Roosevelt's May 2, 1943 words to the coal miners, printed as a poster

The President of the United States on May 2, 1943, said is a Government Printing Office sheet under an American flag and the Great Seal. It quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt promising not to weaken union rights in the coal fields and saying the miners "will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory" (NAID 515206).

Two paragraphs in the president's voice

There is no picture beyond an American flag and the Great Seal. The rest of the sheet is a quotation, introduced by a dated heading and printed by the Government Printing Office. The archive says the statement was made during a dispute in the coal fields.

The President of the United States on May 2, 1943, said . . .

“I believe now, as I have all my life, in the right of workers to join unions and to protect their unions. I want to make it absolutely clear that this Government is not going to do anything now to weaken those rights in the coal fields . . .

“I believe that the coal miners themselves as Americans will not fail to heed the clear call to duty. Like all other good Americans, they will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory.”

A promise, then a summons

The first paragraph is a promise about rights: the government will not use the moment to weaken the miners' unions. The second is a summons. It does not argue the miners' grievance or the operators' case. It tells the miners what "good Americans" will do and assumes they are among them.

The archive tags testimonial first, since the president's own voice is the whole of the message, and glittering generalities for "duty" and "good Americans." Its purpose field reads "Mobilize or secure compliance," and the audience is "Domestic public."

The sheet's ellipses show that the poster quotes only part of what Roosevelt said. The omitted words are not in the record.

Read it beside the possession order

Another 1943 coal-field sheet on this site is a harder document. United States Property! prints Harold L. Ickes's order taking possession of coal mines where a strike or stoppage had occurred or was threatened. One sheet promises that union rights will survive; the other tells the people in the mines that they now serve the government. A free reader is entitled to hold both and ask how the promise looked from inside a mine the government had taken. The record does not give the order's exact date, so this page does not say which sheet came first.

The Roosevelt administration essay sets out the war powers the government claimed. The case study on union and open-shop campaigns, 1910–41 covers the fights before the war.