<P> With the war's ever increasing need for able bodied men consuming America's labor force in the early 1940s, industry turned to teen - aged boys and girls to fill in as replacements . Consequently, many states had to change their child - labor laws to allow these teenagers to work . The lures of patriotism, adulthood, and money led many youth to drop out of school and take a defense job . Between 1940 and 1944, the number of teenage workers increased by 1.9 million, and the number of students in public high schools dropped from 6.6 million in 1940 to 5.6 million in 1944, as a million students--and many teachers--took jobs . </P> <P> The war mobilization changed the relationship of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) with both employers and the national government . Both the CIO and the larger American Federation of Labor (AFL) grew rapidly in the war years . </P> <P> Nearly all the unions that belonged to the CIO were fully supportive of both the war effort and of the Roosevelt administration . However the United Mine Workers, who had taken an isolationist stand in the years leading up to the war and had opposed Roosevelt's reelection in 1940, left the CIO in 1942 . The major unions supported a wartime no - strike pledge that aimed to eliminate not only major strikes for new contracts, but also the innumerable small strikes called by shop stewards and local union leadership to protest particular grievances . In return for labor's no - strike pledge, the government offered arbitration to determine the wages and other terms of new contracts . Those procedures produced modest wage increases during the first few years of the war but not enough to keep up with inflation, particularly when combined with the slowness of the arbitration machinery . </P> <P> Even though the complaints from union members about the no - strike pledge became louder and more bitter, the CIO did not abandon it . The Mine Workers, by contrast, who did not belong to either the AFL or the CIO for much of the war, threatened numerous strikes including a successful twelve - day strike in 1943 . The strikes and threats made mine leader John L. Lewis a much hated man and led to legislation hostile to unions . </P>

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