Absence Makes the War Last Longer (1943), bulletin board placard No. 25

Absence makes the war last longer is Bulletin Board Placard No. 25, printed in 1943 in the name of "Your Production Committee." A cartoon man sleeps in bed beside an alarm clock, over the headline and the order "Stay on the job!" (NAID 513748).

The placard

A man is asleep in bed, and an alarm clock sits beside him. That is the whole picture. The headline is a play on words, and the committee's instruction follows.

ABSENCE

makes the war

last longer

YOUR PRODUCTION COMMITTEE SAYS:

Stay on the job!

[signature: illegible]

[imprint:] BULLETIN BOARD PLACARD NO. 25

[imprint:] U.S. Government Printing Office : 1943-O-509094

Whose voice it uses

The placard speaks as "Your Production Committee," and it was printed by the Government Printing Office in 1943 as number 25 in a bulletin board series. The archive classes the issuer as mixed, the audience as war-plant workers among the domestic public, and the purpose as securing compliance, under labor and the home front. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44. The artist's signature is illegible, and no print run is recorded. The archive also holds the next two placards, credited to War Production Drive Headquarters: No. 26, "Beware!," and No. 27, "If the Absentee Bugs bite you ... Tell us."

How to read it

The archive tags a mild fear appeal. One worker's day in bed is linked to a longer war. The harm is staged as the result of a personal choice, and the remedy is simply to show up.

Two choices stand out. First, the voice. The sheet came off a federal press, but it speaks as the reader's own plant committee, so the order to stay on the job sounds like it comes from colleagues rather than Washington. Second, the cause. The cartoon offers one reason for absence, sleeping in. The War Production Board's own leaflet of the same year, Days Off Cost Lives!, listed illness, accidents, housing, transport, child care and ration-board hours as reasons workers missed shifts. A worker who missed a day because a child was sick or a bus did not come would find no sympathy on this placard.

Asking free workers to come in is fair. Implying that an absent worker is prolonging the war, without asking why, puts the whole cost on the individual. The 1944 Army poster Stay on the Job to Finish the Job made the same request with a soldier's face. The Roosevelt administration essay sets out who held which power after Pearl Harbor.