STRIKES IN AMERICA.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19314, 21 July 1934, Page 7

STRIKES IN AMERICA.

CLASH AT PORTLAND. POLITICIAN UNDER FIRE. STRIKE LEADER’S DECLARATION United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright. SAN FRANCISCO, July 19. With the general strike in San Francisco over and every indication of arbitration in the longshoreman’s strike, interest has shifted to other strike centres. Portland, Oregon, has assumed chief importance. The Governor, Mr. J. L. Meier, ordered out the National Guard following upon a clash between strikers and special guards, whom organised Labour officials declared to •be irresponsible persons armed by the city. The fight centred around pier No. 4 and resulted in serious injury to several people and the arrest and disarming of four special guards after they had fired at a motor-car containing Air. Robert Wagner, a member of the Senate. A tragedy was narrowly averted. Mr. Wagner had been sent specially as President Roosevelt’s mediator and was driving along the waterfront. Unwittingly the car crossed the guardsmen’s line. A volley of 11 bullets Immediately riddled the car, shattering the glass and sides. Nobody was hurt, but Mr. Wagner said he could hear’ the bullets whining past his head. A sentry said he heard someone shout: “Fire,” and he did so. Then every excited soldier in the vicinity followed suit. Two officials of the Textile Union and another unionist were wounded in Alabama as rioting broke out anew there. In Ohio the onion-bed weeders are On strike and rioted to-day, four men being injured. The leader of the striking longshoremen, Henry Bridges, says they will never return to work unless they receive control of the hiring halls where they gather for the allocation of employment. Hitherto the employers have distributed work through their “straw bosses.” The longshoremen construe the N.R.A.’s recognition of collective bargaining as meaning union control of hiring halls. WASHINGTON, July 19. The Government to-day issued a statement • snowing that American workers have lost 13,000.000 days’ work this year owing to strikes and lock-outs and that the workers losses in wages have totalled 50,000,000 dollars.