2 minute read
Vagabond Editorials
By Jack Dionne
The outstanding matter affecting the lumber industry of the nation as this is written, is the labor situation on the Pacific Coast. By the time this is published the world will know whether or not there will be another great strike along the waterfronts of the West. ***
The agreements under which shipping has been operating on the Coast expire on September 30th. Asthis is written there seems little hope of new agreements. The unions have already voted 96/o agunst arbitration of such matters as the shipowners and the labor unions cannot settle. Which vote would seem to render futile any hope of new agreements being arrived at by the expiration date of the present ones.
In anticipation of this situation the lumber industry which ships by water or is affected by water shipments, has been working with frenzied earnestness for the past several weeks. If there is a general tie-up of lumber carrying ships it will be tremendously serious. So everyone has been stocking up with lumber as fast as possible in the consuming and distributing territories; and the shippers and shipowners have been hustling day and night to get everything unloaded that can be by the last day of September.
Lumber shipments by water from the Northwest to California, to theAtlantic seaboard, and to foreign markets will be directly afrected; likewise imports of lumber into Pacific Coast ports from the East and from the Philippines. If water shipments become paralyzed the water-shipping mills of the Northwest will be forced to close very shortly; likewise loggers and other affected departments.
Naturally, with so huge a volume of lumber affected, every lumber district of the country will soon feel the fects if the boats stop hauling. All eyes are turned toward the negotiators who are working in hope of arriving at some solution that will keep the boats running.
This labor trouble affects every boat operating in and out of Pacific Coast ports, big and little, great and small. The lumber boats are, of course, only a small group in the huge set-up. There are between seventy and eighty boats engaged exclusively in handling lumber between mills and the California markets alone. Then lumber is shipped on the larger boats from Pacific ports to the Atlantic and Gulf ports, and to all parts of the lumber consuming world. The big ocean liners will be just as thoroughly affected.
To say that the situation is tense along the Pacific Coast doesn't begin to do justice to the matter. It is the sole topic of conversation in the lumber industry and the shipping industry. In California, where a high building tide is rising, it is a matter of huge importance to the lumber dealer whose source ofsupply at a time when he is doing the best business in years, is threatened. ***
Appointment of a Federal Commission to handle the situation and prevent a tie-up of Coast shipping is one of the suggestions being publicized at the present moment.
(Continued on Page 8)
