# People Who Stand on Swivel Chairs End Up in Wheel Chairs (1946)

People Who Stand on Swivel Chairs End Up in Wheel Chairs is V.A. Poster 5-4, a 1946 Veterans Administration office-safety sheet signed WB. A woman topples backward off a rolling chair as a filing cabinet and a stack of books tip over beside her (NAID 515172).

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      People who stand on swivel chairs end up in wheel chairs

      People Who Stand on Swivel Chairs End Up in Wheel Chairs (1946)
      V.A. Poster 5-4 (1946), signed WB: a woman falls off a rolling swivel chair under a rhyme that ends in a wheel chair. NAID 515172.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
      Date1946Made byVeterans Administration (artist: WB)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANAID 515172; 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) Veterans Administration (artist: WB). National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1507 (NAID 515172).
      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

  People Who Stand on Swivel Chairs End Up in Wheel Chairs is V.A. Poster 5-4, a 1946 Veterans Administration office-safety sheet signed WB. A woman topples backward off a rolling chair as a filing cabinet and a stack of books tip over beside her (NAID 515172).

## The sheet

An office worker in a dark dress has climbed onto a swivel chair, and the chair has rolled. In the archive's description she is falling backward while a filing cabinet and a pile of books tip over next to her. The headline does the rest with a rhyme on "chairs."

PEOPLE WHO

STAND ON SWIVEL CHAIRS

END UP IN WHEEL CHAIRS

[signature: WB]

[imprint: V.A. POSTER 5-4]

[imprint: VETERANS ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON D.C.]

[imprint: U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1946-O-693787]

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 515172, local id 44-PA-1507, Record Group 44.

## Who issued it

The imprint names the Veterans Administration in Washington and numbers the sheet V.A. Poster 5-4. The subject is a filing-room accident, which suggests a poster meant for offices rather than for the public, though the record does not say where copies hung. The artist signed only with initials, WB, and the record gives no fuller name.

## Fear with a laugh

The archive tags the sheet as a fear appeal: a comic picture paired with a stated consequence. The consequence is stark. A wheel chair is not a bruise, and the rhyme makes a serious injury sound like the natural end of a silly habit. That is exaggeration in service of a sensible point. Nobody's rights are at stake when a poster tells office workers to use a stepladder.

The sheet is worth keeping beside the louder material in the collection because it shows the same tools at a low setting. A government office used a joke, a fall, and a frightening last word to change behavior, and here the behavior was standing on furniture. The method is the same one that, on other posters, was aimed at enemies, neighbors, or shoppers.

Other postwar federal sheets on this site include the Veterans' Housing Program poster Homecoming - To No Home? and the Federal Housing Administration card Ask Us About FHA Loans to Remodel for Veterans, both from 1946. The Office of Price Administration's Sucker! sheet from the same year aims the same mix of mockery and warning at shoppers.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, People who stand on swivel chairs end up in wheel chairs, 1946. Veterans Administration (artist: WB).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 515172, local id 44-PA-1507, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/people-who-stand-on-swivel-chairs-va-1946/