Life, 1922-12-21 · page 22 of 42
Life — December 21, 1922 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page announces LIFE magazine's Fresh Air Fund, a charitable initiative sending poor children from New York City tenements to country farms during summer months. The decorative cartoons at the top—simple drawings of cherubic children—illustrate the "warm hearts" of the title, contrasting with financial "cold figures." The article celebrates that 1,603 children were sent to Branchville, Connecticut and Staten Island farms in the 1922 fiscal year, with zero illness or accidents reported. It emphasizes the fund's efficiency: costs dropped from $11.93 to $10.09 per child annually. The "Endowments" section explains how donors could permanently fund a child's annual country visit by contributing $200. This appeals to wealthy readers' philanthropic impulses while addressing a real social problem: tenement children's exposure to disease and hardship during New York's hot summers. The page reflects Progressive Era charity efforts targeting urban poverty, framing rural air and rest as health solutions for working-class families.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
20 : IGURES are usually cold things but those Lire is about to lay before you have to do with the torrid days and nights of midsummer in New York’s crowded tenements ; also they have to do with the warm hearts of Lire’s readers who make possible the splendid work of the Fresh Air Fund. Before making an announcement which is bound to give pleasure to every friend of the Fund—and every one who is a friend of little children is a friend of Lire’s Fresh Air Fund—let us get through with the cold, dry figures themselves. After all they are not so cold and dry, if you translate them into terms of child misery relieved and turned into the childish joy that goes with green fields, good food, wholesome play and sound sleep in the good air of the country hills. Turn your imaginations loose on this mathematical re- view of the year’s work of Lire’s Fresh Air Fund: Receipts AND DisBURSEMENTS For the Fiscal Year ended September 30, 1922 RECEIPTS COMMDTHONS, ceairissamanpnna serine srrnasassierresr, $20,001.32 Income from Endowments, from Marion Storey Fund, James Buchanan Brady Fund, Reserve Funds, and from bank deposits .............+5 4,612.39 $24,613.71 Balance on Hand, October 1, 1921 .. 658.94 DisBURSEMENTS Branchville— Help 3,029.00 Transportation . 1,289.28 Food 2,443.99 Supplies . 915.97 Laundry . 233.53 Insurance 647.59 Repairs 306.71 Improvements Miscellaneous Total Expense for Postage, Circulars, etc. ....... Transferred to Reserve Fund . Balance on Hand, September 30, 1922 1,993.16 Aunpitor’s CERTIFICATE New York, October 31, 1922 We have made an examination of the accounts and records of Lirr’s Fresh Air Fund for the fiscal year ended September 30, 1922, and certify that all receipts, both for general pur- poses and for endowments, have been properly accounted for and that all disbursements are supported by satisfactory vouchers. (Signed) Scovell, Wellington & Company, Accountants. ON’T think of this statement only as a matter of dollars and cents. It means that 1,603 little, poor children—visualize that total of one thousand, six-hun- dred and three children—have been taken out of their wretched city life and, at the hottest season of the year, sent off for a fortnight’s stay and play in surroundings LIFE Cold Figures and Warm Hearts they could never know were it not for the goodness of Lire’s readers. There were twenty parties in all, averaging eighty children each, although many of the parties were much larger. Most of them, 1,253, to go back to figures again, strained the Branchville, Connecticut, Farm, so the remainder were sent to the Goodhue Farm on Staten Island. And—while Lire raps on wood—note this, wise doc- tors and careful fathers and mothers. There was not a bit of sickness nor an accident among the whole 1,603 children. Still further, every one of them brought back to the city fresh vigor to carry on his hard fight to live. Largely through the careful management of Mr. and Mrs. Mohr, the superintendents at Branchville, the cost per child has been brought down to $10.09 from last year’s average of $11.93. The Fresh Air Endowments are now 250 in number, most of them named in honor or memory of some good cause or beloved person. Each Endowment, in consid- eration of a gift ot two hundred dollars to the Fund, insures that every summer, for all time, a child from New York's tenements shall be sent to the country for a fortnight, the funds being put in perpetual trust to provide an income for that purpose. OW for the announcement that will bring pleasure to every friend of Lirr’s Fresh Air Fund—which, as said before, means every friend of little children every- where. The Fund is to have another farm to double the happiness and health conferred by the one at Branchville! A friend of children in New York City has most generously given to Lire’s Fresh Air Fund, in perpetual leasehold as long as children shall be sent there, a splen- did farm of about one hundred acres, convenient to the railway station of Gladstone, New Jersey. The location is an especially healthful one, well up in the Jersey hills, with good soil and an abundance of water. Best of all, there runs through it a stream per- fectly adapted to wading and safe swimming. New buildings will be required and these will be made possible by the reserves which the Fund has been accumulating with a sort of prescience that some day there would come along a generous lover of little children, like this one, and give the Fund another farm to double its power to scatter happiness and health. But remember, good readers of Lire, you have got to be even better than you have been, because in the com- ing year and in the years to come Lire’s Fresh Air Fund will have to provide a whole lot more fresh air for a whole lot more children of the tenements. In this era of high costs the showing is a remarkable one. Railway fares and wages have advanced enormously. Those 1,603 stomachs may be small ones but it takes surprising amount of fresh milk, good bread and other edibles to keep them from caving in. Things to eat, even of the simplest kind, nowadays cost a lot of money. comicbooks.com