Human Nature, Portland Variety

The U.S. Maritime Commission had spent a lot of money to make sure that workers got cheap, comfortable transportation from downtown Portland, Ore. to three Kaiser shipyards. One million dollars was paid for two ferries which in gayer days had taken San Francisco vacationists across the Bay to the World Fair. Now, for 10¢, a worker could buy a round-trip ferry ticket to the Swan Island yards or the Oregon Shipbuilding Co. Twenty railroad cars were purchased from the Southern Pacific. These offered a round trip to the Vancouver yards for 25¢.

But the Kaiser workers would not use the ferries or the railroad. Of the 93,500 employes, 15,356 still drive their cars to work, more than three-quarters of them with supplemental ration cards which they got by telling the ration board there was no other way of getting there. The trains ran with about 3% of their seats filled.

Meanwhile the ferries, fitted out with such conveniences as breakfast bars, chugged up & down the Willamette River with an average 5% load. The Boilermakers’ Union refused to “force” its members to use this Government-provided transportation. The Kaiser Co. said nothing, for fear of losing workers. The Maritime Commission brought no pressure on unions, company, or the ration boards. Tires and gasoline burned.

Last week the Maritime Commission announced that it would discontinue the services that had already cost it an estimated $2 million. The Commission will spend $375,000 more for 50 new busses, with 200 fat rubber tires and a total capacity of only 2,050 passengers.

Said a Kaiser spokesman: “It’s just human nature. A man will drive his car right down to the shreds on the tires. What could we do?”