A Tennessee Valley Authority poster, dated 1941 in the archive, puts a pointing Uncle Sam in front of a dam with the line "I need your money to win this war," then asks, "Where does your department stand in the TVA War Bond Drive." It is a federal agency running a bond drive among its own departments (NAID 514563).
The poster
The figure is Uncle Sam, finger straight at the viewer, and behind him is a photograph of water spilling over a dam. The text is two lines, and the second is a question.
I need your money to win this war
WHERE DOES YOUR DEPARTMENT STAND IN THE TVA WAR BOND DRIVE
Who issued it
FRAME credits the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency, and the National Archives holds the sheet in Record Group 44. No date is printed. The archive dates it 1941, and this page keeps that date while noting that the sheet speaks of a war already under way. The words "your department" point the poster at the Authority's own staff; the record does not say where it hung.
How to read it
Most bond posters dress the request up: a soldier to honor, a child to protect, an enemy to punch. This one says what it wants. "I need your money" is about as direct as government asks get, and there is a kind of honesty in it.
The second line is the part to watch. A drive scored by department, inside a government agency, means the body asking for the loan is also the employer comparing the units. Other records in the archive show private firms doing the same with their own workers: Bethlehem Steel's sheets, I'm buying bonds, are you? among them, end "See your Foreman for details of Purchase Plan." The archive's records show the comparison and the request, and they show no penalty for a department that came in last. On this site's reading, which leans toward the individual, a standings board kept by one's own employer is pressure, even when the purchase it tracks is a free one. The Sixth War Loan quota sheet shows the Treasury's own version, and World War II war bonds and war stamps, 1941–1946 collects the other workplace sheets.
Sources
- FRAME object record, I need your money to win this war, 1941. Tennessee Valley Authority. 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-1037, NAID 514563, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
