Charles Alston drew this 1943 cartoon for the Office of War Information. A spotlight catches a hunched man labeled "Black Market Operator" carrying a carcass and a sack out of a door marked "The Nation's Food Supply," and the caption calls him a traitor (NAID 535643).
The drawing
One man fills the frame. He is bent under a carcass on his shoulder, a sack in his other hand, and he looks back over his shoulder as a beam of light finds him in a doorway. The lettering over the door says what he is taking from. The label on his body says what he is. The caption under the scene gives the verdict.
THE NATION'S FOOD SUPPLY
BLACK MARKET OPERATOR
"TURN THE SPOTLIGHT ON THE TRAITOR!!"
36 1/2 Picas
Alston OWI
Who drew it, and for whom
The signature reads "Alston OWI." The National Archives holds the drawing in Record Group 208, the records of the Office of War Information, in the series OWI Cartoon Artworks and Mockups (NAID 535594); this item is 208-COM-130, NAID 535643. The FRAME archive shows it with a content note for the caricatured figure, as published.
The same series in the FRAME snapshot holds several more Alston drawings about rationing. "It's the Least You Can Do!!" walks a shopper with a ration book past a doorway marked "Black Market" while Hitler peers over the wall, and prints the Home Front Pledge beneath. "Watch Your Local Newspaper!!!" announces that Ration Book No. 4 instructions will appear in the paper. "Equal Protection for All" raises Ration Book Two in front of an official point table. Alston's other OWI work on this site includes A Second Emancipation Proclamation!!
The word "traitor"
The archive tags the cartoon for scapegoating and name-calling, and both fit. A shortage had many causes; the drawing gives it one face. The archive's content note describes the meat as stolen, and the caption goes from that theft straight to treason.
The Constitution uses that word narrowly. Treason under Article III is levying war against the United States or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort, and a conviction needs two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court. A man selling meat above the ceiling or without stamps broke rationing and price rules, and those rules carried penalties. The OPA's own leaflet How to Keep Your Food Bill Down gave the maximum for wilful price violators as a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. That is a crime with a name. Calling it treason in a government cartoon dressed a price offense as the one crime the Constitution itself defines.
The cartoon also asks the public to do the spotting. That fits the rest of the campaign, where shoppers were told to check posted prices and write to their rationing board. A citizen who reports an overcharge is using a lawful channel. A citizen taught to see a neighbor's off-ration purchase as betrayal of the country has been handed a heavier word than the law used.
The black-market sheets are gathered on the rationing and price control hub, with the government's posters beside them, among them Stamp Out Black Markets, where a green-skinned dealer is knocked off a ration stamp.
Sources
- FRAME object record, "Turn the Spotlight on the Traitor!!", 1943. Office of War Information, cartoon artwork, artist Charles Alston. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 208, OWI Cartoon Artworks and Mockups (NAID 535594), 208-COM-130, NAID 535643, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026.
- FRAME object record, How to Keep Your Food Bill Down, Office of Price Administration (penalty line as transcribed).
- U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3 (definition of treason).
