Keep the home fires burning
Defense-production poster: two cartoon figures, a soldier and a sailor, march smiling with rifles and bayonets over their shoulders beside a smoking factory labelled 'DEFENSE PRODUCTION'. The text calls the reader a 'PRODUCTION SOLDIER'. Transfer: the soldiers' standing is lent to factory work, in a friendly cartoon style that casts the reader as one of them.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1941
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Cyrus C. Hungerford, Pittsburgh, Pa. (cartoonist and copyright holder)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- Home front, 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, Pittsburgh, Pa. (cartoonist and copyright holder). National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1209 (NAID 514815).
Text on the object
KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING DEFENSE PRODUCTION [signature: Hungerford] It's an old song . . . but it's still good...the boy in the draft army may be YOURS or your neigh- bor's! The marching will be very tough if we fall down, back home! You are a PRODUCTION SOLDIER... America's First Line of Defense is HERE Copyright 1941, Cyrus C. Hungerford, Pittsburgh, Pa. [imprint: printer's mark below the text, not legible]
