The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1946-08-30
Labor Day

executives from right here in Jackson coun-
ty. Quite a few of these, being here on the
ground when the big effort started six years
ago, rose eventually to relatively high ex-
ecutive posts in the yard.
Many a man who checked in at the ship
yard had never seen a welder's whip in his
life. Few had seen a gantry, few had ever
been aboard an ocean going ship. Many had
grown up on the small poor farms of the
deep south, working the soil with methods
little changed and little more exact than they
were in the times of the Scriptures. Many
got training in the schools that were set up
by the maritime commission, but some simply
decided to call themselves carpenters or ma
chinists and metal workers-and some of
these eventually made the grade. AS the
years passed, memories of the farm and the
ways Of farm life began to dim somewhat.
Men who had come venturing into Pasca-
goula in those early war years, doubtful, not
sure of themselves as industrial workers,
slowly but surely became fine and expert
enced workmen. Some were not serious, and
drifted into the ~community's effort for a brief
pause, and drifted out again; learning little,
caring little. But some stuck to it ten hours
a day, II hours sometimes, then eight hours,
day in and day out as the seasons and the
years went by. And many of these became
welders, machinists, carpenters, expert and
qualified craftsmen in the finest sense of
the word. The differences in skill between
these and the older experts Who came here
qualified to begin with, slowly vanished. And
men who had muddled through the depres-
sion of the '30's as unskilled poorly paid
laborers and farmers, became skilled in
dustrial workers drawing pay established
by national authority as commensurate with
the work.
We often use the word Epic" too lightly,
for epic really means a great story of a
great achievement, in which the lives of a
great many people nave been involved. But
in a sense what was accomplished here by
the workmen, the laborers, of the a~grarian
Gulf states was an epic. A fleet of eighty-four
huge ships, as fine in their class as any made
in the historic shipyards of England and
Scotland, splashed down into our native
waters, to sail out to duties in all the seven
seas and all the ports of the globe. The beau
tiful and sleepy little river which the In
dams called the Pascagoula-named for the
tribe called THE Observation-Disclosures at
last the rival of the Clyde and the Firth of
Forth, the famous s%hip-building centers of
the British Isles.
Pascagoula bid against Edinburough in the
markets of the world and came off with con-
tracts for a fleet of Brazilian ships.
All members contribute to the efforts of
a team, all parts of a machine are import
ant. 1t is fitting that one weekend of the
year should be set aside to celebrate the
Labor that goes into the nations life. All
who worked and sweated in the wartime
effort of Pascagoula and Jackson county, in
whatever capacity, whether in ~overalls or a
white shirt, whether with muscle or with
technical skill, can look back upon their five
year effort and know that the record itself
proclaims:
Well donei