Pitch in and Help! is a 1943 recruiting poster for the Women's Land Army of the U.S. Crop Corps, signed Morley. Women in overalls pick apples, milk a cow, feed chickens, carry a crate and drive a tractor under the call to join (NAID 515177).
What it shows
The poster is busy. Several women in overalls are at work across one farm scene, picking apples, milking a cow, feeding chickens, carrying a crate and driving a tractor. The words are few.
Pitch in and Help!
JOIN THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY
OF THE U.S. CROP CORPS
[signature: MORLEY]
[imprint: U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE ... [illegible]]
Who issued it
The sheet names the program, the Women's Land Army of the U.S. Crop Corps, and carries the signature Morley and a Government Printing Office imprint whose number is illegible on the scan. The archive dates it to 1943 and holds it through the National Archives' World War II Posters series in Record Group 44. The record gives no print run, no place of display, and no first name for the artist.
What the crowd is for
The archive's labels are bandwagon and plain folks. The bandwagon is the crowd: so many women are already at work that the viewer is invited to make one more. The plain-folks element is the clothing and the chores. These are overalls, apples, chickens and a crate, not uniforms and medals, and the heading is a phrase from ordinary speech.
The sheet is notable for what it leaves out. It names no enemy, makes no threat, and does not say that a woman who stays home is helping anyone abroad. It also says nothing about wages, hours, housing or where the work would be; the reader has to ask. That makes it an invitation rather than a contract. The word "Army" is borrowed, but the act it asks for is joining a farm program, and the poster treats it as a choice.
Other home-front recruiting aimed at women includes OWI Poster No. 52, The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win!, the Women's Bureau photo sheet More and More Women Work on Aircraft, and Women in the War. The Roosevelt administration essay sorts the period's posters by what they asked of the reader.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Pitch in and Help! Join the Women's Land Army, 1943. U.S. Crop Corps, Women's Land Army (artist: Morley).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 515177, local id 44-PA-1511, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
