'House Manager' — The American Woman on the Home-Front

A Gibson-style woman strides forward carrying a market basket, her skirt sashed with the banner HOUSE MANAGER, while a column of rifle-bearing doughboys in campaign hats advances behind her. The composition deliberately elevates the domestic manager to the rank of soldier: she does not follow the troops — she leads them, occupying the visual center with the same forward momentum. The argument is the U.S. Food Administration's wartime rationing message: careful household purchasing and waste reduction are as strategically vital as armed service. By casting the housewife as field commander of the civilian supply line, the image appeals to middle-class women to comply with voluntary conservation programs Herbert Hoover's agency promoted throughout American entry into the First World War. The figures are rendered in the idealized type standard to Gibson-circle illustration.