# Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do! (1943), the mending couple

Use It Up - Wear It Out - Make It Do! is OWI Poster No. 39, printed in 1943. A woman kneels to mend the patched trousers of a man pushing a lawn mower, under the line "Our labor and our goods are fighting" (NAID 513834).

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- Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do! (1943), the mending couple

      Use it up - wear it out - make it do!

      Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do! (1943), the mending couple
      OWI Poster No. 39 (1943): a woman mends a man's patched trousers beside a lawn mower. "Our labor and our goods are fighting." NAID 513834.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Plain folksGlittering generalities
      Date1943Made byOffice of War Information (OWI Poster No. 39)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513834; 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) Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-382 (NAID 513834).
      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

  Use It Up - Wear It Out - Make It Do! is OWI Poster No. 39, printed in 1943. A woman kneels to mend the patched trousers of a man pushing a lawn mower, under the line "Our labor and our goods are fighting" (NAID 513834).

## The scene

This is a domestic picture with no weapon in it. The archive describes a woman in a yellow dress on her knees with needle and thread, stitching the patched trousers of a man who leans over a push mower. A sewing basket sits at her feet. The thrift rhyme runs across the top and a second line underneath gives the reason.

USE IT UP - WEAR IT OUT -

MAKE IT DO!

OUR LABOR AND OUR GOODS ARE FIGHTING

[imprint: OWI Poster No. 39. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D. C.]

[imprint: U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1943—O—[illegible]]

Transcription in the FRAME record; the end of the GPO job number is marked illegible. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513834, local id 44-PA-382, Record Group 44.

## Who issued it

The Office of War Information numbered it 39 and printed it through the Government Printing Office in 1943. The record names no artist, so this page names none.

## How to read it

The archive tags two methods. The ordinary couple is plain folks: the viewer is meant to see a household like their own. "Our labor and our goods are fighting" is a glittering generality, a large claim that cannot be checked, attached to a small habit.

Mending trousers and mowing a lawn are ordinary household chores. The poster's real work is to give them a patriotic name, so that a patch becomes a contribution. That is gentle persuasion, and it asks for nothing the household did not control. It also assigns the needlework to the woman and the yard to the man without comment, which is how the archive's description of the picture reads.

The voluntary frame matters here. Unlike the OPA rationing poster, this sheet has no program behind it with legal force. It is advice. For a salvage sheet in the same series, see Save Waste Fats for Explosives, and for the numbered run as a whole, the OWI poster index. The line between advice and law runs through the essay on the Roosevelt administration as well, from the voluntary press code to Executive Order 9066.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Use it up - wear it out - make it do!, 1943. Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 39).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 513834, local id 44-PA-382, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/use-it-up-wear-it-out-make-it-do-1943/