# A 1942 chart that counted payroll bond savers month by month

This 1942 sheet is a government bar chart with no picture on it. It estimates how many workers had War Savings Bond deductions taken from their pay between December 1941 and October 1942 (0.7 million at the start, 23.3 million at the end), how many dollars were deducted, and what share of pay the participants set aside (NAID 514232).

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      Extent of participation in payroll savings plans for War Savings Bonds

      A 1942 chart that counted payroll bond savers month by month
      A 1942 Government Printing Office chart estimates payroll savings for War Savings Bonds: 0.7 million workers in December 1941, 23.3 million by October

## Techniques named on the archive record

Bandwagon
      Date1942Made byU.S. government (issuer not printed; GPO 1942 imprint)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514232; 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. government. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-745 (NAID 514232).
      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

  This 1942 sheet is a government bar chart with no picture on it. It estimates how many workers had War Savings Bond deductions taken from their pay between December 1941 and October 1942 (0.7 million at the start, 23.3 million at the end), how many dollars were deducted, and what share of pay the participants set aside (NAID 514232).

## The numbers on the sheet

Most bond posters ask. This one reports. It is three bar charts stacked on one sheet, each running month by month from December 1941 to October 1942, and the only picture is the bars themselves. The sheet labels its figures as estimates.

EXTENT OF PARTICIPATION IN PAYROLL SAVINGS PLANS FOR WAR SAVINGS BONDS*

Estimated: Monthly, Dec. 1941 to Oct. 1942

Number of Workers Participating

DEC. 0.7; JAN. 3.8; FEB. 7.6; MAR. 9.6; APR. 11.6; MAY 13.9; JUNE 16.0; JULY 18.0; AUG. 19.5; SEPT. 21.4; OCT. 23.3

Aggregate Amount Deducted by Workers Participating

DEC. 5; JAN. 28; FEB. 58; MAR. 78; APR. 96; MAY 126; JUNE 153; JULY 205; AUG. 230; SEPT. 265; OCT. 287

Deduction as a Percentage of Pay of Workers Actually Participating

DEC. 4.1; JAN. 4.5; FEB. 4.8; MAR. 4.9; APR. 4.9; MAY 5.3; JUNE 5.8; JULY 6.5; AUG. 7.1; SEPT. 7.5; OCT. 7.7

*Members of armed forces included starting Aug. 1942

FRAME transcription, abridged to the three data rows; the worker figures are in millions and the dollar figures in millions of dollars, as the chart's axis labels give them. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514232, local id 44-PA-745.

Read plainly, the worker count rose more than thirtyfold between December and October, and the share of pay that participants put aside nearly doubled, from 4.1 to 7.7 percent. The dollar row is headed "aggregate amount deducted"; the sheet does not say in words whether each bar is that month's deductions or a running total, so this page does not choose.

## Who printed it

No office is named. The foot of the sheet carries a Government Printing Office job number for 1942, and the rest of the imprint is illegible. The National Archives holds it with the World War II posters in Record Group 44, and FRAME credits it to the U.S. government without naming a department.

## How to read it

A chart like this is the instrument behind the posters. The Treasury's 1942 score chart gave each firm blank rows for the "% of employees enrolled," and the Aim to Win sheet set ten percent of every paycheck as the target. This sheet is the national version of the same tally. By October 1942, on its own numbers, the average participant was still under that ten percent mark.

Two cautions belong with the figures. They are the government's estimates of its own program, printed without a method. And the footnote changes who is counted halfway through: from August 1942 the bars include members of the armed forces, so the climb after July is not a like-for-like comparison with the months before it.

The open question is what "participation" meant to the person being counted. The 1943 government sheets quoting Admiral King and General Marshall both print the word "VOLUNTARY" in the plan's name, and nothing in the archive's records shows a penalty for staying out. What the records do show is that each worker's choice was being added up, by firm and by nation. This site's reading is that a choice can be voluntary in law and still made under a public count, and that the count is the part worth noticing. The rest of the payroll sheets are gathered on World War II war bonds and war stamps, 1941–1946.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Extent of participation in payroll savings plans for War Savings Bonds, 1942. U.S. government (issuer not printed; Government Printing Office 1942 imprint). 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-745, NAID 514232, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/extent-of-participation-payroll-savings-plans-1942/