Economic Democracy: the Philippine Veterans Legion's 1953 convention sheet

An English-language announcement for the 8th National Convention of the Philippine Veterans Legion, Manila, 16 to 19 April 1953, under the banner "Economic Democracy." The Legion's name is on the face; the sheet sits in the U.S. Information Agency's Asia poster file, catalog date 17 March 1953 (NAID 5729946).

What is printed

A barefoot man in work clothes carries a mallet and a sheaf of rice. Beside him loom two large faces drawn in blue, one soldier in a cap and one in a helmet. A gear wheel and a farmer with a carabao sit behind. The text gives the dates, the city and the group, and closes on a two-word slogan.

8th National Convention

APRIL 16-19

1 9 5 3

MANILA

PHILIPPINES

[seal:] PHILIPPINE VETERANS LEGION * EST * PRO PATRIA * DULCE ET DECORUM EST * MORI

PHILIPPINE VETERANS LEGION

Economic Democracy

[artist signature, illegible]

A local name in an American file

The maker line puts the Philippine Veterans Legion first and adds that the U.S. Information Agency distributed the sheet, in its series of posters for Asia. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 306 with a catalog date of 17 March 1953, about a month before the convention it announces. The archive gives the purpose as "Mobilize or secure compliance," with war and the military and economy and finance as its themes. It classes the source as blurred.

That classification is the point worth stopping on. Everything a Manila reader could see on the paper belongs to the Legion: its name twice, its seal, its convention. Nothing printed says a foreign government's information service had a hand in getting it onto a wall. The record does not say what that hand was, whether design, printing or only circulation, and this page does not fill the gap.

An undefined slogan

FRAME tags glittering generalities and transfer. "Economic Democracy" is never explained; the sheet offers no program, no bill and no demand. Transfer comes from the soldiers' faces, which lend a veterans' standing to whatever the phrase was meant to cover.

Veterans organizing to press their own interests is ordinary civic life in a republic, and the Legion was entitled to its slogan. The open question is the one the hub on U.S. Information Agency posters abroad asks of every such sheet: could the reader tell who was talking? Two other 1953 Philippine sheets in the same file answer it differently. Crooked Politicians is signed NAMFREL, and Don't Sell Your Vote! prints no sponsor at all.