---
title: Days off cost lives!
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/days-off-cost-lives-1943/
description: 'Inside spread of the WPB absenteeism leaflet: line drawings of illness, accidents, bad housing, poor transportation, child care.'
section: Collection
---

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3. Days off cost lives!

[![Days off cost lives!, 1943 US leaflet: Inside spread of the WPB absenteeism leaflet](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/days-off-cost-lives-1943.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/days-off-cost-lives-1943.jpg)

# Days off cost lives!

Inside spread of the WPB absenteeism leaflet: line drawings of illness, accidents, bad housing, poor transportation, child care, shopping problems and ration board hours, beside the headline 'Days Off Cost Lives!' and a text that separates involuntary from voluntary absences. The headline links lost days to deaths; the text lists reasons for absence before asking for fewer voluntary days.

## Propaganda techniques used in this leaflet

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
DAYS OFF
COST
LIVES!
ILLNESS
ACCIDENTS
BAD HOUSING
POOR TRANSPORTATION
Very few of us have a 100 percent attendance record. Most
of us miss a day now and then. Many of us miss work more
often-too often.
Sometimes it's our fault and sometimes it isn't.
But in either case work doesn't get done-necessary war
work.
Your joint labor-management committee wants to cut down
absenteeism . . . wants to wipe out the absentee bugs that have
been biting us. And your committee needs your help.
Here's our program of attack:
1. Find the root causes of absenteeism.
2. Eradicate them.
On both points we must enlist your support.
The drawings on these two pages illustrate the chief cause of
absenteeism in most war plants. Accidents and illness are
the biggest causes. Then come housing and transportation
troubles; child care and other home problems; shopping and
ration board headaches.
There are other causes, too . . . including fatigue, shortage
of materials, and other interruptions to production.
These involuntary causes are the most prevalent absentee
bugs in war plants. We must find out which of them are biting
into production here-and then we must devise ways and means
to lick them. All of us, working together.
What about other causes of absences?
We need your help here, too-for, frankly, these other
causes are chiefly your problem.
Most absences have contributing and understandable causes.
They are involuntary. But some absences are voluntary.
These voluntary days off must be cut down if production is to
be pushed up!
Why?
Because there's a war to be won-and won quickly.
QUICKLY AND COMPLETELY.
Every Day Counts!
DAYS OFF COST LIVES!
CHILD
CARE
SHOPPING PROBLEMS
RATION
BOARD
RATION BOARD
HOURS
Don't Let the ABSENTEE BUGS Get You . . . . .
[handwritten:] 44-PA 483B
```

[← Dare you to say or think you do not feel](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dare-you-say-or-think-1943/) [Days off cost lives →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/days-off-cost-lives-streamer-1943/)

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- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
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