# Don't Be a Job Hopper (1944), a Disney grasshopper for the War Manpower Commission

Don't be a job hopper is a 1944 War Manpower Commission poster signed "© WALT DISNEY FOR O.W.I." A drooling cartoon grasshopper with a lunch pail and a fistful of dollar bills walks away from a factory skyline, and the text tells workers to stick to their jobs (NAID 514129).

- Home
- Archive
- Don't Be a Job Hopper (1944), a Disney grasshopper for the War Manpower Commission

      Don't be a job hopper

      Don't Be a Job Hopper (1944), a Disney grasshopper for the War Manpower Commission
      Don't Be a Job Hopper (1944): a War Manpower Commission poster drawn by Walt Disney for the OWI casts a worker who changes jobs as a greedy grasshopper.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer
      Date1944Made byWar Manpower Commission, artist Walt Disney for O.W.I.MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514129; 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 Manpower Commission. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-651 (NAID 514129).
      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

  Don't be a job hopper is a 1944 War Manpower Commission poster signed "© WALT DISNEY FOR O.W.I." A drooling cartoon grasshopper with a lunch pail and a fistful of dollar bills walks away from a factory skyline, and the text tells workers to stick to their jobs (NAID 514129).

## A grasshopper with a fistful of dollars

The pun is in the picture. A cartoon grasshopper in a work cap, drooling, holds a lunch pail in one hand and a fistful of dollar bills in the other, and walks away from a skyline of factories. The headline names him. A second line sets the soldier beside the worker and tells the worker what his duty is.

DON'T BE A

JOB HOPPER

[signature:] © WALT DISNEY

FOR O.W.I.

Our soldiers are sticking to their guns

STICK TO YOUR JOB!

WAR MANPOWER COMMISSION

[imprint:] U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944-O-599046

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514129, local id 44-PA-651, Record Group 44.

## Three names on one sheet

The poster carries the name of the War Manpower Commission as issuer, a Walt Disney copyright line made out "for O.W.I.", and a Government Printing Office job number for 1944. It is a federal sheet with a drawing under a Disney copyright, credited to the Office of War Information. FRAME sets the issuer type to "State", the purpose to "Mobilize or secure compliance", and the themes to labor and the home front. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44.

## Whose choice a job is

FRAME tags name-calling and transfer. The name is "JOB HOPPER", and the drawing does the rest: the drool and the dollar bills say that a man who leaves one plant for another does it out of greed. The transfer runs from the soldier sticking to his gun to the worker who is told to stick to his job.

That comparison is the weak point. A soldier serves under military orders. A civilian worker sells his labor, and moving to a better wage is the ordinary way a free worker answers an employer who pays too little. The poster cites no rule against changing jobs, and the record does not say whether any rule applied to its readers. On its face it asks, and it shames. Asking is within a government's rights. Drawing a worker who takes a better offer as a drooling insect shames a choice the sheet itself does not call unlawful.

The same commission's 1942 sheet Americans All took a better line, printing workers' surnames beside a Roosevelt quotation against discrimination. Compulsion in the labor field did happen: the Interior Department's 1943 notice United States Property! printed Harold Ickes's order taking possession of coal mines. The Office of War Information hub indexes that agency's English-language posters.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Don't be a job hopper, 1944. War Manpower Commission; artist Walt Disney for O.W.I. 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-651, NAID 514129, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/dont-be-a-job-hopper-1944/