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).

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]]

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.