Oops! We're a little late updating the Hagley Vault this week. Fortunately, the stakes are probably lower than the workers this poster was intended for.
This 1929 poster was created by the artist Willard Frederick Elms (1900-1956) for Mather & Company, a printing company based out of Chicago, Illinois. During the 1920s, the company, inspired by the success of the federal government's World War I poster campaign, created a series of workplace posters that it marketed to employers.
The posters, which were characterized by vivid images and clever captions, were meant to quell labor disquiet and inspire workers to adopt cooperative regarding interpersonal interactions and behavior in the workplace. From 1923 to 1929, businesses that subscribed to the company's workplace poster program received a new poster every week.
Hagley Library's collection of Mather & Company work incentive posters (Accession 2005.278) is an artificial collection consisting of twenty-six Mather & Company posters. click here to see their inclusion in our Digital Archive's collection of workplace posters in the United States. To see these posters, along with a selection of similar posters from other collections, click here to visit the Workplace posters in the United States gallery in our Digital Archives.