LIBRARY - Michigan Stan: University , Ill! llll I“ ill! "I Will 11le lllllllll lllllfllfllllll ! L 3 1293 This is to certify that the thesis entitled POPULAR MAGAZINES, WOMEN , AND WORLD WAR II: THE USE OF POPULAR CULTURE AS PROPAGANDA presented by Maureen E1 izabeth Honey has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph .1) 9 degree in E5191 1 Sh mam? Major professor Date March 1, 1979 PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE JAN 09 NOV 1 O 2613 1110 LC 0 2 2073 I..i 0:1,; .. 4“! I’ll ' '1' it‘ll-ll 'II' in! POPULAR MAGAZINES, WOMEN, AND WORLD WAR II: THE USE OF POPULAR CULTURE AS PROPAGANDA By Maureen Elizabeth Honey A DISSERTATION Submitted to ‘ Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1979 @COpyright by MAUREEN ELIZABETH HONEY 1979 ABSTRACT POPULAR MAGAZINES, WOMEN, AND WORLD WAR II: THE USE OF POPULAR CULTURE AS PROPAGANDA By Maureen Elizabeth Honey This study examines images of women in popular magazines during the l9405. Specifically, it analyzes the characteristics of heroines in fiction and women in advertisements from The Saturday_Evening_Post, a middle-class magazine, and True Story, a magazine aimed at working- class women. The analysis is based on all advertisements from both magazines and over three hundred stories from January 1941 through March 1946. The major question of the study was why images of women in popular magazines after World War II did not reflect the egalitarian- ism of women's war work. Magazines ignored the large numbers of women who entered the postwar labor force and women‘s competent per- formance of male jobs during the war, idealizing instead the full- time homemaker. Women's wartime role should have resulted in reevalua- tion of female capacities and furthered sexual equality in the postwar world. Paradoxically, however, postwar ideology created a feminine mystique which defined women's status more conservatively than at any time since the nineteenth century. Maureen Elizabeth Honey In addition to exploring images of women during the war period, this study concerns the variable of class. It investigates the differences between middle-class and working-class fiction con- cerning women's role in society and female identity. Based on the assumption that women from different classes must cope with separate realities, the research defines how sex roles were affected by class stratification. The conclusions of this analysis are as follows. War work produced egalitarian images of women and improved attitudes toward all the work women performed. Magazines praised them for their strength, intelligence, competence, bravery, and their ability to fill male occupations. Fiction portrayed married working women as managing to successfully handle family and job responsibilities, a sig- nificant change from the prewar period which posed a conflict between female careers and happy marriages. Wartime egalitarianism failed to survive reconversion to a peacetime economy for two reasons. First, images of female war work- ers largely resulted from government and private propaganda groups which were influenced by the government‘s policy to use women as a temporary labor reserve. Fiction writers, advertisers, and government propaganda agencies worked together to recruit women into war produc- tion on a temporary basis only.‘ Of equal importance was the use of the family, in wartime propaganda, to symbolize democracy, peace, and the American Way of Life. The emphasis on women as symbols of vulnerability, innocence, and the home front glorified the homemaker, and reinforced an image of Maureen Elizabeth Honey female dependence on masculine strength. In addition, equating peace with family life insured that women's wartime identities as wage laborers would be abandoned, after the war, in favor of the full-time homemaker. Finally, two findings concern class differences in sex-role ideology. From the evidence of popular magazines, middle-class women based their identity on their role as wife and were primarily con- cerned with their sexual attractiveness to men. Working-class women, on the other hand, placed far more importance on motherhood and tied femininity to fertility rather than to sexual attractiveness. Partly because middle-class women placed great importance on the marital bond, middle-class ideology was more egalitarian than working-class conceptions of sex roles. During the war, middle-class magazines contained stronger egalitarian themes and more assertive images of women than did the more conservative working-class magazines. The impact of war work on traditional notions of female identity was greater for middle-class women-~which casts doubt on the thesis that egalitarian images stem from female participation in the labor force. To Russel B. Nye ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many individuals who contributed to this disserta- tion. I wish I could mention them all and acknowledge my debt to their support, patience, advice, and help in finding research material. Since that would result in another dissertation, I regretfully confine myself to citing the following individuals who were of particular importance to my research. Russel B. Nye directed my thesis and I owe him many thanks for his sensitivity, willingness to suggest sources, and valuable suggestions for the final editing. He has been instrumental in my intellectual growth, by encouraging me to publish and by providing me with a model of an extraordinary teacher, an inspiring scholar, and, most importantly, a kind person. I want to give special thanks, too, to the other members of my graduate commit- tee. Barrie Thorne has been a good friend, a sister in the struggle for female equality, and a superb teacher who has given me unusually good feedback on my work. Her enthusiasm for this project has encour- aged me to continue my research into images of womenin popular cul- ture. Victor Howard, through his interest in American social history, has shown me the value of interdisciplinary work in American Studies and has led me to the Saturday Evening Post as a historical record. Finally, I wish to thank Madison Kuhn for his acute observations about the relationship of the media to government policy during World War II, and for sharing with me his breadth of knowledge of American history. iii I would also like to thank The Macfadden Group, which pub- lishes True Story, for allowing me to use their collection and to work in their offices. Confession magazines are valuable sources of infor- mation about working-class women and are impossible to find in libraries. I cannot overestimate the importance of Macfadden's decision to accommodate scholars. Similarly, I owe thanks to the people who staff the National Records Center at Suitland, Maryland. Their kindness and intelligence helped me find documents on the recruitment campaign waged by the Office of War Information, material I would have had difficulty locating myself. I want to acknowledge my debt to sisters in the women's move- ment who recognized the importance of research on women during World War II, and who have encouraged me to use a feminist analysis in all my research. My teaching colleagues have been extraordinarily sup- portive, and I owe them many thanks for their help in completing the final draft, while I was teaching full time. I want to give special thanks to John Mock, who has given me much help in articulating the ideas of my thesis while encouraging me to pursue academic work. Finally, my family and friends have been largely responsible for my completion of both the dissertation and the requirements of graduate school. It is impossible to thank them enough for being the percep- tive, loving people they are. iv LIST OF LIST OF PREFACE Chapter I. II. III. IV. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLES ........................ FIGURES ........................ THE EGALITARIAN POTENTIAL OF WAR WORK ......... RECRUITING WOMEN FOR WAR PRODUCTION: OWI AND THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY .................. ‘The Magazine Bureau of the Office of War Information .................... ~~Pr0paganda Aimed at the Working Class ........ -The "Womanpower" Campaign .............. “The Recruitment Campaign and Popular Fiction The Response of the Magazine Industry to the Recruitment Campaign ............... ~ Propaganda and Advertising ............. u-Demobilization ................... THE IMPACT OF PROPAGANDA 0N IMAGES OF WOMEN IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST ................ Fiction Encouraging Women to Enter War Work ..... - Encouraging Women to Leave War Work ......... Images of Women in Advertising ........... THE WORKING-CLASS WOMAN AND THE RECRUITMENT CAMPAIGN: THE CASE OF TRUE STORY .......... Women's Changing Status During the War and the Confession Formula ................ Nonfiction ..................... .Advertisements ................... Page vii viii ix Chapter Page V. CLASS DIFFERENCES IN THE PORTRAYAL 0F WOMEN'S WAR WORK ..................... l38 CONCLUSION ......................... l54 APPENDICES ......................... 160 A. METHODOLOGY ..................... l61 B. MAGAZINE FICTION CONCERNED WITH THE RECRUITMENT OF WOMEN INTO WAR WORK .............. 165 C. WOMEN FEATURED IN TRUE STORY'S "WOMEN WHO SERVED AMERICA" SERIES .................. T70 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................ T72 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page l. Women Changing Occupation Group, Pearl Harbor to March 1944 ..................... 4 2. Occupations of Female Characters from Lead Stories Featuring Women in the Saturday Evening Post, 1941-1946 ...................... 65 3. Proportion of Female Characters Portrayed in Wage Labor Who Were Married in Lead Stories Featuring Women in the Saturday Evening Post, 1941-1946 . . . . 76 4. Attitudes Toward Women in Wage Labor and Defense Work in Lead Stories Featuring Women in the Saturday Evening Post, 1941-1945 .......... BO 5. Heroines of Lead Stories Portrayed in Wage Labor in True Story, 1941-1946 .............. 113 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Distribution of Women Production Workers in Manufacturing Industries .............. 8 viii PREFACE Popular culture is a valuable source of information about a society. Not only is it a record of which values and conceptions of reality great numbers of people are exposed to, but it provides insight into the ways people adjust to the stresses of living and to the social system in which they function. Popular culture must speak to the needs of its audience for information, relief of tension, and meaning. The nature of the issues it addresses and the fantasies it contains, therefore, provides clues about what people find important and how they picture themselves.1 This study is based on the notion that popular culture trans- mits dominant cultural values within the framework of audience experi- 2 Itis ence and needs for fantasy, entertainment, and guidance. neither entirely a reflection of audience beliefs nor of values designed to support the status quo. It is, more complexly, an amalgam of audience experiences and fantasies, values deeply rooted in the culture, and attitudes which support the prevailing social structure. It functions as a disseminator of values which are determined by the -economic and political systems, cultural history, communications net- work, and other structural characteristics of the society from which it springs while speaking to the particular experiences of its audience.3 ix Different audiences create variations in the content of popular culture as do historical events. Class, sex, ethnic, and age distinc- tions, for instance, partially account for the types of appeals made by entertainment formulas. To study popular culture, then, is to gain insight into several aspects of society--the contours of social struc- tures, the feelings and motivations of people who do not generally provide the historian with material which describes their lives, the impact of major events on the ideology of social systems, and the forces that produce or inhibit social change. This study uses these principles to illuminate the status of women during the 19405. This was one of the most critical periods in the history of women's participation in the labor force, as it was the first time that occupational barriers against women entering male sectors of the labor market were removed to a significant degree. Women's wartime role implicitly challenged widespread notions about the capacities of women as a group and undermined rationales for occupational segregation. Most importantly, these changes held the promise of restructuring sex roles on a permanent basis. After the war, the potential for women to achieve greater social and economic equality went unrealized. War workers were channeled back into the low-paying female sector of the labor market; three million women left the labor force. Ignoring the reality of women's increasing role in wage labor and their competent performance of male social roles during the war, the mass media glorified the full—time homemaker and created a feminine mystique which defined sex roles as rigidly as at any time since the cult of true womanhood of the nineteenth century. Several studies have examined the war period to see why and how the potential for an egalitarian restructuring of society failed to occur.4 The role of popular magazines in the government's campaign to recruit women into war production and in the glorification of the family as a symbol of democracy throughout the war helps explain why the egalitarianism necessitated by war work failed to be incorporated into postwar ideology. In addition to exploring the nature of magazine images of women during the war, this study focuses on the variable of class. It investigates the way role shifts and economic requirements were adapted to the entertainment formulas of different socioeconomic groups. This is intended to both illuminate the ideology of middle- class and working-class women and to illustrate the ability of popular culture to transmit cultural values in different ways. Magazines played a major role in the government's labor recruitment campaign and their wide circulation made them important attitude and self-image shapers. The emphasis of this study is on magazine fiction and advertisements, because their messages are subtler and carry more emotional weight than those of nonfiction or editorials. Thus they have potentially more influence on reader beliefs.5 Fiction is an especially good indicator of cultural atti- tudes, since its values are absorbed unconsciously and its fantasies are elaborately drawn. In addition, popular fiction is filled with xi archetypal characters who can tell us a great deal about cultural values: Since the reader identifies . . . with a particular hero model, the fictional hero, together with his [gig] status, qualities, and achievements, becomes an important vehicle of social values. Heroes and hegoines become the carriers of specific American traditions. By examining the heroines of wartime fiction, we can thus understand more completely how war work affected social norms concerning sex roles. Chapter I reviews the labor force changes that occurred during the war in order to provide a framework for understanding the propa- ganda and images promoted by magazines. It discusses the significance of women's wartime labor force activities and describes government and business policies toward women wage workers. Chapter II des- cribes the propaganda groups which played a key role in shaping the images of women to war needs and focuses on their relationship to the magazine industry. Connections between government policy makers and these groups made it likely that women's wartime role would be interpreted to the public in a way that would support the use of women as a temporary wartime labor reserve. Chapters III and IV concern the Saturday Evening Post and True Story. The £g§£_represents a group of magazines known as family "slicks" which were aimed at a diverse but decidedly middle-class audience, while True Story represents magazines directed at working-class women. Chapter V draws conclusions about the differences between working-class and middle-class magazines' treatment of women's war work in order to understand the role of class in wartime ideology. xii The use of popular magazines as recruitment propaganda during World War 11 highlights several characteristics of popular culture and American attitudes toward women. It helps explain discrepancies between women's labor force activity and popular images of women while contributing to an understanding of the war period itself. An analysis of wartime images of women allows for identification of those factors which led to the failure of the war to equalize women's role in the economy, strengthen their identities as wage workers, and produce egalitarian images in the postwar period. xiii Footnotes--Preface 1For an indication of the variety of the theoretical approaches used in popular culture research, see Theories and Methodologies in Popular Culture, ed. Ray Browne, Sam Grogg, Jr., andLarry Landrum, from theJ Journal of Popular Culture (n. p. : n. p. , n. d. ); Media and Symbols: The Forms of Expression, Communication, and Education, ed. David Olson (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974); Mass Culture Revisited, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White (New York: VanNostrand Reinhold, 1971), Egpular Culture in America, ed. David Manning White (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 197D); and Culture for the Millions, ed. Norman Jacobs and Paul Lazarsfeld (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). 2John Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: .Univ. of Chicago ress, articulates this perspective brilliantly. 3Studies which support the notion that popular culture pro- motes values consonant with such structural factors include Carl Bode, The Anatomy of Popular Culture, 1840- 1861 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959); Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Lite erac (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), George Gerbner ,A“The ocial Role of the Confession Magazine," Social Problems, 6 (1958), 29- 40; Abraham Kaplan, "The Aesthetics of the Popular Arts," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24 (1966), 351-64; Albert McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual (Kentucky: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1965), Leo Bogart,-“The Mass Media and the Blue-Collar Workers," in Blue-Collar World, ed. Arthur Shostak and William Gomberg (N. J. Prentice-Hall, 1964); and Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising,and the Social Roots of the—Consumer Culture (N. Y: McGraw-Hill, 1976). 4Sheila Tobias and Lisa Anderson discuss the failure of unions to protect the interests of women workers in "What Really Happened to Rosie the Riveter: Demobilization and the Female Labor Force, 1945-47“ (N.Y.: MSS Modular Pub., 1974), Module 9, 1-36; Eleanor Straub attributes the failure to the inability of women in government to influence government policy and to the absence of feminist pressure groups "United States Government Policy Toward Civilian Women During World War II," Diss. Emory Univ., 1973; William Chafe concludes that radical changes were simply not desired by Americans in The American Woman: Her Chan in Social Economic and Political Roles, 1920-1975 (N.Y.: Oxfora Univ. Press, 1972); Leila Rupp asserts that the way public images of women incorporated their wartime labor activities made it clear that women's war work was to be temporary Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda,,1939-l945 (N.J.: *Princeton Univ. Press, 1978). xiv 5For a discussion of communications researchers who support the view that the hidden messages of popular culture are more per- suasive since they escape controls of consciousness, see Frank Fox, Madison Avenue Goes to War: The Strange Military Career of American Advertising, 1941-1945, Charles E. Merrill Monograph Series (Utah: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 1975), p. 11. 6Patricke Johns-Heine and Hans Gerth, "Values in Mass Periodi- cal Fiction, 1921-1940," Public Opinion Quarterly, 13 (1949), 105-113. XV CHAPTER I THE EGALITARIAN POTENTIAL OF WAR WORK The role of women in World War II is of great social and historical importance, because the war precipitated the entry of millions of women into the labor force and into jobs normally filled by men. Only in World Wars I and II were women able to enter the high-paying, skilled occupations in manufacturing generally filled by male workers, thus providing them with the opportunity to make more money than ever before and to acquire job skills and work experience normally denied them.1 They temporarily escaped occupational patterns established from the beginnings of industrialization which confined them to the most marginal positions in the economy.2 While women have steadily entered the labor force in great numbers, they have entered a segregated labor market. From 1900 to 1960, 60 to 73 percent of the female labor force was concentrated in occupations where the majority of workers were female, and 30 to 48 percent were in occupations which were 80 percent or more female.3 This has been a market which provides women with relatively few work options. In 1940, for instance, 23 of 451 occupational titles listed in the census accounted for 75 percent of all employed women.4 Because women have tended to enter occupations which had been performed in the home, such as manufacture of clothing and textiles, processing of food, teaching, nursing, and domestic ser- vice, and because the forces of occupational segregation have been so strong, the occupational roles women fill have remained remarkably stable. Despite the work women did in the war, for instance, 14 occupations in which 70 percent or more of the workers were women appear in lists from both 1900 and 1950.5 The occupations open to women have generally fallen into four categories: high-status, low- wage professions such as teaching and nursing; service and trade industries (clerks, waitresses, laundry workers, telephone operators, domestics); nondurable goods industries (apparel, textile, food); and clerical work. Most of these jobs come from industries which operate on low profit margins, are nonunionized, and provide few opportunities for advancement. In short, women have been treated as "the most expendable members of the work force.“6 The war provided an opportunity for women to significantly alter their status in the work force--and by extension in American society--since the shortage of male workers and the necessity for production of war material forced employers to remove many of the occupational barriers that kept women out of higher paying,more skilled work. Training programs were set up by government and industry for women to learn how to handle industrial equipment and master skills; protective labor legislation which had been instrumental in keeping women out of high-paying jobs was rescinded;7 women were accepted into male-dominated unions;8 and high school girls were encouraged to take courses in fields designed to develop skills useful in war industries.9 Women were hired in durable goods industries where workers tended to be unionized and to enjoy higher wages, and also in nonfactory jobs linked to male social roles. For the most part, these changes began to occur in 1943, when women were hired in great numbers for production jobs in war indus- tries. By the end of that year, they comprised 25 to 52 percent of workers in aircraft plants, 10.6 percent of those in steel produc- tion, and 34.2 percent of ammunition workers.10 The following year, women were 10 percent of all workers in shipping and 8 percent of 11 railroad workers. As a result of the increased employment of women in these male-dominated fields, the percentage of women rose from 8 percent of all production workers in durable goods industries in 1939 to 25 percent in 1944, their numbers having gone from 340,000 12 to over two million. In addition, women went from .9 percent of all "craftsmen, foremen [sic], and kindred workers“ in 1940 to 1.5 percent in 1945.13 Because war industries offered higher wages than traditional woman-employing fields, large numbers of women changed occupations. In seven of the ten major war production areas, 25 percent or more of the women employed both in 1944 and before Pearl Harbor changed occu- pation groups. Thirty-two percent of all sales workers and 30 percent 14 of service workers shifted to operative work. In the Puget Sound area, where many women were employed in shipyards, the trade and ser- vice sector declined from 67 percent of all women workers to 42 percent 15 over the course of the war. Twenty-six percent of female workers in war industries across the nation came from traditional female fields.16 TABLE 1 WOMEN CHANGING OCCUPATION GROUP. PEARL HARBOR TO MARCH 1944 % of Total Employed Women . from Occupation Group Who o‘ggpggig? figrggfle Left Between Pearl Harbor and March 1944 to Enter Another Occupation Group Total, all occupations 14.7 Clerical workers . 4.4 Proprietors, managers, officials 6.2 Professional and semiprofessional workers 6.6 Craftsmen, foremen, operatives, and laborers 8.6 Farmers, farm managers, farm laborers 24.2 Other service workers 29.3 Domestic service workers 29.5 Sales workers 32.9 Source: "Recent Occupational Trends," Monthly Labor Review, August (1947), 139-147. A comparison of the 1944 earnings of women in these fields with those of women employed in war plants explains the desire of female workers to enter male sectors of the labor force. Wages in munitions plants and aircraft factories averaged 40 percent higher than those in consumer goods factories.17 In Detroit, a typical war production center, the average weekly take-home earnings of women in laundries, restaurants, hotels, retail and wholesale trade, and con- sumer goods industries ranged from $24.10 to $29.75 while those of women in war industries averaged'$40.35.18 The shift of women workers from female to male occupations and the hiring of new entrants to the labor force in these more lucrative sectors of the job market constituted massive changes in the history of women's labor force activity. No less significant was the other role shift occasioned by the war, one which carried added potential for greater sexual equality--the employment of mar- ried women and mothers in record numbers. Of the new entrants to 19 and three million were 20 the labor force, 56 percent were homemakers married, an increase of 75 percent over 1940. For the first time, married women workers outnumbered single wage earners. Most of the homemakers (40 percent) went directly into war manufacturing.2] Many of these housewives were service wives, 50 percent of whom joined the labor force and who constituted nearly .4 million of the five million new workers.22 Despite the policy of the War Manpower Commission, which urged employers to hire mothers of young children as a last resort, one-third of the married women in the labor force in February 1944 had children under ten.23 The entry of large numbers of housewives and mothers into the labor force had the potential to break down the normative ideal of the full-time homemaker that had existed from the beginning of industrialization, an ideal instrumental in maintaining women's marginal status in the labor force.24 As long as employers could argue that woman's primary role was that of wife and mother, finan- cially dependent on the husband, they could rationalize low wages and lack of upward mobility by claiming that women were merely tempo- rary members of the work force. In addition, the ideology accompanying industrialization encouraged women themselves to devalue their role as workers. As William Chafe says: "Once the role of full-time homemaker had become a badge of 'succeeding' economically and socially, the barriers of breaking out of that position became nearly insuper- able."25 The need for married women and mothers in war work tempo- rarily modified the homemaker ideal by encouraging women to develop work identities outside the home. These changes challenged the ideology of occupational segre- gation as well as the identification of women with the home, under- mining traditional ideas concerning female capacities and interests. While many studies of the war period indicate that this challenge to traditional beliefs failed to produce significant changes in atti- tudes toward women, it has been argued that the war expanded women's role in society to include that of wage worker.26 The major evi- dence cited in support of this position is that married women and mothers joined the labor force in record numbers after the war. It is true that married women have outnumbered single women in the labor force since the war and that the percentage of female workers never returned to its prewar level. This labor force pattern, however, does not mean that the normative role of women was expanded to include roles as wage earners. To a large extent, the married woman worker of the postwar period has been invisible, nullifying whatever impact her presence could have had on changing conceptions of female roles. The fact that she has come from the lower end of the socioeconomic scale and filled the lowest-paying positions in the job market means that she has not been included in the normative image of middle-class success: “the [rising] participation by women occurred in the face of an intensified cultural fixation on their virtues as housekeepers, child rearers, and husband custodians.“27 The war may have accelerated the entry of married women into the labor force, but the image of women as full-time homemakers remained as central to normative definitions of the female role as it was befbre the war. With reconversion to a peacetime economy, the potential for women to achieve greater social and economic equality went unrealized. Layoffs fell disproportionately on women workers, claiming 175 out of every 1,000 women in manufacturing industries, almost double the rate for men. They were consistently higher for women than for men from August 1945 through May 1946, the period when three-quarters of returned veterans who found employment in manufacturing obtained jobs.28 While 45.3 percent of women production workers had been employed in higher-paying durable goods industries in November 1943, only 25 percent of these workers were in durable goods by November 1946.29 (See Figure 1.) Industry and government channeled women who remained in the labor force into low-paying woman-employing sectors of the labor market. There was a not drop of .5 million women in “craftsmen or foremen [gigJ“ positions after V-J Day-and the percentage of women in 30 service work increased. Job referrals of the U.S. Employment Service indicate that women were placed in unskilled and semi-skilled classifications in industry and that the demand for workers in these 31 positions was greater than the supply. The Women's Bureau described / Textile 50.9% 43_4% and a: 3% Apparel “3 N a.) OJ 33 IE 2 E a fl {3’ // S .6% 8 Other 2 Z Nondurable Durable Oct. Nov. Nov. 1939 1943 1946 Figure 1. Distribution of women production workers in manufacturing industries Source: "Postwar Labor Turn-Over Among Women Factory Workers," Monthly Labor Review, March (1947), 411-419. women as “reluctant to return to household work [paid domestic work], and also to other services, and to the more unattractive and low-paid clerical and manufacturing jobs as well."32 A Women's Bureau study confirms the fact that women were channeled unwillingly into prewar fields: "When jobs of the skill levels women have developed in war work are no longer available, the tendency is to refer them back to their earlier types of jobs, which many of them no longer desire."33 This was in spite of the fact that the proportion of skilled workers in the 1947 labor force was slightly above the wartime ratio.34 While women previously employed in war manufacture were returning to the home, to school, and to female sectors of the labor force, large numbers of male wartime operatives moved up the occupa- tional ladder into the rapidly expanding building trades or into skilled positions in manufacturing of consumer goods.35 By April 1947, 11 million of the 13.5 million veterans were employed, and the bulk of male workers were "proprietors/managers/officials," "craftsmen/foremen/kindred workers," "operatives,“ and “laborers." In contrast, the bulk of women workers in 1947 were clerical workers, operatives, domestics, and service workers.36 Employers and government planners intended from the outset to break down occupational barriers which kept women out of high-paying jobs on a temporary basis only. There were several government and industry policy studies published early in the war that identified women as war labor reserves.37 One of these was authored by Thelma McKelvey who, in 1942, headed the Women's Labor Supply Service of the War Production Board's Labor Division.38 McKelvey outlined war labor lO requirements and identified three phases the economy was expected to go through which would require extra women workers. The first phase consisted of a demand for workers in occupations traditionally held by women resulting from increased purchasing power of the population. The second was use of women as a supplement to male labor in highly industrialized areas in 1942. The third was the replacement of male workers as the war progressed. What is significant about this report is that while it readily supported programs designed to facilitate the employment of women in jobs normally filled by men, it made no mention of any gov- ernment concern for permanently ending occupational segregation based on sex. While government planners expressed concern over work condi- tions, equal wages, fair hours, and adequate living quarters for women workers, it was clear that they gave precedence to male workers. For example, the Labor Division's policy statement specified that defense training programs for women should not be set up in industrial areas 39 In addition, the report where great numbers of men were unemployed. reveals that the government expected women to leave the labor force as soon as the emergency was over: “There is little doubt that women will be required to leave their jobs at the end of the war to permit the return of men to their jobs as they are released from the armed forces."40 The Census Bureau made a more detailed analysis of which women could be most readily utilized as a wartime labor reserve to help the War Manpower Commission with administration of the war pro- gram. While published in 1943, the report had been made available 11 to government agencies considerably before the date of publication. After identifying the demographic characteristics of women in and out of the labor force, the report concluded that married women without children under ten, living in metropolitan districts of 100,000 or more, would be the best source of workers for the duration of the war.41 All of the policy reports drawn up in the early stages of the war show a clear understanding of the value of women as an avail- able reserve of labor power that could be brought into the economy to replace men. None of them considered persuading experienced women workers already in the labor force to enter male occupations in war factories or recruiting housewives from the lowest income bracket, the two groups of women most likely to remain in the work force after the war and most interested in retaining high-paying jobs. Plans were not made to train experienced workers for war factory jobs but instead to recruit women who would be more likely to leave the work force at the end of the war. Another apsect of government policy toward women war workers that fostered retention of occupational segregation was the reluc- tance of the War Manpower Commission (WMC) to recruit mothers of young children, even though it recognized that many of these women would enter the labor force. The WMC made it official policy to employ young mothers as a last resort, and child care facilities were kept to a minimum throughout the war. This policy helped to preserve the normative definition of women as full-time homemakers and to maintain 12 the social attitude that women could justifiably be employed as marginal workers in peacetime. In addition, the government's failure to provide sufficient community services, especially adequate child care, meant that women would be tempted to drop out of the labor force when they were laid off.42 Even before V-J Day, reports of the Women's Bureau showed that absenteeism and failure of women to seek employment were largely due to the enormous workloads female workers had to bear and to the con- flicting demands made on them by employer and family.43 The Women's Bureau conducted a study in the summer of 1943 which showed that one- half of married war workers had full responsibility for housework, and it indicated that the women were exhausted from their double burdens. To support its request for more community services, the Bureau cited cases like the following: A 45 year old woman, living on a farm fifteen miles from the plant, gets up at 4, packs lunches for herself and two sons in high school, gets the family breakfast, and leaves home at six o'clock. For her ride home she has to wait for men who work longer hours, so regardless of the hours worked it is after six when she reaches home. Then she has dinner to get, dishes to wash, and the whole round of house- hold work to do. . . . It is elevea p.m. when she retires, allowing only five hours for rest. 4 Drained by factory work weeks averaging 44 to 48 hours, pressured by husbands to continue their roles as homemakers, hampered by inade- quate transportation, and forced to shoo in crowded stores, married women workers who did not have to work for financial reasons undoubt- edly found the prospect of staying home after the war attractive. Those who had to work were apt to seek employment in female fields closer to home once the war was over. 13 Employers, too, intended to use women in male jobs only for the duration of the war and took steps to preserve occupational seg- regation even while barriers against women were being removed.45 There was a good deal of initial resistance, never entirely overcome, to the hiring of women in male-dominated industries. The Women's Bureau found hostile attitudes on the part of employers and workers alike in aircraft production, shipping, and steelmaking in 1941.46 Eleanor Straub's recent study of labor policy regarding women war workers reveals that, as late as the end of 1942, employers insisted 47 that women were unsuitable for over half of their labor needs. It also shows that when the War Department and the War Manpower Com- mission encouraged employers to hire women for defense jobs, they found "prejudices against women, blacks, aliens, and Jews in the labor force were often frequently deep-seated and employer specifi- cations were often not modified until in-migration had strained commu- nity facilities to the breaking point."48 Employers in war industries lowered restrictions against women workers reluctantly, with a cer- tain amount of apprehension and distaste, and with an eye to replac- ing them with male workers when the war was over. Many employers engaged in war production preferred to hire wives of men called up for duty on the theory that they would leave those jobs as soon as the men returned. The Women's Bureau found this practice widespread. In a sample of 35 ordnance, aircraft, and other war industry plants, half indicated that 50 percent or more of . . 49 . the1r women workers were married. This corroborates an early survey which found that employers preferred hiring female members of families 14 of servicemen because the women would be easier to discharge when the 50 men returned. Employers frequently failed to promote women and put them in blind-alley jobs, a practice which the government later dis- covered was one of the major reasons women quit jobs in war plants.5] Employers also sometimes reclassified jobs as female work, even though they had been previously performed by men.52 These practices illustrate the limited commitment employers made to new women work- ers and how they prevented women from making permanent inroads into male-dominated occupations. Employment policies, therefore, severely limited the oppor- tunities for female advancement opened up by the wartime shortage of male workers, even though it was in the best interests of employers to train and retain women in their new jobs. The extent to which employers were willing to go in favoring male workers in jobs usually filled by men is illustrated by the fact that, after the war, women aircraft workers trained returning veterans in the new technology of airplane production so that the men could replace them.53 Some government policies prohibited discrimination against women, of course, and there were statements by some government offi- cials that expressed a desire to upgrade women's postwar status in the work force. Certain War Manpower Commission policies advocated equal treatment of women workers both in war employment and recon- version. The War Labor Board, for instance, had a policy of equal pay for equal work. The Women's Bureau fought for women's right to retain their new positions, calling for legislation to provide equal pay, upgrade wages in consumer goods induscries as well as in service 15 and trade, to provide adequate services for women workers, and 54 Finally, the Women's institute sex-blind job classifications. Advisory Committee to the War Manpower Commission warned that: Government and industry must not assume that all women can be treated as a reserve group during war only, nor should those who wish to stay in the labor market be accused of taking men's jobs . . . any easy assumption that a great number of women will return to their homes is to be seri- ously questioned. Other policies weakened these sentiments, however, nor was the War Manpower Commission effective in enforcing its egalitarian policies. The War Labor Board, for example, while advocating equal pay, did so in the mildest of tones and ruled that women transferred to men's jobs for the duration would acquire no seniority.56 The War Manpower Commission allowed no women on its Management-Labor Commit- tees, which were the primary organs for institution of WMC programs 57 and had no enforcement powers. While the Women's Bureau and Women's Advisory Committee were strong advocates for women workers, they had 53 In addition, they actually little power to influence labor policy. worked against integration of the labor force by emphasizing the primary role of women as mothers, and by encouraging women to enter jobs in traditional woman-employing sectors of the economy during reconversion.59 Government and industry planners initially considered women as simply a wartime labor reserve to be employed on a temporary basis in jobs normally not open to them. Government policies during the war and in the postwar period encouraged the temporary upgrading of women workers by ineffectual promotion of egalitarian policies, 16 adoption of other policies that undercut egalitarian goals, and by channeling women into traditional female occupations during recon- version.60 One of the final studies made of the war's impact on the labor force reaffirmed the government's initial attitudes toward women as no more than a reserve labor supply and heralded the defeat of egalitarian sentiment: It has been found that there are many persons who can readily be attracted into the labor market when job open- ings expand, and who are likely to drop out when condi- tions become less favorable. . . . The working population's reactions under wartime stress furnished a striking demon- stration of its f1exibility.51 It is clear how the policy to use women as a temporary labor reserve during the war prevented the radical potential of war work from being realized in the peacetime economy. What is less clear is why postwar ideology was not affected by the wartime challenges posed to the homemaker ideal and to occupational segregation in the work force; why, in fact, the postwar period glorified domesticity and traditional sex roles far more than at any other time since the nine- teenth century. Furthermore, there is a discrepancy between govern- ment records, which show that women wanted to keep their wartime jobs, and the dominant image of women war workers, which was that women wanted to return to the home after victory.62 The following analysis addresses itself to these postwar anomalies. It begins with a discussion of the propaganda groups which formed in 1941 and 1942 to support the war effort, and which played a leading role in fashioning public images of women workers in popular magazines. Because these groups provided links between 17 the government, war manufacturers, and the magazine industry, they helped insure that the public's image of women would reflect policies to employ women in male occupations on a temporary basis only rather than the desires of workers to retain their high-paying jobs. 18 Footnotes--Chapter I 1There is little information available on women's role in World War I. Some studies which give information on that period are U.S. Women's Bureau, The New Position of Women in American Industry, Bulletin No. 12 (Wash. D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1920); F. M. Brewer, "Women Workers After the War," Editorial Research Reports, 1, No. 16 (1944), 285-300; Washington Bullard, Women's Work 1n War Time (Boston: Merchants National Bank, 1917); Sophonisba Breckinridge, Women in the Twentieth Century; A Study of Their Political, Social and Economic Activities (N.YL: McGraw-HiTT, 1933); and Nancy Malan, flHow 'Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down?: Women and World War I," Prologue, 5 (1973), 209-239. 2For an excellent review of women's labor force activity from 1870 to 1940, see U.S. Women's Bureau, Women's Occupations Through Seven Decades, Bulletin No. 218 (Wash. D.C.: Govt.7Printing Office, ; W. iot and Mary Brownlee provide a valuable though brief analysis of women's labor force activities from 1675-1929 in Women in the American Econo : A Documentar Histor (New Haven: Yale Un v. ress, ; Wi am hafe s e merican Woman, 1972, also provides useful information on women in the work force. 3Valerie Oppenheimer, The Female Labor Force in the United States, Population Monograph Series, No. 5 (Berkeley: Univ. of Cali- fornia Press, 1970), p. 70. 4U.S. Women's Bureau, Bulletin No. 218. The sources and mechanisms of occupational segregation are discussed in Martha Blaxall and Barbara Reagan ed., Women and the Workplace (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976) and in Oppenheimer, The Female Labor Force. 5Oppenheimer, Female Labor Force, Table 3.5, pp. 78-79. 6Chafe, American Woman, 1972, p. 67. 7U.S. Women's Bureau, State Labor Laws for Women with Wartime Modifications, Bulletin No. 202-171WashTD:C.: Govt.Printing‘OffTE§, 944). 8Female members increased from 800,000 in 1939 to 3 million in 1945. Chafe, American Woman, 1972, p. 144. 9Karen Anderson, "The Impact of World War II in the Puget Sound Area on the Status of Women and the Family," Diss. Univ. of Washington, 1975, p. 94. 10Chester Gregory, meen in Defense Work During World War II (N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1974), pp. 68, 95, 114. 19 11 120.5. Dept. of Labor, Handbook of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 916 (Wash. D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1947). 13Harold Wool and Lester Pearlman, "Recent Occupational Trends," Monthly Labor Review, August (1947), 139-147. 14U.S. Women's Bureau, Women Workers in Ten War Production Areas and Their Postwar Employment Plans, Bu11etin No. 209 (Wash. D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1946), p. 38. Ibid., PP. 81, 130. 15Anderson, "Puget Sound," 1975, p. 32. 160.5. Women's Bureau, Chan es in Women's E loyment Durin the War, Special Bulletin No. 20 (Wash. D.C.: Govt. rinting ffice, 1944). 17 Chafe, American Woman, 1972, p. 143. 18 19 20Mary Pidgeon, “Women Workers and Recent Economic Change," Monthly Labor Review, 65 (1947), 666-671. 21 22Leonard Eskin, “Sources of Wartime Labor Supply in the United States," Monthly Labor Review, August (1944), 264-278. 23Ihid. 24This position has been effectively argued by Elise 30U1d109: "Familial Constraints on Women's Work Roles" in Women and the Workplace Blaxall and Reagan, eds., 1976. 25William Chafe, Women and Equality: Changin Patterns in American Culture (N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977), p. 4. 26viniam Chafe is the best known advocate of this position. It has also been advanced by Gregory, Defense Work, 1974. 27 28Clara Schloss and Ella Polinsky, "Postwar Labor Turnover Among Women Factory Workers," Monthly Labor Review, 64 (1947), 411-419. 29 Women's Bureau, No. 209, 1946, Table III-1. Women's Bureau, No. 20, 1944. Women's Bureau, No. 209, 1946, Table II-6. Brownlee, Economy, 1976, p. 2. Ibid. 20 30Wool and Pearlman, ppm, 1947. 31 32 33U. S. Women' 5 Bureau, Employment of Women in the Early Post- War Period, Bulletin No. 211 (Wash. D. C.: Govt. Pr1nting Office, 946). Schloss and Polinsky, mpg, 1947. Pidgeon, M53, 1947. 34 35 36Ibid., and U.S. Women's Bureau, Handbook of Facts on Women Workers, Bulletin No. 225 (Wash. D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1948). 37Thelma McKelvey, Women in War Production (N. Y: Oxford Univ. Press, 1942); U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U. S: Population--The Labor Force: Employment and Family,Characteristics of meen (Wash. D. C. Govt. Printing Office, 194); Harold Metz, Is There Enough Manpower? (Wash. 0. C: Brookings Institution, 1942); M. L. Gainsbrugh and I. J. White, "Women as War Labor Reserves,“ Conference Board Economic Record, 4 (1942L 47- 50; Jerome Kidder, Women in Factory Work, Studies in Per- sonnel Policy, No. 41 (N. Y. NICB, 1942): Wool and Pearlman, M55, 1947. Ibid. 38McKelvey participated on OPM's Natl. Labor Supply Commit- tee and served on a subcommittee to form policy on women workers with Mary Anderson of the Women's Bureau and Nelle Miles of USES. Eleanor Straub, "United States Government Policy Toward Civilian Women During World War II,“ rologue, 5 (1973), 240-254. 39Ibid., p. 16. 40Ibid., p. 30. 41Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth, 1943. 42Chafe identifies the inadequate provision of cammunity services and the failure to industrialize housework as one of the major factors that prevented postwar modification of sex roles; American Woman, 1972, p. 171. 43Gregory also mentions lack of child care as the primary cause of absenteeism and resignation among women workers; Defense Work, 1974, p. 52. 44U.S. Women's Bureau, Women's Wartime Hours of Work: The Effect on Their Factory Performance and Home L1fe, Bulletin No. 208 (Wash. 0. C: GEVt. Printing Office, 1947. 21 45See Eleanor Straub, "U.S. Government Policy Toward Civilian Women During World War II," Diss. Emory Univ., 1973 for an excellent analysis of government and employer policies toward women war workers. 46Gregory, Defense Work, 1974, pp. 68, 82, 106. 47Straub, "Policy," 1973, p. 33. 481bid., p. 170. 49U.S. Women's Bureau, A Preview as to Women Workers in Transitioanrom War to Peace, Bulletin No. 18 (Wash. 5.5.: Govt. Printing Officeifil944). 50Kidder, Factory Work, 1942. Straub also discusses the favoritism shown to married women as they would be easier to remove when the war ended. "Policy," 1973, p. 178. 51 52Chafe, American Woman, 1972, p. 157; Gregory, Defense Work, 1974, p. 172. 53 Women's Bureau, No. 18, 1944. Gregory, Defense Work, 1974, p. 79. 54Women‘s Bureau, No. 209, 1946. 55Women's Bureau, No. 18, 1944. SGIbid. 57Industrial Mobilization for War: History of the War Pro- duction Board‘and Predecessor Agencies, Vol. I (Wash. D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1947), p. 718. 58Straub documents the futile efforts of women in government to serve the interests of women war workers and to prevent reinsti- tution of prewar status barriers, "Policy," 1973. 59Chafe, American Woman, 1972, p. 159. 60For a full discussion of the use of women as a wartime labor reserve and its implication for labor policies toward women workers in peacetime, see J. E. Trey, "Women in the War Economy—- World War II," The Review of Radical Political Economics, 4 (1972), 41-57. 6IHarold Wool, “Recent Trends in the Labor Force," Monthly Labor Review, December (1947), 638—644. 22 62Tobias and Anderson first brought to light information which showed that 75 percent of women war workers wanted to keep their jobs, including 50 percent of those who had previously been engaged in full-time housework, "Demobilization," 1974. These find- ings are confirmed by studies with similar results: N.Y. State Dept. of Labor Reprints, Post-War Plans of Women Workers in New York State, Women in Industry and Minimum Wage (N.Y.: n.p., 1945) and "Women War Workers' Post-War Job Plans," Monthly Labor Review, 59 (1944), 589-591. CHAPTER II RECRUITING WOMEN FOR WAR PRODUCTION: DWI AND THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY During the period between World Wars I and II, Americans had considerable distaste for the use of propaganda. Most studies attribute this to offensive excesses of the Creel Committee during World War I, but it also stems from democratic principles of freedom of thought and abhorrence of state control. As a result, those who engaged in the dissemination of propaganda during World War II generally couched their activities in terms more consistent with democratic beliefs. The Office of War Information (OWI)saw itselfas a conduit of information about the war. A distinction was madebetween .M-._—-*"~" propaganda, which was cons1dered distortion of the truth for politi- ' “A." . ..*.,.l a... .w cal ends, and information, which was perceived as neutral truthful, and a necessary element of democracy. Elmer Davis, head of OWI, expressed this distinction when the agency was establisned: "This is a. [w " _- r...” a people' s war, and to win it the people should know as much about it as they can. This Off1ce Will do its best to tell the truth and ~A-‘1‘ 'r-‘u-umuq Fmg-‘mw-ll nothing but the truth. " Later, he addressed the issue of propaganda directly: "'Propaganda' is a word in bad odor in this country but 1|~.__‘ there is no public host111ty to the idea of education as such, and we regard this part of our job Lma1nta1n1ng morale] as education. “1 H.-. 1». __MW. 1—1 23 24 Statements like Davis' are admirable in their intent but, in retrospect, seem naive given the necessary distortion of reality that news dissemination involves, especially in stressful periods like wartime. What seems to have been meant by "propaganda“ was WW “I M,- " F""“‘“—- the whipping up of public emotion through persuas1on techniques and, on this point, there was genu1ne ambivalence and division in govern- w. ment CITEI§$s« There was squabbling between media representatives and ._— —.-.nao\ \VM‘m'J' ' government officials over proper and efficacious use of the media, with some wanting OWI to function as a news service and others want- ing it to mobilize public opinion in support of government programs.2 Despite these divisions, an elaborate and effective bureauc- racy was set up in 1942 which coordinated government policy with information disseminated by the media until 1945. Bureau chiefs kept track of economic requirements through regular contact with government information officers in war agencies, and through an interdepart- mental liaison staff which served as contacts with war agencies for questions of major policy. Policy decisions were funneled to the media through frequent and detailed publications, correspondence, and personal visits with media representatives. The controversy over government management of information and dissemination of propaganda was largely resolved by the willingness of media organizations to shoulder the burden of influencing public opinion. Media people had fewer qualms than government officials about the propriety of arousing public sentiment for war purposes. Advertisers were particularly eager to sell the war to the public. James Young of Young and Rubicam proudly and enthusiastically endorsed 25 the formation of the War Advertising Council (WAC) in November 1941: "We have within our hands the greatest aggregate means of mass edu- cation and persuasion the world has ever seen."3 Chester LaRoche of Rubicam and chair of the WAC wrote fre- quently to Gardner Cowles, head of OWI's Domestic Branch, throughout the war, urging expanded use of the media's potential for directing public sentiment. In a lengthy letter complaining of insufficient government control of the media, he suggested reorganizing OWI to better coordinate propaganda: For waging psychological warfare, our informational weapons have not been as highly developed as the fighting machines of the armed forces; . . . we, in the information field, are rapidly falling behind the Army. There cannot be total war effort unless the informational weapons at hand are properly used; . . . we have the brains, the experience, the coast-to-coast polling machines; we know the people, know how to make them read; know how to plan huge informa- tional effbrtsi . . . and know how to coordinate every form of media. The Writers‘ War Board was another nongovernment group that took upon itself the task of influencing public opinion. As one member of the Board later said: "I think we broke through a lot of taboos, did many things the government wanted done and could not itself do. . . . The government was slow; we were fast. . . . World War II was strangely unemotional and needed a Writers' War Board to stir things up." Clifton Fadiman characterized the Board as "an arm of the government" and a recent study concludes that it "could engage in controversial polemics without involving the government's own reputation for objectivity."5 26 These two organizations played a major role in fashioning magazine images of women which were consonant with the recruitment effort. The War Advertising Council was formed to coordinate adver- tising with the needs of the war economy. Not only was it in the long-range interest of advertisers to see that the economy func- tioned smoothly, but it was apparent that companies would have few consumer goods to sell. By June 1942, fOr instance, 29 percent of prewar production of consumer durable goods had been cut off.6 By July 1942, the Council had set up a procedure which allowed for fast and accurate transmission of information from war agencies to the advertising industry.7 When the Bureau of Campaigns within OWI was set up in August 1942, government agencies funneled their publicity needs through that office which became the Council's major government contact. The Council communicated directly with magazine publishers through their representation on the Council itself and through the Magazine Publishers Association. In November 1942, the Council persuaded the Association to 8 and, the devote a page in every magazine issue to the war effbrt following month, LaRoche sent a war campaign plan for the Associa- tion to Gardner Cowles. He also announced the appointment of a Management Committee from the Council to supervise the plan. The campaign's function was "to create a background for the specific directives of the Government." The major method for creating that background was to present home-front campaigns in terms of the citizen's personal life: 27 The citizen must be convinced that, unless he [s12] coop- erates, he personally will pay a penalty, either through loss of the war or through loss of something precious to himT-his son in the armed forces, his Bolitical rights and soc1al privileges, h1s future freedom. Through emphasizing the personal stake of magazine readers in vic- tory, the Council and the Association devised advertisements which they hoped would "clear up misunderstandings, overcome irritations, disarm unreasonable criticism, and thus condition the public not only to make required sacrifices willingly but to make more than are actually asked."10 The Writers' War Board first met in January 1942 under the leadership of mystery writer, Rex Stout. Several committees organ- ized by the Board channeled information about government campaigns to different media. The Board had a close working relationship with the Authors' League of America and originally worked out of that organization's offices. Luise Sillcox, executive secretary of the League, was a Board member throughout the war and through her, the Board had access to a file of four thousand writers. In the spring of 1942, the Board set up a file which indexed these writers accord- ing to the type of writing the person was most eXperienced in, his or her fields of knowledge, and the writer's region.]] The Board also had close ties to the government. It received funds from the Office of Civil Defense and OWI, had a liaison office that handled information from government agencies, and was often mistaken for a government agency itself. It also distributed the Magazine War Guide for the Magazine Bureau of OWI, in addition to its own monthly report which was distributed to up to four thousand 28 writers from April 1943 to March 1946.12 The Magazine Bureau kept regular contact with the Board through its own New York office and through correspondence with the Bureau's first chief, Dorothy Ducas, ‘3 Ducas who was the government's principal correspondent with Stout. also had contact with the Authors' League, to whom she explained the operations of the Magazine Bureau, its cooperation with the Board, and OWI's request that writers use war themes suggested by her office in fiction.14 The Magazine Bureau of the Office of War Information Just as these groups eagerly sought to aid the war effort without government prompting, the Magazine Bureau was largely estab- lished at the urging of magazine editors, most of whom were based in New York and had no Washington correspondents. When Ducas made her first visits to editors in May 1942, she found that they enthusias- tically endorsed setting up a Magazine Division and believed it long overdue. They suggested she make frequent visits to New York and that she send them a periodic memo on themes the government wanted stressed in magazine stories.15 Editors wanted government direction in order to aid the war effort and to insure smooth functioning of the economy. Many of them, particularly the "pulps," "confessions," and movie magazines, wanted contact with some government agency to avoid being shut down by paper shortages and transportation priorities. They followed the survival strategy of the advertising industry through promoting 29 themselves as useful to the war effort and asking for government ' recognition of their key role as opinion shapers.16 The Magazine Division was established as an OWI Bureau in June 1942. Ducas pressured Cowles to enlarge its scope through the summer, arguing that magazines reached large audiences and were ideally suited for subtly influencing public opinion through fiction and advertisements.17 By 1943, her staff had grown to thirteen, with two people located in the New York liaison office. The Bureau was to coordinate government policy with information disseminated by maga- zines. It proposed articles, fiction, and editorials which would further the aims of war agencies. The Bureau maintained regular and extensive correspondence with the magazine industry and government agencies. During the early part of the war, it received an average of six hundred letters per month from editors and writers requesting information on background material for stories. It took an active role in ascertaining the publicity needs of war agencies, information about which was then sent out as suggestions for specific stories to individual writers. It also sent photographs, pamphlets, posters, and campaign books to editors which publicized government campaigns.18 To minimize misunderstanding of OWI programs, Ducas arranged meetings between magazine editors and government officials. The government was thus able to avoid resentment of wartime measures which required the cooperation of the public. Ducas attended all such meetings, as well as other meetings to plan campaigns, and met 30 regularly too with the War Manpower Commission and the War and Navy Departments. In addition, Ducas' meetings with editors and writers in New York clarified war information needs. A typical visit occurred in March 1943, when she contacted editors of Fawcett Publications, This Week Home Institute, the Russian War Relief Committee, Megallfs, gfljgk, Dell Publishers, and Ladies Home Journal. Ducas arranged a meeting between a writer for the Journal and a member of the Russian War Relief Committee; smoothed the feathers of a pulp editor who was denied clearance for a story he saw in another magazine; obtained information for the WMC on a story it considered damaging to labor recruitment; met with a writer concerning an article combatting race hatred and suggested to Qljgk_that it publish the story; and encour- aged the planned publication of an article on teenage war workers.19 Toward the latter part of the war, these contacts were systematized by assigning staff members to specific magazine groups so that the special needs of each market could be incorporated into propaganda appeals. The major activity of the Bureau was publication of pamphlets, memos, and the monthly Magazine War Guide. The pamphlets and memos provided editors with background information on various phases of the war effort--rationing, labor statistics, child care facilities, and community services. These were sent upon request and provided more facts concerning government campaigns than the monthly Guide, The Magazine War Guide was the major information conduit between OWI and the magazine industry. It began publication in July 1942 and ran 31 until April 1945. During the war period the Gujgg_reached 400-600 magazines which had a combined circulation of over 140 million. By the end of 1943, it was being sent to over 900 magazine editors and staff writers and 400 government information officers. One thousand capies were distributed to free-lance writers by the Writers' War Board.20 The ngge_was published and circulated three months in advance of the desired publication date of stories to give editors time to plan issues. The third issue, published in August 1942, identified three subject categories for stories the Qujge_wanted to encourage--the armed forces, the home front, and “the issues for which we fight." It concentrated on the last two since infbrmation on soldiers and the battlefront was available elsewhere. From a small mimeographed four-page fact sheet, the Guide_quickly mushroomed into a 16-page comprehensive, slickly produced mini-journal. Most issues provided three kinds of information. The first concerned timing and goals of campaigns. Magazines were asked to run editorials and develop feature articles which supported home- front campaigns such as fat salvage, rationing, War Bond drives, and labor recruitment. A second more important kind of information con- cerned government programs and policies. These were explained in detail, along with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of offi- cials who handled magazine inquiries for war agencies. Suggestions were made as to how policies could be handled in different kinds of features-~factual articles, editorials, food sections, or fiction-- and which format would be most suitable. 32 The final and most controversial kind of information recom- mended emotional slants for stories that dealt with the war to create attitudes the government considered conducive to the war effort. In the December-January 1942 issue, for instance, the Ggige_advocated promoting an attitude of civilian toughness and willing sacrifice of material comforts as the basic philosophy for stories dealing with contemporary American life. There were several items which encour- aged readers to hate the enemy, including one that advised showing how "Japanese upbringing, environment, and training have made them the ruthless, savage people they are."21 There were two.categories of instructions for blending gov- ernment propaganda into magazine fiction. One was to propagandize through setting, background action, and illustration. To discourage use of strained telephone and transportation lines, for instance, the Guide,asked that lovesick heroines and lonely service wives not be portrayed calling the men in their lives for "trivial" conver- sations.22 The other category concerned plot and characterization. It urged that stories promote an overall attitude of "war-mindedness." Characters should be portrayed buying War Bonds, conserving scarce resources, and supporting the war. They should also show concern for 23 Plot lines should include soldiers and display cheerful stoicism. home-front problems and encourage readers to solve them. For example, to encourage readers to rent rooms to war workers in crowded boom towns, the figige_proposed glorifying characters who opened their homes to migrants in war production centers.24 33 Propaganda Aimed at the Working Class Publishers and editors of the "pulps" and “confessions," magazines aimed at a working-class audience, requested that the Maga- zine Bureau help them integrate propaganda into formula fiction. Ducas eagerly complied with the request and persuaded OWI to fund a Supplement to the Magazine War Guide. In a memo concerning the pulps, she explained the importance of reaching this audience, arguing that "persons of inferior education on the lowest economic level are most in need of understanding of the true issues of the war" and that these people were reached only partially by most mass-circulation magazines. To insure that blue-collar workers supported home-front campaigns, Ducas advocated translating OWI material into plot ideas which would present "emotionally, the story of democracy's fight, the attitudes of good Americans, the stakes of all of us in the war."25 Leo Rosten, Deputy Director of OWI, expressed similar sentiments when he addressed a meeting of pulp editors: Pulp magazines reach one of the largest and most important audiences in America. Propaganda is aimed to hit the readers of pulp magazines more than any other group. Thus, if the pulps and DWI could find a way to cooperate, it would be extremely advantageous. Arthur Leo Zagat, head of the Pulp Writers Division of the Writers' War Board and himself a pulp writer, was in charge of writing the Supplement, which began publication in September 1942. Zagat's headquarters werein New York, and his duties included holding con- ferences with editors, writers, OWI representatives, and public relations officers of war agencies. There was close cooperation between the pulps and OWI throughout the war, symbolized by the 34 appointment of Oscar Schisgall, another pulp writer, as head of the Book and Magazine Bureau in 1944. The Supplement was distributed by the Writers' War Board to 400 to 600 writers specializing in magazine fiction.27 Zagat pro- vided them with examples of plots which combined their formulas with propaganda needs. For example, one issue recommended that sports magazines arouse anti-Japanese feelings by running a story about an American baseball team touring Japan which encountered "Japanese slyness, ruthlessness, and inability to comprehend the spirit of sportsmanship."28 The Supplement became increasingly less specific as the war progressed, both because writers claimed they did not need their imagination stimulated and because it came under Congressional attack in June 1943. As part of an anti-Roosevelt move which tried to limit executive power, Congress slashed OWI's domestic budget and Repub- licans attacked the Supplement as an example of Democratic boon- doggling. Thereafter, it confined itself to explanations of govern- ment policy, information on campaigns, and propaganda needs. The "Womanpower" Campaign By the fall of 1942, an extensive information network had been organized to expedite and coordinate war information emanating from government agencies and intended for mass-circulation magazines. With the Magazine Bureau serving as a clearinghouse for editors and writers and with the Bureau of Campaigns funneling information about government needs to advertisers, the magazine industry was provided with an avenue of communication to government planners. 35 Public and private studies which identified women as a war- time labor reserve endorsed publicity campaigns to recruit female workers. A report on women ih factory work prepared by the National K‘ Hui. Industr1a1 Conference Board in 1942 included a detailed summary of ‘meflyH-Il .x-q"? British attempts to recruit wOmen into factory work through adver- WNW tising, and antic1pated that "extended advertis1ng campa1gns" might it." a“ .lwWH-‘lrt‘fixer-v av“.- Wlaar be needed in the United States, The British urged that a national ‘campaign be waged to provide local recruitment effbrts with an ideo- logical and emotional framework, a policy subsequently adopted by the War Manpower Commission.29 The recruitment campaign of World War II was far more exten- sive and sophisticated than that of World War I when the short-lived Division of Women's War Work of the Creel Committee and the unfunded Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense handled pub- licity fer enlisting women's services.30 ,Kgfilgflflfiflcllcwas-ambiggen. and longer confl1ct which necess1tated the use of many more.uomen workers, and the medie had grown in size and soph1st1cation as well. '- WWW-rare wrxfi'm A comprehsive propaganda campaign to recruit women early became the .u, WW3"; hum mar _SM ‘ --- ”anti-“131M .uun' .‘qur» ”M “‘3‘" aunt u“ Primary method used to get women into the work force. 3] “Nev-mm an m rudpfim 37AM virus-.- Depite the need for vigorous publicity to counter negative attitudes against married women entering the labor force, the recruit- ment campaign did not get fully under way unti-when the War Manpower Commission launched its first intensive drive. This was followed by a fall CQEPEIQD_E9 fill PQSIEI°"$.I" supply, service, ‘0...- LLLLL Mfivfi"! tary jobs:wdln addition to these major drives, there were smaller ‘fihaum .=.~ IN KM" 36 campaigns for farm labor in the summers of 1943 and 1944,_forgoygrn- ment clerical workers, Eflflefgtuflur55§e The WMC called a halt to M‘dn‘ufiw‘” u“‘ "‘ .. m... Cup—- national recruitment of women in the fall of l944, although govern- ment agencies and propaganda groups continued to appeal to women to enter war production until well into l945. \llagagines‘ formed _the backbone of“ the ".WQDIWELSMPM . In the summer of l942, editors pressed Ducas for information about the need for women workers; she in turn urged Elmer Davis to develop a coordinated policy on the dissemination of information--how many women were needed for what kinds of jobs and where they could go for -‘m A‘N \.. ~~ training. She also brought up the issue 0 ‘day care centers: ad ’ _......_—-W '- "Magazine editors have been convinced that nurseries are necessary before the full womanpower of the country can be tapped." They had complained that there was no central source to consult for a list of centers and for procedures to get them_e§tabljshed in war production -,§r§a.s.....3f.wu The Bureau reacted quickly to these requests and took credit '64' for 63 stories on womanpower and labor needs that appeared in national "' 33 magazines in the fall of 1942. In addition, it published a booklet in October of the same year called "War Jobs for Women," which was in part a response to a complaint by the WMC that treatment in magazines of employed women was not properly proportioned. They were giving too much attention, for instance, to glamorous fields, such as model- ing, and not enough to labor-short occupations in war production centers. This booklet listed the kinds of jobs for which women were needed, how to get training for them, and what the range of pay was 37 for factory work. Ducas distributed 700 copies to magazines in October and by November, the demand had become so great that she ordered another edition of 50,000. Magazines printed sections of the text, reviewed it favorably, and used it as a reference for articles.34 This was the first of several publications put together in »l943 and sent out to ed1tors by the Bureau to supplement theM Magazine War Guide' 5 coverage of women in war work. These included reports on how to meet the demand for skilled workers, housing for war work- ers, day care facilities, and a series of memos on women in labor- short occupations. In addition to providing information through pamphlets on how to get women into the work force, Ducas made numerous visits to ‘L.._- Ham. .—u 'New York to visit editors and writers concerning stories on woman- nm Man-1d ‘mflwrnu. “L *«w m.) ”f _‘1 anzkmmuw 01m ”mm “~EQYSE; She wrote deta1led reports of these visits from May 1942 until April l943 which reveal that many of her activities concerned gathering and disseminating information on recruiting women into the labor force. She urged several magazines to print stories on nursing, for example, since the Bureau made nurse recruitment one of its major efforts. She provided Harper's Bazaar and all the Sunday supplements with a picture spread, while suggesting stories to Cosmopolitan and 35 Life. Similarly, to recruit clerical workers, Ducas agreed to help Woman's Day_with a story on housing for government workers, congratu- lated Redbook for serializing a novel in support of the campaign, and provided a suggestion to Fawcett Publications that a story be written about a worker who "sacrificed for her country and was 38 rewarded."36 She also discussed stories with Mademoiselle and the Writers' Nar Board which glorified working in Washington and finally succeeded in placing material in ll magazines on the subject.37 To;counteract occupational sex typing, the Bureau arranged that stories be written about women in jobs considered "men's work.“ For example, Ducas negotiated a feature in garagg_which concerned a woman executive, and persuaded the Eg§t_to run an article on women Egfifltyniléfifi in factories and day care centers.38 She also tried to discourage stories that fostered a negative attitude toward women in male jobs. In one instance, the War Manpower Commission asked her to chastise the persons responsible for an article entitled "Fired Because They were Women” which claimed that women workers had been fired from a metalworking plant because they suffered from hyperacidity.39 Finally, Ducas asked magazines to print stories which gen- __.”.r—p. ‘9‘ was.» ,.-.-, mar- erated a P9$-l.§1ye-.atmtude~toward. wowed wither 1992!..1793293: She suggested a series to American Magazine which defined female success 40 in terms of a woman worker‘s happy adjustment to her war job. She asked Fawcett Publications to run features on careers women were taking up in wartime and guided Katherine Brush, a well-known fiction writer, through a story about a suburban housewife who responds to the womanpower campaign and takes a factory job.41 These reports indicate that the recruitment campaign was of “rm”... . WWWWflflMH -.~. “hing—Quiv— prime concernwto.thenBuceau-ind tQ.£hecm09311nesa_Ihey WOFKEd closely “Mia together in developingmstocies that would encourage placement of women _ ”WWW“ - 1W ‘r‘ ,.. _ .m ”WWW mur- in jobs where they were needed. Ducas took an active role in making \_ MmawM'*"1~W suggestions to magazines with certain markets for stories suited to 39 those markets, in answering requests from editors and writers for background information, and in seeing that magazines were moving in the right direction. A New York liaison office, set up in August l943, provided freer access to government information, although the visits from Bureau officials to writers and magazine editors con- tinued until the Bureau fblded. Other indications that magazines published stories in line with government-determined needs for women workers are found in the Magazine War Guide and its Supplement. From a total of 222 items which the §gidg_carried from October l942 to June l945, 66, or nearly 30 percent, concerned recruitment of women into the labor force or armed services. The majority of items on womanpower appeared in l943. The guigg_set a goal of five million women for war work by the end of the year and announced that “the womanpower story . . . is the big story for 1943.“42 General appeals for workers appeared in three issues which guided magazines to approaches the NMC considered best for getting women into war jobs. Other items fbcused on spe- cific occupations. These guidelines provided the following infor- mation: dates when stories should be run to coincide with labor needs; characteristics of women at whom the message should be aimed; obstacles to recruitment that needed to be eliminated; and addresses of people in the NMC who could answer questions. The Bureau early publicized training programs for skilled factory work. The February-March issue of 1943 advertised the Enginearing/Science/Management War Training Program of the Office of Education and urged women to enter supervisory or personnel work. 40 It also asked magazines which reached girls in high school to print 43 As editorials encouraging them to take science and math courses. late as the summer of 1943, magazines were asked to advertise train- ing programs for women in vocational schools, and the August- September issue listed training programs for women around the country in aircraft, shipping, machine shop, and ordnance work.44 In addition to publicizing training programs, the Qgigg_pub- lished a list of 24 jobs for which skilled workers were needed, prepared by the WMC, and exhorted women who had experience in these fields to migrate immediately to war industry centers.45 So that magazines could report accurately on these positions, it provided the address of an information staff person in the NMC who could arrange visits for writers at war plants.46 Reflecting the middle-class orientation of most mass- circulation magazines, many womanpower items in the figigg_concerned female college students. It discouraged magazine writers from indulging the fantasies of these young women to be actresses, dancers, and singers, common heroines of popular fiction. They were urged instead to portray heroines of college age abandoning volun- teer war work and taking a full-time job in a war production factory or in a branch of the armed forces. In a sharp reversal of prewar attitudes, the Quigg_also asked writers not to glorify marriage as a full-time career. Finally, it asked writers to steer college graduates away from female fields like fashion designing to male occupations, such as drafting.47 41 In addition to encouraging magazines to publish stories on women in skilled work and heavy industry, the §gidg_proposed features on women filling other "male“ jobs. Anticipating the labor shortage in supplies and services that developed in late 1943, the June-July issue asked magazines to feature women bus drivers, cabbies, ticket- takers, conductors, and other male-identified occupations. Another issue focused on women who trained Army and Navy pilots and received 48 favorable reactions from their students. One of the primary appeals used to advertise the Women's Army Corps was that wACs per- formed work normally done by men and found it rewarding work.49 Similarly, a HAVE recruitment item in the March-April issue of l944 recommended appeals based on the excitement of entering male jobs such as law, mapping and charting, machinist work, and metalsmithing. A labor need arose at the end of l943 for workers in the strained service, trade, and supply industries--laundries, restau- rants, transportation, grocery stores, schools, and hOSpitals. Forty-eight-hour work weeks, boom towns, and the exodus of women workers to war plants created a labor vacuum that was never satis- factorily filled. Low salaries, minimal possibility for advance- ment, and the monotony of many of these occupations made it difficult to attract housewives and students who gravitated toward higher- paying work. The Bureau's response to this labor shortage illustrates the ability of ONI to mobilize the media in support of campaigns to aid the war economy. It first sent a questionnaire to employers in the service and supply fields asking them for information on 42 training, wages, hours, extent of their labor needs, and suggestions fbr recruiting women workers into male jobs. This information and a list of critical occupations provided by the NMC were then sent to l46 magazines so that they could design Labor Day covers which con- cerned these jobs. As a result, the newsstands in September 1943 were filled with magazine covers depicting women as truck, cab, and bus drivers, railroad workers, mail carriers, gas station attendants, and in other jobs drained of workers by war production--all glorified as war work. The final campaign, conducted in the spring of l944, aimed at recruiting women into the military, getting more workers into labor-short local economies, and keeping women already working in the work force.50 While the peak of war production had been passed, the NMC wanted to retain a large supply of female workers to ease the transition from war to peace. If women filled civilian production jobs that opened up as the war drew to a close, the HMO hoped men would not leave their war jobs to seek more permanent work in con- sumer goods industries; also, women would be easier to displace when 5] While the Bureau of Campaigns and advertisers. veterans returned. handled the bulk of this campaign, the Magazine Bureau contributed by advertising the continuing need for women workers and service- women in several l944 issues. A major aspect of the Bureau's participation in recruitment of female labor was the publicity it gave on ways to lessen the work load of married women and mothers of young children. One of its campaigns was to cut housekeeping down to four hours a day. It 43 asked women's and home magazines to show readers how to budget their time, prepare quick meals, work efficiently, and parcel work to family members. It also publicized child care centers by provid- ing details on the Lanham Act as well as information about a special fund for day care within the Office of Defense Health and Welfare Services. Most importantly, it encouraged magazines to abandon the ideal of the full-time mother and to create a favorable attitude toward the use of child care centers.52 The Magazine Bureau recognized the importance of providing adequate community services to women war workers and emphasized that communities must provide more restaurants, laundries, and transpor- tation facilities. The guide, therefore, recommended that stories fbcus on communities that had solved some of their problems and on housewives who helped their working neighbors by pooling neighbor- hood resources and opening their homes as child care centers. The Recruitment Campaign and Popular Fiction The Supplements addressed themselves to the womanpower cam— paign as well but made more specific suggestions for weaving recruit- ment propaganda into fiction. One set of suggestions aimed to increase male acceptance of women in "men's" jobs. For example, one issue included this item on womanpower for adventure, air, and sports pulps: The men in these fields must be prepared to receive women as co-workers. This can be done through stories showing the advent of women in the logging camps, on the railroads, rid- ing the ranges, and showing thgg ngt_as weak sisters but as coming through in manly style. 44 For westerns, it offered the model of pioneer women: "Women fought rustlers, highwaymen, and bandits beside their men. Women helped to carve out an empire; it is only fitting that they help in the fight to preserve it."54 Even science fiction pulps had a role to play: An Amazonian economy might trace its inception to this war- enforced change in our mores. A story of the supernatural might be woven around a woman locomotive engineer, for instance, or a feminine bus driver meeting with eerie adven- ture in lonely streets. Other issues focused on the romance formula of love and confession magazines to reach the female audience of the working class: "Some heroines may be blind and deaf to their nation's call, be awakened to the situation through personal problems. The clois- tered girl may find her mate when war takes her out of her ivory 56 tower." Similarly, romantic appeals were woven into propaganda to persuade women to enter specific occupations, such as skilled factory work or government clerical jobs: "Stories of girls and young women in the training schools, the factories, and in Washington war agencies give an opportunity for romantic interludes with the impact of the war on the woman as the complication instead of on the 57 man." To recruit registered nurses, a major campaign in late l942, the same Supplement provided an example of how to glorify the nursing profession within the confession formula: A young doctor is struggling to maintain medical service in a town whose physicians are depleted. The girl tries to help, not being trained is inefficient. At a critical junc- ture she visits an ex-nurse, persuades her to help--giving writer a chance to put gver message--thus saves the situation --and wins the doctor.5 45 The suggestions of the Supplement and the guide demonstrate the government's willingness to influence readers through subtle manipulation of the media. OWI thus sanctioned the use of popular culture as propaganda. They also illustrate the ways radically new roles for women could be incorporated into the traditional formulas of popular fiction which had formerly glorified homemaking. The glorification of women's war work in romances during the war indi- cates the enormous flexibility of entertainment formulas, which, in turn, helps account for their ability to survive and adapt to vast changes in cultural values. The Response of the Magazine Industry to the Recruitment Campaign Magazines followed the direction of the Magazine Bureau and willingly disseminated propaganda for the government. Not only did self—interest motivate them to advertise government campaigns, but Bureau reports and memos made numerous references to the cooperation of various magazines with OWI programs. For example, Ducas reported that This Week magazine used a Bureau reference on nurse recruiting in an Army Nurse story, the editor of Standard Magazines assigned four stories based on an early issue of the figigg, and ll magazines published recruitment items for clerical workers in Washington as a result of Ducas' efforts.59 To determine the effectiveness of the Bureau, Ducas sent a questionnaire to editors asking if they used the Qgigg_in October l943. Of 348 replies, 163 said they read the Qgigg.thoroughly and 166 said it was useful.60 In addition, the Bureau kept track of 46 stories in 200 national magazines that promoted programs sponsored by OWI as a result of the Magazine War Guide. Articles, editorials, and fiction were listed which encouraged readers to comply with government programs. This listing shows that, from March l943 to August 1945, 433 stories supported recruitment of women into the labor force, 399 promoted female jobs in the armed services, l38 con- cerned the nurse campaign, 58 advertised child care facilities, and 26 publicized streamlined housekeeping.6] Propaganda and Advertising_ The other two media groups which influenced images of women in magazines also involved themselves in the recruitment campaign. The Writers' War Board expended much of its effort on magazines so that, when the War Manpower Commission began its recruitment drive in March l943, the Board had a supply of stories ready for publi- cation.62 In addition to distributing the Magazine War Guide and Supplement to writers, the Board had a liaison committee composed of OWI officials and commercial representatives of the magazine industry which operated in New York and helped facilitate the flow of infor- mation between Ducas and Stout. The War Advertising Council coordinated ads encouraging women to enter the labor force and the armed services throughout the war by receiving direction from the Bureau of Campaigns, which gave labor recruitment the highest priority of all the government pro— grams.63 It maintained regular contact with the War Manpower Commis- sion as well through Raymond Rubicam, head of one of the biggest 47 advertising agencies, and who assisted Paul McNutt through covering promotional aspects of labor recruitment.64 In September 1942, a former NBC executive and advertising director for Colgate-Palmolive, Ken Dyke, was chosen to head the Bureau and became the Council's chief contact with the government. Although magazines were represented on the Council, Dyke helped keep track of what magazine advertisers were doing to further the war effort. For example, he asked the Intelligence Division of OWI to check magazines fbr advertising which complied with the Magazine War 65 Guide. The Council also appointed a full-time consultant to the Bureau and sent representatives to bi-monthly meetings of the Bureau with Gardner Cowles.66 The Bureau also published a monthly War Guide for Advertisers which gave information to advertising agencies on public relations tasks that would be of use to the government. The most extensive cooperation between the Bureau and the Council concerning female labor recruitment occurred in early l944 when the national “Women in the War" campaign was planned. This campaign, intended to last throughout the year, aimed to recruit women into civilian work and military service. The WAC asked advertisers to devote at least a portion of their ads to the theme of women war workers and advised them on appropriate appeals to use through campaign booklets sent out in the winter of that year. While advertisers had been coordinating magazine ads to promote home-front campaigns since l94l, some companies still needed coaxing to participate. One of the 1944 booklets, in asking for 48 cooperation, appealed to economic self-interest. It recommended featuring women war workers as symbols of wartime, which would bene- fit the sponsor by associating companies with patriotism.67 Propa- gandists, then, were aware of the expedience of featuring women in new roles. Not only did supporting the recruitment drive work toward the long—range interests of businesses by helping the economy func- tion smoothly, but it allowed them to share in the glory of victory even if they were not manufacturers of war material. During this campaign, the WAC supported the policy to use women as a temporary labor reserve by suggesting advertising appeals which glorified war work without challenging the homemaker ideal. Leila Rupp's recent study of OWI propaganda concludes that this was an important technique in fashioning an image of war workers com- patible with the government's labor policy.68 She cites several examples of propaganda which simultaneously legitimized male roles for women and reinforced their role as homemakers. For instance, the WAC recommended that advertisers compare factory work to housework: "Many war factory jobs are very similar to running a sewing machine or vacuum cleaner, assembling a meat grinder, sewing by hand, and other familiar household tasks."69 Similarly, Council guidelines found ways to combine the traditional support function of wives with propa- ganda for the armed forces: "It takes a girl in uniform to understand a service man. . . . Do you want a chance to share his life today--and speak his language tomorrow? . . . When it's all over, you'll have the same interests, the same viewpoint."70 49 Advertising propaganda presented traditional images of women, too, by associating servicewomen with the family in military recruit- ment ads. A WAC booklet, for instance, provided a model ad which pictured a mother flanked by a son and daughter in uniform with the caption: "I'm proud of my twgsoldiers."71 Focusing on military women in family settings both encouraged acceptance of women in masculine roles and maintained their traditional identification with the home. Not all of the appeals used in the recruitment campaign carried such double messages. Some, based on female self-interest, supported a firmer commitment to egalitarianism. The desire for high wages, getting involved in a world outside the home, the excitement of performing a task usually denied to women, and the chance to acquire skills that would lead to a better postwar job--all these were mentioned in OWI propaganda. Other appeals based on egalitarian principles were the ideal of partnership between women and men, the contributions of women to American history, and the reprehensibility of Nazi ideology regarding woman's place. These appeals, which had the potential to significantly alter sex-role ideology, illustrate both the willingness of government planners to increase role options for women when the economy needs workers and the pressure brought to bear on traditional notions about sex roles by the need for women to perform work normally done by men. In addition to these guide books with their thematic direc- tion, the Council provided the government with advertising agencies for individual campaigns. Young and Rubicam handled publicity for 50 the Women's Army Corps; Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne that for the WAVE campaign; and J. Walter Thompson took care of the Army Nurse, Cadet Nurse, and "Women in the War" drives.72 The Council also enlisted the support of manufacturers who sold products to a female market. Beech-Nut gum devoted a great deal of space to WAC recruitment; Canady Dry promoted the WAVE and the Cadet Nurse Corps; E. R. Squibb recruited Army nurses; and Bristol-Myers contributed to the "Women in the War“ campaign.73 The activities of the War Advertising Council, the Writers' War Board, and OWI helped fill the needs of the war economy by fol- lowing guidelines of government agencies which kept track of labor shortages as the war progressed. They fashioned appeals to first recruit skilled workers, then factory workers in war goods manu- facture, and finally workers in service and supply industries. They advertised training programs and encouraged the socialization of homemaking by creating positive attitudes toward services such as child care centers. Along with supporting campaigns to cut down on absenteeism and job turn-over, these publicity efforts encouraged women to enter the labor force as they were needed and to remain there until they could be replaced by male workers. Demobilization Unlike the explicit suggestions they made for recruiting women into war production, propaganda groups did not recommend ways to persuade women to leave their wartime jobs. The Magazine War Guide, for instance, did not ask magazines to encourage women to 51 leave their war jobs and return to the kitchen. The War Advertising Council provided no samples of advertisements designed to expel women from the labor force. This does not mean, however, that these groups did not encourage the movement of women back to their prewar roles. While the Magazine War Guide provided no direct instructions to portray women leaving their war jobs in 1944 and l945, it facili- tated the female exodus from those jobs by asking magazines to adver- tise postwar labor needs in traditional female fields, such as teaching, nursing, and social work. It also replaced discussion of child care centers with items on juvenile delinquency, one of the social ills blamed on working mothers after the war and one of the major elements of the conservative reaction against working women. In addition to the Ggiggfs shift in emphasis from women in male jobs to advertising female fields, propaganda groups supported the temporary employment of women in atypical occupations by the nature of recruitment appeals. While the War Advertising Council recommended some egalitarian appeals, their effects were mitigated by those that used traditional imagery: The new image did not mean that the ideal American woman had changed beyond recognition. Beneath her begrimed exterior, she remained very much a traditional woman... Rose had left the kitchen for the factory, but the public ifiigfidé’fi fiflebfifififies'sepiifiafl‘éfli SEé‘SififiZaiaifli ¥Zic2?94 Despite the radical notion that women could perform male jobs compe- tently, recruitment propaganda fostered retention of the ideological 52 base for occupational segregation by associating war work with traditional norms. More importantly, however, the close connection between propaganda groups and the magazine industry throughout the war made unnecessary specific instructions to encourage the movement of women back to the home and to female fields in the labor force during demobilization. Fiction and advertisements which portrayed war workers leaving their jobs for domesticity, office work, and unskilled jobs in manufacturing largely resulted from information writers had received from the government for three years; information which was based on the assumption that new women workers would not remain in "male" occupations once veterans returned. The campaign to recruit women into war jobs on a temporary basis did not work perfectly. It gave insufficient emphasis to skilled jobs, especially in the metal trades which numbered one-third 75 Nor did it give of the new jobs required for war production. adequate publicity to executive and supervisory positions. The need for clerical workers throughout the war was given minor attention, as were the specific needs of local war production economies, a task left up to individual communities ill equipped to deal with the problem. These deficiencies can be partially attributed to an assump- tion that market forces alone would take care of some labor require- ments. However, most of the errors can be attributed to the government's failure to fully coordinate labor mobilization. If the government had wanted to make full use of the magazine industry 53 to recruit women, it should have begun its propaganda drives in early l942 to get women into training programs and into geographical areas where they were needed. The economy needed two million extra women workers in l942, while aircraft production and shipbuilding reached their peak in early l943--when the Magazine Bureau and the Bureau of Campaigns were just beginning their activities. Likewise, the strain on community services began well before the fall of l943, when the campaign for women in necessary civilian services was launched. Finally, propaganda only partially addressed the need to have women in civilian production during l944 and 1945. A memo to advertisers concerning that campaign complained that it was impossible to get accurate labor forecasts from the War Manpower Commission, and by the fall of that year, the WMC had ended its recruitment drives.76 Although they were hampered by inadequate government support and direction, however, propaganda groups had a large impact on magazine images of women and are significant in several ways. First, the Magazine Bureau filled the gap left by failure of the War Man- power Commission to centralize information on labor needs and was the major source of information for magazines on wartime policies con- cerning women workers. It performed a service for editors that they would have had difficulty in providing for themselves since so few publishers had regular contact with government officials. Second, OWI coordinated information disseminated to maga- zines with labor campaigns so that stories would have maximum impact on the public. All the propaganda groups provided exceptionally good communication channels between government agencies and the 54 magazine industry, an important medium of persuasion. Since the government relied primarily on publicity to influence women's labor force activity, the role of these groups in explaining policy, pro- moting labor-short occupations, and publicizing campaigns was decisive in producing images of women congruent with labor policy and require- ments of the war economy. Third, OWI sanctioned the use of magazines as propaganda by encouraging advertisers to weave recruitment appeals into advertise- ments and urging writers to use them in formula fiction. The sample ads suggested by the Bureau of Campaigns, the sample plots of the Supplement, and the goals promoted by the Magazine Bureau constituted guidelines for ways to influence public attitudes through entertain- ment. While advertisers, writers, and publishers desired government direction, the media's subtle manipulation of public opinion during the war set a dangerous precedent. Finally, the alignment of public information with a labor policy that was not committed to upgrading women's status in the work force facilitated the temporary employment of women in occupations normally closed to them. Through promoting images of women consonant with war production requirements, the media undermined the egali- tarian potential of women occupying male work roles. As one his- torian of the war period has observed: The demonstration by women that they could perform jobs hitherto assigned primarily or solely to men caused a reassessment not of the nature of women, but rather of the nature of the jobs they were doing so that they more neast conformed to traditional preconceptions regarding women. 55 Propaganda helped weaken the radical notion that women were capable of filling male occupations and provided ideological support for a policy which ignored the desire of war workers to retain their high- paying jobs. The extent to which magazines participated in aligning images of women with government labor policy is partially indicated by OWI records, which point to significant cooperation between wide- circulation periodicals and propaganda groups. The Saturday Evening Egst, a magazine of the middle class, and True Story, one of the "confessions" and a magazine aimed at working-class women, played an active role in the ”womanpower" campaign. They both carried fiction and advertising liberally laced with propaganda and, as leading periodicals in two huge markets, they represent what most magazines were saying about women workers during the war. 55 Footnotes--Chapter II 1Allan Winkler, “Politics and Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945," Diss. Yale University, 1974, pp. 47, 66. 2See Winkler, Ibid., and David Jones, "The U.S. Office of War Information and American Public Opinion During World War II, 1939-1945," Diss. SUNY at Binghamton, 1976 for a discussion of the divisions among government leaders over information policy. 3 4Letter from Chester LaRoche to Gardner Cowles, January 13, 1943, R6 208, Entry 20, Box 15, National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland. (Note that all citations from government records of the Office of War Information come from the National Records Center, Suitland, Md., Record Group 208.) 5Robert Landry quoted in Robert Howell, "The Writers' War Board: Writers and World War II," Diss. Louisiana State and Agri- cultural and Mechanical College, 1971, p. 498.. 6Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The U.S. 1941-1945 (N.Y.: J. B. Lippincott, 1972), p. 11. Fox, Madison Avenue, 1975, p. 22. 7For a more complete discussion of the War Advertising Council, see Fox, Madison Avenue, 1975. 8Letter from Chester LaRoche to Gardner Cowles, November 21, l942, Entry 20, Box 15. 9"Policy and Plan for the Total War Campaign of the Magazine Publishers Association," December 31, 1942, Entry 20. 10 Ibid. nHowen, "Writers' War Board," 1971, p. 76. 12Ibid., p. 79. 13Jones, ”OWI," 1976, p. 315. 14Report from Dorothy Ducas, October 30, 1942, Entry 339. 15 Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, May 11, 1942, Entry 339. 16Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Gardner Cowles, November 12, 1942, Entry 20. 57 17 Entry 20. 18 Entry 339. 19Report from Dorothy Ducas to Harold Guinzburg, March 25, 1943, Entry 339. 20Memos from Dorothy Ducas to F. Girardot, September 17, 1943, and December 11, 1943, Magazine Bureau Organization File, 1944, Entry 339. Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Gardner Cowles, August 4, 1942, Report on Organization of the Magazine Bureau, 1943, 2Magazine War Guide, November/December 1942, Entry 345. ZZIbid. 23Magazine War Guide, March/April 1943, Entry 345. 24Magazine War Guide, June/July 1943, Entry 345. 25Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, July 15, 1942, Entry 339. 26Editors Conference Report, April 5, 1943, Meetings for Magazine Editors File, 1942-45, Entry 340. 27Memos from Dorothy Ducas to F. Girardot, Magazine Bureau Organization File, 1944; Writers' War Board Annual Report, January 1944, Entry 339. 28 29 Supplement for November/December 1942, Entry 345. Kidder, Women in Factory Work, 1942; Straub, "Policy,“ 1973. 30A brief account of the Division of Women's War Work activi- ties is given in George Creel, How We Advertised America (1920; rpt. N.Y.: Arno Press, 1972). 31Straub, "Policy," 1973, p. 113; Rupp, Mobilizing Women, 1978, p. 90. 32 Entry 339. 33Memo from Dorothy Ducas to William Lewis, March 3, 1943, Magazine Bureau Organization File, 1943, Entry 339. 34"War Jobs for Women," undated memo; memo from Magazine Bureau, August 25, 1943; Magazine Bureau Reports File, Entry 340. Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Elmer Davis, September 23, 1943, 58 35Report from Dorothy Ducas, December 16, 1942; memo from Ducas to Ulric Bell, May 19, 1942; memo from Ducas to Bell, June 30, 1942; Entry 339. 36Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, May 11, 1942; memo from Ducas to Bell, May 19, 1942; Entry 339. 37Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, June 30, 1942; memo from Ducas to William Lewis, December 21, 1942; Entry 339. 38Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, December 30, 1942; memo from Ducas to Bell, June 23, 1942; Entry 339. 39Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Harold Guinzburg, March 25, 1943, Entry 339. 4OMemo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, May 11, 1942, Entry 339. 4‘Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, May 19, 1942, Entry 339.; 42Magazine War Guide, January/February 1943, Entry 345. 43Magazine War Guide, February/March 1943, Entry 345. 44Magazine War Guide, August/September 1943, Entry 345. 45Magazine War Guide, April/May 1943, Entry 345. 46Visits like these were often encouraged and sometimes arranged so that magazines could provide coverage of women in defense work and military service. 47Magazine War Guide, August/September 1943, Entry 345. 481bid. 49Magazine War Guide, February/March 1944, Entry 345. 50In February 1944, military procurement programs were out $12 million and many war plants began converting to consumer goods before the government wanted them to. Turnover among workers in manufacturing was extremely high as a result and women started leav- ing the labor force. Janeway, Struggle, 1951, pp. 340, 350. 5IMemo from Allan Wilson to advertisers, undated, Womanpower Recruitment Campaign File, Entry 90, Box 587. 52Magazine War Guide, January/February 1944, Entry 345. 59 53Supplement III, October 30, 1942, Entry 345. 54Supp1ement I, September 3, 1942. Entry 345. 55Ibid. 56Supplement for Confession Magazines, October 30, 1942, Entry 345. 57 Supplement for Love Story and Western Love Magazines, September 11, 1942, Entry 345. 58 59Memo from Dorothy Ducas to Ulric Bell, June 2, 1942; memo from Ducas to Bell, June 30, 1942; memo from Ducas to William Lewis, December 21, 1942; Entry 339. 50Memo from Genevieve Herrick to Mary Keeler, December 20, 1943, Magazine Bureau Organization File, 1943, Entry 339. 61Magazine Editorials, Articles, and Fiction Stories on Programs Being Promoted by OWI, Entry 343, Box 1699. 62 63Jones, "OWI," 1976, p. 222. Ibid. Howell, "Writers' War Board," 1971, pp. 112, 122. ‘ 64Report from the War Advertising Council. September 1942’ Entry 39. 65For example, in a memo to Keith Kane, Chief of the Intel- ligence Division of OWI, Dyke asked that several magazines be checked for subjects of advertising in line with the Magazine War Guide, September 5, 1942, Entry 39. 66Report in Manpower Campaigns File, Entry 39. 67"Women at War“ Campaign Guide, Womanpower File, Records of the Program Manager for the Recruitment of Women, Entry 90. 68Rupp provides a good account of these appeals and their double messages in Mobilizing Women, 1978, p. 152. 69 7O"Waves Wanted," January 1944, Records of the Program Manager for the Recruitment of Women, Womanpower File, Entry 90. 7“Give Us More Wacs. . . ," Records of the Program Manager for Homefront Campaigns, Nurses File, Entry 84. "Women at War" Campaign Guide, Entry 90. 60 72J. Walter Thompson was also the advertising agency for the War Manpower Commission, "Words that Work for Victory,“ March 1, 1944-March 1, 1945, Report of the War Advertising Council, Entry 90. 73The chief support for the "Women in the War" campaign came from the Drug, Cosmetic, and Allied industries which contributed 5 percent of their advertising space and radio time, Ibid. 74 75 76 77Karen Anderson, "The Impact of World War II in the Puget Sound Area on the Status of Women and the Family,“ Diss. Univ. of Washington, 1975, p. 72. Anderson is here referring to comparisons made in newspapers between spotwelding and sewing, stamping parts and cutting cookies; these comparisons have also been remarked upon by Chafe, American Woman, 1972, p. 139. Rupp, Mobilizing Women, 1978, p. 152. Slichter, Economic Factors, 1941. Memo from Allan Wilson to advertisers, undated, Entry 90. CHAPTER III THE IMPACT OF PROPAGANDA ON IMAGES OF WOMEN IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST The Saturday Evening Post is a good magazine to study for gathering information on American values and normative beliefs. It has been described as the most typical of American magazines in the first half of this century, and it enjoyed consistently high sales until the 19505.1 It saw itself as the guardian of free enterprise, the family, democratic principles of government, and middle—class values, all of which makes it valuable as a record of dominant cul- tural beliefs. This is not to imply that all Americans believed in values promoted by the Pg§t_for 50 years, or that it always accu- rately reflected American life. Social histories are vastly more complex than the view of reality found in one item of popular culture or even in the most widely held belief system. It is, rather, as a major purveyor of middle-class values that the £Q§t_assumes histori- cal importance. The Eg§t_had a circulation of 3.5 million during the war years and published a special, monthly overseas edition for soldiers which makes it an important disseminator of information. It was aimed at a broad segment of the population and is a good indicator of how changes necessitated by the war were assimilated into popular 61 62 beliefs. A regular group of seasoned writers contributed fiction and factual articles on all aspects of the war. The professionals who wrote for the Pg§t_had mastered literary formulas of long standing and journalists reported on the battlefront with unusual competence and depth. Due to its position as a mass-circulation “slick" and its reputation for publishing both credible articles and mainstream fiction, the Eg§3.had great potential for aiding in the recruitment of women. It could help make acceptable the employment of women in factories which were considered dirty, rough, disreputable places for women, and it would also increase the acceptability of married women working. Several characteristics of the Pgst_during the war indicate the extent to which it participated in the recruitment campaign and created images of women consonant with government labor policy. First, the attitude displayed in wartime advertisements and fiction toward women in male roles was a positive one, especially in occupa- tions that were short of labor during the war--executives, managers, durable goods workers, and those in trade and transportation. At the height of the recruitment effort, females were encouraged to enter these labor-short occupations and toward the end of the war images of women became increasingly traditional. Second, the attitude displayed by the £Q§t_toward working women in general, especially married women and mothers, supported the use of housewives in war production. Images of women in work roles improved as women were needed in the labor force and 63 middle-class norms concerning the full-time homemaker changed to allow for the employment of housewives. The traditional conflict between marriage and career, for instance, which characterized Pg§1_ fiction during the 19305, completely disappeared between 1943 and 1945. Third, the definition of female attractiveness changed from glamour to strength of character once the recruitment effort was underway. Softness, prettiness, helplessness, and passivity have been staples of female sexual allure in popular culture; these quali- ties were replaced during the war, with others more compatible with the performance of male or blue-collar tasks--se1f—sufficiency, competence outside the home, physical strength, and emotional hardi- ness. Fourth, it is clear that much of the fiction and advertising from the Pg§t_resulted from the activities of propaganda groups. Evidence from the Magazine War Guide and Supplement, brochures pro- duced by the Bureau of Campaigns and the War Advertising Council, and other OWI records show that the Eg§t_participated extensively in the recruitment campaign. Finally, a major characteristic of wartime images of women was that war workers largely retained their traditional homemaker identities. Because advertisements and fiction idealized the family as the symbol of a besieged America and portrayed women as both war production workers and housewives, they laid the basis for postwar glorification of the feminine mystique. 64 'Fiction Encouraging Women to Enter War Work An analysis of all the lead stories featuring women during the war years shows that Pg§t_fiction encouraged the movement of women into and out of typically male occupations and labor-short fields as the economy required.2 During 1943, 1944, and early 1945, it encouraged female readers to seek some kind of war work--voluntary, factory, community service, or military. In 1941, when war work was reducing the ranks of the unemployed and women were not yet needed in the labor force, female characters were in traditional work roles such as housewife, nurse, and teacher or in no occupation at all. (See Table 2.) In 1943, the number of female characters in typically female roles declined significantly, while the number of those engaged in war factory work or other male occupations increased. Conversely, stories appearing in the latter part of 1945 and early 1946 portrayed females in a way that encouraged readers to leave war work for homemaking and traditional female jobs. The number of women characters with no occupation increased in these years over prewar levels and those in male occupations dwindled to the same proportion as obtained in 1941. Stories which encouraged the employment of women in war work had the following characteristics. Some portrayed the people who were important to the heroine--especially the love interest--rewarding and admiring her for engaging in war work. Others described the heroine's patriotism in glowing terms. Many placed a female war worker at the center of the plot and made her well-being and happiness dependent on successful performance of her job. 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