Life, 1928-08-16 · page 19 of 48
Life — August 16, 1928 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page describes Life magazine's charitable initiative providing summer camps for disadvantaged urban children, particularly boys from New York's Lower East Side tenements. The article focuses on "Bill," a typical street youth the camp aims to help. The cartoons illustrate the problem the camp addresses: the first shows a precariously stacked tower of soap boxes (labeled "soap"), satirizing makeshift urban conditions; another depicts a boy being struck by an adult, representing the violence and neglect these children faced. The article argues that camps provide structure, outdoor activities, and mentorship that instill "honor" and ethics in street children. It presents the camp as a moral reform project, emphasizing how friendships formed there persist through winter correspondence, proving the program's lasting impact on vulnerable youth.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Lires Camps for Needy Children Bill—A Sporting Proposition In one of the musical comedies that is making summer endurable for the stranded New Yorker, a fascinating lady sings a song about a man she loves. He isn’t clever, he isn’t much to look at, he isn’t rich or successful, but the lady nightly assures the audience that she loves him just the same. She doesn’t know why, but he remains forever her Bill. And that is the way we feel about one of the boys—and he is typical of all the boys—who are being given a very much needed holiday at Lire’s Camp at Potters- ville, New Jersey. His name, too, is Bill, and he comes from the Lower East Side, a crowded, sweltering, dangerous and un- lovely section of the metropolis. Lill is serany and pretty wild. He gives the counselors a peck of trouble, and his appetite is the eighth wonder. But he’s the kind of tenement youngster THe PRoressionaL Fire-EaTeR PREPARES A Licht Summer Luncu “Say, Pa, can't you be a little more subtle and lay off this everlasting slap-stick hokum?” AN ORIGINAL IDEA Gert: Did you get your husband a sur- prise on his birthday? Savte: I'll say I did. You never saw a more surprised man in your life. Gert: What did you get for him? Sapte: Breakfast. we adore. All the rest doesn’t matter. He's just our Bill. Down where Bill comes from is the sort of place where gangs flourish, where young thugs are bred, where evil association lays its ensnaring arm across young shoulders and beckons down dark alleys. It is for boys like Bill that Lrre’s Camp at Pottersville gets into action and delivers the goods. Understanding, companion- ship, sanitation, fresh air, outdoor sleep- ing, long hikes with nature lessons and scout lore on the side and grand campfire suppers at the end, seem, suddenly, to all our Bills, the very finest things in the world, Ethics, little by little, creeps into the playing of all games and field activities, so that the word “honor” gets mirac- ulously written across the sky. The counselors at our Boys’ Camp have that wonderful thing called a “feeling” for these small strect citizens. They become big brothers and advisers and chums, in one. Letters drift back to these coun- selors all during the winter months to prove that the friendships made at Pot- tersville live and bear fruit. Tt is futile for us to groan with despair over the daily newspaper accounts of gangsters and gunmen and desper- adoes, and wonder how it will all end. Let's do some- (Please turn to page 28) Snir’s Barser: Have a shave, sir? I think I can make it. comicbooks.com