The Art of Manliness - #262： Santa Claus, Rifle Toting Boy Scouts, and a Jazz Age Con Man

00:00:00.000 Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:17.160 Well, it's Christmas time, trees are up, stockings are hung, and you've likely seen Santa Claus

00:00:21.040 a dozen or so times already. While many Christmas traditions have ancient roots, Christmas culture

00:00:25.940 as we know it today is a modern creation. And most of that genesis happened in New York

00:00:30.600 City, the Big Apple, over a century ago. My guest today on the show wrote a book that

00:00:34.580 explores the development of Christmas in New York City by looking at a 1920s con man who

00:00:38.980 used the story of Santa Claus to swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from generous New

00:00:42.720 Yorkers. The author of the book is Alex Palmer, and his book is The Santa Claus Man, The Rise

00:00:47.080 and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York. And today on the

00:00:50.980 show, Alex and I discuss what Christmas looked like before the 19th century in the famous New

00:00:55.640 Yorkers who helped turn Christmas into what it is today. Against that backdrop, we discussed

00:01:00.500 the life and times of John Gluck, a PR man who started an organization that answered letters

00:01:04.800 written to Santa Claus, but in the process lined his pockets with hundreds of thousands of

00:01:08.940 dollars. It's also a story that sidetracks to a story that involves a bitter rivalry between

00:01:15.320 the Boy Scouts of America and another scouting organization that consisted of rifle-toting 12-year-olds.

00:01:21.320 You don't want to miss this holiday edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. It's going to

00:01:24.220 give you lots of fodder to talk about at Christmas dinner. After the show's over,

00:01:28.360 check out the show notes at awim.is slash Santa Claus Man.

00:01:37.000 Alex Palmer, welcome to the show.

00:01:39.840 Hey, Brett. Thanks for having me.

00:01:42.080 All right. You wrote a book called The Santa Claus Man, The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and

00:01:48.180 the Invention of Christmas in New York. And I was telling you earlier, before we started recording,

00:01:52.600 that this is probably the funnest history book I've read in a long time, because it has Christmas.

00:01:59.240 It's seasonal. It's December now. And it involves all these missing bits, these forgotten bits of

00:02:05.440 American history that still have an influence on American culture today. I mean, we got Santa Claus,

00:02:11.760 the way we celebrate Christmas. Boy Scouts make an appearance in this. So it's a lot of fun. And it all

00:02:19.400 centers around this caper story involving a guy named John Gluck, who used Santa Claus to line his

00:02:28.480 pockets from untruth and generous New Yorkers. How did you, before we get into the details of Gluck,

00:02:36.520 and we'll get to what he did specifically, but how did you find out about this guy and what he did?

00:02:41.640 Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. And that's kind of an interesting story in itself.

00:02:48.260 John Gluck is actually a relative of mine. He's a great grand uncle who I didn't really know much

00:02:53.860 about till a couple of years back. It was actually on Christmas Eve. We were sitting around with our

00:02:58.440 family and my uncle had mentioned that we had this relative that had been, he didn't know a lot of

00:03:04.720 details, but he had been Santa Claus. He had answered Santa letters in New York, and that was

00:03:09.340 about all he knew. And that seemed like a fun story. I thought maybe there was, it'd be worth

00:03:16.820 just learning for myself, or maybe there'd be a fun article or something. So I did a little digging

00:03:21.140 and found out that we had had this figure in our family who had started a group that answered

00:03:28.100 Santa letters and had really become something of a jazz age celebrity in New York. A lot of newspaper

00:03:35.900 articles about him, a lot of coverage and celebrities that worked with him. But then as I started digging

00:03:41.720 more, I realized there was a lot more to the story, a lot of darker aspects to what he was doing and what

00:03:47.020 sort of was discovered about the seemingly warmhearted charitable work that he was set on. And that's

00:03:54.200 when I realized there was a great potential for a book here.

00:03:58.260 Right. So we'll get into the seedier parts of Gluck's story later on, but let's set some background

00:04:04.400 for this because he used Santa Claus as sort of the ruse for his con. And what I loved about your book

00:04:11.300 and what I found fascinating was pretty much what we think of as Christmas today and how we conceptualize

00:04:19.240 Santa Claus today. It was invented in New York City during the late night. I mean, all the way from

00:04:26.240 the beginning of the early 19th century to the end. Can you walk us through briefly the evolution of

00:04:32.200 Santa from the moment he arrived in New York at the beginning of the 19th century or late 18th century

00:04:41.020 to how he became the big, fat, jolly guy in the red suit?

00:04:45.140 The familiar guy we know. And that's, like you were saying, it was actually a surprise to me too

00:04:51.400 as I started reading it. Just as I was learning about my own relative, these interesting backstories,

00:04:56.120 Santa himself, sort of this character I thought I knew, I thought was this timeless figure that just

00:05:02.180 was imported from Europe and caught on here. And maybe Coca-Cola had helped invent. I sort of had

00:05:07.940 these different assumptions about the character. Once I started digging, it did turn out he was really a

00:05:13.720 New York convention. So yeah, so, but he really did start kind of at the beginning of the 19th century

00:05:20.840 in New York. It was sort of a handful of figures of writers and kind of patrician leaders in the city

00:05:29.760 who were getting frustrated with the way Christmas was being celebrated in the city. And they wanted to,

00:05:39.080 they sort of, there was this, the figure of St. Nicholas had kind of been floating around. It was,

00:05:44.940 it was a familiar character, but it was really Washington Irving, the author you know more

00:05:52.360 familiarly as the writer of Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Rip Van Winkle. He wrote this sort of satirical

00:06:00.240 history called The History of New York that was more like just kind of a comedy book that took pieces

00:06:08.200 of true facts about New York history, characters that were actually figures in the history, and then

00:06:14.400 added a lot of his own kind of comedic wit to it. And one of the additional characters he had in it

00:06:22.460 was St. Nicholas, who he presented as being this major figure in the Dutch, the early Dutch settlers

00:06:29.880 culture. They worshipped St. Nicholas. He was on the bow of the first ship that came into harbor in New

00:06:37.760 York, according to, to Washington Irving's telling of it, and that he was this guy who rode around on a

00:06:46.100 wagon over rooftops, dropping gifts to children. So that was, this was in 1809, and this was really

00:06:53.640 the first time St. Nicholas was being discussed in this way as this kind of mythical, fun figure.

00:07:01.720 Prior to that, he was really this, he was a saint, he was associated with the Catholic Church,

00:07:08.220 but he didn't have these sort of fun elements in the way that, that Washington Irving introduced.

00:07:13.740 And that, that was kind of one of the earliest, what really kind of foundational moment of Santa

00:07:21.220 Claus in the U.S. And that book was immensely popular. That version of St. Nicholas was widely

00:07:29.120 discussed and became this sort of figure that was, became well known and became the sort of

00:07:36.540 a new version of the character that hadn't really existed prior to that. And so his work combined

00:07:43.540 with, there was another man named John Pintard, who was one of the founders of the New York Historical

00:07:49.600 Society. And he had also kind of had a, had this, this interest in our, in, in the, the, the New York

00:07:58.060 past, in its Dutch founders and the culture surrounding it. And he had made an effort, his own effort to

00:08:04.420 kind of bring St. Nicholas, this sort of cult of St. Nicholas to America and to New York. And kind of

00:08:11.600 took it from, took it from, took a very different approach of talking about the sort of noble aspects

00:08:16.960 of St. Nick and the, these ideas of him, his generosity and, and those sort of points. He, he was

00:08:25.580 really, he tried to bring back the celebration of St. Nicholas day on December 6th. And this just sense of,

00:08:33.800 of St. Nick as this cultural sort of godfather to the city. He actually tried to get him to be

00:08:43.520 instituted as the patron saint of New York. So kind of both this, it was 1809 that Washington Irving's

00:08:50.260 book came out and it was 1810 that John Pintard kind of instituted this St. Nicholas day feast

00:08:56.880 celebration and created a woodcut of the character. It was the first time you actually had an image of

00:09:02.360 St. Nicholas in New York city or in the U S at all. Uh, so those kind of two things then got the ball

00:09:08.960 rolling with St. Nick. Um, but he was still kind of a, a ecclesiastical figure, the sort of church,

00:09:14.260 you know, more affiliated with the saint part than, than before he was really a Santa Claus. Uh, and it

00:09:19.580 took really a few other developments, particularly Clement Clark Moore wrote that poem that, you know,

00:09:24.800 that was the night before Christmas on all through the house. And that came out in 1821. And that

00:09:29.880 really in all this, so many elements of Santa Claus that we know now grew out of that poem. Um, and,

00:09:37.820 and he was really, when he wrote that poem, kind of cherry picking different elements of the character

00:09:43.200 that had been introduced by Irving and Pintard and a couple other writers. Uh, and he really got the

00:09:48.660 ball rolling on, on Santa. So by the time it was, you know, early 1820s, you had that version of

00:09:55.280 Santa Claus really starting to be seen. And it took a few other figures, uh, Thomas Nast,

00:10:01.360 who was an illustrator for Harper's, uh, put drew for years. He would draw these illustrations of

00:10:07.500 Santa in, uh, that magazine every Christmas. And it became one of the most popular, you know,

00:10:13.660 there was, it was a widely read magazine and that, that was what sort of solidified the final image of

00:10:19.000 Santa Claus. And that was around like the 1860s, 1870s. Uh, and so then from that point, that was

00:10:25.100 really where the modern Santa Claus image was, was created. Right. And then also I thought it was

00:10:32.600 interesting, like the history of writing letters to Santa, um, that took some time. Yeah. It also

00:10:38.640 developed over time and, and around the same time as really the 1800s when, when it first, you know,

00:10:43.680 early 1820s where Santa really had started as this kind of disciplinary ecclesiastical figure,

00:10:50.080 uh, Santa letters to kind of started in this didactic way where really the earliest letters

00:10:55.680 were written from Santa to children. Uh, he would, it would be these parents writing to their kids

00:11:01.960 about, you've done this really well during the year, but I think you should be doing this and,

00:11:06.540 and just judging them on their behavior, what they, you know, the, the, the, the goods and bads,

00:11:11.340 kind of this voice of God they would be creating for their children. Uh, and there would be these

00:11:16.340 lessons in there and, and little, uh, you know, requests for how they should behave in the next

00:11:22.320 year. But then over time that shifted as well with figures like Thomas Nass drawing illustrations

00:11:28.880 of Santa answering his letters, uh, with developments in the postal service where it became easier for

00:11:34.680 kids to actually write a letter and drop it in the mail and it would actually be sent out. Uh, it started

00:11:40.720 to catch on and you had a lot more kids writing to Santa. You had, uh, uh, kids being more, uh,

00:11:48.380 open about requesting gifts. Uh, and this was about around the time when, you know, mass production

00:11:53.080 was becoming more common. So they would go from asking for things like apples or, uh, you know,

00:11:58.280 little homemade gifts to asking for a specific, uh, you know, doll or a specific, uh, toy that they

00:12:05.180 wanted that they could buy at the department store. Um, and soon newsletters were really piling up.

00:12:10.720 Right now that'll lead us to, uh, John Gluck and what he did, but besides Santa, like the way we

00:12:17.520 just celebrate Christmas in America, um, was pretty much New York city too. Um, you know, for example,

00:12:23.340 we offer Christmas is this very domestic family oriented holiday where you just sit with your

00:12:28.480 family and, you know, you maybe get together as a community to do these community things, but

00:12:33.240 it wasn't always like that, uh, in America. How did, how did people celebrate Christmas in America

00:12:38.740 in the early days and how did New York city, uh, change that? Yeah. Yeah. Christmas had really

00:12:43.780 kind of gone back and forth in the way it was celebrated. I like to think of it as kind of going

00:12:48.120 from outdoor to indoor and back again. Uh, it, you know, we'll go way back and it started really

00:12:53.380 as this pagan festival to celebrate the end of the harvest. The church kind of co-opted that

00:12:59.680 then like, I think it was like the fourth century, uh, where they then made that officially Christmas

00:13:05.900 and tried to make it more of a religious holiday. And there was a lot of tension about that back

00:13:10.040 and forth. So you always had these tensions where it was the, the, the, the church trying

00:13:15.060 to create a more spiritual, uh, holy day and these pagan roots that kept coming back up where

00:13:22.540 it was a time to party. You'd done all the work for the year. You had all this food and drink,

00:13:26.800 so you're going to enjoy it. Uh, and in New York kind of during the early 1800s, really that

00:13:33.100 was when the, the outdoor celebration sort of pagan roots were on full display where when people would

00:13:39.220 celebrate Christmas, it was just going into the streets, partying, they would sing, uh, drink,

00:13:46.660 be shooting off guns and fireworks. It was just this, maybe closer to, to what you see as celebrating

00:13:55.040 New Year's, but much more anarchy where it would just be, you know, this, this wild partying that

00:14:01.240 would be happening in the streets. And that obviously didn't sit well with a lot of the town

00:14:07.060 elders or the, you know, the upper classes, the, a lot of these people partying were the,

00:14:11.860 the, the working class and the people who didn't have that many opportunities to blow off steam.

00:14:17.020 The, the upper class really preferred to celebrate New Year's. They would have more quiet time in,

00:14:23.400 in their homes. They might visit with friends, go to go, you know, from, from one house to the other

00:14:28.720 and, uh, say hello. But the real party on Christmas day was, was these sort of lower casts and, and, uh,

00:14:37.540 the, the, um, more wealthy and the elite wanted to see a shift happen in the holiday. And that's where

00:14:45.000 you had folks like John Pintard and others, uh, Clement Clark Moore, they really started to encourage

00:14:51.820 this celebration of Christmas as a family holiday and moving it indoors, uh, again. And even with maybe

00:15:00.700 less religious connection than it, than it had, uh, in, in some of its earlier versions, but they

00:15:06.540 really made it a family holiday. Uh, and that corresponded with the time when, when formal police

00:15:13.100 groups were being created so they could actually start enforcing, uh, these laws and, and put a stop to

00:15:19.220 the drunken madness happening on the streets. Uh, and it really ended up shifting the holiday into

00:15:25.220 the house, uh, where people, if they were going to celebrate Christmas, it would be with their family,

00:15:30.100 with, with parents giving gifts to kids rather than say, uh, you know, the, the, the party or the,

00:15:37.480 you know, the newspaper boy who was, you know, you know, demanding tips from, uh, from his customers,

00:15:43.760 uh, which is what it had been before. And I mean, also things like, uh, Christmas trees became popular

00:15:49.780 in New York city. I mean, I'm sure Christmas trees were being used by American immigrants

00:15:53.480 throughout America, but like in New York city, like the idea of like a Christmas tree lot where he would

00:15:58.080 go and buy a Christmas tree that started in New York city too. Yeah, that's right. And that was around

00:16:03.200 1850s. As you were saying, it had been sort of there, there, there had been sort of this tradition

00:16:08.900 of Christmas trees from some of the German immigrants and there, it, it, it, it was being 1.00

00:16:13.580 done, but not really on a large scale basis until there started to be more newspapers covering this

00:16:20.580 practice, especially after, uh, Prince, uh, Prince Albert in, uh, England brought that to, uh, when,

00:16:28.720 when, uh, he married, uh, Victoria, he brought that, uh, practice into, uh, you know, the, the,

00:16:34.740 the, the, into the, that to, to England. And then that was covered in the American papers

00:16:39.720 and people started to catch onto that. So it was in New York city where the market for

00:16:44.920 it became clear. People were starting to want those Christmas trees. And there was a, uh,

00:16:49.800 a merchant in New York who had the idea of, well, why don't I, he was living up, uh, in

00:16:54.880 the, uh, you know, upstate New York where they, he had a lot where he just had all these evergreen

00:17:00.220 trees that he didn't know what to do with. He had the, struck on the idea of, well, why don't

00:17:03.360 I go down to the city and sell these. And he did, uh, I think it was 1851 was the first

00:17:08.840 year he went down and, and, uh, just opened up a little shop on the corner of, uh, of the

00:17:14.600 Washington market, uh, and immediately sold out. And from, from that point on, uh, Christmas

00:17:20.500 tree farms became a staple in the city and in New York and then throughout the United States.

00:17:25.660 Right. And then, um, you also, we see the merging of, uh, commercialism with Christmas in

00:17:30.360 New York city too, like the FW Woolworth company, um, huge and making Christmas decorations

00:17:36.080 popular.

00:17:37.000 Yeah. And it followed a similar pattern is the, the Christmas tree market where it was

00:17:42.000 something that, you know, had been done kind of informally. People might make their own

00:17:45.280 ornaments or candles light it, you know, actual, uh, ignited candles were very popular for a

00:17:50.940 while. So also there every, you know, day after Christmas, there'd be reports of these

00:17:54.840 homes burning or, or the fire department would have to be on high alert because, uh, so much

00:18:00.420 of that, you know, that where these, these trees would just go up. Uh, and with, uh, as

00:18:05.960 it was so much else, uh, around Christmas, there, there was a clear market there that, uh, figures

00:18:11.480 like FW Woolworth saw, he was the one who founded the five and dime store and really kind of created

00:18:16.880 the idea of, of a department store for people that didn't have a ton of money. He had a lot

00:18:22.860 of inexpensive things that he would sell. And this made Christmas ornaments very affordable.

00:18:27.520 He, uh, saw the opportunity here of really, you know, doubling down on Christmas. He, he

00:18:33.200 partnered with, uh, these glass makers in Germany who made these special, uh, or Christmas ornaments.

00:18:39.660 So he would sell those, uh, and first kind of did a test run the first year and they immediately

00:18:44.220 sold out. And soon that became one of his biggest sellers each year. Uh, and that really

00:18:49.260 kind of pioneered what now we have with, you know, black Friday on where say, you know,

00:18:55.840 Christmas decorations, Christmas gifts have become just such a huge part of the holiday,

00:19:01.560 but that really originated, uh, in that, in that timeframe around the eight late 1800s.

00:19:07.160 Yeah. All right. So this brings us back to John Gluck and his Santa Claus association. So we have

00:19:12.340 this sentiment, we have this idea of Christmas being very sentimental. This idea of Santa who is a,

00:19:17.680 a jolly guy, he's not disciplinarian, but he's there to give gifts to children. Um, and Gluck had

00:19:24.320 this idea of answering letters from, uh, poor New Yorkers, children, um, to fulfill their Christmas

00:19:32.700 wishes. So let's talk about like, why, why was, what happened to these letters, uh, before Gluck decided

00:19:39.020 I'm going to be the guy to answer them. Yeah. Yeah. So these letters as you know, children were

00:19:45.360 riding them. They started, uh, getting, uh, more, more and more stacking up where they would put

00:19:51.020 them in the mailbox and they would go to the post office. Obviously there wasn't a Santa Claus that

00:19:55.500 they could actually deliver them to. So generally either the post office would pass them off to

00:20:01.840 newspapers and they would sometimes publish the letters or, uh, occasional groups would volunteer

00:20:08.160 to take them. Uh, but the, the law was that if a letter came that couldn't be delivered to a

00:20:15.280 recipient, they, they were supposed to go to the dead letter office and be destroyed. So that's what

00:20:19.960 would end up happening with most of these letters. Uh, there was some back and forth with, they tried

00:20:24.480 to change the, the, the rules or, uh, there was a lot of protests from different, uh, both, you know,

00:20:31.040 different private groups and individuals. And, and even, uh, the New York times weighed in saying

00:20:36.240 the post office should really release these letters, uh, and be put a lot of pressure on

00:20:41.260 the post office to do something about all these Santa letters. There was this outcry that all

00:20:46.940 these children's wishes are just being ignored and destroyed. And this just seemed like a tragedy for

00:20:52.340 sometimes tens of thousands of kids who just weren't getting, uh, you know, we're, we're having

00:20:57.500 these innocent letters just to go to the garbage. So the post office finally relented. There was enough

00:21:03.860 pressure put on them that, uh, in 1912, they changed the rule and they said, all right, on the

00:21:09.640 local level, if, if any city's post, uh, postmaster wants to give these letters to a charitable group

00:21:18.220 that's interested in answering them, or even an individual, they can do that. Uh, it's, it's,

00:21:22.780 you know, up to the postmaster's discretion. And it's depends on if there's somebody or a group

00:21:27.360 that's willing to answer these letters, but, uh, we will, we will, you know, grant them. Uh, so this

00:21:32.840 was a very popular decision. Once this was made, it got a lot of attention. People were excited that

00:21:38.000 Santa's letters were going to be answered, but in the biggest city in the country, uh, nobody really

00:21:43.120 came forward. There was still thousands of children's letters that were going to the New York post office

00:21:48.920 and just having to end up at the dead letter office in 1912. Nobody came forward, uh, to claim them. So

00:21:54.820 they just ended up getting destroyed. And that's where John Gluck saw an opportunity. He was reading

00:21:59.480 these stories about all these letters and, and thought this might be, uh, a worthwhile project

00:22:05.840 to undertake. Prior to that, he had been this, uh, press agent and a publicist and, uh, uh, working as

00:22:13.940 a, um, uh, like as a customs broker where it was this job that he had inherited from his dad. He's

00:22:21.020 been working for the family company doing things. He wasn't very particularly interested in. So he

00:22:25.260 really moved into more work as, as this publicist trying to get generate interest in for, for clients

00:22:31.780 and, uh, got started getting, uh, good with creating press contacts and getting news into, you know,

00:22:39.600 about various events or, uh, you know, uh, different, you know, business opportunities and things like

00:22:45.460 that. He would get, uh, the press to cover. So he thought, well, his combination of business savvy

00:22:50.900 and ability to generate press combine that with this idea of answering Santa letters. And it was

00:22:58.240 just too irresistible of opportunity for him. So he, he founded this group in 1913 called the Santa

00:23:03.420 Claus association, requested the letters from the post master who granted it to him. Uh, and so in 1913,

00:23:11.060 this was the first year that the New York city's children's Santa letters would be answered.

00:23:15.960 And did he start off like with sincere intentions? Like he thought like I could,

00:23:20.460 we could do something good here. Or was he looking at this like, this could actually

00:23:23.620 help me out some way. It really, it, from, from what I can tell, it certainly seems like he had

00:23:29.620 some good intentions. Obviously if he was somebody just out to make a quick buck, this was not the

00:23:34.420 easiest way to do that. Uh, he, and he may took a lot of steps, made, made a real show of

00:23:42.020 verifying that these letters, the way he set up the association and kind of what set it apart from

00:23:49.200 efforts to answer Santa letters in the past was he would, uh, he, he, he wouldn't actually handle

00:23:56.600 any of the gifts or any donations himself. And he made a major, uh, point of that when he first

00:24:02.780 founded the group, he had a lot of volunteers that would help out. And all it really did, it was more of

00:24:08.220 a clearing house for these letters where the postman would give the Santa Claus association,

00:24:13.040 this stack of Santa letters, uh, Gluck and his volunteers would then send these letters out

00:24:18.640 to individuals who volunteered to, to receive them or just people who he had, he'd gotten their names

00:24:25.700 and maybe prominent members of society, Vanderbilts and others, uh, and would just send them these

00:24:32.220 Santa letters. They would then get that and they could answer that on their own. So you'd get a

00:24:36.720 letter from Johnny asking for a toy truck and you personally could either mail that gift to Johnny

00:24:43.460 and say it was from Santa, or you could even go yourself to visit and hand him the gift. So the

00:24:49.260 Santa Claus association was just there to route those requests. They weren't, uh, accepting gifts.

00:24:55.640 They weren't accepting money or so. So it was when he first founded and started the group. Uh,

00:25:01.360 but this idea really did catch on and, uh, what, whatever Gluck's motivations, it certainly

00:25:08.840 there were people answering these letters. There were thousands of kids that ended up receiving

00:25:14.860 gifts as a result of it. So it certainly had a positive impact right out the gate, uh, whether,

00:25:21.100 but whether it was a purely, uh, from innocence, uh, motives was, it was not totally clear.

00:25:28.320 What sort of tactics did he use to gin up support for the Santa Claus association? Cause I mean,

00:25:33.020 it seems like a lot of the, the reason I, why it caught on cause like Gluck had a really,

00:25:37.680 a real knack for promoting. Like he had a skill for it.

00:25:40.800 Yeah, he really did. And it's fascinating to look at cause 1913, the group started,

00:25:44.560 but it ended up running for 15 years and it's fascinating to see sort of how his own strategies

00:25:49.620 evolved over that time. The first year it was really about, he got a ton of press coverage,

00:25:55.380 but it was more the novelty of it that got a lot of attention. So he would just the idea that

00:25:59.920 Santa's letters were going to be answered, got a lot of attention in the press. And you could really

00:26:04.040 see his skills as a publicity man at work. He was able to get coverage in every major New York

00:26:09.580 newspaper, even nationally, people were writing about it. But then the next year, the novelty wears off.

00:26:15.140 So he has to come up with other ways to keep it relevant. And he, this is the same year that

00:26:19.380 World War I begins. So he initiates this whole campaign of, we're not only going to be getting,

00:26:27.300 answering kids wishes for Santa for, but we're going to be encouraging these children to pray for

00:26:32.740 peace. And he even wrote to the president to try to get him to sort of get, make a, you know,

00:26:40.100 a break in the war for at least on Christmas day. So that also got a lot of attention. And then he

00:26:46.160 starts, uh, reaching out to Broadway stars and, and stars of the theater and they working with

00:26:52.620 John Barrymore and another of the producers on Broadway, they actually host a benefit show all

00:26:58.360 for the Santa Claus association, all the money that people pay on, uh, I think it was like December

00:27:02.680 22nd show, uh, all that money goes to help pay for postage and other supplies for the Santa Claus

00:27:09.100 association. Soon then movie stars, he's getting involved. Uh, at that time it was all just silent

00:27:15.440 films. Uh, but he each year finds new schemes to get a lot of attention. Politicians were getting

00:27:23.440 involved, uh, as well as, uh, different kind of public figures like that bit leaders of business.

00:27:31.340 Uh, and he was always sure to, as soon as he got support from somebody, the word would get out to

00:27:36.600 the press right away about this new person. That's either going to be answering a letter to Santa or is

00:27:41.300 coming to the Santa Claus association headquarters to help answer them. Uh, and he just always kept

00:27:46.980 the group in the headlines that way. Okay. So we got to take a quick detour here. Um,

00:27:52.940 because while he was doing the Santa Claus association, Gluck got involved in a bit of

00:27:58.200 forgotten American history that involves boys. Right. And it's not just the boy Scouts of America.

00:28:04.320 Uh, he was involved with the group. I didn't know this. I didn't know there were, I didn't know at

00:28:08.620 the very beginning of the scout movement, there were different scouting organizations competing

00:28:12.280 with each other and it got pretty, um, I mean, cutthroat of how competitive they were trying to

00:28:18.020 capture young boys, um, their attention. But he was involved with a group called the United States

00:28:23.880 Boy Scout. Um, can you tell us a bit about this group and what made it different from the BSA?

00:28:29.760 Yeah. And it's similar to learning about Santa. It was the same thing with the boy Scouts where it's like,

00:28:33.900 once you start digging, you're like, Oh, there's a fascinating backstory. And, and just as Gluck

00:28:38.100 changed his promotional tactics for the Santa Claus association each year and found new ways to

00:28:44.080 generate interest in it. He also was always looking for new ideas. Cause obviously the Santa Claus

00:28:49.760 association, it really only became active December 1st and lasted for that month. So he had 11 other

00:28:55.080 months. He was trying to work and he, he kind of pat together different odd jobs, but what he found

00:29:01.940 most, uh, profitable, uh, was working as, as a promoter in this way for sort of noble causes.

00:29:08.860 And he saw the success that Santa Claus association had. So then he saw this opportunity with a group

00:29:13.480 called the United States Boy Scout, which, uh, when the Boy Scouts of America were founded,

00:29:18.000 uh, it was this import from, uh, England and this idea that sort of a paramilitaristic idea of,

00:29:25.800 of the, the young boys should be, uh, trained and, uh, learn to, uh, you know, learn good character,

00:29:32.360 good citizenship, that sort of thing. Um, but the, the more militaristic version in England,

00:29:37.380 when it was imported to the U S a lot of that was kind of dropped. So it was much more just about,

00:29:41.200 uh, being a good citizen and, and finding ways to sort of, uh, show your civic pride, you know,

00:29:46.800 helping old ladies cross the street and that sort of thing. But within months of when the Boy Scouts

00:29:53.120 of America, which is what still is around today that we know, uh, within months of when it was

00:29:57.440 founded, this other group called the United States Boy Scout was created. Uh, and that was actually,

00:30:02.240 uh, sort of to fill the, the, the gap of, there was of, of that, that militaristic, uh, element of,

00:30:10.400 of the group where the, the Boy Scouts of America was not militaristic. The boy, the United States

00:30:15.960 Boy Scout really embraced that, uh, the idea of military and that we're training the children to,

00:30:21.120 to fight in the wars eventually. So they would have things like, uh, uh, you know,

00:30:25.860 drills like military drills where they would actually go out and do these mock battles. And

00:30:32.420 they, they, they ended up running into trouble early on. Not only did the Boy Scouts of America

00:30:37.560 kind of organize quickly and start trying to put pressure on these rival groups to shut down, but

00:30:43.240 the United States Boy Scout also ran, had, uh, because of their, the use of, uh, rifles,

00:30:49.560 they had a couple incidents early on where some of the members would shoot each other. And there

00:30:54.640 was actually a couple of deaths that happened because of, uh, the sort of freewheeling and,

00:30:59.140 and gun toting nature of these, uh, United States Boy Scouts. So the group took a hit and,

00:31:04.540 and really fell out of, you didn't hear much about them. And that's when Gluck saw an opportunity there

00:31:09.740 that he could kind of use this group as a, a, you could kind of help promote it and do something

00:31:15.280 more with it that, that it was still around, uh, but just had lost a lot of membership and

00:31:19.940 a lot of interest. So he then sort of at first joined the group as a fundraiser and then slowly

00:31:27.200 rose up the ranks as his, as he got more and more effective at helping to promote it and to get,

00:31:32.080 uh, there would be kind of playing a lot of the similar, uh, heartstrings that the Santa Claus

00:31:38.680 Association would, uh, but where this, where, where the Santa Claus Association appealed to,

00:31:43.840 you know, people's sense of, uh, you know, the holidays and, and, uh, and, and those sort of

00:31:49.560 sentimentality, uh, the Boy Scouts, the, the United States Boy Scout, he really aimed at their

00:31:55.700 patriotism and said, you know, donate to our group. And we're helping to train these, these kids to

00:32:00.720 become, uh, you know, good, uh, you know, fighters and good citizens. Uh, and so this, this became a,

00:32:07.540 a success for him. He ended up raising quite a bit of money and, and in the process, uh, not

00:32:13.060 necessarily being clear with the people who were donating that this was a separate group from the

00:32:17.920 Boy Scouts of America. Uh, it was, there were many checks that were sent to them thinking that they

00:32:23.020 were the Boy Scouts of America, uh, but that actually they didn't realize this was going to

00:32:27.120 a separate organization. And Gluck was also, he was getting a finder's fee, right? He was getting

00:32:32.080 like 40%, whatever money he raised. Yeah, exactly. 40% on top of a salary. And he, he, he was,

00:32:40.580 and, and even that it wasn't being very carefully accounted for. So that was at minimum what he was

00:32:46.560 bringing in on this. Uh, and this is, you know, substantial amounts of money that the people would

00:32:51.000 donate, uh, especially as this was, you know, when world war one was really kicking into full gear.

00:32:57.240 So people were really cutting checks to patriotic, uh, efforts and this was a great opportunity for

00:33:03.440 him. So he, uh, he used it. It seems like his involvement with the, the boy, the United States

00:33:08.380 Boy Scout, I mean, that seems like that's where he kind of re sowed the seeds for his self-destruction

00:33:13.320 with, uh, the Santa Claus association. I mean, what, how, what happened with his involvement in,

00:33:19.760 with the United States Boy Scout that it affected how he, uh, did work with the Santa Claus

00:33:23.780 Association? Yeah. So he, you know, had these different schemes going on and the, the, the most

00:33:28.940 prominent being the Santa Claus association and this United States Boy Scout, but yes, the, the,

00:33:33.260 the difference of Santa Claus association, it wasn't getting that much scrutiny because there

00:33:37.540 was no one else answering Santa letters. So people were happy to kind of let it run and do what it was

00:33:42.540 doing. They, there wasn't a lot of questioning about how it was doing this or, uh, double checking

00:33:47.600 the process to make sure that the money was going where they, where Gluck said it was going,

00:33:52.240 but the United States Boy Scout had a very prominent rival in the Boy Scouts of America and they were

00:33:58.680 not, uh, not happy to see what the United States Boy Scout was doing. So they, James West in particular,

00:34:05.880 who's sort of the, the, the chief executive of the Boy Scouts of America really went hard after Gluck

00:34:10.820 and the U S Boy Scout. Uh, and it took years of, of them kind of battling back and forth where first it

00:34:18.280 was these efforts just to, you know, inform the public that this is not a real organization,

00:34:23.780 uh, on the same level of the Boy Scouts of America, uh, that it was falsely advertising the

00:34:29.520 number of members it had. It was using, uh, names of prominent, uh, donors and, uh, uh, honorary,

00:34:37.160 uh, executives and, and giving out all this, this information that was not true. A lot of the times,

00:34:42.480 these prominent people didn't even realize that they were, uh, being affiliated with this other

00:34:47.780 group. Uh, so they, the Boy Scouts of America first tried to get this information out there

00:34:52.780 when that didn't totally work. They finally just tried to shut down the United States Boy Scout.

00:34:57.180 Eventually it went up to the Supreme court and they, they succeeded in getting, uh, the,

00:35:04.160 Gluck to no longer use the term Boy Scout in, in the group's name. He tried to keep it going

00:35:10.820 under a couple of different names. Uh, but really once that, uh, decision had, had come down that

00:35:16.200 he couldn't use, uh, the, the, the, the name that pretty much killed that, uh, effort. And,

00:35:22.280 and it also really exposed Gluck in a way that he hadn't been before. It showed so many elements

00:35:27.620 that things like the, uh, honorary vice presidents, the fundraising questions and all of those elements

00:35:34.660 that were going on in the Santa Claus association. Uh, but because it had been exposed so fully with

00:35:40.300 the, the Boy Scouts, uh, scandal, it created some problems for him with the Santa Claus association.

00:35:46.440 And he, he ended up because he was sort of been totally walloped in, uh, the decision with the

00:35:52.980 Boy Scouts. He sort of backed off the Santa Claus association for a couple of years. And this was

00:35:57.520 around 1918, I believe. Uh, so it was a right around then that he, he ended up having to kind of

00:36:02.700 pull back from being, uh, the city Santa Claus.

00:36:05.660 But he eventually licked his wounds, um, and came back to it and came back to it with like,

00:36:11.140 with a lot of energy. Um, but something changed in the way he approached the Santa Claus association.

00:36:16.380 How, what was that change?

00:36:18.320 Yeah. And it was really kind of making himself less of a, less of a prominent role for the first

00:36:25.040 five years of the group, whenever it would be promoted, it was always, he was the Santa Claus

00:36:30.020 man. He was the center of the group. It was his business genius and, and charitable, uh, mind that

00:36:38.260 created the group. It was always him in the headlines. But when he returned to the work,

00:36:43.960 because even though he tried to step away from it, he actually went after the, the Boy Scout scandal,

00:36:48.600 he tried to give, uh, pass the work off to the Salvation Army. Uh, they refused. They had enough

00:36:55.720 else going on that they couldn't really take it on. So he tried to, to not work with the Santa Claus

00:37:02.420 association anymore after that point, but the letters kept coming and he was still the only

00:37:06.820 person who had authority to answer them. So they kept going to him. Uh, so he kind of couldn't help

00:37:13.240 but still be involved. But then he, he shifted his role where he became more of a background figure.

00:37:19.180 He tapped folks like, uh, Samuel Brill, who was a prominent businessman, uh, the, the, the reach,

00:37:25.680 the major retailer, uh, owner of Brill brothers became the figurehead and would speak to the press

00:37:31.220 about the group's work. And then even celebrities like, uh, Doug Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, uh,

00:37:37.260 became major spokespeople for the group and helped to launch it, uh, in its, uh, 1923 season.

00:37:43.280 So in all of those stories, Gluck wasn't mentioned and he really took a back seat,

00:37:48.220 but the work of the Santa Claus association just got bigger, more letters were coming,

00:37:52.780 bigger names were being associated with it. And it's fascinating to look at it compared to what

00:37:58.640 happened with the boy Scouts where once the, the, the reality of what was going on behind the scenes

00:38:04.580 of the boy Scouts was exposed, that fell apart pretty quickly. The Santa Claus association really

00:38:09.960 kept out living, uh, you know, the exposure and, and things that would have, you know, would have,

00:38:17.140 would have killed a, a different organization, but because of its connection to Santa and the

00:38:22.140 holidays, it proved really hard to, uh, you know, call into question.

00:38:27.020 So, I mean, how, how was Gluck, you know, doing the con? Cause I mean, he, part of the thing that

00:38:31.580 made Santa Claus association different, it was just a clearing house. We just took letters and then

00:38:35.820 the people, we didn't touch gifts. We didn't touch money. Like the only money we used was for,

00:38:39.700 um, postage, but like he was making money from this. Um, so how, what was he allowed him to line

00:38:45.700 his pockets? Yeah. And that's where things started shifting pretty quick. The first year it was all

00:38:50.220 about where we were just a clearing house. We don't ever touch any of this stuff. But then by the next

00:38:54.180 year he was asking for donations to cover postage. Uh, and then it was the, he created a gift buying

00:39:00.900 committee, uh, within the group that would, if you send us money, we'll do the work of buying these

00:39:06.680 gifts for the children. And then he started, he put out every year, the Santa Claus annual that was

00:39:12.580 really like a, you know, a beautiful, uh, brochure about all the work that they would do with all

00:39:18.940 the photos of the prominent, uh, the society ladies and, and, uh, you know, men of, of industry who

00:39:25.960 were involved in the group. Uh, and he would get advertisers to, to advertise in it and charge them.

00:39:31.940 And he would charge to buy the Santa Claus annual, which all the members would obviously want to do

00:39:36.780 because it had them so flatteringly displayed in there. So he kept coming up with new ways to raise

00:39:43.980 money despite having initially created the group saying, we won't touch money. This is all volunteer

00:39:48.600 driven. It started shifting and he, he saw these opportunities. He saw how much generosity was

00:39:54.460 produced during the holiday season, how happy people were to try to contribute to this. Uh, and he

00:39:59.400 couldn't help himself it seemed. And so he, he started coming up with one scheme after another where the,

00:40:05.420 the work of answering the children's letters was still happening, but there were all these satellite

00:40:11.520 money-making schemes that were being built up around it. And most of that money was not being

00:40:17.260 accounted for. And there weren't, there weren't many more people than Gluck who were, uh, who were

00:40:22.780 profiting from it. And how did the way, I mean, I think the way you describe in the book seems like

00:40:27.600 philanthropic work in the beginning, early 20th century was very laissez-faire. It wasn't a lot of

00:40:33.000 regulation that started to change right around the time that the Santa Claus association got going.

00:40:37.800 How did the, this, these new regulations or new, um, policing of charitable organizations,

00:40:43.380 how did that lead to his, the downfall of the Santa Claus association?

00:40:48.160 Yeah. Cause it really charitable giving was really, it was, it was kind of a wild west. There was just a

00:40:53.640 lot of groups asking for money. There wasn't a lot, there wasn't much formal regulation of it.

00:40:58.780 And after world war one, that's when you saw charity as an industry really grow. That's when

00:41:05.660 it really became a formal industry. As we know now with things like the red cross and, uh, you know,

00:41:11.860 uh, other major, uh, charitable organizations and Gluck took advantage of that, this, that there was

00:41:19.080 still no formal, uh, policing things like, um, if, if you, you don't have to, you didn't have to keep

00:41:27.240 a lot of records. If you could just prove that even part of your money, it could even just be a,

00:41:31.840 a, you know, a negligible percent. If that went to the charitable work and most of the other money

00:41:37.120 went to the solicitors who got the money, then you couldn't really be prosecuted. Uh, the, the DA

00:41:43.160 actually had tried to, to go after, uh, but, but didn't have much luck making anything stick for

00:41:49.960 those reasons. The laws just weren't there, but things shifted, uh, in New York city, particularly

00:41:55.140 there was a, a public welfare commissioner who took over starting in 1918 and really made it his

00:42:02.800 mission. He had previously been sort of the, the, the, the, the accountant of the city. And it was all

00:42:09.000 about, you know, making sure that all the, trying to make sure that, you know, no money was going to

00:42:14.100 waste and was happy to, you know, cut off groups that seemed like they weren't, uh, deserving of,

00:42:21.560 of, uh, charity. So he started cracking down on things like, uh, peddlers in the street that were

00:42:27.320 claiming they were with veterans groups or there to help children for the, in the war effort and those

00:42:33.520 kinds of things. He would crack down on their efforts or require them to have some sort of permit to do

00:42:38.780 that. Uh, and he did other sort of centralizing of, of charity efforts throughout the city so that

00:42:45.600 instead of it just being this hodgepodge of different individuals and organizations that no

00:42:50.120 one could really verify, there was really this formal, uh, citywide organization that would be

00:42:55.900 overseeing things. Uh, and Gluck didn't want any part of that for, for a lot of reasons. And he really

00:43:01.800 presented it as a, a sense of that, that it shouldn't have this kind of bureaucratic control.

00:43:09.800 That was one of his big selling points of the Santa Claus association to begin with. It wasn't about

00:43:13.960 top down this, you know, massive organization arranging for donations. It was about individuals

00:43:22.120 answering kids' letters. And he kind of sold that as more formality and formalizing was happening of

00:43:28.220 the charity groups. He was saying, well, Santa Claus association doesn't need to do that. We're about

00:43:31.940 the individuals being able to answer these children's letters. And, uh, that, that public

00:43:38.040 welfare commissioner soon enough got wind of what Gluck was doing and kind of the suspicions around

00:43:44.020 what he was doing. Uh, and then started to take a closer look at the Santa Claus associations.

00:43:49.780 And I mean, Gluck also used just the, the sentimental feelings that people had about Santa Claus.

00:43:54.740 Yeah. I mean, people love this idea and, and they still do now, you know, the idea of answering

00:43:59.900 Santa's letters every year, uh, in New York, there's, there's the, the, the New York city

00:44:04.800 post offices answers Santa letters and people are always like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know that

00:44:08.400 they do that. And it's sort of a new discovery each December.

00:44:11.660 Do you know how much money Gluck made during this long con?

00:44:15.920 It's, it's hard to say because he did not keep super strict records. Uh, but as much as,

00:44:21.100 as a quarter million potentially, but as low as maybe just, you know, 10, 20,000, but he certainly

00:44:27.040 was generating a lot of money, but he was able to keep it all kind of shady in a way that it was

00:44:33.440 impossible to really get a, an exact figure. And that's what made him so, uh, you know, slippery for

00:44:40.460 these, for, for when, uh, any kind of authorities tried to prosecute or to get a closer look at what

00:44:47.080 they were doing. Uh, it was difficult because he, the records were sort of misleading or he would

00:44:52.460 have, uh, information that didn't really say exactly how much was coming in or exactly how it

00:44:58.140 was being used.

00:44:59.540 I mean, so what do you think about, what do you think Gluck's legacy is? I mean, he did, uh, take

00:45:04.720 advantage. He, he made a lot of money unethically, uh, by taking advantage of Santa Claus, but at the

00:45:10.100 same time, he was a Christmas booster. He was a Santa Claus booster. Um, do we have something to

00:45:15.340 think to Gluck for, you know, the way we think of Christmas today?

00:45:19.000 I think so. And he, he really, he was the first to, in New York to, to answer Santa letters

00:45:25.220 at this scale and to, to give it this kind of attention after even, you know, as he was exposed

00:45:31.400 and it was 1928 when he finally, uh, sort of his downfall and the book kind of outlines, you know,

00:45:36.700 how, how that came about. It was a, it took some doing even, even as he was being exposed,

00:45:42.460 it was still difficult to really, uh, pull the letters from him, uh, because of the, the,

00:45:47.240 the quirky rules of the post office. But once he finally was, uh, had this revoked, this,

00:45:54.380 the letters still came in and were still answered. And the post office ended up, uh, creating its own

00:46:00.700 organization, Operation Santa Claus, which still operates today, kind of in, in, uh, as a result of

00:46:07.960 what Gluck had done. Uh, and it still has a lot of similar elements to the kind of, uh, executive

00:46:15.920 approach that he had used, where it's the, the careful organization of, of numbering letters and

00:46:21.240 matching them to the donors and having more direct contact between the donors and the givers. Uh, and

00:46:26.420 so many elements of what the Santa Claus association did and Gluck's innovations with that, uh, are still

00:46:31.920 in practice today. You can go to the same post office that he went to, uh, uh, the, the, the Farley

00:46:38.000 post office on, uh, 8th Avenue, uh, and go in there today and get, uh, letters to Santa to answer.

00:46:44.000 So that legacy still lives on in that. And, and, and obviously the, the children whose letters he

00:46:49.540 answered, uh, were that still something that, uh, despite what he may have been, uh, skimming off the

00:46:56.860 top, there were still, there was still good to come out of this effort compared to say, if, if he had been

00:47:01.640 pulling a complete Ponzi scheme, uh, there was something slightly more noble, I guess, about

00:47:06.440 the Santa Claus association, even if, even as it kind of played on the, uh, emotions and generosity

00:47:11.760 of New Yorkers. Well, Alex, this has been a great discussion. And I, I, if you're listening to this,

00:47:16.320 go out and get this book. It's a great Christmas time read. Um, where can people learn more about

00:47:20.580 your book, about the book and your work? Yeah. Well, um, my, my website is alexpalmerwrites.com where

00:47:26.480 you can read about updates on the book and, and all kinds of other news on it. Uh, and it's

00:47:30.560 available in most bookstores, certainly Barnes and Noble and Amazon, uh, and any independent

00:47:35.360 bookstore as well. It should be available there. Uh, yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

00:47:39.820 Yeah. So Alex Palmer, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure and, uh, have a Merry

00:47:42.860 Christmas. Thanks a lot. You too, Brett. Take care. My guest today was Alex Palmer. He's the author

00:47:46.680 of the book, the Santa Claus man. It's available on amazon.com. Go check it out. Great Christmas time

00:47:51.620 read. Uh, you'll learn a lot about the history of Christmas in America today. Also check out our show

00:47:56.200 notes at aom.is slash Santa Claus, where you can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into

00:48:01.240 this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly

00:48:16.660 tips and advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com.

00:48:20.440 And our show is edited by creative audio lab here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have any audio editing

00:48:24.320 needs or audio production needs, check them out at creative audio lab.com. As always,

00:48:28.220 we appreciate your reviews on iTunes or Stitcher helps us out a lot. Until next time, this is Brett

00:48:32.260 McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - December 19, 2016

#262： Santa Claus, Rifle Toting Boy Scouts, and a Jazz Age Con Man

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