This fascinating collection of social hygiene posters (designed to inculcate certain social practices regarding hygiene, friendship, prostitution, and mental health) is culled from the fine holdings of the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Interestingly enough, the Archives were established in 1964 by the historian Clarke Chambers, who in his own work on voluntary associations discovered that most manuscript repositories had collected very few social welfare records. Visitors will appreciate the online search engine which features options such as a time period search, a keyword search, and the opportunity to search by the subject or theme of each poster. Each record contains an image of the original poster, information about the poster's provenance, its creation date, and the organization responsible for creating the poster. For those interested in the social history of the United States during this period, this small collection will be quite appealing.
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