This is another poster issued by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, an agency established by the federal government to organize the emergency construction and operation of merchant ships to transport troops and military supplies to Europe during World War I. It was similarly part of the agency’s campaign to encourage the productivity of the shipbuilders on which it depended. In an obvious appeal to their masculine and patriotic pride, the workers are urged to imitate the apparent determination of the U.S. infantrymen seen here advancing on the enemy through the mud and fire of the trenches, bayonets at the ready. The painterly style of the image reveals the training of the Brooklyn-born artist and later professor, Howard Everett Giles, at the Art Students League in New York before the war; like many of his contemporaries, he went on to work as an illustrator for magazines like Scribner’s and Harper’s before producing poster designs for various government agencies during the conflict.
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