Aluminum Lost

In the 1 6th Century Explorer Jacques Cartier told his monarch in France that the Saguenay River in Quebec flowed through a land of gold and rubies, oranges and almonds, wherein dwelt men with no digestive organs, square bodies, and only one leg. Almost as unbelievable, for a modern nation at war, was the story last week, also from Saguenay, of how most of Canada's aluminum industry had been put out of action for weeks to come. The stoppage occurred at the $150,000,000 Aluminium, Ltd. plant at Arvida which, using cheap water power to process ship-borne bauxite ore from British Guiana, is now turning out enough ingot aluminum for 50,000 airplanes a year, and has become the second biggest single aluminum-production center in the Western Hemi sphere.*

"Organized . . . sabotage," roared crusty, New England-born Clarence Decatur Howe, Minister of Munitions and Supply.

"Not a labor dispute in any sense," opined Canadian Minister of Labor Norman McLarty, who backed up Howe's prediction of wholesale arrests and hinted at the use of Canada's Treachery Act, with its death-penalty clause.

The situation, so far as it became known after censorship had held up the story for five days:

The trouble started in the "pot room" (final stage of aluminum reduction). Irked by the sweltering heat and the inaction of the company and the National Catholic Syndicate of Aluminum Workers on requested wage increases, 300 huskies quit work and set up a shout for "a dollar an hour." They tossed out protesting "front-office" workers, told company police to go chase themselves. In violation of Canada's labor-conciliation law they staged a sit-down in the pot room, thereby capturing a plant surrounded by anti-aircraft batteries, as carefully guarded against outside attack as any in North America.

Government troops, ordered on the bounce from Valcartier in Bren gun-carriers, did not arrive for four days because municipal and provincial authorities contested the Government's legal right to intercede. When the troops did show up, a worried priest said a special Mass for the "sit-downers," who then moved out peacefully.

Two days later all 5,000 regular plant employes and 4,000 sympathizing construction workers, who were building new plant units, returned to work. Conferences began between the Syndicate and the company to discuss wage adjustments. Meanwhile the aluminum had solidified in the pots. Special crews started a three-week job of chipping it out. Before the plant could get going again Canada would have lost thousands of tons of aluminum production, much of which was earmarked for U.S. airplane factories.

-Biggest: Alcoa's at Alcoa, Tenn.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.