American cartoons and comics during world war ii. I can remember from my days in parochial chapel schools 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 you are interested, chapter 4, where the prophet elija, has someone bring him 20 leaves of barley and hes got to feed 100 men and his sermon asks him, how we going to do that . We only have 20 loaves of barley. And the prophet says give them to the men that they may 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 them. Anders that an incident from the you the testament, where jesus is confronted with a crowd of people, 5,000 people. How are we going to feed all these people . One of his disciples says, well, heres a young boy with five barley loaves and two fish. Not a lot. It could take like six months of pain to feed the crowd of 5,000. All we got is five loaves, two fish. He says, 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, are 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 needs. And he was trying to tell us that it didnt matter how little we had p. If we use it faithfully, to a righteous call, it will help a big kneeled to be met. And i have been thinking about that lesson for a long time as i have 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 what 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 19 troop, just a few sentences that are going to incapsulate 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. The 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 p. That means tax. 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 homefront, and your loved ones were fighting overseas over there as the popular song went, there was still work that you could do to help defeat the 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 tax taxes. From 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 moy for so much. What uncle sam was saying we will have people pay us taxes for this thing, but realso are going to have to go into debt to pay for this thing. N now, a show of hands, how many people have some sort of United States saveings bonds . Okay. We 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 important looking piece of paper thats not a toy. You open the card. Its not a toy. But its a very official looking piece of paper with some very official historical looking people on it. And what your parents may have to ex39 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, 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 of for as low as 18. 75. If you gave the occupation 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. Senates n 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 win the war. I dont know about you, but what if are you a little kid in 1942, a little kid with his hands in his pock. One ting he does not have is 18. 75. Because remember 1942 were just coming out of the great depression. So what . Am i out of this . Am i out of this great crusade . The u. S. Government says, oh, no, youre not. You can buy something called United States savings stamps. United states staveings stamps. Yeah, yes, yes. See, heres what you would do. Youd 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 stamp, what are you talking about stamps . Im talking about stamps, like this, you can get them, you know, they would have these, you would sell these over the counter at banks and at other institutions. Its like, okay. All ive got is 10 cents. Thats not much and they 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, 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, these stamps are in various denominations. Some of them are 10 cents. Some are a dollar. Some are 50s, 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, if 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 10 cent stamp is 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, a dollar, 5, things like that. But what if you were strict lay 10 cent kind of earn . Its 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 superman, got that 10 cent price sticker on it. Its worth a whole lot more of that now. If you only got 10 cents, heres what you might do, spend one dime on a comic book. Maybe another dime on Something Else like a cookie or some ice cream. Then another dime youd spend on this. But what you did is you had friends. I bought superman for 10 cents. You may have bought batman. You pay 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 curved 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 whats a little inflation to get you over the great depression. You dont want too much. The way to do that is to encourage americans to keep some money in their pockets. Or savings. 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 for kids. Theyre asking adults to do the same thing. They would be payroll savings where you dont get your complete paycheck. You let a 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. A dollar apiece. 5 apiece. Until you save enough to buy bond. Okay. 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. Deposit 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 your taxes. Walt disney was thinking, well, if americans dont pay their taxes, you got to throw them in jail. What itself the problem incentivizing here . I have a problem with mine. They said to mr. Disney. Walt, okay, walt, walt disney is very informal, we can 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 not they say, okay, now, walt, this is what we want you to do. We want you to come one a character called mr. Taxpayer. We want that character, mr. Taxpayer. Walt says, no, no, no, no, no, im not creating new character. Youre not . No. Because weve already got the perfect character for you. Donald duck. Donald duck . I mean, donald duck. Listen, folks, and he says the Disney Studio is just like any other studio, were giving you one of our star actors right now. Treat it that way. They said, okay. Because its cantankerous if cantankerous donald duck can be persuaded to pay his tax, anybody can. We saw animations of donald duck and how cantankerous he could be. We saw how he was based, in part, on the cantankerous secretary of the interior harold ickes. If donald can pay his taxes anyone can pay their taxes. I will show you 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 snap all right. Fr from. There is a new spirit of america. Quack quack. A free People United in a common cause to stamp tyranny from the earth. Quack quack. Our very shores have been attacked. 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. All right. You wont get a medal for doing it. Oh, thats all right. It may mean a sacrifice on your part. Can i do that. But it will be a vital help to your country and its all thats needed. We have a plan. Shall i tell you what it is . Yes. Tell me. Shall i . The. Tell me. Your income tax. Income tax . Yes, your income tax. Income tax . It may not seem important to you, but it is important . What . Yes, and its your privilege, not just your duty, your privilege to help your government by paying your tax and paying it promptly. 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, good, taxes. Thats the spirit. Yes, sir. Now, how about your income tax . Okay. 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 you heard was taxes to beat the axis. Taxes to beat the axis. The rest of that cartoon will show it paid for planes, tanks planes guns, canons and all those implements of war. The thing are you 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. I want to show you a bugs bunny cartoon in which he sings a popular song, any bonds today. I want to caution you about something, even as we are involved in this grand enterprise to fight the axis powers and the totalitarianism. The United States could not raise itself entirely above its own racism in that time. I will show you why. Bucks bunny will perform bit and black face patterned after a popular performer at the time al jolson who sang a song called my mammy in the 1927 Ground Breaking talking feature the jazz singer. The film that signals the end of the silent era, the beginning of the talking era. So when bugs bunny does that black face impression, he is imitating a specific performer and hes saying, uncle sam might have instead of mammy. Still the racism is inexcusable. Its why you dont see this cartoon too much and its one of the very few cartoons with bugs bunny that uses this offensive form of humor. Snoe. [ music playing [ music playing ] the tall man with a high hat and whiskers on his chin would soon be knocking at your door and you ought to be in. The tall man with high hats will be coming down your way. Get your savinging out when you hear him shot gets e get bond today cmon, any bond today, bonds of freedom, thats what im za selling. Any bonds today scrape up the notions can heres the freedom map asking you to buy a share of freedom today. Who managed stampsed to . You are blessed. We all invest in the usa sammy, my uncle sammy here comes the freedom man thats tomorrows plan not unless you fire a shell of freedom today any sam, any bond today [ music playing ] 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 minute man soldier. This is from the revolutionary war days and they said, you know, weve got to impression e press 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 buy United States savings bonds as stamps. This was the very prevalent symbol around the country, advertising the need to buy savings bonds as 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 f. And wonder woman says, when you see these minuteman posters, boys and girls, remember, hes talking to you. So, yes, the super heros that we have been spending a number of days in this class researching the origins of and getting into the background of, they, too, are joining in this fefrt. And ill 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 1s was dedicated the to a let rer 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 morganle that, jr. , secretary of the treasury. You see the letterhead, the secretary of the treasury in washington. Boys and girls of america, heres a way for every one of you to help your country. Every time you buy a savings stamp, you are helping uncle sam to pay for a part of a gun, plane or ship, with your fathers, brothers or uncles are using for the defense of our country. If every one of you 40 million boys and girls would buy at least one 10 cent savings stamp every week, you would be lending your uncle sam 200 million every year. Think of all the guns, planes, and ships he could buy with that. Remember, you can help to keep them flying by buying a defense stamp every week. Sincerely, henry morganthal, jr. , then you got the minute man symbol again. Down here, this space is donated by the publishers of this magazine in the interest of National Defense and victory. Okay. Of course the company was dc comics. Dc comics had some levels to its organization at that time. There was the National Comics when which gave us superman batman and aqua man and green arrow and the all american comic win