The unemployed (1914), John Scott Clubb's "I Won't Workers" cartoon

The unemployed is a cartoon dated 10 March 1914 and credited to John Scott Clubb. Well-dressed idle men under an "I Won't Workers" banner refuse to shovel snow, with a sign demanding two dollars a day, and the enlarged letters spell I.W.W. Library of Congress copy.

A banner that spells the union's initials

The archive describes a crowd of well-dressed men standing idle under a banner. They refuse to shovel snow. A sign sets out their price, and one man shouts that they would sooner break into a church. The banner's lettering enlarges three capitals inside the words so that the union's initials, I.W.W., read out of "I Won't Workers."

I Won't Workers

Well break into a church first!

$2 A DAY

FOR SHOVELING

SNOW EXTRA

PAY FOR WAITING

What the record says about it

The catalog title is The unemployed, the date 10 March 1914, the maker John Scott Clubb. The issuer type is media and the audience the domestic public. The purpose field reads "Demonize," and the one technique tagged is name-calling. The record does not name the newspaper or magazine that printed the drawing. The copy comes from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, which the rights line says has no known restrictions on publication.

Reading it

A cartoonist may mock a union, and in 1914 a cartoonist did. What the drawing does is move the argument from wages to character. The men are dressed well, the sign asks for pay to wait, and the line about the church makes them sound like vandals. The archive's description puts it plainly: no worker's stated grievance appears in the frame. The reader is given a nickname and no complaint to weigh.

The labor organizing case study cites this cartoon by date and name and sets it beside the strike committees' own name-calling. A Bain News Service photograph from a month later, Bread or Revolution, shows an Industrial Workers of the World rally for the unemployed in Union Square. In May 1918 W. A. Rogers drew Uncle Sam hauling off a tag marked I.W.W. under a "Sedition law passed" banner in Now for a Round-Up. A little over four years after Clubb's joke, the union's initials were drawn as cargo for a sedition law. The Wilson administration essay treats the Espionage and Sedition Acts and their use against war critics.