Smokey Says, Albert Staehle's 1944 bear and a fire statistic with no source

Smokey says - Care will prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires! is a 1944 poster signed Albert Staehle for the U.S. Forest Service and the California Division of Forestry. Smokey Bear, in ranger hat and jeans, pours a bucket of water on a smoking campfire among conifers (NAID 515435).

The picture

A bear in a ranger's hat and jeans stands among conifers and empties a bucket of water onto a campfire that is still smoking. The headline is short. The archive notes that the word "will" is underlined, so the sentence reads as a promise rather than a hope.

SMOKEY SAYS—

Care will prevent

9 out of 10 forest fires!

[signature:] Albert Staehle

[imprint:] U. S. Department of Agriculture
Forest Service

[imprint:] ☆ U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944—O—615994

[imprint:] State of California
Division of Forestry

Two governments, one bear

The sheet carries two issuers: the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the State of California's Division of Forestry. Albert Staehle signed the painting, and the Government Printing Office job number dates the printing to 1944. The archive lists the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as mobilizing compliance, under the home-front theme. No print run or posting place is recorded.

A federal agency and a state agency put their names side by side on one public message. Nothing here compels anyone. The reader is asked to put out a campfire, which is within any camper's power and plainly in his interest.

The number

The archive tags card stacking, and the reason is the figure. "9 out of 10" is offered with no source, no year, and no definition of what counts as a forest fire or as care. The bear vouches for it instead, which is the second tag, transfer. A friendly animal in a ranger's hat lends the statistic a trust it has not shown on its own.

The advice itself is sound. The objection is narrower: a public agency that wants citizens to believe a number should print where the number came from. This one did not. A reader in 1944 had no way to check it from the poster.

A later fire-prevention sheet on this site, Keep'em Green of 1946, also paired the Forest Service with a second issuer, the Keep Washington Green Committee. The Roosevelt administration essay places the period's posters by what they asked; this one asked for a bucket of water.