Prosperity and stiffer government controls added
significantly to the strength of organized labor; indeed,
the war had more to do with institutionalizing collective
bargaining than the New Deal. As workers recognized
the benefits of union membership, they flocked into the
organizations. Strikes declined sharply, but some crip-
pling work stoppages did occur. In May 1943, after John
L. Lewis’s United Mine Workers walked out of the pits,
the government seized the coal mines. This strike led
Congress to pass, over Roosevelt’s veto, the Smith-
Connally War Labor Disputes Act, which gave the presi-
dent the power to take over any war plant threatened by
a strike and outlawed strikes against seized plants.
Although strikes persisted—the loss in hours of labor
zoomed to 38 million in 1945—when Roosevelt asked
for a labor draft law, Congress refused to go along.
Wages and prices remained in fair balance.
Overtime work fattened paychecks, and a new stress
in labor contracts on paid vacations, premium pay for
night work, and various forms of employer-subsidized716 Chapter 27 War and Peace, 1941–1945
fewer than 6,000 airplanes, in 1944
more than 96,000. Shipyards produced
237,000 tons of vessels in 1939, 10 mil-
lion tons in 1943.
This growth was especially notable
in the South and Southwest. This
region got a preponderance of the new
army camps built for the war as well as
a large share of the new defense plants.
Southern productive capacity increased
by about 50 percent, and southern per
capita output, while still low, crept
closer to the national average.
Wartime experience proved that the
Keynesian economists were correct in
saying that government spending would
spark economic growth. About 8 million
people were unemployed in June 1940.
After Pearl Harbor, unemployment virtu-
ally disappeared, and by 1945 the civilian
workforce had increased by nearly 7 mil-
lion. Military mobilization had begun
well before December 1941, by which
time 1.6 million men were already under
arms. Economic mobilization proceeded
much more slowly, mainly because the
president refused to centralize authority.
For months after Pearl Harbor various
civilian agencies squabbled with the mili-
tary over everything from the allocation
of scarce raw materials to the technical
specifications of weapons. Roosevelt
refused to settle these conflicts.
The War Economy
Yet by early 1943 the nation’s economic machinery
had been converted to a wartime footing and was func-
tioning effectively. Supreme Court Justice James F.
Byrnes resigned from the Court to become a sort of
“economic czar.” His Office of War Mobilization had
complete control over priorities and prices. Rents, food
prices, and wages were strictly regulated, and items in
short supply were rationed to consumers. While wages
and prices had soared during 1942, after April 1943
they leveled off. Thereafter the cost of living scarcely
changed until controls were lifted after the war.
Expanded industrial production together with
conscription caused a labor shortage that increased
the bargaining power of workers. At the same time,
the national emergency required some limitation on
the workers’ right to take advantage of this power.
After Pearl Harbor Roosevelt created a National War
Labor Board (NWLB) to arbitrate disputes and stabi-
lize wage rates, and he banned all changes in wages
without NWLB approval.
Texaco, which produced this poster, used a racist caricature to discourage absenteeism
among American workers during the war.