Incentive Without Kittens

Discovered on Antiques Roadshow last night where some jerk found 12 of these work incentive posters rolled up at an auction and paid $1700 for them. Most start at $700 and many hover around $1000 with even more going for "please call" which usually means expensive. There's a whole series of around 350 lithographs printed between 1923 and 1929 by Mather & Company. At the time, office and factory work was surpassing farm labor as the driving economic force. Charles Mather sold subscriptions to corporations for the annual poster series to motivate and inspire workers. And not a kitten in sight. See more posters here and here and here. And here's a bit more info from International Poster Gallery:

Printed in Chicago between 1923 and 1929, the posters were designed to improve worker productivity and curb turnover during a time of economic expansion and plentiful jobs. The traditional American virtues the posters promote are as relevant today as they were 80 years ago and represent a unique chapter in American advertising and economic history.

While the posters can be seen as workplace propaganda or camp Americana, they are perhaps most interestingly viewed as a visual expression of the idealism and optimism of the rising nation. President Calvin Coolidge pithily summed up in two sentences the ideology of the era in his 1925 speech to the Society of American Newspaper Editors: "The chief business of the American people is business...The chief ideal of the American people is idealism."

This attitude sparked a movement known as Welfare Capitalism, in which employers voluntarily offered incentives such as reduced hours, higher wages, health insurance, and paid vacations in return for greater productivity and worker loyalty, while blunting the arguments of labor unions and socialists.

Charles Mather, a Chicago-based printer seeking to use up excess capacity, saw opportunity in the movement and started selling factory owners subscriptions to his poster series. The annual "campaigns" found ready acceptance in a workplace accustomed to Madison Avenue advertising techniques in government production posters recently seen during World War I. Mather's series however, was the first widespread employer sponsored program with the goal of corporate success and employee development.

Outstanding American artists such as Willard Frederick Elmes and Hal Depuy were commissioned to boldly employ familiar images such as racing trains, running football players, and mischievous clowns alongside simple and direct headlines. Many of Mather's artists were heavily influenced by the "Plakatstil," or Poster Style, made famous in Germany by Lucian Bernhard and Ludwig Hohlwein. The clean lines of the 1929 Mather posters in turn anticipated the streamlined and dynamic Art Deco designs that would dominate the next decade.

Artist Frank Beatty's "The Perfect Finish" (1929) depicts a sailing crew hard at work during a boat race. The subtitle, a classic example from Mather's lexicon, warns, "No job's done till it's ALL done," succinctly communicating through word and image the need for teamwork to beat the competition.

Also featured is Hal Depuy's poster featuring bold imagery from America's favorite pastime, baseball. "Over the Plate!" (1929) depicts a pitcher in mid-throw and states, "Winners never have to say they're good - their work proves it. RESULTS TALK." The baseball metaphor plays directly to the American worker, who knew the difference between a pitcher who throws balls or strikes.

Employers changed the posters weekly based on current events, holidays or factory problems. A catalog organized the posters by theme, with cautionary categories ranging from laziness, responsibility, mistakes, and rumors to fire prevention and even practical joking. With their fresh graphics, surprising metaphors and over-the-top but thought-provoking platitudes, the posters demanded attention.

Mather created approximately 350 different images in seven annual campaigns before the series ended abruptly with the stock market crash in October of 1929. By January 1930, jobs were increasingly hard to find, and employers did not have the funds or the need to motivate workers as they had in the Twenties.