1941.11.22 “A Better Job”
by Harold Roberto (Hal) Coffman (1883-1958)
12 x 17 in., crayon on board
Coppola Collection
Coffman got his first cartooning job was with the San Francisco Post in 1898. He was 15, and drew for $3 a week. He also worked on the Los Angeles Herald and Los Angeles Times while still in his teens. In 1906, he went to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He first gained fame when the San Francisco earthquake and fire struck [April 18]. Coffman drew sketches for the Inquirer from memory of downtown San Francisco buildings. He filled in details of the ruin from the wire reports. Around 1940 he moved to Texas and worked for 16 years at the Star-Telegram before his semi-retirement in 1955.
John Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960. He was a major player in the history of coal mining. He was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, he took the Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942, then back into the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1944.
In the Presidential election of 1940, Lewis, heavily dependent on pro-Soviet organizers, rejected Roosevelt and supported Wendell Willkie, a Republican candidate, fearing Roosevelt's intention for American involvement in World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the miners issued a no-strike pledge "for the duration" in support of the war effort. However, Lewis repeatedly violated the pledge.
Lewis would damage his reputation further, when in 1941, on the eve of America's entrance into World War II and in 1943, Lewis led over half-a-million mine workers on strike, demanding wage increases even while other labor unions were operating under a general no-strike policy in support of the war effort.
Two weeks before Pearl Harbor, John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers ended a six-day strike. With the outbreak of war on December 7 several strikes then in progress were immediately called off and several threatened strikes, even where strike votes had been taken, were canceled. Labor organizations in numerous localities passed resolutions pledging full support to the Government and in many cases promised that there should be no strikes interfering with the production of war materials.
November 22, 1941: Ten pickets of the United Mineworkers’ Union were ambushed and wounded by shots fired near the entrance to the Endenborn mine, at Brownsville, yesterday. This is the latest outburst of violence in the greatest Labor crisis for years – the strike of some 153,000 soft coal workers, which is holding up steel production and hampering the defense program.
While almost everybody is saying that each coal pit closed is tantamount to the gift of a tank to Hitler, the president of the United Mineworkers (Mr. John Lewis) refused to admit the existence of a national crisis. He professes to believe that President Roosevelt is a greater enemy to American democracy than Hitler.
Australian Associated Press and 'The Mail' Special Service
