Is your washroom
breeding Bolsheviks?

A rabbit hole of research.
Lincoln Cushing, September 24, 2025

As I catalog posters, sometimes I find multiple variations over time, each with their own story. Anticommunist corporate advertising
becomes a Left satirical trope and ends up as an inflated art world commodity. Go figure.
It helps that I have copies of mail order catalogs - one of the main methods for distributing posters before the Internet.

Thanks to all who helped research this string of examples.

1931
Scot Tissue Towel company produced a series of full-page ads in TIME magazine, this one was in 10/19/1931 issue. 
An ad April 11, 1932, was similar –
“A ‘Washroom Red’ in the making! Harsh paper towels cause chapped hands – ruin the morale of your employees.”
Graphic had blue background.

1974-1975
David Smith, a graduate student in history at Madison, Wisconsin, finds the TIME ad and
sends to the national New American Movement office.
NAM reprints as theirs (misdated 1932) with blue background,
“Reprinted by the New American Movement” at bottom. No union bug or printer identification.

[Circa 1975]
Peace Press, a movement shop in Los Angeles, prints a version with blue background, no bug or printer identification.
NAM is credited, with 2936 W. 8th Street, Los Angeles address.
Image courtesy the Center for the Study of Political Graphics

1979
Northern Sun produces their version of poster with black background (shown here in green, as published in their catalog).
Incorrect 1932 date is dropped, but listing in 1988 catalog from Northland Poster Collective ($3.95) describes it as a "classic 20's ad."
Initially lists at $2, sells continuously until around 2023.
A red background version of this is held at the University of Michigan's Labadie Collection.

1985
Donnelly-Colt distributes poster with black background and red type and UPIU bug, describing it as being created by “Red Scare Products 1982”

2017
Swann auction lists sale of this “vintage poster” with black background as sold for $1,300.

United Paperworkers International Union bug, from the Donnelly-Colt edition

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