A hundred years ago, the Arkansas Gazette counted down the days of December by badgering readers to buy gifts for poor children and deliver those gifts in person.
The newspaper exhorted readers to call its Goodfellows editor at phone number Main 4001 to sponsor one of the children listed in something called the Goodfellows Club of Little Rock's "kiddie book."
These weren't tiny stories tucked tidily into a bottom corner of Page 9 or 10. December 1916's Gazettes also made a daily march through the titles of 300 "Christmas books" to buy for boys ... uhhh ... and girls, as recommended by the public library, and that was slipped in wherever it fit, but the Goodfellows campaign appeared up front and center above the fold of the front page, every day.
And it didn't suggest. It grabbed heartstrings and yanked. Imagine that Pet of the Week were intended to make the reader feel guilty for not adopting the weekly cat.
Although no names were printed, the paper described pitiful children and their miserable families in privacy-threatening detail. Witness the kiddies of Dec. 12, 1916:
"The family is desperately poor, so poor that the little five-year-old girl is now wearing boy's clothing because her brother had more than he needed and she had none."
After the "club investigator" inspected their poverty and informed their mother the newspaper intended to publish their story in hope of inspiring a Samaritan to bring them gifts, the children followed him down the street for five blocks.
"The little girl went, too, unashamed of her boyish garb, and her mother's worn-out shoes that covered her feet. She was not ashamed because she did not know that little girls in her station of life may hope for anything better. Ragged shoes and makeshift clothes are a matter of course for her."
1916 was the newspaper's fifth year of Goodfellows appeals, and marketing lessons had been learned during the earlier efforts. Pity the blind man's family:
"Goodfellows, have you seen the little red-headed, cheery, bright-faced boy who leads the
blind broom peddler about the street? Have you ever noticed how his footsteps falter and linger, and then reluctantly pass on by the windows full of toys and good things? Have you ever wondered how he is going to enjoy this Christmas?
"The blind man is his father, and for years he has been his father's guide. While he is eager to learn, and very quick to comprehend, he has been able to go to school only two weeks in his life. He can spell his name, and write by a process of drawing a copy that was set for him years ago, and that is the extent of his learning. He has been in too great demand for him to have acquired much learning, for it takes a long time each day to sell enough brooms to support a family, and that is what the blind man must do.
"There are three daughters, a wife and the boy, whom the blind man must feed and clothe, and the little boy does what he can to help. If you are interested in knowing how he is going to spend Christmas, ask him about it. Boys who know him say that he hardly knows what Christmas is.
"He knows that at certain times of the year all the store windows take on a bright and interesting aspect, and he sees other little boys coming out of the stores clinging to a father's hand and with the other hand clasping some cherished toy, and there is a kind of lilt and thrill to the very atmosphere which he can feel even if he can't understand it. For him Christmas is just one more day on which his father cannot work, and on which, consequently, he may be a little hungrier.
"This little fellow is on the kiddie book, Goodfellows, and you have until noon today to get the chance of making him happy. He is not the only one. As the campaign closes, which it will at 12 noon sharp, the untaken little boys and girls on the club's kiddie book look more and more pitiful. They are getting dangerously near the deadline: they know that day after tomorrow is Christmas, and no one has come to see them.
"Aren't you coming in at the last minute, Goodfellow? Call Main 4001 and get the names of these little ones and tomorrow go to see them. How could you spend Christmas eve better?"
LITTLE MERCHANTS
It makes sense that Goodfellows clubs were led by newspaper editors, because children were a big part of the newspaper labor force. Hustling little merchants -- "newsies" -- ran through the early morning dark to deliver the paper or stood on street corners to hawk it. Newspaper editors knew kids in tough circumstances.
Their charities were just one small symptom, really, of growing civic concern for children whose families could not or would not let them attend school. It went well beyond whether kids had heard about Santa Claus. Child labor was factual and common in Arkansas, and everywhere, before 1915.
Little Rock and Fort Smith department stores employed children at odd hours, and large numbers worked from sunup to sundown harvesting small crops like strawberries. In 1915, night shifts at Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Co. employed more than 92 girls younger than 18.
And meanwhile, gangs of unschooled boys -- "the street Arabs," as the Gazette put it -- were breaking into houses and stores, breaking brass fittings off locomotives in the train yard, breaking windows at the Little Rock Public Library's new Carnegie Library, breaking one another out of the city jail.
Pushed by an increasingly political generation of educated women, Arkansas voters passed the Child Labor Act of 1914. This initiated act prohibited labor for pay by children younger than 14, except during school vacations. Also, children couldn't work more than eight hours a day or more than 48 hours a week until they were 16. And they had to be 18 to work after 10 p.m.
When the law took effect Jan. 1, 1915, the state Labor Commission was "besieged" by requests for permits to violate it, the Gazette reported. "Many appeals are coming from widows whose only support is the money earned by children who cannot be employed under the child labor law."
One ironic and yet understandable query came from the Arkansas Press Association. In January 1915, state Attorney General W.L. Moose (actual name) opined that the law didn't apply to newsies, because delivering papers wasn't "an occupation."
Next week: "Newsies" Agree To Give Up Cigarettes.
ActiveStyle on 12/12/2016