Suppose it Won’t do its Job?
During the war, and even before the United States entered the war, American factories turned out the materials necessary to fight. American industrial production during the war was staggering, from massive warships to parachutes to canteens to toilet paper and the American work force reached full employment as it churned out everything needed to maintain the troops and the home front.
Nonetheless the government felt the need to maintain a propaganda campaign pleading with workers to keep up levels of production, maintain quality, and minimize absenteeism on the job.
Posters which urged a maximum effort at all times were common, most often seen at the workplace or in the buses, trams, trolleys, streetcars, and subways which carried workers to their jobs. Quality was often urged by presenting soldiers or sailors faced with possibly defective equipment while in a moment of danger. Many of these posters featured women, now doing what had until then been considered to be a man’s job.
Posters urging increased production became even more prevalent during the summer of 1945, after the collapse of Nazi Germany. With the Germans out of the war the government feared a letdown on the home front after more than three years of sacrifice and felt the need to stress the fact that the war with Japan was not yet over.
With the existence of the atomic bomb a highly guarded secret, many believed that the Pacific War would drag on for many months, or even years, and posters stressing the need to finish the job, with a direct focus on Japan, became more common. The war ended in late summer, just as American production hit its peak for the war, and many planes and tanks manufactured that summer went straight to the boneyard.