Life, 1929-06-14 · page 17 of 44
Life — June 14, 1929 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page promotes **Life magazine's charitable initiative** providing summer camps for poor children in New York City and other urban areas. The illustration shows a **ragged, poorly-clothed child**—representing the target population: impoverished kids from tenement districts who lack resources for healthy recreation. The article argues that American ideals of "equal opportunity" demand intervention. It highlights the contrast: while middle-class families vacation at lakes and mountains, poor children remain unsupervised in dangerous urban conditions (fire escapes, streets). The photograph shows children gathered "Around the Totem Pole at Boys' Camp," documenting the program's reality. **The satire is gentle**: Life magazine positions itself as facilitating national unity through charitable work, appealing to readers' sense of civic duty and American meritocratic values.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFES Camps for Needy You and Yours Yo and I have planned our sum- mer vacations. Some of us will go away with our children for two or three months. Some of us will join our families later for the customary two weeks. The Maine lakes or sea- shore, the mountains, East or West, North or South will be ours to play in and enjoy. Our children will swim, ride horseback and enjoy other healthy forms of exercise. We will have spent quite a good deal on va- caticn money. It will have been well spent, however. The dividends will accrue in September when our lucky children come back “brown as ber- ties,” full of health and energy and a keenness to tackle another school year. We are proudly and willingly paying them a debt we owe them. Ours is an obligation to do ALL within our power and means to make them finer, healthier and sturdier young men and women—the citizens of tomorrow. It is they who will “carry on” where we leave off. You and Others There are literally hundreds of thousands of children in this huge metropolis of Greater New York, whose lot is not such a happy one as that of our own flesh and blood. We are all neighbors, all bound together by the same ties and interests. These little poor children, God willing, will grow up contemporancously with our litle children. They will live and work together side by side as grown-ups. It would be a great thing to instil in them an appreciation of the ideals we are trying to give our children. eaten Life We pride ourselves that this land of ours offers equal opportunities to every man, woman and child. For obvious reasons this is not so and can never be so. If there were thousands upon thousands of Lire Camps scattered near all the cities and towns, we might begin to see a fulfillment of this Na- tional desire. How You Can Help But, by helping to support Lrre’s Camps, we can feel that we, you and I, are doing our’share, our bit, toward this equalization of opportunity which is so vitally necessary to the forming of American Nationhood, out of such a great melting pot of races, which come to us from all over the face of the earth. Our schools and hospitals, orphan homes, etc. ete., do good beyond measure, but what of the long sum- mer months of vacation time when father is at work in the mill, when mother is washing dishes in the res- taurant and little Johnny or little Mary are left without any supervision whatsoever? The tenement districts of New York on a hot summer's day give sufficient answer to this question. What do we see there? Countless hot, oh, such hot little children, wearing almost nothing, playing games on the hot pavements, hanging and lolling about rusty fire escapes, some sitting on the high stoops with their chins in their little hands staring at nothing and thinking of nothing. Perhaps a few are thinking of fields and trees and swimming pools, turtles and all sorts of things they saw last summer at Lire’s Camp and wondering why the nice lady didn’t come around and uae three a Fe t v we Around the Totem Pole at Boys’ Camp. 15 Children tell them to pack a few belongings and go out again. They do not know, thank goodness, that if the postman brings another twenty dollars or even fifty cents into Lire’s offices at 598 Madison Avenue, that they stand a good chance of going, even though it’s not long before school opens again. Care and Supervision We have the very finest type of su: pervision for these children. Mr. Sharp (Columbia University) _ will again be in charge for his fifth season. A counselor for every ten children, the best medical care, a dietician—in short, we're proud of our work which is entering its forty-second year, We have given over fifty-two thousand va- cations to these needy children, How many more children we can help in this way depends on you. You can help in many ways, even if you can't send money—old clothes, books, phono- graph records,—anything you care to send. Please don’t delay your good inten- tion too long, will you? No matter what you send you are helping just one more little child to realize its fondest hopes—laughter, sunshine, country, play—yes, all those things which rightfully belong to every child. (Continued on Page 34) comicbooks.com