# Don't Feed Black Market Greed, a 1946 OPA ceiling-price poster

Don't Feed Black Market Greed is a May 1946 Office of Price Administration poster signed by Robbins. A huge caricatured mouth swallows a list of scarce goods, from meat and nylons to new and used cars, above the order "Pay no more than ceiling prices" (NAID 514140).

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      Don't feed black market greed

      Don't Feed Black Market Greed, a 1946 OPA ceiling-price poster
      May 1946 Office of Price Administration poster by Robbins: a giant mouth of greed eats scarce goods. "Pay no more than ceiling prices." NAID 514140.

## Techniques named on the archive record

ScapegoatingFear appeal
      Date1946Made byU.S. Office of Price Administration (artist Robbins)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANAID 514140; 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) U.S. Office of Price Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-661 (NAID 514140).
      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 Feed Black Market Greed is a May 1946 Office of Price Administration poster signed by Robbins. A huge caricatured mouth swallows a list of scarce goods, from meat and nylons to new and used cars, above the order "Pay no more than ceiling prices" (NAID 514140).

## What the sheet prints

The villain is a mouth. It has a long pointed nose and chin and no body, and into it flows a band of goods typed out like an inventory. Red dollar signs, struck through with arrows, fly toward it. The text is short.

don't feed black market greed

PAY NO MORE THAN CEILING PRICES

meat, nylons, butter, irons, electric toasters, washing machines, refrigerators, glass, cement, brick, lumber, new cars, used cars

UNITED STATES OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION WASHINGTON 25 D. C. INF-P2727 (5-46)

FRAME transcription; the list of goods is repeated on the red band and partly cut at the edge. Signed "Robbins." Imprint U.S. Government Printing Office: 1946—O-695617. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA RG 44, 44-PA-661, NAID 514140.

## How to read it

The OPA code on the imprint, INF-P2727 (5-46), dates the printing to May 1946, months after the shooting war ended. The list tells you what was short: building materials, appliances, cars, food, stockings. The poster's answer to the shortage is to name a moral fault, greed, and to tell the buyer not to feed it.

The archive tags it with scapegoating and fear appeal. The scapegoat is the right word. A personified mouth standing in for a market problem is an old device, and readers should notice that the drawing points at a vice, greed, rather than at a price, a supply, or a rule.

## The liberty reading

Here the record is honestly open to two readings. One is that ceiling prices protected ordinary buyers while factories converted back from war work. The other is that a legal maximum below what buyers would pay is itself a cause of the black market the poster condemns, and that the government was blaming sellers and buyers for a gap its own rule created. This site takes the second reading as the one to keep in view: a price control enforced by asking citizens to police each other's purchases puts a heavy load on voluntary exchange. Both readings agree that the poster settles nothing with evidence. It settles it with a mouth.

Related sheets: Help your OPA fight inflation and Report over-ceiling prices to the OPA, both 1946, in the FRAME archive.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Don't feed black market greed," 1946. U.S. Office of Price Administration, artist Robbins.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-661, NAID 514140, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/dont-feed-black-market-greed-1946/