Uncle Sam Speaks

Long before the 30-second commercial or the full-page ad, there was the poster. For more than two centuries, the U.S. has been using colorful placards and broadsides to implore the people to do the right thing, from preventing forest fires to keeping mum about military secrets during wartime. Last week 117 examples of this perennial propaganda tool, drawn by the likes of Thomas Hart Benton, Ben Shahn and Norman Rockwell, went on display at the National Archives in Washington in a new exhibition called "Uncle Sam Speaks." The show will run for a year.

The oldest document in the exhibition is a 1775 proclamation by King George III urging the colonies to engage in "Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition." Other graphic entreaties were more persuasive. One from 1880 exhorts settlers to move into "Indian Territory, That Garden of the World, Open for Homestead." A health campaign from the 1940s warns, "Syphilis Keep Out!" Meanwhile, another broadside urges Americans to eat a balanced diet to "Make America Strong."

It is the war posters that are most familiar and redolent of the American $ mood over the years. "Keep 'Em on the Run" crys a World War II poster bearing crude caricatures of Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. In a 1971 Viet Nam- era placard, a Marine drill sergeant braces new recruits with a more subdued slogan: "We Don't Promise You a Rose Garden."