MANPOWER: The Deserters

A new great migration was on in the U.S. last week. Thousands of workers were deserting their war jobs on the West Coast and swarming East toward peace jobs. The planemakers and shipbuilders, heading back to towns and farms, were a prime evidence of the American feeling that one war is nearly over.

By last week the swelling migration had become a prime problem for the War Manpower Commission. For several months Los Angeles has been losing an estimated 7,000 workers a month; San Francisco, 4,000; Portland and Seattle, 15,500.

In Washington, William Haber, WMC’s swarthy, workmanlike assistant executive director, summed up: “The workers begin to think about the aluminum factory that’s going to be started in their home town, about the new gas stations, the other factories that are supposedly going into civilian production. They want to get in on the ground floor.”

But there was still much more work on the West Coast than back home. In Seattle, Boeing needs 4,000 workers. In Portland the Kaiser shipyards need 11,500. In the great Northwest the logging industry needs 7,000.

And when the European war ends and the United Nations’ power shifts to the Pacific, the West Coast needs will be even greater. WMC tightened up on job transfers, made many a migrant sit idle for 60 days after he trekked back from the West. But these were straws on the flood. The desertions went on.