When the U.S. entered World War II and mobilized its armed forces using the draft, industrial output would have fallen and severely affected the business cycle. What was one important way this was avoided was that?
2 Answers
Women replaced men in factories
Explanation:
Since men were drafted and had to serve in the military, women replaced them by working in factories on assembly lines in which bombs and aircrafts were assembled.
Besides women entering the work force, The Great Migration of African Americans from the south helped maintain industrial output
Explanation:
The African American population of the south had been underemployed working for very poor wages or no wages at all in the share cropping schemes in the south. Many African Americans could little or no work in the south. The caste system and Jim Crow laws regulated much of the African American population to virtual slavery.
World War II blocked immigration from Europe that had supplied much of the labor force needed in the northern factories and industries. Many workers had volunteered or been drafted to fight in the war. The workers became soldiers leaving gaps in the factories.
Agricultural workers were not subject to the draft as agriculture was deemed essential to the war effort. Most of the African Americans in the south were agricultural workers and therefore not drafted. African Americans were discouraged from volunteering and enlisting in the armed forces because of racial prejudice.
There was a major population shift as African Americans that had been working as underpaid, and underemployed agricultural workers moved north to work in the factories during the war.
Many wartime factories had up to 50% of their workforce being migrant workers from the South. These hardworking African Americans filled the gaps left by the departing soldiers and kept the factories working during the war.
