Life, 1925-05-07 · page 16 of 44
Life — May 7, 1925 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not satirical content** but rather a **charitable appeal** from Life magazine's editorial pages. The piece advocates for sending poor tenement children from New York City to fresh-air camps during summer heat waves. The illustration shows a large group of children gathered outside a rural building at "Potterysville." The argument is humanitarian: tenement housing lacks ventilation and cooling during hot months, causing child suffering. The author proposes that even partial funding ($15 for a fortnight) helps. Life endorses two specific "Fresh Air Farms" in Connecticut and New Jersey that provide supervised summer vacations for underprivileged urban children. The small cartoon figure (top left) simply illustrates an overheated, uncomfortable child—a visual aid to the fundraising message rather than satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE * When ROBABLY you are feeling very comfortable as you read this. You know perfectly well, though, that between now and September there are going to be times when nothing you can do will make you entirely comfortable. You may take any number of baths; you may be equipped with plenty of electric and other fans; all sorts of cooling drinks may be yours for the pushing of a button; with all these comforts there are bound to be days and nights when even they won't enable you to escape the suffering from heat—that is, if you have to stay in the city. At those times, which you with all your alleviations find it hard to endure, there are thousands of little, poor tene- ment children who can’t escape or miti- gate the heat, day or night. Hot pave- ments, heat-retaining buildings, stuffy and crowded rooms, bad air, foul smells—these things you escape, but the tenement children can't. They simply have to stay and suf- fer and wilt and wait for cooler weather to bring relief. We should like to take all the tenement children out of New York and keep them in the fresh air and green fields of the country during — the heated term, surroundings, BEFORE whole WHERE THEY SLEEP AT POTTERSVILLE. These the Mercury Goes Up together with generous, nourishing food and plenty of play, would give their little bodies a chance to build up resistance to the ills of their existence. We can't take them all, much as we should like to. In the past thirty-eight years, we have taken over forty thousand of them out for a fortnight of relief and happiness. We can, with your help, continue to take some of them away from their misery. We can give them something to lool, forward to and to look back on. That helps those little children a whole lot. Will you help us to help them? A unit of fifteen dollars provides most of the cost of sending a child. In these days of high prices we can't be sure that fiftcen dollars will pay all of a child's expenses for a fortnight, but it comes pretty near it, near enough to make sure that it will provide a fresh-air vacation for a poor child. Don’t hesitate even if you can't send the entire unit. y part of it will m part of a vacation for a child, or a whole vacation for part of a child. Send more, if you feel that way. Of course, you don't know how a tenement child feels in the torrid night of August. You can guess at it, though, from your own ex- perience. If you can, give a thought and send a bit of help to Lire’s Fresh Air Fund, 598 Madison Avenue, New York. Lirt’s Farms IFE has two Fresh Air Farms, one at Branchville, Con- necticut; the other at Pottersville, New Jersey. During the summer vacation period parties of children are given a two weeks’ vacation in the country. The number of chil- dren to go depends on how generously you give. It has been decided this year to send the girls to one camp and the boys to the other. These children are taken from the poorer districts of Greater New York. The effect of these two weeks will be even greater than ever before. Lire’s Fresh Air Association has secured the services of Mr. L. B. Sharp of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, to take charge of the summer camp activities. The children will recei more than fresh air and lots of good food—they will re- ceive instructions in such things as swimming, athletic games, clay modeling, basket weaving, bird-lore, appreciation of plants and flowers. In short, they will be taught along simple lines in order to help them develop into better and more useful citizens. It is Ltre’s intention to keep in touch with each child the fifty weeks in the year when he or she is away from the farm. The best type of caretakers is employed to look after the children, which accounts for the fact that in an experience with more than forty thousand children, so far there has not been one serious accident. Lirr’s Farms are supported entirely by contribut from its friends and readers. If you can’t send money maybe you have some children’s book in your attic, some old bathing suits, or an old chest of tools. erything and anything you send will be appreci- ated. Please help to provide for a happy vacation in lives where happy vacations are rare. Perpetual Good Two hundred dollars doesn't yicld quite enough income to pay for a child’s summer vacation, but it establishes a Fresh Air Endowment, meaning that it goes into a perpetual trust which with other funds insures that every year a poor child will have that enjoyment. A Fresh Air Endowment may bear any (Continued on page 36) comicbooks.com