# America Needs Your Scrap Rubber (1942), four objects and their weight in rubber

America needs your scrap rubber is a 1942 poster of the War Production Board, Bureau of Industrial Conservation. Four silhouettes, a gas mask, a life raft, a scout car and a heavy bomber, are each captioned with the pounds of rubber they require, from 1.11 to 1,825 (NAID 513799).

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      America needs your scrap rubber

      America Needs Your Scrap Rubber (1942), four objects and their weight in rubber
      A 1942 War Production Board scrap-rubber poster lists the pounds of rubber in a gas mask, life raft, scout car and heavy bomber. NAID 513799.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Card stacking
      Date1942Made byWar Production Board, Bureau of Industrial ConservationMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513799; 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) War Production Board. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-349 (NAID 513799).
      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

  America needs your scrap rubber is a 1942 poster of the War Production Board, Bureau of Industrial Conservation. Four silhouettes, a gas mask, a life raft, a scout car and a heavy bomber, are each captioned with the pounds of rubber they require, from 1.11 to 1,825 (NAID 513799).

## What the sheet prints

The design is a column of four black silhouettes, small to large, each with a caption. It reads like a page from a supply manual, and its only appeal is in the final line.

A Gas Mask requires 1.11 pounds of rubber

A Life Raft requires 17 to 100 pounds of rubber

A Scout Car requires 306 pounds of rubber

A Heavy Bomber requires 1,825 pounds of rubber

America needs your SCRAP RUBBER

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942 -- O -- 469847

WAR PRODUCTION BOARD Bureau of Industrial Conservation

Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513799, local id 44-PA-349.

## Who issued it

The issuer is the War Production Board's Bureau of Industrial Conservation, printed by the Government Printing Office in 1942. The National Archives keeps the sheet in Record Group 44. No artist is credited.

## How to read it

Of the posters in this set, this one comes closest to an argument made with evidence. It gives numbers, names the objects, and lets the reader draw the conclusion. That is a respectful way to ask a citizen for something.

The numbers are still chosen. Every item on the list is military, and the largest figure sits at the bottom where the eye lands before the request. A reader is not told how much rubber the country had, how much scrap a drive could recover, or whether reclaimed rubber could go into a bomber at all. The poster does not claim those things. What it does is pick the comparisons that make a garden hose or an old tire feel urgent. The FRAME record classes that as card-stacking, and it is a mild case.

The request was voluntary. The same year the Office of Price Administration was rationing scarce goods outright, which is the compulsory side of wartime shortage (see Rationing Safeguards Your Share). For other salvage appeals, see Save Your Cans, and for the poster program as a whole, the Office of War Information index. For the war government around the War Production Board, including the Office of Censorship and Executive Order 9066, read the Roosevelt administration essay.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, America needs your scrap rubber, 1942. War Production Board, Bureau of Industrial Conservation. 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-349, NAID 513799, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/america-needs-your-scrap-rubber-1942/