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¶ Hardest hit of all by the strike was Alaska, which imports 85% of its food.
On Thanksgiving Day turkey soared to 75¢ per lb:, 30¢ above normal. Cities like Nome, Fairbanks and Ketchikan, which lay in a winter's stores in advance, were unworried. But Cordova was rationing condensed milk, six cans to a customer.
Petersburg was out of coal. Sitka, Skagway, Seward reported their shelves almost empty of fresh vegetables and meats.
In this emergency President Roosevelt, before sailing for South America, issued an executive order empowering the government-owned Alaska Railroad to commandeer government ships or charter private vessels, import food. Soon as three ships had been chartered, the problem rose of getting strikers to load and man them.
Last week a deal was made whereby the Government gave the striking unions substantially everything they were demanding from their employers—control of hiring halls, higher pay, cash for overtime. Suggesting that this be made precedent for settling the whole strike, International Longshoremen's Association crowed in San Francisco: "It is interesting to note that the U. S. Government recognizes the demands of the strikers as just and reasonble."
A prime talking point for the New Deal's Matanuska Valley resettlement project (TIME, May 6, 1935 et seq.) was that it would supply some of the food which Alaska must otherwise import. Last week in Washington, returned from a month of Alaskan observation, Oklahoma's Senator Elmer Thomas asserted that Matanuska is a flat failure. One-third of its transplanted families, said he, were ready to quit. Though the cost of settling had run to $14,000 per family instead of an anticipated $3,500, the experiment was worth every cent it had cost, declared the Senator, because it had "proved once and for all that Alaska is not suitable for large-scale colonization."
Reason was that Alaska's lush but extremely short growing season made its vegetables bloated, watery. Matanuska vegetables, said Senator Thomas, "taste like icicles." Potatoes must be dried in a slow oven before they can be stored even briefly. Alaskans, he declared, generally refuse to eat their native produce.
To this blast, Matanuska's Federal manager retorted that its 164 families had this year fed themselves, put 714 tons of hay and potatoes in storage, sold $4,000 worth of vegetables and creamery products.