American Propaganda
Closed: Public Notice for Violation of the Rules of the United States Food Administration, 1918 US poster: A blank form

Closed: Public Notice for Violation of the Rules of the United States Food Administration

Closed for Violation (1918), a Food Administration enforcement form

A 1918 U.S. Food Administration placard, with blanks for days and dates, announced that a business was closed for breaking the agency's rules. National

Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
Date
1918
Made by
U.S. Food Administration, Enforcement Division
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Wilson Administration
NARA
NAID 512439
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives (NARA), RG 4 (U.S. Food Administration), World War I Posters (NAID 512439) , retrieved October 3, 2026
Source
NARA Unrestricted; hosted by owner decision U.S. Food Administration, Enforcement Division. National Archives and Records Administration, 4-P-278.

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 1918 blank placard from the U.S. Food Administration's Enforcement Division announces that a place of business is closed for a stated number of days for violating the agency's rules, with spaces for the dates to be filled in by hand.

What the sheet prints

Most posters in this archive ask for something. This one reports a penalty. It is a form, with blank lines for an official to fill in, and a seal of a striped shield inside wheat ears.

CLOSED

Public Notice

For Violation of the Rules of the United States Food Administration This Place of Business is

Closed for ______________ Days

From ______________, 1918 to ______________, 1918

UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION

Enforcement Division

Who issued it

The issuer is the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Food Administration, 1918. The National Archives copy is in Record Group 4, World War I Posters (series NAID 512439), local identifier 4-P-278. The record does not say which business, if any, this copy was posted on.

How to read it

The Food Administration's public face was pledges, window cards, and posters like Food Is Ammunition. This form is the other face. It assumes an agency that wrote rules for merchants, found violations, and shut doors for a set number of days. It also assumes the shutdown would be posted on the door for every customer to read, which makes the notice a warning to the next shopkeeper as much as a sentence on this one.

The sheet does not say what rule was broken, who decided, or what hearing came before the closure. Those questions are not in the FRAME record, and this page does not answer them. They are still the right questions for anyone reading the form: a penalty that lands on a person's livelihood should come with a charge, a decider, and a chance to answer, and a placard with blanks for days and dates shows none of that. Whatever the legal basis was in 1918, the object is a reminder that wartime "voluntary" conservation had an enforcement division behind it.

Wider wartime controls on speech and press are covered in the CPI case study. The Wilson administration essay covers Hoover's Food Administration and its account of relying on voluntary saving; this placard comes from the same office's Enforcement Division.

Sources

  • FRAME object record, Closed: Public Notice for Violation of the Rules of the United States Food Administration, 1918. U.S. Food Administration, Enforcement Division.
  • U.S. National Archives, RG 4, World War I Posters, series NAID 512439, catalog item 512715, local identifier 4-P-278, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: NARA unrestricted.