Panuganti 1

Rohan Panuganti
Professor Christopher Martin
UCOR 1100
25 September 2016
At Home Short Writing Assignment 1
In the 2003 political comic, Labor Day Blues, a defeated-looking man stares at a large
poster in front of a building that says U.S. FACTORY. The poster reads Labor Day. This
years picnic will be held in Mexico, where your job went. The top of the poster has stars and
the American flag on the top. The building behind the poster has a lot of pipes with smoke. It
has an industrial feel to it. Mike Lane, the creator of this comic, is known for being a liberal
cartoonist. However at first glance, the comic appears to be xenophobic. But all aspects need to
be taken into consideration to fully assess the cartoonists message.
The man displayed in the comic sports a checkered shirt, jeans and little lunch pail. He
appears to be a worker. He stares at the poster with a sad look on his face; he is clearly upset by
what is says. The creator of this cartoon wants you to pity this character. If the character had
been angry, upset, or surprised, this cartoon would have a whole different message. This
character represents the working class.
This comic was published in the year 2003. During the time, the president of the United
States, George W. Bush, was a republican. An ideal that is usually adopted by right wing
politicians is a free market economy. The free market economy simply means An economy
where the prices of goods are determined by companies with unrestricted rivalry in the market,

Panuganti 2

rather than the government controlling the prices. The topic of free market is very
controversial and is heavily debated. Since the president was a republican, the market was
relatively unregulated. This allowed large powerful companies to discover cheaper ways to
build their products. One major way that products were being built was by machine. The need
for large number of workers dropped when businesses realized that machines could mass
produce their goods. However it required a lot of money and people still needed to operate the
machines. So many took a very unpopular method called outsourcing. Companies and
businesses that outsource have their products made outside of the United States; for a dirt
cheap price. Workers can be paid less than the American minimum wage, ultimately saving the
business millions a year. Unfortunately for the working class, outsourcing has caused many
Americans to lose their jobs because workers in China and, like the poster says, Mexico are
being paid less for the same work. The ruthless cycle is good for business at first, but as time
passes the people buying the products will not be able to afford them anymore; causing
business to fail in America.
Mike Lane, the cartoonist, drew this comic for the Baltimore Sun. It seems to be aimed at
the average worker, someone who can analyze this comic for what it is. It is quite clear that the
cartoonists intentions were to warn the public that outsourcing is going to cause a lot of
Americans to lose their jobs. There were a lot of symbols in the comic that represented the large
industry in America and its exploitation of poorer countries. The chain link fence and concrete
walls really show how built the American Business is. This comic showed the working class as
pitiful; possibly to rouse some kind of response from readers. The issues that came with
outsourcing had not shown to be very impactful until a recession occurred later during 2008.
This comic was foreboding the consequences of American greed.