International Poster has a nice selection of Charles Mathers’s Work Incentive Posters that were popular in U.S. workplaces in the 1920s. They were sort of a early 20th century version of those insipid motivational posters that are routinely mocked on the Internet.
According to International Poster’s history of the Work Incentive series,
Charles Mather, a Chicago-based printer seeking to use up excess capacity, saw opportunity in the movement [welfare capitalism] and started selling factory owners subscriptions to his poster series. The annual “campaigns” found ready acceptance in a workplace accustomed to Madison Avenue advertising techniques in government production posters recently seen during World War I. Mather’s series however, was the first widespread employer sponsored program with the goal of corporate success and employee development.
The posters are fascinating both for the relentless message tied up in what seems like fairly primitive propaganda methods. For example, did Mathers seriously expect this 1925 poster to motivate employees to work harder? Did it? It seems like an extraordinarily clumsy and bizarre attempt at propagandizing a workplace.
