Sorex aaa LABOR’S VOIC A E FOR VICTORY VANCOUVER, B.C., WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1942 e The steel of which ships are wilt starts on its way from the nines in the long trains of hop- vers that carry the iron ore and he limestone, with coal the es- ential materials for a steel in- lustry, to the mills. There it is jassed through open hearth and Nast furnaces, through ingot boaking pits and blooming mills. ®hen, and only then, does it be- rin the long haul to the shipyards ind the sea. This is the weakness of British Solumbia’s shipbuilding industry. [here is no steel mill on the Soast. Virtually all the steel used nm our war industries comes from Sastern Canada and the United States. That steel will continue ‘0 come, but only as long as our ihipyards, through maximum pro- juction achieved under the con- inuous production plan, establish heir indisputable right to it. HIS, however, does not alter the fact that three thousand ‘niles, the width of a continent, veparate our shipyards from the steel industry without which they sannot exist, three thousand miles o haul steel over a burdened ailway system. Wer can it disguise the absurd- ey of British Columbia itself sending steel East—scrap steel which originally came from East- ern Ganada as automobiles, mine and farm machinery, now being sent back to be melted down and returned as steel for cur ship- 5uilding and other war industries. It costs $15 a ton to send this scrap metal Hast and $19 a ton, in sheets, and $30 a ton, in cast- ings, to bring it baek again. Serap steel is essential to the making of armored plate. Mixed mm proportion of one third to one half of every open hearth charge lt produces the steel for the weap- 5ns that in the hands of resolute men determine the outcome of modern war. This wasteful haul, it has been pointed out, is good business for the railways, but our railways are faxed to the limit now to haul war materials, food and fuel If some of the steel for our ship- yards were produced on the Coast t~ would ease the burden on rail Transportation. Gentralization of the steel in- justry in the East is good busi- ness for the stee] companies, but he fact is that steel manufactur- rs in the East, both in Canada ind the United States, can bare- ¥ satisfy the insatiable demands ff war industry. That is why peri- \dically there is a threatened Shortage of steel for our ship- rards. By HAL GRIFFIN Even with Henry J. Kaiser’s new steel plant at Fontana, Cali- fornia, casting its first iron this month, the new steel will soon be absorbed in the rising tempo of production. What at any time would be an economic absurdity, in wartime has become a neediess restriction on our program of production. ) TEEL production is the basis S) ef modern economy. Without a steel industry no state can wage modern war. Steel carries supplies across the seven seas and trans- ports armies to the battlefronts. It carries troops into battle and blasts the enemy from his forti- fications. Steel is the measure of a nation’s industrial development. It might be said that men write history with a Bessemer convert- er. Ss ar Industries {ee so often there is talk of a threatened shortage of steel for British Columbia's ship- yards. And men cannot build ships without steel. The steel freighters taking shape on our ways do not have their beginning amid the dJangor of the shipyards. Their beginning is in the mines, in the blast furnaces and bloom- ng mills of cinder-scarred cities. Behind the pallid flash of the welder’s “stinger” is the muddy glow cast on the night by tall stacks belching flame and gas. One of the prime reasons for the Soviet Union’s great streneth "jes in the tremendous develop- ment of the steel industry under the first and second five year plans. The great achievements of the Soviet people in building their heavy industry, and particuiarly their steel industry, have enabled them to supply the superb weap- ons, in quantity, without which even their heroism and fortitute could not nave stemmed the Steel- armored tide of German fascism. The one factor, above all others, which makes the United States the main arsenal of the United Wations, is its steel industry, still the greatest in the world. e = HERE can be no question that establishment of-a steel in- dustry in British Columbia would strengthen the national war effort industrial de- and constitute an velopment which would marked- ly influence Canada’s future. While it would not eliminate the need for steel from the East, it would provide our war industries with a provincial source to relieve any shortage and augment exist- ing sources. British Columbia has the raw materials in abundance. It has the iron, the limestone, the coal, and what is more; it has them in prox- imity—iron ore reserves at Texada Island variously estimated at 250,- 000 to 6,900,000 tons, iron, lime- stone and coal on Vancouver Is- land. In the Queen Charlotte Islands there is the Iron Duke mine with its estimated iron ore reserves of 10,000,000 tons. Before the war Japanese interests considered it of sufficient importance to form the Louise Mining Company, with an authorized share capital of $80,- 000, to develop it. e@ STEEL industry could have been established in this prov- ince twenty years ago. Had it not been for the unyielding opposi- tion of powerful industrial inter- ests in Eastern Canada, mills on Vancouver Island might now be producing part of the steel for our shipbuilding industry. This point would not be so im- portant now were it not apparent that the same influences and con- siderations that in the past have thwarted ali attempts to build a steel industry on the Pacific Coast are today operating to prevent the renewed and widespread de- mand from attaining its end. Establishment of a steel indus- try has been an issue since the last war. It has been discussed in the legislature, debated on pol- itical platforms and by industrial- ists at their conventions. Commit- tees have been appointed to in- vestigate resources and potential sites and their reports have gath- ered dust on library sheives. Twenty years ago it was sug- gested that the provincial govern- ment should aid in founding a steel industry, and a plank in the platform adopted by the Conserva- tive Party at its 1922 convention urged “government aid in prov- ing presence of iron bodies in the province and provincial coopera- tion with federal authorities in es- tablishing a provincial steel in- dustry.” Even before that, in 1920, Hon. William Sloan, minister of mines in the Liberal Oliver government, told the legislature that encour-= agement of private enterprise would cost so much that the goy- ernment was considering “estab- lishment of anindustry for the manufacture from local iron ores of-commercial iron and steel rath-— er than of financing it as a priy- ate enterprise.” 2 But beyond passing of the Iron Ore Bounties Act to subsidize the prospective steel industry at $3 a ton to the extent of $200,- 000 a year for ten years, nothing much was done. There were a few more investigations, a few more reports were made, and there the matter was left. e@ N= January, when the leg- islature meets again, the question will be discussed once more, only this time there will be a difference. Qn past occasions it has been a question of whether British Go- lumbia is to be developed as an industrial province, as industrial- ists on the Coast want, or wheth- er it is to be kept mainly as a source of the raw materials it produces in such abundance, now rapidly being exhausted, as some industrialists in the East desite. This question today is of minor importance, although there is no lack of evidence that there are some who insists on placing it first in their considerations. The main question before the people today is the strengthen- ing of the national war effort. te- which the reluctance of cer- tain interests in Hastern Ganada to allow establishment of a steel industry in British Columbia con- stitutes an obstacle that must be removed. United efforts by the people of this province can overcome the Opposition and the obstacles, and there is no doubt that the people, appreciating the importance of a steel industry both to the war effort now and to provincial economy after the war, are unit- ed on this issue. Representatives of all political parties, of '!ndtis- try and labor, called together hy Vancouver City Council Jast month to consider establishment of a steel industry, were unani- mous in supporting the project. Industry knows that it can be done. Labor must employ its growing influence to see that it is done.