in the 1920s largely put an end to new initiatives of this sort. Trade continued to grow slowly, with an emphasis on China and (especially) Japan, but other West Coast and Gulf Coast ports increasingly copied Seattle's initiatives of the prior decade, and the Port of Tacoma in particular undercut Seattle on prices. A price war through the 1920s resulted in a 1929 agreement through the American Association of Port Authorities to set uniform wharf rates. Seattle and the state of Washington were not well-positioned coming into the Great Depression that began in 1929. Due to over-fishing and excessive logging, the natural resources that had provided much of the basis for the local economy were being depleted. The salmon catch was down below a tenth of what it had been in the peak year, 1913, and timber production was also significantly down even before the national economy began to tumble. By October 1931, low-rent housing in Seattle was oversaturated, and a Hooverville began to form in the abandoned Skinner & Eddy land along Elliott Bay, site of present-day (2023) Terminal 46. In its first few months it was twice removed by Seattle Police "sweeps," but eventually a compromise was reached that allowed a shantytown to persist for almost a decade. World War II and after The economic depression and labor troubles of the 1930s (see following section Politics and the Port) were followed by the wartime economy of World War II. Even before the U.S. entered the war, export of scrap metal to Japan, of course, went to zero, and export of Eastern Washington apples to Europe fared little better, but with the Soviet Union newly an ally, Seattle became a base for trans-oceanic shipping to Siberia. The Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation (Todd Pacific) on Harbor Island scored contracts to build 45 destroyers, which put it in a tie with Bethlehem Steel San Francisco for largest purely military ship production on the U.S. West Coast. The U.S. Navy took over the massive Smith Cove piers. The state legislature granted the Port of Seattle and other port authorities around the state exceptional powers to pursue defense-related projects without requiring the public to vote on the bond issues, which enabled the port to purchase additional land on the Harbor Island side of the East Waterway and to pursue major projects on the mainland side: Pier 42 (now part of Terminal 46), with its