Don't Make Excuses - Make Good! Between World Wars I and II, the U.S. economy was booming - workers had choices and employers competed for their time. How to motivate and gain loyalty from a labor force that knew it could walk out the door and find more work soon?
Charles Mather, head of a family printing business in Chicago, offered employers a solution: the
first motivational posters for the private workplace market. Printed between 1923 and 1929, Mather's "
Work Incentive Posters" used strong imagery and short, clear messaging to encourage workplace values like
teamwork, punctuality, safety, and loyalty. Today, some of his 350 designs can be seen in
traveling exhibitions and
poster galleries, and
Antiques Road Show - or you can soak up some motivation from his modern-day successors at
Successories - or
generate your own.
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posted by Miko
on Oct 12, 2010 -
25 comments
The opening shots of 1920s New York City are wonderful, then you get a zany high-speed Harold Lloyd blazing down the avenues, and that's fun to watch, but the real killer is the horse-drawn trolley absolutely
tearing-ass through lower Manhattan, full gallop. Ends badly. Then it's over to San Francisco for one last bit of homicidal vehicular activity with a bus. Well, they sure don't drive
like they used to!
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posted by flapjax at midnite
on May 25, 2008 -
37 comments
T.R.A.N.S.I.T. is, by a wide margin, my favorite animated short ever produced. Set in the art deco Europe of the 1920's and (and released in 1997) it tells the story of a journey throughout several major vacation destinations of a wealthy tycoon, his young wife with wandering eyes, and a murderous turn of events. The story is told in reverse, from the final stage of the "vacation" back through each prior stop, and the artwork for each segment is painted in the style of the luggage travel sticker for that stop.
posted by jonson
on Sep 2, 2007 -
14 comments
America's worst school violence ever was not a
recent event, but the
Bath School disaster of 1927.
Andrew Kehoe, a school board member upset with his tax bill, used dynamite and some
pyrotol from WWI-era military surplus to blow himself up along with the elementary school of
Bath Township, Michigan, leaving 45 dead and 58 injured. See a
1927 book on the disaster, a
list of victims, the
coroner's inquest, a
historical marker, a
memorial park, an
oral history from a witness, and a 1920s
KKK rant denouncing Kehoe as an agent of the Roman Catholic conspiracy.
posted by jonp72
on Oct 5, 2006 -
14 comments