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Short Stuff: The Santa Claus Association · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there. Let's get jolly because buddy, it
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: is Christmas Day. Wow. Is that amazing? It's amazing. It's
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: not to us, but it is to us. Think about it. Yeah. Well, anyway,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Merry Christmas everybody. Yes, and Merry Christmas to you and Jerry.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And thank you for the lump of goal. You're welcome.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Uh and uh Jerry, thank you for the red wagon. Yeah,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: thank you for my ferrari. Jerry, Wow, I got it
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the wrong red wagon. You got a magnet p I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: red Ferrari. Yeah, it's pretty awesome, amazing, Thanks again, Jerry. Anyway,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: since it's Christmas, Chuck, we have a special Christmas them
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: short Stuff, and it's about something called the Santa Claus Association.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And if you want to ever learn more about the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Santa Claus Association, make sure you put those words in
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: quotes in your search engine, because there's a lot of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: different Santa associations. This is a specific one that we're
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: going to talk about. And also add uh New York
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: to that search, yes, because that'll really narrow it down
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: to really well. So the Santa Claus association we're talking
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: about has its backstory in the about the turn of
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the century, um the last century, okay, and in New
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: York City in the United States, really, the US Postal
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Service had away a technique of dealing with little children's
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: letters to Santa the Furnace. They would they would destroy them,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: that's right. They would send these letters to the Dead
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Letter office and they would eventually be destroyed or in
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the worst case scenario, returned to the little sender. That awful,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and it was even stamped return to little Cinder. Yeah,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: they had a special standard, right and it had uh yeah,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: had like a reindeer on its back with excess for eyes.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: So the popular press, the media as we call them
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: today and the public said, this is wrong. There's got
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: to be a better way to do this. What if
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: like charities could get their hands on these letters and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: then they can fulfill these these wishes because Santa is busy,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: he doesn't really have time field letters. Maybe some grown
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: ups could intervene and uh, all right, And so they
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: said that was great, And the Postmaster General at the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: time in nineteen o seven said, that's fine. I'm commanding
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: all post offices in the United States to just hand
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: over letters to Santa to any charity that wants to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: fulfill them. I wonder if the Postmaster General is just like,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: oh God with these letters, like trying to do a
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: job right. Yes, that was the impression that I had,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: is they did not want to be in the Santa
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Male business anymore, and this is a God send for them. Okay.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Everything worked pretty well for nineteen o seven, and then
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight or during the nineteen o seven um,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the Charitable Organization Society of New York, the COS, actually
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: took it upon themselves to start investigating the backgrounds of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: some of the le to writers to Santa. And they
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: went to their houses unannounced. Can you is there a
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: little Timmy who lives here? Basically, and let's see, let's
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: see the crutches that you mentioned in your letter, Timmy.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And they actually determined that some of these letter writers
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: weren't quite as needy as they made themselves sound in
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: their letters. They determined that one little girl already had
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a doll anyway, this is enough to to get the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Postmaster General to reverse his decision in nineteen o eight.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: He said, Nope, We're sending them back to the dead
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Letter office. That outburst or that outcry, the public outcry
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: against that was even worse than it was before. So then, finally, Chuck,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: we've reached the end of the back story. In nineteen eleven,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the Postmaster General, the new one said from now on,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: for from to infinity and beyond, the United States Postal
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Service will hand over letters to Santa to any charity
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: that wants them, which is great, But in New York
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: no one stepped up for two years, and by the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: time roll around, it's seemed that there wouldn't be a
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Santa again to fulfill these children's wishes in their letters
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: to Santa in New York City. Yes, that's right, and
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it was all over the papers headlines like mailmen disowned
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Santa and Santa Claus is tardy. Saint took over the streets. Uh.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And on December eight of I guess Edward Morgan, who
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: was the New York City's postmaster who also had more
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: important fish to fry. Uh. He got a letter from
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: a guy who was a customs broker named John Duval
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Gluck Jr. And he said, let me run this thing
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: handed over to me, and Morgan said great. He did
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: just get this off my plate. I'm really happy to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: not have to deal with this. Gluck had no kids,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: he was not married. Uh. And the story was was
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: that he was a kind hearted man who wanted to
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: do something with his life, and this he saw this
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: as an entree into that world. He also had some
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: some pretty impres us of credentials for somebody who steps
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: up and says, I'll handle the Santa business for the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: post Office from now on. He said that he was
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a special representative of newspapers, a famous tariff expert and investigator,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and a member of the Secret Service. None of those
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: things were true. Yeah, I mean the name of this
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: article that you found was the con man who Saved Christmas. Yeah,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: that was from History Extra. So that should tell you
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: kind of where this was headed. This guy was lying
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: to begin with, and the story just gets even more interesting.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break? We should? All right, let's
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: take a break and we'll tell you about Gluck right
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: after this. So the thing about Gluck was this, he
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: was a confidence man. He was a fraud. He made
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: up all of his credentials and all that. But with
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the Santa Claus Association, he actually did do something genuinely good.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: For once. Yeah, he did um. He started this organization
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and it was described as a bottom up um, which
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: is a good way to describe it, because the donors
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and the people who did this were New York City residents.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: They were the real people. He provided. He created the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: app basically exactly that got people in touch with other people,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: got these letters in the hands of folks that had
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a little extra money. Uh. In the case of h. Vanderbilt,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: he only chipped in ten dollars apparently, which is still
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: only like a couple hundred bucks. I looked it was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: like to seventy. I was thinking, we have a pretty
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: good idea these days after looking at the inflation calculator
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: for so many years, and that one definitely stunk. Uh.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So people were volunteering. A lot of people were um
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: from clubs and organizations, but many just regular average New
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yorkers who didn't have a lot of money themselves sometimes right,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So imagine this if you're a New Yorker and you
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: feel like your city has literally turned its back, almost
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: literally turned its back on needy children by ignoring their
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: letters to Santa, even though anybody could take it and
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: fulfill it. Having Gluck step up and say we can
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: do this and create the Santa Claus Association. It just
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: filled the city with pride. And they started throwing money
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: at the Santa Claus Association faster than it could use it. Yeah.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: They I think that first year they answered the request
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of twenty eight thousand children. That's astounding, that is super astounding.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And they kept doing this for another like fifteen years
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: or so, and he kept asking for a little bit
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: more money, um like, Hey, at first it was let
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: me cover the stamps, just the stamps, man, Yeah, exactly.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And then then it was envelopes, just just a few envelopes,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and then it was how about some money for the gifts,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: you know, And then she said, how about this right
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: in the middle Manhattan, let's build a Santa Claus building. Yeah.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: He said that the um, like, the the unusual nature
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: of our work kind of demands that we have our
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: own space to work in. Yeah. And I mean, was
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: this just sort of being rubber stamped the whole time,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: because it seems like he just kept getting more and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: more funds. Yeah. The way that this History Extra article
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: puts it is that the optimism, the post World War
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: One and jazz age optimism really kind of created this
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: sense of like we can do anything. Everybody's great. Of
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: course the guy who was running a Santa Claus association
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: is fine, Like, have you heard jazz exactly what? We
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: can definitely pay for a Santa Claus building. Have you
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: tried a jazz cigarette? To try one of those? Is
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: that like what Brad Pitt smoked? And uh, once upon
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: a time in Hollywood probably what was that? Oh no,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: no, no no acid cigarette. It was just pot marijuana cigarett,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I think is why they call it today, gotcha. Yeah,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: and they're like, have you seen this new movie Reefer Madness.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. You're gonna want to jump out a window.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: You'll be so excited. So eleven years in is when
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: the first Macy's Christmas Parade happens, which would eventually become
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and it was all just sort
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of coalescing with catalogs and things like that, and everyone's, uh,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: everyone's notion of Christmas was just getting more and more
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: commercial and more in the news, and it was just
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: a big, big deal. Yeah, Christmas became huge, like the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Christmas that we understand it today. It happened during this
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: time and it happened during the time that Gluck Santa
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Claus Association was handling um answering the needy children of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: New York's Christmas wishes. That's right. But enter Bird Collar,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: new York's Commissioner of Public Welfare. His motto was, Hey,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I'm not the bad guy here. Probably, So he was
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: charged with going around to the unregulated charities of New
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: York City and uh closing them down, asking to see
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: their financial records, including what Chuck while including the Santa
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Claus Association. Yes, but in addition to Santa Claus Association,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: he would investigate block parties that were raising money for
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood because they hadn't registered his charitable organizations. He
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was that kind of guy. You got to make sure
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that the money's going in the right place. Yeah. So
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: he said this Santa Claus Association, little fishy, Yeah, I'm
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: going after him, and Gluck said, yeah he did because
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: he didn't keep great records, which turned out to kind
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: of save him. Because he didn't have much documentation, he
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: could not be convicted of a crime when they found
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars just unaccounted for. Basically, Yeah,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: that's by the way, that's right, that's no ten dollar donation.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I think a dead giveaway that there this might have
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: been a fishy operation was that the headquarters of the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Santa Claus Association was in the back of a steakhouse
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan. I tried to find out what steakhouse and
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: could not find it. I did to the closest I
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: could find was it was in the wool or wool Worth.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: But that's it. There's no name for it or anything
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: like that. I wanted to know because knowing New York City,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: it's still there. It's not I didn't know if it
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: was like a Keynes or something. No, there's a The
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: wold Worth building is stiller, but I'll bet it's somebody's
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: like trillion dollar apartment right now, right and still thinks
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of dead beef. So gross. Like we said, Gluck could
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: not be convicted. Um, but they said you are definitely
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: not in charge of this Santa Claus Association anymore. Um.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: They took away his letters and uh, he left for Miami,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: which is I mean, talk about a sure fire away
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: to cement yourself as a con man. It's like, I'm
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: off to Miami. But the good news is they didn't
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: start sending letters back to the dead letter office. Um.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Pretty soon the US Postal Service would undertake Operation Santa Claus,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: which we talked abou out in a previous Christmas edition. Ironically, UM,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: not based on necessarily, but I think Gluck System was
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: sort of an inspiration closely following it for sure. Yeah,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: they were like, Okay, the guy went to Miami. We
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: understand who he is now, but it was a pretty
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: good idea, so we're gonna stick to it and still
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: to this day, rather than UM, the Santa Claus Association
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: handling things, it's a committee of Postal employees that are
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: now the the app that connects children in need and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the donors that want to help them out on Santa
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Claus's behalf. It's wonderful and uh yeah, hats off to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Alex Palmer for that history extra um article. Who's among
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: one of several Well, Merry Christmas, everybody that is it
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: for the short Stuff Short Stuff Away with Sleigh Bells.
• 12:54
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