# There's Work to Be Done, Vernon Grant's poster for women workers There's work to be done and a war to be won... NOW! is a 1944 War Manpower Commission poster signed Vernon Grant for O.W.I. Small cartoon women in work clothes climb over giant letters spelling WOMEN, and readers are sent to the U.S. Employment Service (NAID 513682). - Home - Archive - There's Work to Be Done, Vernon Grant's poster for women workers There's work to be done and a war to be won... NOW! There's Work to Be Done, Vernon Grant's poster for women workers 1944 War Manpower Commission poster by Vernon Grant for OWI. Cartoon women work on giant letters spelling WOMEN. NAID 513682, Record Group 44. ## Techniques named on the archive record BandwagonGlittering generalities Date1944Made byWar Manpower Commission, U.S. Employment Service (artist Vernon Grant, for OWI)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513682; 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) War Manpower Commission, U.S. Employment Service. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-240 (NAID 513682). 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 There's work to be done and a war to be won... NOW! is a 1944 War Manpower Commission poster signed Vernon Grant for O.W.I. Small cartoon women in work clothes climb over giant letters spelling WOMEN, and readers are sent to the U.S. Employment Service (NAID 513682). ## What the poster prints The largest thing on the sheet is a word. Red block letters spell WOMEN, and tiny figures work on them: women in overalls, in uniform, one dressed as a waitress. A bomber wing, a locomotive, and a jeep sit around the letters. The tone is light, close to a cartoon page. WOMEN There's work to be done and a war to be won . . . NOW! SEE YOUR U. S. EMPLOYMENT SERVICE WAR MANPOWER COMMISSION [signature: Vernon Grant for O.W.I.] [imprint: U.S. Government Printing Office: 1944—O—598047] Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513682, Record Group 44, local id 44-PA-240. ## Who issued it Three bodies are on the sheet. The War Manpower Commission is the issuer. The U.S. Employment Service is where the reader is told to go. The artist, Vernon Grant, signed "for O.W.I.," which ties the art to the Office of War Information; the record does not say how. The archive classifies the purpose as recruiting, with labor, the home front, and gender among its themes. ## How to read it The archive's technique tag is bandwagon, and the picture earns it: so many women, so many jobs, that the reader is invited to see herself already among them. The waitress is a useful detail. The poster does not limit "war work" to riveting. Service jobs that kept a town running counted too. What the poster offers is a direction, not a draft. Women were not conscripted for industry, and the sheet's only instruction is to visit an employment office. That is persuasion in the open, under the name of the agency doing it. A reader may still notice what is missing: pay, hours, child care, and what would happen to these jobs when the men came back. The sheet is silent on all of it. The best-known image of women in war industry, We Can Do It!, was a company poster, not a federal one. This sheet is the federal side of the same push. For the agencies, see the Office of War Information hub and the domestic-branch case study. Military service for women is on the WAC and WAVES pages. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the war government the War Manpower Commission belonged to, from the Office of War Information to Executive Order 9066. ## Sources - FRAME object record, There's work to be done and a war to be won... NOW!, 1944. War Manpower Commission, U.S. Employment Service (artist Vernon Grant, for OWI). U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 513682, 44-PA-240, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/women-work-to-be-done-war-to-be-won-now-1944/