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

IUR SUMMER d. q tuuC W tdhI NV aNJ5 ~
for fishing, picnicking, or simply sitting IN
the shade to take it easy. Usually the first
vagrant winds of autumn are sitting down
from the North about this time to cool things
off q bit and make the occasion refreshing
and enjoyable. But often they don't, and a
hot sun beats down on labor's celebration,
leaving many a sunburned pair of shoulders
and peeling noses scattered throughout the
community.
We are deeply gratified this year to note
the unusually ambitious preparations which
the organized labor crafts here and the Elks
and other civic groups have undertaken to
make this first honest-to-goodness peacetime
Labor Day a celebration worthy of the truly
splendid achievement of toll and production
which Jackson County's sturdy working men
and the community at large have accomplish
ed during the war years.
To many longtime residents here it seems
like "only yesterday" that the ominous yet
thrilling hum of war began to ~electrify our
relatively small community, bringing the
first clear knowledge that we were to play
a big part in the war. AT the mouth of the
Pascagoula river, a point of sleeping tropical
beauty little changed from what it was in
ancient times, a huge modern shipyard began
to grow, causing land to be filled in, changing
the old contours of the river, and swallowing
up the abandoned ste of a long-forgotten en-
terprise of the first world war.
Workmen streafled into ,Pascagoula by
every road. The tempo increased with the
passing months. Warehouses and ways rose
against the skyline of the coastal marsh, and
Ex-@ff.. A. ~I11.fr., - t.,.o1xIO,tc chtNC
rose slowly upward. Men working and
climbing in the structures looked like small
Lilliputian figures besides the tremendous
gantries and other machines of the yards.
Yet in the long run it was the muscle, the
sweat, the slowly acquired skills of these
small figures in the strakes and scaffolding
which patiently stitched the great ships to-
gether piece by piece. All who worked on
these vessels in a sense were part of the labor
force, for all contributed their labor, whether
it be chipping, welding. or burning the mid
night oil over complex engineering blue
prints.
And ships were not the only products which
our ~county's laboring men and women turn.
ed out in the total war effort. Our factories
produced utility sweaters and other wool
q iCi1t oAA hAii6 AdiAto NtAitA
uted some of the countless smaller objects
needed in war, our fishermen brought in
food that helped feed worker and soldier,
our farmers produced the fruits of earth that
in the long run are more vital than shells
and gunpowder in a nations ability to stick
it out.
When the bombs dropped in Pearl Harbor
opening the war in earnest the Pascagoula
community had already undergone its con-
version to production. And now the roads
brought an ever increasing stream into the
community. Every day saw workmen ar
irving here alone, or with their families,
stepping off bus or train, or perhaps driving
in with an old farm pickup truck loaded
high with pieces of furniture and children.
BY tens and by, hundreds they got wrote up"
as the saying went and showed up for work
in the din and hammer and flashing weld
arcs of the ship yard. None of them had been
a stranger to toll, to earning bread by the
sweat of the brow. Some were better work.
men than others. Some learned quicker than
others. Some tried harder than others. That's
the way it is with universal human nature.
Where did our workmen come from? They
came from Jones, Smith, Jeff Davis, Walt
hall counties; Kemper. Hancock, George and
~Yallobusha; they came from all the counties
of Mississippi and most of the parishes of
Louisiana; they came from the towns and
farms of Alabama; from the big cities of the
South. from the Tennessee mountains; among
them even were the boys from Brooklyn,
Newark, Chicago, Frisco. many of these
discharged soldiers from Northern units sta
toned in nearby Mississippi camps. They
came too from all the big and little towns of
the coast. And many didn't come from any,
where. They did not have to, for they ived
here. Some Of the finest workmen in the
yard were farmers. fishermen, clerks and