Answer The Red Cross Poster

This 1918 American Red Cross fundraising poster by artist Ray Greenleaf employs gentle winter imagery—a snow-covered house with chimney smoke and evergreen trees—combined with the appeal "Answer the Red Cross Christmas Roll Call / All you need is a heart and a dollar" to democratize wartime charitable giving. Produced as an offset lithographic print by Niagara Litho. Co. of Buffalo, New York, the poster reflects the Red Cross's strategy of making membership accessible to ordinary Americans through minimal financial requirements that emphasized goodwill over wealth. The Christmas timing linked charitable giving to seasonal traditions of generosity while creating urgency around year-end fundraising goals.

The Red Cross Christmas Roll Call represented annual membership campaigns that sustained the organization's humanitarian work providing medical care, supplies, comfort items, and support services to American soldiers and Allied civilians. By setting the membership threshold at just one dollar, the Red Cross transformed war support from elite philanthropy into mass participation opportunity, allowing working-class Americans to feel they contributed meaningfully to the war effort alongside wealthier citizens who could afford liberty bonds or larger donations. The emphasis on needing only "a heart and a dollar" framed giving as moral obligation accessible to all rather than financial burden beyond ordinary means. This democratization of charity reflected broader World War I transformation of American civic culture, where total war required mobilization of entire population rather than just military-age men and industrial workers. The poster's domestic imagery—peaceful home rather than battlefield violence—created non-threatening appeal that invited contemplation rather than demanding immediate action through fear or guilt. This gentler approach to fundraising demonstrates range of propaganda techniques employed during the war, from violent imagery designed to provoke rage to sentimental appeals to charity that positioned giving as comfortable extension of middle-class values.