Imperial Valley Press

IMPERIAL VALLEY PRESS, EL CENTRO, CALIF.
Defense Strikes Spread Thru U. S.
(Continued from Page One)

...discussed giving the administration power to take over and operate factories until their labor troubles could be settled; the Oklahoma senate passed a bill making it a felony punishable by three years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine to solicit defense workers for union membership, and the Texas house passed a bill outlawing violence against anyone trying to work at a legitimate job.

The Oklahoma bill went to the house; the Texas bill to the senate for final action. Oklahomans said their bill was designed to protect air field and army camp projects.

Texas' Gov. W. Lee O'Daniel submitted the bill making it a felony to molest workers and his senate passed it without change after two army officers had testified that strikes were hampering deliveries of military supplies.

It has been estimated that the U. S. steel negotiations alone involve 600,000 workers, since a general shutdown of the firm's plants would close hundreds of smaller ones depending on U. S. steel for materials.

The jobs of another 338,000 men, coal miners in the eight-state Appalachian area, were at stake in negotiations that have reached a deadlock in New York. It was believed that the government might intervene to prevent a general shut-down of the mines when the United Mine Workers (CIO) contract expires next Monday midnight. The union demands a $1 a day general wage increase.

Workmen began returning to work in the 155-acre Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing company plant under protection of 500 policemen and special deputies. A crowd of CIO automobile workers behind police lines hooted "scabs" at the first 300 who passed into the plant.

The company opened its gates for the first time since 7,800 struck 66 days ago in response to an urgent request by Secretary of Navy Frank Knox and William S. Knudsen, director general of the office of production management, to resume work on $45,000,000 worth of vital defense machinery.

Further trouble was feared at the Richmond, Ind., plant, of the International Harvester company, one of the four firms whose cases have been taken over by the new national defense mediation board. Thursday, police escorting 700 workers into the Richmond plant battled furiously with pickets. There were 25 injured and 82, including 18 women, arrested and held incommunicado while Police Chief Ellis Duckett considered asking a grand jury to indict some of them for plotting murder.

The plant had been closed six weeks by a strike of the Farm Equipment Workers organizing committee (CIO) enforcing a demand for higher wages. International Harvester, with $10,000,000 in defense orders, has had four of its 17 plants closed by strikes. Its McCormick works at Chicago, struck by the FEWOC, was reopened Monday with American Federation of Labor workers. The Chicago Tractor plant employing 5,000 and the Rock Falls, Ind., plant, employing 250, have been closed two months by FEWOC strikes.

Another blow to defense production was an announcement by the Boeing Aircraft company at Seattle, Wash., producer of the famous "flying fortresses," that it had laid off 300 men and expected to lay off more because of a shortage of parts. The firm employs 10,000 and has $200,000,000 worth of American and British airplane orders.