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Artist: Herman Volz (1904-1990)
Title: Scrap Iron
Date circa: 1939
Media: Lithograph
Edition size: 40
Signed in pencil, Volz, lower right, also signed in the stone; numbered, 29/40, lower left.
Dimensions: Image: 10 3/8 x 13 7/8 inches (263 x 352 mm). Sheet: 12 5/8 x 18 inches (320 x 457 mm).
Excellent condition. Good margins. Printed on white laid paper with Warren's Old Style watermark. May also have the alternative title Picket Line.
In 1939, picket lines were organized in U.S. western port cities to protest the sale of of scrap iron and steel to Japan, where it was thought that it was being turned into war materials and being used against China (2,000,000 tons were shipped in 1939). Chinese American citizens, longshoremen, and others, eventually organized protests in objection to this practice. Though short lived, the protests had there effect. In late 1940, Roosevelt, using new congressionally approved powers, imposed a de facto embargo preventing the shipment of metal to Japan. In consequence, Japan went to Central and Southern America for these itmes. This print depicts a mixed ethnic picket line near the San Francisco Bay docks - ships visible in the upper left, scrap iron to the right.
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