Stay on the Job to Finish the Job is a 1944 U.S. Army official poster, ISD No. 165, signed Ronald McLeod. An infantryman in a foxhole aims an automatic rifle toward the viewer under "Give him a better chance to get back" (NAID 515484).
What the poster prints
The painting puts a helmeted soldier low in a sandy foxhole, a Browning automatic rifle aimed toward the viewer. The text is split: a plea above, an instruction below, and the Army's credit line at the foot.
[signature: RONALD McLEOD]
Give him a
better chance
to get back
Stay On The Job
To Finish The Job
U. S. ARMY OFFICIAL POSTER
ISD No. 165
[imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944—O-589036]
Who issued it
This is a War Department product, not a Treasury or OWI one. "U.S. Army Official Poster" and the ISD number say so on the face. The painter signed as Ronald McLeod. The audience the archive records is the domestic public, and the themes are labor and the home front.
How to read it
The sheet does not name the problem it answers. Read plainly, "stay on the job" speaks to a worker thinking of leaving or missing a shift; the record does not attach the poster to a particular plant or campaign. The soldier is the reason given. The poster does not say that a missed shift kills him. It says that steady work gives him "a better chance," which is a modest claim and probably a fair one.
There is a civil-liberties side worth naming. This sheet asks a worker to stay; it does not order him to. Seeking steady attendance by persuasion is the right order of things in a republic: ask first. The archive calls the technique faint, and on this sheet that judgment holds. The pressure is real but quiet.
The Army's other production sheets on this site include Give Us More B-17's. The Navy's version of the same ask is Deliver for "D" Day! For the wider campaign to fill war jobs, see the War Manpower Commission poster for women and the Office of War Information hub. The Roosevelt administration essay separates offices that asked, as this poster does, from powers that compelled, such as mail censorship and the exclusion order.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Stay on the job to finish the job. Give him a better chance to get back, 1944. U.S. Army (official poster, ISD No. 165; artist Ronald McLeod). U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 515484, 44-PA-1805, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
