Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Not the Size of the Dog


This is a workplace motivational poster from 1927 featuring a tip from "fellow worker" Bill Jones.  

The "Bill Jones" series was a 1920’s propaganda campaign designed to motivate people in the work place by promoting industrial efficiency and a unified work force.  "Bill Jones" was supposed to be some sort of model worker of the kind the communists were trotting out in their part of the world at about the same time. 

Of course not only did "Bill Jones" not exist, if he did he would have been a plagiarist:  the quote, above, is actually from Mark Twain. who was, in 1927, very much alive

As for how this poster was supposed to "motivate workers," your answer is as good as mine.  Apparently, however, these inane "motivational" posters go back 100 years.  Who knew?
.

4 comments:

Chas S. Clifton said...

Not to mention being then written on a chalkboard in every high school locker room in country ...

grapfhics said...

Clemens died in 1910.

PBurns said...

THANKS -- fixed that! Wrote this months ago, too lazy to write anything new this morning and did not get the date right when I was slamming up the text some months back. Much appreciation for correction!

P

grapfhics said...

Well, he did say that the reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.