Content note: Caricatured enemy-style faces, including a Japanese figure with exaggerated teeth and ears, drawn as grotesques. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Don't talk out of turn!
Color cartoon poster: a wide-mouthed factory worker with a lunch pail shouts 'Information' while caricatured Axis-style listeners, in German-style, Japanese-style and other caps with cupped ears, gather above him. Text urges workers to 'imitate a clam' and report pumping strangers, and calls the worker a 'production soldier'. A fear-appeal built on a plain-folks everyman figure.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1941
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Cyrus C. Hungerford (artist and copyright holder), Pittsburgh
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Individual
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Warn or inform
- Themes
- Home front, Security and surveillance, Labor
- Event
- World War II
- Regime
- Roosevelt administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, retrieved October 4, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
Cyrus C. Hungerford (artist and copyright holder), Pittsburgh. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-691 (NAID 514172).
Text on the object
DON'T TALK OUT OF TURN! INFORMATION An Innocent remark made to the wrong person at the wrong time, may spell disaster. Be suspicious of the pleasant stranger who trys to "pump" you. Just Imitate a Clam, and pass your suspicions along to the proper Authorities. Keep Safe! Keep Mum! You are a PRODUCTION SOLDIER... America's First Line of Defense is HERE [signature: HUNGERFORD] [imprint: Copyright 1941, Cyrus C. Hungerford, Pittsburgh, Pa.] [handwritten in pencil: can be blanked out]
