Posters for Factories

Few months ago the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's veteran cartoonist Cy Hungerford sat chatting with an old friend, George Shaffer Sherman, advertising manager of Pittsburgh's Rosenbaum department store. Somehow the conversation got around to a subject in which neither was more than academically interested: FBI's investigation of sabotage in defense plants. But before they had parted they had thought of an idea that excited them both: a series of posters to encourage factory workers to obey regulations and keep their mouths shut. Hungerford and Sherman took their idea to FBI's J. Edgar Hoover. G-Man Hoover liked it too, and Hungerford and Sherman went to work.

Last week their first batch of twelve anti-sabotage posters was in use. Each had a sharply pointed Hungerford cartoon, an admonitory paragraph by Sherman, ended with the slogan: "You are a production soldier . . . America's first line of defense is here." Sample: A dope in overalls talking his head off while Hitler,

Stalin, Mussolini and an unidentified Japanese cock their ears in the background (see cut). Said Hungerford: "We figured that cartoons combining humor with serious fact would have more of an appeal to the average worker than most ordinary conventional posters." Because FBI cannot engage in commercial activity (Hungerford and Sherman expect to make their work pay), it could not sponsor the posters. But by week's end, Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. had bought 3,600, Westinghouse 1,680; other defense manufacturers were standing in line for their share.

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