American history tv continues now with a look at american cartoons during world war ii and how they supported and influenced the war effort by encouraging children to recycle paper and buy savings bonds and stamps. This is about 90 minutes. Were going to look at today the place where the socalled real world comes together with the cartoon and comic world. Thats why the title of todays class is bonds and taxes, american cartoons and comics during world war ii. I can remember from my days in parochial Chapel School where our pastor gave us a sermon that has stuck with me ever since, and the lesson of it draws from two parts, two separate biblical texts, one is from second kings, if youre interested, chapter 4, where the profit elisha, not elijah, but elisha has somebody bring him 20 loaves of barley and hes got to feed 100 men and his servant asks him, how are we going to do that, 100 men . Weve only got 20 loaves of barley. And the prophet says give them to the men for they shall eat, for thus says the lord, they shall eat and have some left. So he set it before them and they ate and they had some left, just as the lord told him. And theres an incident from the new testament where jesus is confronted with a crowd of people, 5,000 people, how are we going to feed all these people . And one of his disciples says, well, here is a young boy with five barley loaves and two fish. Not a lot. It could take like six months of six months worth of pay to feed the crowd of 5,000. All weve got is five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus said, bring it up. He gave thanks to it and the whole crowd was fed and there was more than enough. And i remember my pastor saying it doesnt matter how little you are, you can be a little guy, and i was a little guy. You can be a child, you can be a boy, you can be a girl. It doesnt matter. When there is a need if you bring your little bit, however little bit you might have, god will use that to meet the need. And he was trying to tell us that it doesnt matter how little we had, if we use it faithfully to a righteous cause, it will help a big need to be met. And ive been thinking about that lesson for a long time as ive been contemplating what are we going to talk about in terms of world war ii and paying for world war ii. And in the days of world war ii the need was indeed great. Franklin roosevelt as president made a number of speeches to the American People in the weeks right after the attack on pearl harbor and one of the things he impressed upon the American People was that everybody, rich, poor, old, young, didnt matter, had a role to play, a very Important Role, in getting this monumental job done of paying for the war and winning the war. Im going to give you an excerpt of his state of the Union Address from 1942, just a few sentences that are going to encapsulate what he was talking about here and how he was urging all americans to do their little bit. Fdr came before congress and before the American People on that occasion and he said, war costs money. So far we have hardly even begun to pay for it. We have devoted only 15 of our National Income to National Defense. As will appear in my budget message tomorrow, our war program for the coming fiscal year will cost 56 billion, or, in other words, more than half of the estimated annual National Income. That means taxes and bonds, and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other nonessentials. In a word, it means an all out war, by individual effort and family effort in a united country. Now, when he was talking about individual effort and family effort, he was talking about kids, too. And family effort meant that even if you were over here on the home front and your loved ones were fighting over seas over there as the popular song went, there was still work that you could do to help defeat the ene enemy. Everybody, both young and old, and no matter how much you had or how much you didnt have, had a very Important Role to play in this United States war effort. And roosevelt wanted to make very, very sure that everybody was clear about that. Early in that new year of 1942 the United States treasury is already going to work trying to figure out how to get americans to help pay for the war. Now, roosevelt talked about taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. We know what taxes are, right . Its when the government compels you to pay a certain part of your income to meet the costs of government doing what it has to do. But what are bonds . A bond is an iou. Write that down. An iou. Its a statement that the United States government owes you money for so much. See, basically what uncle sam was doing was saying were going to have people pay us taxes to pay for this thing, but we also are going to have to go into debt to pay for this thing. Now, show of hands. How many people have some sort of United States savings bond . Okay. Weve got a few hands. How many people have been given Something Like that for a birthday or a graduation or something of that kind . Right . Its a very, very importantlooking piece of paper thats not a toy. You open the card, its not a toy, but its a very officiallooking piece of paper with some very official historical looking people on it, and what your parents may have to explain to you is that it is a u. S. Savings bond, which means you keep it, dont do anything with it for a while, but in a few years you will be able to cash it and get money so that, what, you can pay for your education, you can pay for this, you can pay for that, for important things. Its an investment in the future by having uncle sam go into debt to you. Okay . Thats a savings bond. What the United States treasury decided to do was to initiate a savings bond program specifically for the purposes of collecting money for the war effort. Okay. How much . Well, you can get a United States savings bond at that time for as low in the amount for as low as 18. 75. If you gave the United States government 18. 75 and said, hey, i want to buy a bond and you wait several years for that bond to mature it would give you back 25. Thats not a bad deal, huh . You put out 18. 75, you get 25 back, years later, but this is all in lending uncle sam money to help win the war. I dont know about you, but what if you are a little kid in 1942, a little kid with his hands in his pockets and one thing he does not have in his pockets is 18. 75. Because remember 1942 when just coming out of the Great Depression. So what . Am i out of this . Am i out of this great crew said . And the u. S. Gft said, no, you are not. You can buy something called United States savings stamps. United states savings stamps. Yes. See, here is what you would do, you would get yourself a Little Green Book like this and in that Little Green Book you would place every time you would go and buy u. S. Savings stamps what are you talking about stamps . Im talking about stamps, like this. You could get them you know, they would have these they would sell these offer the counter at banks and at other institutions and its like, okay, all ive got is 10 cents, thats not much. And they would say, thats okay, thats enough, because for 10 cents, watch this, for 10 cents you can go ahead and buy one u. S. Savings defense stamp. Okay. How does that help . How that helps is you get to the Little Green Book here, your stamp book, you put the stamp right in here and maybe youve gotten other stamps in the past, you stick it right there, and these stamps watch this this stamps were in various denominations, some of them are 10 cents, some of them are a dollar, some of them are 50 cents or Something Like that. You get them and you get them and you get them and you fill the book full of them and when it comes out to 18. 75, you walk over to the place and with that 18. 75 you can buy yourself a war bond. Now, those of you who are math experts are going to realize that a 10 cent stamp its going to take you a lot of time to buy enough savings stamps for 18. 75. Thats why the stamps came in various denominations larger than that, 1, 5, things like that. But what if you were strictly a 10 cent kind of person . Thats all right. What it did was as were going to see, the cost of a comic book back then was 10 cents. Right . Action comics number 1 the first appearance of superman, its got that 10 cent price sticker on it. Its worth a whole lot more than that now, but 10 cent price sticker. If youve only got 10 cents here is what you do, you might spend one dime on a comic book, maybe another dime on Something Else like a cookie or some ice cream, but then another dime you would spend on this, but what you did is you had friends. I bought superman for 10 cents, you may have bought batman. You may have bought wonder woman and what we would do is swap and trade. See . Whats happening even on the level of a little kid and his friends or her friends is that it encourages kids not to spend every dime they have, but to put some of them away into u. S. Defense they called it defense savings stamps. And what this did, among the merits of the u. S. Savings bond program was that it curbed inflation because whats happening is that when people arent spending all the money theyve got, it puts a cap on inflation. World war ii was an inflationary time and it reversed the deflationary process of the Great Depression. So its one thing to have a little bit of inflation to get you over the Great Depression but you dont want too much, and the way to do that is to encourage americans to keep some money in their pockets or save it. And this book and other books like it represented you putting money away, lending it to uncle sam to help win the war. You are not spending it on stuff. And that over time curbs inflation among kids and they are asking adults to do the same thing. They would be payroll savings where, you know, you dont get your complete paycheck, you let part of that paycheck go for buying war bonds and things. See . So thats what the war bonds and Stamps Program is about. Thats what its about. So when you say buy defense bonds and stamps, thats what its about. If you are not rich enough to buy a full bond for 18. 75, well, go collect some stamps, 10 cents apiece, 1 apiece, 15 apiec 5 apiece until you buy enough to buy a bond. Everybody clear on what the defense bonds and Stamps Program was about and how whether you were rich or poor, an adult or a little kid, you could participate. And, of course, the government did not hesitate to tell you that youre doing your part, you may have a brother, an uncle, a parent overseas fighting. You can do a little bit for them. Your little bit is able to help in this great endeavor. And thats where the cartoons come in. U. S. Government was very smart. They said, well, weve got to get taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes, and they went to walt disney and they said, walt, we need your help to get americans to pay their taxes. And walt disney was thinking, well, if americans dont pay their taxes you go throw them in jail, right . Whats the problem with incentivizing here . I sure would pay mine. And they said, mr. Disney walt, okay, Walt Walt Disney was very informal we cant arrest and jail the whole country. If were going to just rely on fear and intimidation, its not going to work. We cant jail every last person in the country. We have to get people to want to pay their taxes. And thats going to be tough. Nobody likes paying taxes. And walt disney is nodding. And they say, okay, now, walt, this is what we want you to do, we want you to come up with a character called mr. Taxpayer and we want that character mr. Taxpayer and walt said, no, no, no. Im not creating a new character. Youre not . No. Because weve already got the perfect character for you. Donald duck. Donald duck . Listen, folks, and he said, the Disney Studio is just like any other studio, were giving you one of our star actors right now, just treat it that way. They said, okay. Because if cantankerous donald duck can be persuaded to pay his taxes then anybody can. And remember in previous weeks when we looked at the history of animation we saw some animated cartoons of donald duck and we saw how con tank rouse he can be. We saw how he was based in part on the cantankerous secretary of the interior, harold ickies. If donald can pay his taxes, anybody can pay his taxes. So what were going to do is im going to show you just a bit, just a bit of a clip of a cartoon that walt disney created involving donald duck persuading him and through persuading him, persuading the American People to pay their taxes. I want to show you how its done. How did they do that . How did they work into the argument . There he is, a new spirit in america. The spirit of a free people, united again in a common cause to stamp tyranny from the earth. Thats right. Our very shores have been attacked. That is not right. Your whole country is mobilizing for total war. Your country needs you. Okay. Im ready. Are you a patriotic american . Yes, sir. Eager to do your part . Yes, sir. Then theres something important you can do. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Ill do it. You wont get a medal for doing it. Oh, thats all right. It may mean a sacrifice on your part. I will do it anyway. But it will be a vital help to your country. I will do anything. Anything. Shall i tell you what it is . Yes. What is it . Tell me. Shall i . Tell me. Your income tax. Income tax . Yes, your income tax. Income tax. It may not seem important to you, but it is important. It is . Yes, and its your privilege, not just your duty, but your privilege to help your government by paying your tax and paying it promptly. Oh, whats the big hurry . Whats the big hurry . Your country is at war. Your country needs taxes for guns, taxes for ships, taxes for democracy, taxes to beat the axis. Oh, boy. Taxes to beat the axis. Thats the spirit. Yes, sir. Now, how about your income tax . Oh, boy. Oh, if everybody attacked the process of paying their income tax with that much enthusiasm. And tax payments, early tax payments, went up after the release of that cartoon. It worked. And walt disney made sequels to it with donald duck paying his taxes. And the catch phrase is tax is to beat the axis. The rest that have cartoon is going to show that it pays for planes and tanks and guns and cannons and all those implements of war. The thing that you are not crazy about doing is vital to this great enterprise of fighting and winning the war. So much for taxes. How about bonds . Well, other studios got involved also and i want to show you a bugs bunny cartoon in which he sings a popular song, any bonds today, and i want to caution you about something. Even as we are involved in this grand enterprise to fight the axis powers and the totalitarianism and the racism that they represented, the United States could still not raise itself entirely above its own racism in that time. Im going to show you why because bugs bunny is going to perform a bit in black face, patterned after a popular performer at the time al jolsen who had sang a song called my mammy in the jazz singer. The film that singled the end of the silent era and talking era. When bugs bunny does that black face hes imitating a specific performer and says uncle sammy instead of mammy, but still the racism is inexcusable. Its why you dont see this cartoon too much and one of the few cartoons with bugs bunny that uses this offensive form of humor. The tall man with the high hat and the whiskers on his chin will soon be knocking at your door and you ought to be in. The tall man with the high hat will be coming down your way get your savings out when you hear him shout any bonds today. Come on and get them, folks. Skill right up and get them. Any bonds today bonds of freedom thats what im selling any bonds today scrape up the most you can here comes the freedom man asking you to buy your share of freedom today give today we all invest in the u. S. A. Sammy, my uncle sammy, here comes the freedom man cant make tomorrows man not unless you buy a share of freedom today any stamps any bonds today now, look at that. I want you to freeze your attention on that image here, for defense buy United States savings bonds and stamps. The u. S. Treasury adopted this symbol, this is the minuteman soldier. This is from the revolutionary war days and they said, you know, weve got to impress upon the American People that this world war ii that we are involved in now is just as important a fight for freedom and independence as was the revolutionary war in 1776. So if you want to be in that grand tradition of the patriots of 1776, then youve got to do your part for defense and buying United States savings bonds and stamps. This was a very prevalent symbol around the country, advertising the need to buy savings bonds and stamps. It even made its way into the first issue of wonder womans own magazine. This is a panel from a story, from the end of the story of one of the adventures wonder woman had in wonder woman number 1. And wonder woman says when you see these minuteman posters, boys and girls, remember hes talking to you. So, yes, the superheroes that we have been spending a number of days in this Class Research the origins of and getting into the background of, they, too, are joining in this effort. And i will tell you something, its not as if the comic book company was just, well, lets slap that in there. No. There was cooperation with the u. S. Government because the back cover the back cover of wonder woman number 1 was dedicated to a letter to the boys and girls of america from the secretary of the treasury himself. A special message to the boys and girls of america from henry morganthall, jr. , secretary of the treasury. You see the letter head here, the secretary of the treasury in washington. Boys and girls of america, here is a way for every one of you to help you