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