# Geared to Victory (1943), Benjamin Franklin on a Printing Education Week poster

Benjamin Franklin, labeled "PATRIOT · STATESMAN · PRINTER," looks down from this blue poster for Printing Education Week, January 13 to 19, 1943. A worker stands beside a large press below him. The National Graphic Arts Education Association sponsored it, and Carnegie Institute of Technology's Department of Printing prepared it (NAID 514345).

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- Geared to Victory (1943), Benjamin Franklin on a Printing Education Week poster

      Geared to Victory

      Geared to Victory (1943), Benjamin Franklin on a Printing Education Week poster
      A 1943 Printing Education Week poster sets Benjamin Franklin, "PATRIOT · STATESMAN · PRINTER," over a pressman and the words "GEARED TO Victory." NAID

## Techniques named on the archive record

TransferGlittering generalities
      Date1943Made byNational Graphic Arts Education Association and Carnegie Institute of Technology, Department of PrintingMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514345; 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) National Graphic Arts Education Association and Carnegie Institute of Technology, Department of Printing. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-851 (NAID 514345).
      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

  Benjamin Franklin, labeled "PATRIOT · STATESMAN · PRINTER," looks down from this blue poster for Printing Education Week, January 13 to 19, 1943. A worker stands beside a large press below him. The National Graphic Arts Education Association sponsored it, and Carnegie Institute of Technology's Department of Printing prepared it (NAID 514345).

## Franklin above the press

The sheet is blue, per the archive, with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin above a worker beside a large printing press. Three titles name him, and a line gives his birth and death.

PATRIOT · STATESMAN · PRINTER

Born in Boston, Jan. 17, 1706. Died 1790.

Printing Education Week

JAN. 13-19

1943

GEARED TO Victory

Sponsored by the National Graphic Arts Education Association and prepared by the Department of Printing, Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514345, local id 44-PA-851, Record Group 44.

## A trade week around a birthday

The dates fit the choice of hero. The sheet gives Franklin's birth as January 17, and the week runs January 13 to 19, so his birthday falls inside it. Two private bodies made the poster: a national association for printing education, which sponsored it, and the printing department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, which prepared it. FRAME types the issuer as an NGO and the purpose as "Persuade or win support," with themes of home front, labor, and media and information. No government office is named, and the National Archives holds the sheet with the war posters in Record Group 44.

## The press as war work

The archive tags transfer and glittering generalities. Franklin's standing as patriot and statesman is lent to a trade, and "Victory" ties the trade to the war. The poster's claim is that printing education is war work.

That is a fair claim for a trade to make. The choice of hero says something more. Franklin is introduced first as a patriot and last as a printer, as if the titles belonged together. A poster about printers "GEARED TO Victory" stresses output and service. It says nothing about what a free press prints when nobody has asked it to, which is the part of Franklin's trade a republic most depends on.

Other 1943 sheets on this site that treat print as a weapon or a target: the OWI's The Nazis Burned These Books and, from 1942, Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas. The American Revolution prints case study opens with Franklin's own 1754 snake woodcut.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Geared to Victory, 1943. National Graphic Arts Education Association and Carnegie Institute of Technology, Department of Printing. 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-851, NAID 514345, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/geared-to-victory-printing-education-week-1943/