# As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap! (1951), a Philippine voter-registration poster

A Philippine voter-registration poster with a catalog date of 10 October 1951 pairs a farmer sowing seed with a man dropping a ballot into a locked box. Its printed credit names the National Movement for Free Elections and the League of Women Voters; the National Archives files it with State Department posters (NAID 5729913).

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- As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap! (1951), a Philippine voter-registration poster

      As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap! Register and Vote!

      As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap! (1951), a Philippine voter-registration poster
      As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap! (1951): a Philippine voter poster credited to two civic groups and filed with U.S. State Department posters.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Transfer
      DateOctober 10, 1951Made byNational Movement for Free Elections and League of Women Voters (Philippines), in the U.S. State Department Asian poster seriesMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANAID 5729913; Record Group 306SourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceU.S. National Archives (NAID 5729913); image copy via Wikimedia Commons , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) U.S. Department of State / U.S. Information Agency. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 5729913). Item page: Use Restriction Unrestricted.
      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

  A Philippine voter-registration poster with a catalog date of 10 October 1951 pairs a farmer sowing seed with a man dropping a ballot into a locked box. Its printed credit names the National Movement for Free Elections and the League of Women Voters; the National Archives files it with State Department posters (NAID 5729913).

## A proverb, and a second line built on it

In the archive's description the poster pairs two pictures: a farmer sowing seed, and a man dropping a ballot into a locked box. The text follows the same pairing, a Biblical proverb and then the same sentence rebuilt for elections.

AS YE SOW,

SO SHALL YE

REAP!

AS YE VOTE,

SO SHALL YE

BE GOVERNED

BALLOT BOX

Published by the National Movement for Free Elections and League of Women Voters

REGISTER and VOTE!

Transcription in the FRAME record; the archive notes the imprint is in small type at the lower right of the green panel. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5729913, Record Group 306.

## A printed credit and a U.S. file

The sheet names two Philippine civic groups as publishers. The archive's maker line adds that it belongs to the U.S. State Department's Asian poster series, and the National Archives holds it in Record Group 306, with the rights line crediting the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency. The record classes the issuer as a state, the audience as a foreign public, and the event as the Philippine elections of 1951. Its source field reads "Unidentified," with the gloss "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure."

The record does not say who drew the poster, who paid for printing, or what role the State Department played beyond keeping it in its series. This page does not fill that gap.

## Reading it

The archive tags transfer: the proverb carries moral weight, and the poster offers no argument beyond the analogy. As civic messages go, it is a good one. It asks people to register and vote, names no party or candidate, and puts responsibility for government on the voter.

The difficulty is the credit line. Urging free elections is honorable work. When a poster carries local groups' names and also sits in a foreign government's poster series, a reader cannot tell whose message it is. A citizen deciding whether to trust an appeal about his own elections deserves that answer.

A poster with the same printed credit, The Woman Who Votes, carries a catalog date two days earlier. The 1953 sheets Our God-Given Right to Vote and Don't Betray Your Heroes are also filed with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia. The U.S. Information Agency hub covers the agency's posters abroad.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap! Register and Vote!, 10 October 1951. National Movement for Free Elections and League of Women Voters (Philippines), in the U.S. State Department Asian poster series.

- U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, NAID 5729913; image copy via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work); item page use restriction unrestricted.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/as-ye-sow-register-and-vote-1951/