Another enemy to conquer, a Forest Service folder that drafts fire into the war

A two-panel folder from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and a State Forest Service, catalogued at 1941, calls forest fires "another enemy to conquer" over a squirrel family among flames, then gives fire rules for farmers and ranchers, smokers, forest industries, campers, and everybody (NAID 513858).

The folder has a picture side and a rules side

On the left panel, a squirrel and its young huddle in a tree hollow while red flame shapes rise around them. The headline sits above. The right panel is all text, grouped by who is reading. Someone has also written "Forest Fires" and the archive number 44-PA-407 on the copy by hand.

ANOTHER ENEMY TO CONQUER

FOREST FIRES

NINE OUT OF TEN CAN BE PREVENTED

U. S. DEPT. AGRICULTURE—FOREST SERVICE / STATE FOREST SERVICE

GONE: 40% OF AMERICA'S FORESTS

From 1909 to 1938, while America's saw timber was being reduced almost 40%, fires killed billions of little trees—tomorrow's timber—and enough big ones to build 6½ million five-room homes! [...]

FARMERS, RANCHERS: Ask fire wardens if the law requires a permit before clearing land with fire or burning grass, brush, fence rows, ferns, sedge, debris. [...]

SMOKERS: Crush out cigarettes, cigars, pipe ashes; break matches in two. [...]

CAMPERS AND PICNICKERS: Get a permit—if the law requires—before building any fires. Before leaving always drown your fire, stir coals, drown again.

[...] HELP CONQUER AMERICA'S ENEMY—FOREST FIRES

"Enemy" turns a safety notice into a war notice

The archive tags two techniques. Transfer is the wartime word "enemy" applied to something with no politics at all. Fear appeal is the frightened animal family. The archive says the technique is lighter on the text panel, and that is fair: the rules there are plain instructions.

The numbers come without a source. The sheet says saw timber fell almost 40 percent between 1909 and 1938, that fires killed enough big trees for six and a half million homes, and that nine fires in ten can be prevented. The archive transcribes them without comment, and they appear here only as the sheet's own claims.

The folder points to the law instead of making one

The folder is honest about its own authority. Twice it tells readers to find out whether "the law requires" a permit, once for farmers burning brush and once for campers. It does not claim to be the law, and it does not say what the law is in any state. Farmers are told to ask the fire wardens.

A later fire poster on this site drops the war language: Keep'em Green, from 1946, asks for care instead of warning of an enemy.