After the Welcome Home - A Job!
Artist
Edmund Marion Ashe
1867 - 1941
Printer
Heywood Strasser & Voigt Litho. Co.
United States
Datec. 1918
Dimensions40 1/4 x 27 in. (102.2 x 68.6 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.123
DescriptionThis poster promotes the work of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Service, founded in 1918 to assist returning veterans of World War I. E.M. Ashe shows a doughboy removing the jacket of his worn and dirty uniform as he looks down with an expression of hope on a scene of urban industry. The factory chimneys belching smoke and the buildings under construction promise bountiful opportunities. He stands above the scene under a Victory Arch like the temporary one constructed over Fifth Avenue at Madison Square to honor New York City’s war dead. American servicemen returning from France were often greeted with lavish homecoming ceremonies and parades, like the one on Fifth Avenue in which hundreds of thousands of people gathered to welcome the first returning American regiment from France, the African American 369th Infantry known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.” By April 1919, however, some 40 percent of veterans remained out of work. In 1919, the American Legion was founded to give veterans a voice, ultimately playing a role in the government’s establishment of the U.S. Veterans Bureau in 1921. E.M. Ashe was a painter and magazine illustrator who worked for such publications as Scribner’s, Harper’s, and Collier’s. He made several fundraising posters during World War I.On View
Not on view
