Truman's 1945 food message, printed as a poster

A Message About Food from the President of the United States is a 1945 Government Printing Office sheet carrying a printed Harry Truman signature. It asks every American to grow, preserve, and conserve food, and it ends on the line "There can be no lasting peace in a hungry world" (NAID 513731).

What the sheet prints

There is no picture on this poster beyond the Great Seal at the head. Everything else is type, white on a dark blue ground, set out like a short proclamation and closed with Truman's signature in facsimile. The President speaks in the first person and makes three concrete requests.

A MESSAGE ABOUT FOOD FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

In this fourth year of war the need for food is greater than ever before.

I call upon every American to help increase the Nation's food supply . . .

By growing larger and better victory gardens and seeing them through to the harvest.

By preserving our food at home or in a community canning center.

By conserving food in every possible way—wasting not an ounce.

Our food will make a real contribution to the final victory and the peace. There can be no lasting peace in a hungry world.

How to read it

The archive tags the poster with glittering generalities and says the technique is faint. That is a fair reading. The persuasive weight sits on two abstractions at the bottom, "final victory" and "the peace," but the body of the sheet asks for specific, checkable acts: plant a garden, can at home or at a community center, throw nothing away. A citizen could do each of them or decline, and the poster names no penalty.

The phrase "fourth year of war" places the message inside the war, not after it. The last sentence looks past the war, toward feeding a damaged world, and makes the household pantry part of that argument. A related 1946 sheet in the archive, a later food message under Truman's name, is not rewritten here.

Issuer and rights

The maker line is the President of the United States, printed by the Government Printing Office. The record classes the source as openly identified: the sheet says who is speaking, and it is who it says. The rights line is public domain as a U.S. government work, held in National Archives Record Group 44, the wartime poster file that also holds the Office of War Information sheets. For the domestic information office behind much of that file, see the OWI domestic branch study.