# I'm Out to Lick Runaway Prices (1942), the Office of Economic Stabilization's seven keys A 1942 poster distributed by the Office of War Information for the Office of Economic Stabilization. A smiling woman in an apron grips a handful of cloth above a seven-point plan set on keys lettered V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, from buying war bonds to following ration rules and price ceilings (NAID 514607). - Home - Archive - I'm Out to Lick Runaway Prices (1942), the Office of Economic Stabilization's seven keys I'm out to lick runaway prices I'm Out to Lick Runaway Prices (1942), the Office of Economic Stabilization's seven keys A 1942 Office of Economic Stabilization poster: a housewife and a seven-key VICTORY plan of bonds, taxes, savings, ration rules, price ceilings and wage ## Techniques named on the archive record Plain folksTransfer Date1942Made byOffice of Economic Stabilization (distributed by Office of War Information)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514607; 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) Office of Economic Stabilization (distributed by Office of War Information). National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1080 (NAID 514607). 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 A 1942 poster distributed by the Office of War Information for the Office of Economic Stabilization. A smiling woman in an apron grips a handful of cloth above a seven-point plan set on keys lettered V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, from buying war bonds to following ration rules and price ceilings (NAID 514607). ## The plan, as printed The speaker is a woman in an apron, smiling but set, one fist closed around a bunch of fabric. She talks in the first person. Below her, seven keys run down the sheet, each with one numbered line, and the letters on the keys spell a word. I'M OUT TO LICK RUNAWAY PRICES LET'S ALL FOLLOW THE 7-KEY PLAN TO HOLD PRICES DOWN [V] 1. Buy and hold War Bonds. [I] 2. Pay willingly our share of taxes. [C] 3. Provide adequate life insurance and savings for our future. [T] 4. Reduce our debts as much as possible. [O] 5. Buy only what we need and make what we have last longer. [R] 6. Follow ration rules and price ceilings. [Y] 7. Cooperate with our Government's wage stabilization program. Distributed by O.W.I. for the Office of Economic Stabilization FRAME transcription, read from the image and not independently checked; the bracketed letters mark the key shapes. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. ## The office behind it The credit line names two agencies: the Office of Economic Stabilization, which issued the plan, and the Office of War Information, which distributed it. The National Archives copy is in Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1080 (NAID 514607). No artist is named. The seven keys were a set message, not a one-off. The FRAME snapshot has three more sheets with the same list. In For Victory and My Personal Post War World (1942) a factory worker tucks bills into his pay envelope. In Here's How to Head Off Runaway Prices (1943) a shopper holds War Ration Book No. 3 beside a newspaper headed "OPA top legal prices." In We'll Take Care of the Rising Sun (1944) a soldier on a beach hands the home front its half of the job: "You take care of rising prices." ## Request and rule under one word FRAME tags plain folks for the housewife and transfer for the acronym, which lends the word "victory" to each line. Both are mild. The purpose is printed in the headline, to hold prices down, and most of the keys are ways to spend less or set more aside. A citizen could read the list and judge it. What the sheet does not do is sort its keys. Life insurance, savings, debt and thrift were private choices. Taxes were law, and the second key asks for them to be paid "willingly," a request about a citizen's feelings toward an obligation. Ration rules and price ceilings were regulations with penalties behind them; an OPA leaflet, How to Keep Your Food Bill Down, printed the maximum for wilful price violators as a year in jail and a $5000 fine. The seventh key names a "wage stabilization program" and asks for cooperation without saying what the program did to anyone's pay. Putting a voluntary habit and a binding rule side by side, under one letter each, makes them look like the same kind of thing. They were not. A reader who chose not to buy insurance had broken no rule; a grocer who charged over the ceiling had. The libertarian reading asks a public notice to say which is which, and this one lets the acrostic blur it. The office's sheets are filed with the OPA's on the rationing and price control hub. A 1943 sheet with no issuer printed made the same inflation argument for bonds alone: Help Control Inflation by Investing in War Bonds! ## Sources - FRAME object record, I'm out to lick runaway prices, 1942. Office of Economic Stabilization (distributed by Office of War Information). 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-1080, NAID 514607, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/im-out-to-lick-runaway-prices-1942/