Life, 1928-08-23 · page 27 of 36
Life — August 23, 1928 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines **charitable fundraising with travel advertising**. The left column solicits donations for LIFE magazine's Fresh Air Fund camps for poor children in New York City slums. The text contrasts the myth of New York as a luxurious summer resort (enjoyed by wealthy people in "cool porcelain bathtubs") with the reality faced by tenement children suffering through oppressive heat. The appeal argues that $20 can send one child to camp for eighteen days for fresh air, food, and swimming—a moral imperative framed as basic human decency ("We can't, any of us, simply say 'My, my, that's too bad'"). The right column ironically advertises Canadian holidays and steamship travel, featuring images of leisure activities (boating, golf, tennis). This juxtaposition—luxury vacations alongside pleas for impoverished children—reflects early 20th-century progressivism: simultaneous awareness of class inequality and acceptance that affluent readers would naturally pursue their own pleasures while being shamed into modest charitable contributions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
our LIFE Lires Camps for Needy Children IT’S A GOOD STORY— Dox’r believe those people who tell you that New York is a gorgeous summer resort. They are speaking from the depths of cool porcelain tathtubs, or from the airy roof gardens that top the big hotels and clubs, or they are just enjoying the sound of their own voices as they recline in luxury, imbibing long iced drinks before motoring down to the shore or up along the river for dinner at some restful inn. It’s a good story—but it isn’t true, except to the lucky rich. If you were to tell some little tenement girl to stop fretting about the heat and to remember that New York is a might fine summer resort, she would lift her tiny white face and Too at you with stricken eyes and she would say in her desolate, childish heart that you were mocking her unhappiness. New York is no summer resort for the children of the slums. It is the city of dreadful nights and of dreadful days, and as heat wave after heat wave tortures and weakens these children, their need becomes a cry that we cannot deaden our cars to. We can’t, any of us, simply say, “My, my, that’s too bad. Poor little things. Heaven pity them.” We must do something. And that something is very simple—beautifully simple. If we have hearts at all, we must help send some of these seedy and wilted youngsters to the country. We must give them cool breezes, fresh and nourishing food; we must let them sleep out-of-doors and play in the woods and swim in the brook and the pool, and grow strong and rested and happy. They must have some sort of even break with circumstance, if only for a few days. Lire maintains two splendid Camps in the country—one for boys at Pottersville, N. J., and one for girls at Branchville, Conrecticut. To these two Camps come the little denizens of the heartbreak streets—as many as we can take—and we only wish we cculd take more. Twenty ($20) dollars keeps one child at either of the Camps for eighteen miraculous days. We beg of you to send us that sum just as quickly as you can. Midsummer heat in the slums so scourges these helpless litte ones, that we long to take your twenty dollars, or your bundred dollars, or your one dollar (which will help a lot), and rush down to some dark, sweltering alley, snatch up in our arms some wretched little creature and say: “See what someone sent you, Sonny! Stop crying! There— se! It isn't so impossible to smile, is it? Not when there's someone you've never seen who wants you to go to the country tohave a marvelous time and to be made plump and joyous!” We want to say something like that to some youngster in your name Wouldn't you like us to? Wouldn’t it make you feel content? Please let us hear from you about this right away. All checks should be made payable to Lire’s Fres Air Foxo, and sent to 598 Madison Avenue, New York. L. A. F. Previously acknowledged + +6 $16,428.77 {a Memory of M. L. M. 40.00 1"p Nancy. Joyce “and $.00 Kak: Temolin, Chicago. 10.00 rd Kabn, Wyoming, 5.00 ;,B: Clark, Neenah, Wis: 10.00 Mr. and Mrs. Laurence V. 25.00 (Continued on page 27) cAnd that’s. ~ a Holiday! HY not take a real holi- day for once in a way? You can see the most wonderful scenery in the world on the St. Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers— shoot the Rapids — play tennis — go boating and swimming — fish for big ‘uns that fight — golf at Murray Bay on superb links — ride and tramp — or simply do nothing at all. How does that appeal to you? Don't go scutewbre and Thea find that the tennis is not so good or the golf indifferent. Take a Canadian holiday where everything is really good, and the trip and hotels are the last word in luxury, Get the full information right away. CANADA STEAMSHIP LINES J. C. Randall, 535 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. Murray Hill 3866 715 Victoria Square, Montreal comicbooks.com