As naval and merchant shipping contracts flew out to companies across the country and the building crisis intensified, a secondary crisis reared its head: shortages. Coal and iron were in short supply, and were needed by the Army and the railroads as well as the Navy. However, the primary shortage on Staten Island proved to be labor, and the related problems of transporting and housing that labor. An investigation in early January 1918 found “the four shipyards on Staten Island are confronted by a shortage of 10,000 men.”[7] At the same time there was a “vital lack of transportation for carrying work-men from their homes to the shipyards.”[8] A month later this crisis had not eased; as one New York paper stated, “the Government will blunder again in its shipbuilding programme unless it acts immediately to relieve congested housing conditions for the workmen at eighteen shipbuilding plants near New York city.”[9] A Staten Island committee was established and sought to construct housing at a one-mile square area in Bull’s Head and Mariner’s Harbor due to its direct trolley line to the water’s edge, but the housing was needed even more immediately. In addition to the housing crunch, the four large shipbuilding companies on Staten Island were all short of men: SISCO had 2,100 but needed 5,000, Johnson had 180 and needed 500, Downey had 900 but needed 3,500, and Standard had 2,500 but needed 2,500 more. The New York Herald wrote that the “loss of efficiency and productive capacity, the direct cost to the plant, and therefore to the nation, is staggering.”[10] Then in late February 1918 these labor shortages were exacerbated by the next crisis to trouble the shipyards.
The struggle over union recognition, fair wages, and many other labor issues rumbled on throughout the First World War. In mid to late February 1918, East Coast marine carpenters fought for wage parity with workers on the Pacific coast and struggled under increasing living costs. There were already 400 carpenters striking at shipyards on Staten Island when reports of a general strike across the entire Atlantic seaboard began to circulate. John Stuart, secretary of the Marine Woodworkers District Council, declared the “strike would start unless carpenters get $6.40 for an eight-hour day, instead of $4.80,” a general strike like that would have crippled government shipbuilding.[11] The calls for a general strike created a firestorm in the press with equal vehemence on both sides. Striking workers at Downey Shipbuilding Company claimed they were not unpatriotic; many had sons fighting in Europe, but they wanted fair wages for their work.[12] The potential impact on mobilization was so serious that President Wilson sent a telegram to William L. Hutcheson, the General President of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, stating that