1944.08.16 “The Rising Reservoir”
by Paul R Carmack (1895-1977)
11.2 x 15 in., crayon and ink on board
Coppola Collection
Paul Carmack was a staff cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor.
A wartime cartooning pivoting from winning the war to managing what comes after it. By late summer 1944, that pivot is no longer premature, it’s strategic.
By August 1944, Normandy had broken open, Paris would be liberated within days, Axis defensive lines were collapsing across Europe, industrial production was at historic highs… and consumption was done and outright curtailed.
On August 15, 1944, the U.S. government — through the Office of War Mobilization and the War Production Board — issued Priorities Regulation 25, sometimes called the “spot authorization order.” This directive allowed civilian goods manufacturers to resume or expand production of non-military items that had previously been restricted, but only when labor and facilities were available without interfering with war production. It was a formal mechanism for beginning the programmed resumption of civilian output even while total war production continued.
Before this order, civilian production was tightly limited to keep every resource focused on munitions and armaments. After it, manufacturers could seek authorization to produce civilian items — using labor and materials that were free and not needed for war purposes — on a case-by-case basis. That represents an early and cautious but explicit shift toward economic reconversion planning before the war was even over.
The war was not over—but the outcome was not in doubt. The memory of post-World War I collapse and the Great Depression loomed large. The cartoon asserts: nothing has been lost—only delayed. The reservoir as pent-up demand. The message to the readership: we are already planning how to absorb victory.
