3. His cartoons were used to sell war bonds.
While working for PM as its primary editorial cartoonist, Seuss also drew cartoons to advertise for and encourage the purchase of war bonds. War bonds preceded American entry into the war as Defense Bonds. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor they were quickly renamed War Bonds, and the earliest advertising exhorting Americans to buy them came soon after the Japanese attack, at a time when American outrage towards the Axis powers was primarily directed toward Japan. His first War Bond cartoon appeared in PM on December 12, 1941, and featured caricatures of Adolf Hitler and a Japanese (presumably meant to be Tojo) replacing the heads of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore. The caption urged Americans not to let those faces be carved on American mountains.
The War Bonds cartoons appeared in PM and were also published in other periodicals, as well as issued as posters for display in businesses and other public areas. In December of 1942 Seuss published a cartoon featuring three reindeer asking the general public to give War Bonds as Christmas gifts. By that point of the war the bonds were available to be purchased in many places, including in the lobbies of movie theaters, and their purchase was recommended at the end of the films, as well as during the cartoons, newsreels, and short films which preceded the feature film. Earlier that year Seuss produced a War Bond cartoon which criticized Americans for using less than ten percent of their income to purchase bonds, with a pair of cats sneering at an American claiming to be willing to give his life for his country, noting that ten percent for bonds was another matter.