WW1 food posters: Food Administration

What were WW1 food posters?

WW1 food posters were sheets issued by governments and their agencies from 1914 to 1919 asking civilians to eat less of certain foods, grow their own, hand over grain or pay controlled prices. The best-documented set in this collection comes from the United States Food Administration, led by Herbert Hoover from 1917. Others come from Canada, Bulgaria and occupied Poland.

Poster, 1917: Herbert Hoover's signed slogan Food will win the war above a text on conserving wheat, meat, sugar and fats

The pledge and the slogan

The Food Administration relied on volunteers rather than a ration book. Its sheet signed by Herbert Hoover pairs a portrait and a signature with a very small ask (a few savings in wheat flour, meat, sugar and fats) and a picture of hungry children in Belgium: Testimonial joined to Fear appeal.

Window card, 1917: Member of the United States Food Administration, a shield ringed by a wheat wreath

Poster, 1918: a hand slices a loaf of bread beneath the words Save a loaf a week, help win the war

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Households that signed the pledge got a card to hang in the front window. It makes no argument; it is a public badge of participation, a case of Identity fusion. A flag-draped woman on another sheet makes the same request as a test of patriotism (Transfer).

"Save a loaf a week" attaches a small household act to the large goal of winning the war, with no figures on supply: Glittering generalities.

Poster, 1918: ships labelled Sugar spiral away from a woman sipping a drink toward a shore marked War

Wheat, sugar and the ration

Sugar was framed as shipping. "Sugar Means Ships" gives one figure, 400 million pounds imported for beverages, and no wider supply data (Card stacking). A shop card compares the American sugar allowance of 2 lb a month with the lower allowances of England, France and Italy; the selection of voluntary against compulsory rationing is the argument.

Poster, 1918: a boy swears off ice cream in a child's misspelt oath, a small dog behind him

Poster, 1918: US infantrymen with fixed bayonets charge across a snow-white ridge above a request for wheat

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A cartoon puts the sugar pledge in a child's mouth (Plain folks).

Wheat posters link the soldier to the bread bin. This one sets the troops' sacrifice against a household food choice (Transfer), and a wall chart for bakers, "Victory Bread" (four fifths wheat flour, one fifth substitutes), is mostly measurement with a name that carries the war aim.

Fear, shame and enforcement

Poster, 1918: a woman collapses over a child in a ruined city while a man stands over them with a torch, under Hunger breeds madness

"Hunger Breeds Madness" shows starvation producing violence and ties American exports to preventing it (Fear appeal). "Blood or Bread" sets blood given by others against food saved at home.

Poster, 1918: a heavy man in a dinner jacket smokes over a laden table beside a headline addressed to Sir

"Sir, Don't Waste While Your Wife Saves" shames a type of household member into joining the majority (Bandwagon). Voluntary did not mean unenforced: a blank "Closed" notice, issued by the Enforcement Division, was posted on a business shut for breaking the rules.

Gardens

Poster, 1918: a woman in a stars-and-stripes dress scatters seed over a ploughed field beneath Every Garden a Munition Plant

The National War Garden Commission's poster by James Montgomery Flagg turns vegetable-growing into war work with the line "Every Garden a Munition Plant", and offers free books on gardening and canning.

Poster, 1918: three men of different ages stride across a field above the word FOOD and the line Keep the Home Garden going

The Food Administration's "Spirit of '18" adds a generational tradition to the same request (Glittering generalities). The Department of Agriculture's instruction sheet goes the other way: it shows ordinary households as the model, in photographs.

Poster, 1918: a man in a CANADA shirt scratches his head beside a giant hen over drawn eggs scaled to dozen counts

Other nations

The Canada Food Board's egg chart shows Britain's shortage and Canada's past small sales, and only those, so the verdict "Canada must do better" follows (Card stacking).

Leaflet, 1917: a text-only Bulgarian appeal to farmers signed by a general

Poster, 1917: a dense Polish-language text poster demanding that grain and potatoes be handed over

Poster, 1918: a photograph of two women hauling a plough with chains, under Heroic Women of France toiling to produce food

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In Bulgaria, a state directorate under Maj.-Gen. Aleksandar Protogerov told farmers in June 1917 that the enemy hoped to break the nation by hunger and that unharvested grain was a sin and a betrayal of the troops (Fear appeal).

In Lublin, a relief committee under the Austro-Hungarian military administration demanded grain and potatoes, warned the cities "will perish of hunger" and called profiteers "robber and Cain" (Name-calling).

The same American agency used French women ploughing as the yardstick for American effort, with quotations from Alonzo Taylor, Hoover and Wilson (Testimonial).

What differed, and what did not

Every sheet above asks the reader to give up food or labour for a war aim, and each uses fear, flattery or shame to do it. The difference lies in the instrument. The American sheets ask and say so ("the Food Administration merely ASKS"), backed by fair-price lists and closure notices. The Bulgarian and Lublin sheets are orders from military or state authorities to hand grain over. The sugar card makes that contrast itself.

What the collection does not hold

Not here: British food-economy posters, the German turnip-winter and bread-card material, and French or Italian food sheets. The collection is heavily American for this topic.
Not here: a ration book or coupon, or any measure of how far posters changed behaviour. Food Administration statistics on savings are not reproduced.

Sources and further reading

Sources

National Archives and Records Administration, U.S.

National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. Food Administration posters (4-P series), as cited on each item. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, World War I Posters (Canada Food Board, item 2005696901). Wikimedia Commons and State Archives of the Republic of North Macedonia (Bulgarian notice), and National Library of Poland, Polona (Lublin poster). Each item in the grid carries its own source and rights note.