Sea Stall

Under a bright Hawaiian moon, dainty Anna May Wong put out to sea one night last week in a pineapple barge. Embarked on neither a pleasure jaunt nor a cinema stunt, Actress Wong and 446 fellow passengers were en route to the U. S. For three weeks, they had been stranded in Honolulu by the shipping strike (TIME, Nov. 23). A few tourists, including a California man and an Australian woman who met and married in the interim, had enjoyed their isolation. But most were glad to be towed in the pineapple barge last week, two miles out to the Matson liner Monterey, whose captain had refused to enter the harbor for fear of losing his crew. They left Hawaii in a state of what its Governor Joseph B. Poindexter called "very grave emergency." No one was starving, but Hawaii imports 55% of its food and after three weeks supplies were running dangerously low, food prices rocketing. As it neared the end of its first month last week, the biggest, most serious shipping strike in U. S. history was being felt across half the world.

P: In Le Havre, as an "entente cordiale gesture" to U. S. strikers, French dockworkers refused to unload the U. S. Line's S. S. Washington.

P: In Ensenada, Lower California, Mexican taxi drivers refused to carry passengers disembarking from the Grace Line's 5. 5. Santa Elena. The Mexican Confederation of Labor proclaimed a boycott of all U. S. ships.

P: In Shanghai it was announced that beginning this week all U. S.-bound mail would be posted on foreign ships.

P: In London, for fear of "civil commotion in the ports," Lloyd's quadrupled its insurance rates on freight in the U. S. coastal trade.

P: In Beaumont, Tex., Sheriff W. W. Richardson arrested 236 shipping picketers in one day, threatened to build a prison stockade if he had to arrest any more.

P: In Tampa, the convening American Federation of Labor solemnly branded as "outlaw" the strike on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, opposed from the start by conservative heads of Longshoremen's and Seamen's unions. Dismayed were Federationists when more than 1,000 ship's officers, members of the National Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots and Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, joined the 20,000 "outlaws" in a perfectly legitimate strike of their own.

P: In Hollywood, the filming of four cinemas with maritime backgrounds was postponed.

P: In San Francisco, the Chamber of Commerce announced that the strike had crippled shipment of $75,000,000 worth of West Coast freight, was adding to that figure at the rate of $3,000,000 per day. Relief rolls were swelling, heavy construction being curtailed, perishable foods intended for export being dumped on local markets. San Francisco's Federation of Churches requested a day of "public and private prayers" for a strike settlement.

P: As Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward F. McGrady continued striving to arbitrate the strike, his first break came late last week when the Ship Owners' Association of the Pacific, which had reached agreements with five disgruntled unions before the strike began, gave in to a sixth, the Marine Cooks and Stewards Association. Despite its imposing name, however, S.O.A.P. comprises only 20 of 80 shipping companies involved, operates only 70 coastwise schooners.

P: Hardest hit of all by the strike was Alaska, which imports 85% of its food.

On Thanksgiving Day turkey soared to 75-c- per lb:, 30-c- above normal. Cities like Nome, Fairbanks and Ketchikan, which lay in a winter's stores in advance, were unworried. But Cordova was rationing condensed milk, six cans to a customer.

Petersburg was out of coal. Sitka, Skagway, Seward reported their shelves almost empty of fresh vegetables and meats.

In this emergency President Roosevelt, before sailing for South America, issued an executive order empowering the government-owned Alaska Railroad to commandeer government ships or charter private vessels, import food. Soon as three ships had been chartered, the problem rose of getting strikers to load and man them.

Last week a deal was made whereby the Government gave the striking unions substantially everything they were demanding from their employers--control of hiring halls, higher pay, cash for overtime. Suggesting that this be made precedent for settling the whole strike, International Longshoremen's Association crowed in San Francisco: "It is interesting to note that the U. S. Government recognizes the demands of the strikers as just and reasonble."

A prime talking point for the New Deal's Matanuska Valley resettlement project (TIME, May 6, 1935 et seq.) was that it would supply some of the food which Alaska must otherwise import. Last week in Washington, returned from a month of Alaskan observation, Oklahoma's Senator Elmer Thomas asserted that Matanuska is a flat failure. One-third of its transplanted families, said he, were ready to quit. Though the cost of settling had run to $14,000 per family instead of an anticipated $3,500, the experiment was worth every cent it had cost, declared the Senator, because it had "proved once and for all that Alaska is not suitable for large-scale colonization."

Reason was that Alaska's lush but extremely short growing season made its vegetables bloated, watery. Matanuska vegetables, said Senator Thomas, "taste like icicles." Potatoes must be dried in a slow oven before they can be stored even briefly. Alaskans, he declared, generally refuse to eat their native produce.

To this blast, Matanuska's Federal manager retorted that its 164 families had this year fed themselves, put 714 tons of hay and potatoes in storage, sold $4,000 worth of vegetables and creamery products.

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