A 1944 Treasury War Finance Division poster for the Sixth War Loan leaves a blank for a local dollar quota and draws two cartoon workers beside a ladder that measures two things, the percent of workers buying and the percent of the quota met, up to 125 percent (NAID 514876, sheet code WFD 955).
What it shows
The poster is a form. A man in overalls and a woman holding a wrench point up a scale that rises in steps, and at the top is a blank line where someone at the plant or office was to write in a dollar figure. Nothing else on the sheet names the target or who set it.
Let's Go!
OUR QUOTA IS $ ______
% OF WORKERS BUYING
% OF QUOTA IN DOLLARS
25% 50% 75% 100% 125%
6th WAR LOAN
Who issued it
FRAME credits the U.S. Treasury Department's War Finance Division, and the sheet carries the code WFD 955. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44. It has a direct predecessor: the Fifth War Loan's Our quota is $___, with the same blank and two bars headed "Here's how many of us are buying" and "Here's how we stand in $$ sales," scaled to 150 percent. Both follow the pattern of the Treasury's 1942 war bond score chart, which gave each firm ten blank rows for the percentage of employees enrolled.
How to read it
The purchase is individual and the score is collective. Each bond was a private loan by one person to the Treasury, but the chart measures the group, and its first column counts heads, not dollars. A worker who chose not to buy did not change the dollar bar much. He did lower the other one, and everyone at the workplace could see it.
That is the honest difficulty with calling the drives simply voluntary. The archive's records do not show a single penalty for a worker who stayed out, and this page does not suggest one. They do show that the Treasury supplied the forms for posting participation where co-workers would see it, and set the scale past 100 percent. On the libertarian reading, a free choice made in front of a posted tally is still a free choice, and the tally is still a kind of pressure the citizen is entitled to notice and resist.
For the numbered drives in order, see the Third War Loan, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh. The Second War Loan and the Victory Loan are on World War II war bonds and war stamps, 1941–1946.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Let's go! Our quota is $ ____ 6th War Loan, 1944. U.S. Treasury Department, War Finance Division. 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-1270, NAID 514876, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
