The Daily Alaska Empire

Coal Strike Is Hitting Hard,
Food Problem
Steel Production Also Sagging-Steps Taken by
Penn. Governor

(By The Associated Press)

While the 34-day-old soft coal strike continued to spread a creeping paralysis throughout the steel industry and seriously hamper railroads. Pennsylvania's Governor Edward Martin made an effort today to get enough coal mined to meet vital public utility needs.

Martin named three of his Cabinet members to confer in Pittsburgh today with four District Vice-Presidents of the AFL-United Mine Workers on whether coal can be mined for utilities servicing hospitals and other essential consumers.

At Washington, J. A. Krug, Solid Fuels Administrator, declared in a statement that the relief and rehabilitation program for Europe is on the verge of collapse because of the shortage of coal for transportation.

There is a grave possibility, he said, that great quantities of food "will not reach starving people in the liberated nations in time to avert an international catastrophe."

Meanwhile, the nation's output of steel-vital to peacetime reconversion-dropped nearly six points to 67.7 per cent of capacity this week.

It was the sixth straight week that production has sagged.

Fast-emptying fuel bins and lack of steel from basic producers brought additional sharp curtailments in such steel-making centers as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Birmingham, and threatened to add thousands to the more than 71,000 workers in coal-consuming industries already idled by the coal shortage.

At the same time, railroad officials were working out arrangements to meet the Office of Defense Transportation's edict to slash passenger service on coal-burning lines by 50 per cent.

The ODT order, effective May 15, came on the heels of another ODT order imposing a sweeping embargo on virtually all freight shipments except fuel and food. About three-fourths of the country's rail system relies on coal.