How to Get Copper Miners

The labor shortage in the copper mines (TIME, Aug. 3) was so critical last week that the War Labor Board finally went way out of its way to do something about it, promised to consider 37 separate wage-boost pleas forthwith on "an industrywide basis," in order to keep copper miners from drifting away to higher-paid work faster than they can be replaced.

All Washington agrees that copper is one war industry whose wages (87.5-c- an hour) are too low to compete successfully for labor. Half a dozen agencies have plans to do something about it. The War Manpower Commission is talking about giving copper miners extra special draft deferment; and last week there was new and stronger talk of closing U.S. gold mines and diverting their workers to base metals.

The output of mines that produce nothing but gold (like Homestake and Natomas and Golden Cycle) just gets buried in the ground again, but it requires the labor of more than 7,000 miners, while copper production lags for lack of only 5,000 men. Hitch in this logical suggestion is that there is still no way to make sure that the disemployed gold miners would stop off at Butte instead of drifting on to West Coast shipyards. Nor is there as yet any national service law to stiffen the spine of Paul McNutt's War Manpower Commission to the point of freezing labor in strategic jobs. And--Washington being Washington--there is little or no hope of getting such unpopular legislation on the books until after the elections are over.

Thus wages are the simplest and almost the only practicable way of solving the copper crisis now. If copper wages are raised much OPA will have to do some new figuring on copper prices, for at 12-c- a Ib. the big companies are already producing some 30% of their copper at a loss (on the OPA theory that they can afford to average the loss out against their lower cost output). Even a 10-c--an-hour raise would cost $7,000,000 a year--small pickings compared with the $250,000,000 the Government is paying for domestic copper.

California Shipbuilding Corp. (TIME, July 13) at Los Angeles launched its 55th Liberty ship, last of the ships on its first war contract, 200 days ahead of schedule and just 18 months after the first pile was driven for its $20,000,000 shipyard.

On Calship's books are new contracts for 169 more ships.

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