Vintage Christmas – 1912

This image is from an illustration by Will Crawford on the cover of the December 11, 1912 issue of Puck, “America’s first successful humor magazine of colorful cartoons, caricatures and political satire of the issues of the day.” (Wikipedia)

Hands Up! – As Santa Claus looks to some of us. Card

by HawCreekShop

Hands Up! – As Santa Claus looks to some of us. Coffee Mug

by HawCreekShop

Other Hands Up! items are available at Zazzle .

Library of Congress image.

It has become apparent that the ARA San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric submarine in the Argentina Navy, has been lost with all hands.

San Juan had been missing since November 15, following a naval exercise in Terra del Fuego archipelago and a shore visit to Ushuaia, the provincial capital.  International search and rescue efforts in ensuing days were hampered by severe weather with waves as high as 33 feet (10 meters).

On November 23, the Argentine Navy reported that an event consistent with an explosion had been detected on the day San Juan lost communications by Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) seismic anomaly listening posts on Ascension Island and Crozet Islands.  CTBTO had been asked to analyze data early in the search, but no information was available until November 22 when CTBTO provided information to the Argentine government through the Austrian ambassador in Austria (CTBTO is based in Vienna).

Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said evidence showed “an anomalous event that was singular, short, violent and non-nuclear that was consistent with an explosion.”

It’s been nine days since San Juan went missing. Even if found today, it’s unlikely that there would be any survivors.

Families of crewmembers have been told there is no chance that any of the 44 San Juan sailors are alive.

I served on the USS Casimir Pulaski (SSBN 633) blue crew for 6 deterrent patrols from 1974 to 1977.  Pulaski was a fleet ballistic missile (FBM) boat. — Mike Goad [former MM1(SS)]

The image of San Juan was rendered in Akvis Sketch using a photo released by the Argentina Navy.

Smithsonian Institution

Christmas postcard from Pittstown, New Jersey rural carrier John S. MacIlroy to William Taylor dated December 21, 1915. The back of the postcard has a printed five stanza poem titled “If” that includes the verse, “when packages due don’t come on time / And those who are sending don’t raise their sign / it sure would save anxiety / if I knew you and you knew me.” Many rural letter carriers left holiday postcards for their patrons, though few went as far as Mr. MacIlroy in creating specialty cards such as this one. Fortunately for MacIlroy, he remembered to place a stamp on this postcard. Carriers who simply placed postcards in their patrons’ mailboxes without stamps were subject to disciplinary measures for misuse of the mailbox.

Persistent URL: arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=2&cmd=1&id=203574

Repository: National Postal Museum

The photographs of healthy kids playing with rosy cheeked, plump faced dolls are cute, but where did the dolls – and their clothing – come from?

Faces out of time #3

Children playing with Campbell Kid dolls. New York City, March 1912¹

In the pre-World War I years of 1911 and 1912, photographer Lewis Wickes Hine² was so struck by the wretched conditions in which poor parents and their children made Campbell Kid dolls that he sought out some of the privileged children who played with and treasured them.³

Same children with dolls, different pose⁴

Putting a Campbell Kid doll to sleep. March 1912⁵

Campbell Soup Company got its start in 1869 by Joseph A. Campbell, a fruit merchant from Bridgeton, New Jersey, and Abraham Anderson, an icebox manufacturer from South Jersey, with Anderson leaving in 1896.  The red and bright white color scheme that graces its cans today was adopted in 1898.

Campbell Kids first appeared in ads in 1904.  “Starting in 1905, they first appeared on the sides of streetcars and in magazine advertisements, first in black and white, and later in full color. They were so cute that the company licensed the E.I. Horsman Company to make dolls in their likeness” as promotional items. Enormously popular, other companies scrambled for the right to make them and they “were sold in many stores, such as Montgomery Ward and Sears. If a child in those days owned a doll, it was quite likely to be a Campbell Kids doll.”⁶

Little girl conversing with a Campbell Kid doll. March 1912⁷

The images of children with Campbell Kid dolls are from the National Child Labor Committee Collection (NCLC) at the Library of Congress as are the images of homeworkers making the dolls and doll clothing.

Between 1908 and 1924, NCLC investigative photographer Lewis Wickes Hines documented working and living conditions of children in the United States. His work was instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.

Mrs. Alfonso Ricca, making rompers for Campbell Kids⁸

Already desperately ill with tuberculosis, Annie Maier was photographed sewing doll clothes in her family’s  New York basement apartment in 1911^{9, 10}

Annie Maier, the 16 year old daughter of a New York Jewish family, was photographed at the sewing machine in the kitchen of her basement apartment making doll clothes for the Campbell Kids – working for a contractor, not the Campbell Company.  Given the materials and a pattern, she was paid a few cents for each piece after the contractor collected the work.

Annie’s pale complexion contrasted sharply with the plump, ruddy health of the Campbell Kids, icons of health and nutrition. Her very ill father had already be committed to a tuberculosis hospital, so there was no male provider. A relief society had been helping them, but stopped, refusing to help unless the seriously ill girl – ill with tuberculosis herself – agreed to be hospitalized. She refused and, instead “was working on dolls’ clothes with tuberculosis progressing toward its final stages.”¹⁰

Annie Meyer, making Campbell-kids’ pinafores in her basement home¹¹

Making dolls legs for Campbell Kids. Cattena family¹²

Making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room¹³

Romana making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room¹⁴

In one typical family in 1912, “the highest wage was $12.00 a week for operating on dolls clothes earned by the combined labor of the father, mother, and three children.”¹⁵

The month after the most recent of these photos, the Titanic, full of wealthy travelers and poor immigrants, sank after colliding with an iceberg.

Note: This is a very much expanded update to a post originally published July 24, 2012.

End notes:

1. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Children playing with Campbell Kid dolls. See photos showing where they are made.Location: New York, New York State. 1912. March. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003451/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
2. Lewis Wickes Hine was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States.
3. Abbott, Elizabeth, A History of Marriage: From Same Sex Unions to Private Vows and Common Law, the Surprising Diversity of a Traditione, page 188, Seven Stories Press (January 4, 2011); Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
4. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Children playing with Campbell kid dolls.Location: New York, New York State. 1912. March. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003452/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
5. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Putting a Campbell Kid to sleep. See photos showing where they are made.Location: New York, New York State. 1912. March. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003454/PP/. (Accessed November 22, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
6. When Were The Campbell Soup Kids Created? – CulinaryLore.com (accessed 11/22/2017)
7. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Little girl conversing with a Campbell Kid. See photos showing where they are made.Location: New York, New York State. 1912. March. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003453/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
8. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Mrs. Alfonso Ricca, 71 Sullivan St. 2nd floor back. Making rompers for Campbell Kids she said. Husband out of work. Location: New York, New York State. 1911. December. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003312/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
9. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Annie Maier or Meyer, making Campbell-Kids’ pinafores in her basement home, 71[?] E. 108th St. She was reported to have tuberculosis. Working in the Kitchen. See also #2715. Location: New York, New York State. 1911. December. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003315/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
10. Larkin, Jack, Where We Worked: A Celebration Of America’s Workers And The Nation They Built, page 133, Lyons Press; First Edition edition (November 23, 2010)
11. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Annie Maier or Meyer, making Campbell-kids’ pinafores in her basement home. 71 E. 108 Street. She was reported to have tuberculosis. Working in the kitchen. see also No. 2713.Location: New York, New York State. 1911. December. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ncl2004003317/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
12. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. 5 P.M. Making dolls legs for Campbell Kids. Cattena family, 71 Sullivan St., 5th floor front. As soon as the photo was taken, Rose carried the box full of finished legs to the Aetna Doll and Toy Co, whose name was on the box. Tessie, on the right lives down stairs and does this work there. Was helping here. Rose is 14 yrs. old. Lena, deformed, is 12, Nettie, 9 yrs. old is very deft. They all work after school and often until 10 P.M. Location: New York, New York State 1912. February. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003397/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
13. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room, 59 Thompson St., N.Y., 4th floor, front–Romana family. The little boys, 5 and 7 years old, help to break the threads, the older boy, about 12 years old, operates the machine when the mother is not using it.Location: New York, New York State. 1912. March. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003458/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
14. Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room, 59 Thompson St., N.Y. 4th floor front. Romana family. The older boy, about 12 years old, operates the machine when the mother is not using it, and when she operates, he helps the little ones, 5 and 7 years old, break the thread.Location: New York, New York State. 1912. March. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004003457/PP/. (Accessed November 21, 2017.) (See more on Flickr)
15. Foreman-Brunell, Miriam, Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930, page 113, Johns Hopkins University Press (October 9, 1998)

Post-processing¹ #3

Early 2000s Ford Freestyle, Utah Highway 12 in Cannonville, Utah, October 6, 2015, elevation 5918 ft (1804 m)

The intent with this photo was to get a fairly clear, crisp image of the vehicle with the background and foreground blurred as I panned the camera with the movement of the car.

1. Image editing to enhance the photo closer to what the eye “saw.” Images in this series are selected within a day or so of being edited and are either posted at the time or scheduled for posting at a later date.

I-64 northwest of Williamsburg in James City County, Virginia

I’m astounded sometimes when people mention multiple traffic violations.

In 48 years of driving, I’ve had three traffic tickets, one of which was reduced to a warning. I’ve also had a similar small number of warnings.

My first ticket was in 1976 in James City County, Virginia, for speeding. On leave from the Navy, we were visiting my family in Norfolk when we got a phone call that one of Karen’s brothers had died in a car accident, so we had cut the visit short and were heading to northwest Arkansas. Keeping pace with traffic, we got caught up in a coordinated speed trap. A couple of state troopers were set up in the median with a radar on a tripod.  Then, just over a small hill were more officers directing offenders’ vehicles, including ours, to the shoulder where other officers were writing tickets.

In most states’ vehicle codes, the following traffic violations will adversely affect your driving record – DMV.org:

• Driving with a suspended license.
• Violation of license restrictions.
• Committing a hit-and-run accident.
• Driving in the bicycle lane or on a sidewalk.
• Ignoring traffic signs and traffic cops.
• Running red lights and stop signs.
• Not pulling to the side for an emergency vehicle.
• Crossing a divided highway.
• Going over the speed limit, or under the minimum speed.
• Tailgating.
• Speeding in a construction zone.
  
• Illegal passing.
• Illegal U-turns.
• Not stopping for a school bus.
• Reckless driving.
• Causing another bodily injury through reckless driving.
• Drag racing (aiding or abetting).
• Transporting a person in the bed of an open truck.
• Drinking while driving, DUI, and DWI.
• Disobeying a toll officer.

Later that same day, still in Virginia, I rolled through a stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop.  Of course, the state trooper parked nearby pulled us over. He let me off with a warning.

I80 east of North Platte, Nebraska

It was not quite 20 years later that I got my next ticket in August, 1995.  We had been visiting family, first in Oregon and, then, in Nebraska and were on our way home to Arkansas on I-80 somewhere east of North Platte, Nebraska.  The speed limit had been raised on I-80 from 55 mph to 65 mph about 8 years earlier.  However, when the young Nebraska state trooper caught me on radar, I was going about 75 in our Chevy van.

Ironically, the speed limit on I-80 was changed later that same year to 75!

In my next traffic violation, in 2002, I was cited for reckless driving and, possibly, tailgating – I don’t remember.  I was heading south out of the small town near us towards the larger city in our area, probably going to work or to the gym.  I had turned my head to the left to look at something in the small shopping center I was passing, not realizing that the car ahead of me was slowing to turn in there. I turned my head back, saw the situation and before I had a chance to react….SMASH!… I rear-ended her.

The town marshal was the officer that showed up to investigate.  When he gave me the ticket, he said that I could either mail in my fine or go to traffic court.  He told me that, if I went to traffic court, he would recommend that I be given a warning instead of getting a fine, which is how I got a traffic ticket reduced to a warning.

The Jeep that I was driving was totaled.  A few years later, the road where the accident occurred was widened and now has a turning lane, which makes that stretch of road much safer.

Excessive speeding really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  When I’m driving the car or truck, I usually limit myself to no more than 5 miles per hour over the limit and, even then, a good percentage of the vehicles will pass me when driving on the interstate. When we drive to Little Rock, that might get us to whatever clinic or shops we are going to just a few minutes earlier, if the traffic cooperates.  If I need to get there earlier, then I should leave earlier instead of driving faster.

With the motorhome, towing the car, we’re limited to 65 mph according to the manufacturer recommendation.  In our case, I’ll actually, most days, only drive 60 mph, especially if there is a headwind or a crosswind.  It’s more controllable and, actually, much less stressful than trying to keep up with the traffic.

We’ve never owned a radar detector or other device intended to beat the traffic rules.

Post-processing¹ #2

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – Elevation 9,520 ft. (2902 m), Utah Highway 12, October 6, 2015, 23 miles south of Torry, Utah.

1. Image editing to enhance the photo closer to what the eye “saw.” Images in this series are selected and posted within a few days or weeks of being edited.

Art on Sunday #25

Rosie the Riveter, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,
Bentonville, Arkansas, May 19, 2012

Mary Doyle (later Keefe) was a 19-year-old telephone operator – operated out of her mother’s home – in Arlington, Vermont, when she posed for neighbor Norman Rockwell’s iconic “Rosie the Riveter” painting that was published on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 and came to symbolize the millions of American women who worked on the home front in the dark days of World War II.  The painting was subsequently loaned to the U.S. Treasury Department for the duration of the war for use in war bond drives.

While Doyle was a petite 110-pound woman, Rockwell wanted Rosie to show strength and based the pose of Rosie on Michelangelo’s 1509 Sistine Chapel ceiling image of the prophet Isaiah, giving her broad shoulders, and large arms and hands. Twenty-four years after she posed for the painting, Rockwell wrote to her apologizing for the large body he gave her in the painting.¹

Doyle posed two mornings for Rockwell and his photographer, Gene Pelham, as Rockwell preferred to work from still images rather than live models. She was paid $5 for each sitting. “You sit there and he takes all these pictures,” she told the Associated Press in 2002. “They called me again to come back because he wanted me in a blue shirt and asked if I could wear penny loafers.” Doyle was a redhead, like the Rosie Rockwell painted and who appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on Memorial Day weekend, 1943.

In the painting, above her head a halo, Rosie is holding a ham sandwich in her left hand, her feet are resting on a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and her blue overalls are adorned with badges and buttons: a Red Cross blood donor button, a white “V for Victory” button, a Blue Star Mothers pin, an Army-Navy E Service production award pin, two bronze civilian service awards, and her personal identity badge. In a pocket of her overalls is a lace-fringed handkerchief and a white-trimmed gold compact. In an interview, Doyle explained that she was actually holding a sandwich while posing for the painting, that the rivet-gun she was holding was fake,  she never saw a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and she did have a white handkerchief in her pocket like the picture depicts.

“Except for the red hair I had at the time, and my face, the rest I don’t think is me at all,” Mrs. Keefe said in a 2002 interview for the Norman Rockwell Museum.²

The painting³ is part of the permanent collection⁴ at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Mary Doyle graduated with a degree in dental hygiene from Temple University.  She married Robert J. Keefe in 1949. Born on July 30, 1922 in Bennington, Vermont, Mary Doyle Keefe died in Connecticut on April 21, 2015, at the age of 92.

Bennington Banner (Vermont) May 1943

Painting of Rosie, a Riveter, Starts Tempest in Teapot⁴

Norman Rockwell of Arlington, veteran Saturday Evening Post cover artist, has another cover in this week’s issue and it hits the rivet right on the head. There’s nothing new in that, since all his covers have been knockouts. But this one came very near causing the Curtis Publishing Company, a lot of trouble.

The cover, posed for by Miss Mary Doyle, Arlington’s attractive telephone operator, shows a husky gal, perched on a timber with a riveting gun lying on her lap, one arm over her lunch box, and a ham sandwich (1) point per pound held in a strictly feminine manner between carmine-tipped fingers.

Beneath one moccasined foot is a smudged copy of “Mein Kampf”, pagan bible of the Hitler regime. Across her bosom is a row of buttons, including a service button, a red cross emblem, a “V” button, a “E” insignia, and a few others.

Feminine Touch

From the pocket of her soiled blue dungarees protrudes a lace-edged handkerchief, and a gold trimmed white compact, in pleasing contrast to the double—buckle leather wrist strap.

Lettered in white paint across the top of her lunch box is the name “ROSIE”, and thereby hangs a tale.

News dealers from coast to coast, including Evans of Main street, received “blow-ups” of the Rockwell cover last week. A “blowup” is an enlargement in colors of a cover picture. It is tacked up to tip off news stand customers of what to expect in the coming Post issue. But this one had a title over it, to wit: “Rosie the Riveter.”

This, it is said, is the name of a new and popular war song. The name “Rosie” on the lunch box isn’t copy-righted, but presumably the title of the song is.

Hurry Call

A couple of days ago Evans and a hundred thousand other news dealers received urgent instructions from the Curtis Publishing Co. to ditch the “blow-up”, and to sign a solemn statement certifying that they had done so, presumably to indicate the good faith of the company and adduce proof that there had been no intention on their part to plaglarize. The Curtis Co. is too smart for that, too long established and certainly knows better, but someone in their promotion department, it is to be supposed, didn’t know about “Rosie.”

Norman Rockwell, when interviewed by The Banner this noon said that “this is the first I’ve heard of it.” Of course he had nothing to do with the promotion anyway, and the use of the word Rosie was quite safe.

She’s Really Beautiful

“It’s Miss Doyle, our telephone operator, who should sue me,” laughed Rockwell, or at least grinned, judging from the sound of his voice over the telephone. “She is really a beautiful girl, but since I wanted to portray a girl of husky proportions, I had to distort the picture.

“I made a mistake in detail that people will be calling me down for,” he concluded. “The cover shows ‘Rosie’ with goggles and an isinglass protective shield. I don’t think riveters use both. It was silly of me.”

The reporter hadn’t noticed that slip, but a few thousand riveters who read the Post regularly undoubtedly will.

Endnotes:

1. “He called me one day and he said, ‘Mary, I apologize, but I made you very large,’ ” Mrs. Keefe recalled before the Sotheby’s sale. “Of course, as a young girl, I said, ‘Oh, that’s all right.’ But when I saw it, that was a different story.”

   She was mollified a bit in 1967, however, when she received a letter from Rockwell. “The kidding you took was all my fault,” he wrote, “because I really thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”  – Mary Keefe Obit, New York Times.

2. Mary Keefe, Model for Rockwell’s ‘Rosie the Riveter,’ Dies at 92 – obit, New York Times, April 24, 2015
3. The painting was eventually donated to the Treasury Department’s War Loan Drive, which raffled it off. The winner was identified as Mrs. P. R. Eichenberg of Mount Lebanon, Pa. Art dealers said it was later owned by Chicago Pneumatic and Dresser Industries, makers of rivet guns and drills, and S. B. Lewis, a New York arbitrageur, who auctioned it off at Sotheby’s to the Elliott Yeary Gallery of Aspen, Colo., in 2002 for $4.9 million, which was believed to be the highest price fetched for a Rockwell at public auction at that time. – Mary Keefe Obit, New York Times.
4. Title: Rosie the Riveter

Artist: Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978)
Date: 1943
Dimensions: 52 x 40 in. (132.1 x 101.6 cm)
Framed: 62 in. × 50 in. × 3 1/4 in.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Credit Line: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, (Accession Number) 2007.178

Label Text:

Rosie the Riveter stands as a powerful reminder of American women’s critical contributions to victory during World War II. Posed before a waving American flag and dressed in red, white, and blue, Rosie proudly displays a series of patriotic badges across the bib of her overalls. A tattered copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf lies underfoot.

The image emblazoned the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943, in the midst of the wartime labor boom which helped to ease unemployment experienced during the Great Depression. Closer examination reveals the art historical inspiration for Norman Rockwell’s statuesque figure: Michelangelo’s depiction of the prophet Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

5. Transcribed by Penny Colman, author of Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II in a blog post, Rosie the Riveter and Mary Doyle Keefe

Post-processing¹ #1

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – Homestead Overlook, elevation 9,387 ft. (2861m), Point Lookout Road off Utah Highway 12, October 6, 2015, 26 miles south of Torry, Utah.

1. Image editing to enhance the photo closer to what the eye “saw.”