Text: Equality of sacrifice?

Year: 12 October 1939.

Publisher: The Federationist.

Artist: NA.

Additional information: Cartoon shows a worker shouldering the immense ‘war costs’ while a capitalist runs off with the war profits’. The cartoon appeared in the The Federationist, a Vancouver-based newspaper published by the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in the 1930s and 40s. In the run-up to the Second World War, the newspaper followed a pacifist line under the leadership of J. S. Woodsworth, himself a vocal and lifelong pacifist. Another cartoon published a few months earlier depicts a similar scenario, with an enormous capitalist dropping a man into a cannon before callously discarding him at the end of the war. The newspaper’s stance quickly changed, however, following a stroke suffered by Woodsworth in May 1940, after which the newspaper began to support the Canadian war effort. The CCF rose to national prominence in the 1930s advocating workers’ rights and welfare reform. Following the war, it became the New Democratic Party.