# Aim to Win (1942), ten percent of every paycheck in war bonds

Aim to win... Everybody every payday 10% is a 1942 war bond poster of the U.S. Treasury Department, War Savings Staff. A welder seen from behind points an arrow at a target marked 10%, setting a tenth of each paycheck as the norm for bond purchases (NAID 513761).

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      Aim to win... Everybody every payday 10% Buy war bonds

      Aim to Win (1942), ten percent of every paycheck in war bonds
      A 1942 Treasury War Savings Staff poster asks "everybody every payday" to put 10% into war bonds, with a welder aiming at a target. NAID 513761.

## Techniques named on the archive record

BandwagonTransfer
      Date1942Made byU.S. Treasury Department, War Savings StaffMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513761; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) U.S. Treasury Department, War Savings Staff. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-314 (NAID 513761).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Aim to win... Everybody every payday 10% is a 1942 war bond poster of the U.S. Treasury Department, War Savings Staff. A welder seen from behind points an arrow at a target marked 10%, setting a tenth of each paycheck as the norm for bond purchases (NAID 513761).

## What the sheet prints

The figure is a war worker in a welding helmet and heavy gloves, turned away from the viewer. He holds out a sign cut in the shape of an arrow, and it points at a red-and-white bullseye with "10%" in the center. The words are few, and the number does most of the work.

AIM TO WIN...

EVERYBODY

EVERY PAYDAY

10%

Buy WAR BONDS

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942--O-476658 WSS 550

Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513761, local id 44-PA-314.

## Who issued it

The FRAME record credits the U.S. Treasury Department's War Savings Staff, and the foot of the sheet carries a Government Printing Office job number and the series code WSS 550. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44 with the other World War II posters. No artist is named on the sheet or in the record.

## How to read it

A poster that asks someone to lend money to the government is asking, not ordering. War bonds were a loan the buyer would be repaid, and nothing on this sheet threatens a person who declines. That matters, because the alternative ways to pay for a war, higher taxes or printing money, do not ask anyone's permission.

The pressure is in the two words "everybody" and "every." They turn a voluntary purchase into a standard the reader can be measured against, ten percent of every paycheck. The poster does not say what happens to the worker who signs up for less. It does not need to. A posted quota invites comparison, and the libertarian reading is that a free choice made under a public tally is still free, though less free than it looks.

For other 1942 bond appeals, see Right in Der Fuehrer's Face, which uses ridicule rather than arithmetic, and Knock off a Japanazi, a war stamp poster from a liquor-industry council. The Office of War Information index gathers other federal posters of the period. The Roosevelt administration essay places Henry Morgenthau's Treasury, which ran the bond drives, among the war offices.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Aim to win... Everybody every payday 10% Buy war bonds, 1942. U.S. Treasury Department, War Savings Staff. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-314, NAID 513761, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/aim-to-win-10-percent-war-bonds-1942/