#262： Santa Claus, Rifle Toting Boy Scouts, and a Jazz Age Con Man
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Summary
On this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett and Alex discuss what Christmas was like in the early 19th century in New York City, and how John Gluck used the story of Santa Claus to swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from generous New Yorkers.
Transcript
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Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Well, it's Christmas time, trees are up, stockings are hung, and you've likely seen Santa Claus
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a dozen or so times already. While many Christmas traditions have ancient roots, Christmas culture
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as we know it today is a modern creation. And most of that genesis happened in New York
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City, the Big Apple, over a century ago. My guest today on the show wrote a book that
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explores the development of Christmas in New York City by looking at a 1920s con man who
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used the story of Santa Claus to swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from generous New
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Yorkers. The author of the book is Alex Palmer, and his book is The Santa Claus Man, The Rise
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and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York. And today on the
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show, Alex and I discuss what Christmas looked like before the 19th century in the famous New
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Yorkers who helped turn Christmas into what it is today. Against that backdrop, we discussed
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the life and times of John Gluck, a PR man who started an organization that answered letters
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written to Santa Claus, but in the process lined his pockets with hundreds of thousands of
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dollars. It's also a story that sidetracks to a story that involves a bitter rivalry between
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the Boy Scouts of America and another scouting organization that consisted of rifle-toting 12-year-olds.
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You don't want to miss this holiday edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. It's going to
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give you lots of fodder to talk about at Christmas dinner. After the show's over,
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check out the show notes at awim.is slash Santa Claus Man.
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All right. You wrote a book called The Santa Claus Man, The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and
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the Invention of Christmas in New York. And I was telling you earlier, before we started recording,
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that this is probably the funnest history book I've read in a long time, because it has Christmas.
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It's seasonal. It's December now. And it involves all these missing bits, these forgotten bits of
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American history that still have an influence on American culture today. I mean, we got Santa Claus,
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the way we celebrate Christmas. Boy Scouts make an appearance in this. So it's a lot of fun. And it all
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centers around this caper story involving a guy named John Gluck, who used Santa Claus to line his
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pockets from untruth and generous New Yorkers. How did you, before we get into the details of Gluck,
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and we'll get to what he did specifically, but how did you find out about this guy and what he did?
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Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. And that's kind of an interesting story in itself.
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John Gluck is actually a relative of mine. He's a great grand uncle who I didn't really know much
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about till a couple of years back. It was actually on Christmas Eve. We were sitting around with our
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family and my uncle had mentioned that we had this relative that had been, he didn't know a lot of
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details, but he had been Santa Claus. He had answered Santa letters in New York, and that was
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about all he knew. And that seemed like a fun story. I thought maybe there was, it'd be worth
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just learning for myself, or maybe there'd be a fun article or something. So I did a little digging
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and found out that we had had this figure in our family who had started a group that answered
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Santa letters and had really become something of a jazz age celebrity in New York. A lot of newspaper
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articles about him, a lot of coverage and celebrities that worked with him. But then as I started digging
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more, I realized there was a lot more to the story, a lot of darker aspects to what he was doing and what
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sort of was discovered about the seemingly warmhearted charitable work that he was set on. And that's
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when I realized there was a great potential for a book here.
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Right. So we'll get into the seedier parts of Gluck's story later on, but let's set some background
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for this because he used Santa Claus as sort of the ruse for his con. And what I loved about your book
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and what I found fascinating was pretty much what we think of as Christmas today and how we conceptualize
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Santa Claus today. It was invented in New York City during the late night. I mean, all the way from
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the beginning of the early 19th century to the end. Can you walk us through briefly the evolution of
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Santa from the moment he arrived in New York at the beginning of the 19th century or late 18th century
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to how he became the big, fat, jolly guy in the red suit?
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The familiar guy we know. And that's, like you were saying, it was actually a surprise to me too
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as I started reading it. Just as I was learning about my own relative, these interesting backstories,
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Santa himself, sort of this character I thought I knew, I thought was this timeless figure that just
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was imported from Europe and caught on here. And maybe Coca-Cola had helped invent. I sort of had
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these different assumptions about the character. Once I started digging, it did turn out he was really a
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New York convention. So yeah, so, but he really did start kind of at the beginning of the 19th century
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in New York. It was sort of a handful of figures of writers and kind of patrician leaders in the city
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who were getting frustrated with the way Christmas was being celebrated in the city. And they wanted to,
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they sort of, there was this, the figure of St. Nicholas had kind of been floating around. It was,
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it was a familiar character, but it was really Washington Irving, the author you know more
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familiarly as the writer of Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Rip Van Winkle. He wrote this sort of satirical
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history called The History of New York that was more like just kind of a comedy book that took pieces
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of true facts about New York history, characters that were actually figures in the history, and then
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added a lot of his own kind of comedic wit to it. And one of the additional characters he had in it
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was St. Nicholas, who he presented as being this major figure in the Dutch, the early Dutch settlers
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culture. They worshipped St. Nicholas. He was on the bow of the first ship that came into harbor in New
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York, according to, to Washington Irving's telling of it, and that he was this guy who rode around on a
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wagon over rooftops, dropping gifts to children. So that was, this was in 1809, and this was really
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the first time St. Nicholas was being discussed in this way as this kind of mythical, fun figure.
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Prior to that, he was really this, he was a saint, he was associated with the Catholic Church,
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but he didn't have these sort of fun elements in the way that, that Washington Irving introduced.
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And that, that was kind of one of the earliest, what really kind of foundational moment of Santa
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Claus in the U.S. And that book was immensely popular. That version of St. Nicholas was widely
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discussed and became this sort of figure that was, became well known and became the sort of
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a new version of the character that hadn't really existed prior to that. And so his work combined
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with, there was another man named John Pintard, who was one of the founders of the New York Historical
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Society. And he had also kind of had a, had this, this interest in our, in, in the, the, the New York
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past, in its Dutch founders and the culture surrounding it. And he had made an effort, his own effort to
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kind of bring St. Nicholas, this sort of cult of St. Nicholas to America and to New York. And kind of
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took it from, took it from, took a very different approach of talking about the sort of noble aspects
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of St. Nick and the, these ideas of him, his generosity and, and those sort of points. He, he was
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really, he tried to bring back the celebration of St. Nicholas day on December 6th. And this just sense of,
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of St. Nick as this cultural sort of godfather to the city. He actually tried to get him to be
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instituted as the patron saint of New York. So kind of both this, it was 1809 that Washington Irving's
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book came out and it was 1810 that John Pintard kind of instituted this St. Nicholas day feast
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celebration and created a woodcut of the character. It was the first time you actually had an image of
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St. Nicholas in New York city or in the U S at all. Uh, so those kind of two things then got the ball
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rolling with St. Nick. Um, but he was still kind of a, a ecclesiastical figure, the sort of church,
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you know, more affiliated with the saint part than, than before he was really a Santa Claus. Uh, and it
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took really a few other developments, particularly Clement Clark Moore wrote that poem that, you know,
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that was the night before Christmas on all through the house. And that came out in 1821. And that
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really in all this, so many elements of Santa Claus that we know now grew out of that poem. Um, and,
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and he was really, when he wrote that poem, kind of cherry picking different elements of the character
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that had been introduced by Irving and Pintard and a couple other writers. Uh, and he really got the
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ball rolling on, on Santa. So by the time it was, you know, early 1820s, you had that version of
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Santa Claus really starting to be seen. And it took a few other figures, uh, Thomas Nast,
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who was an illustrator for Harper's, uh, put drew for years. He would draw these illustrations of
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Santa in, uh, that magazine every Christmas. And it became one of the most popular, you know,
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there was, it was a widely read magazine and that, that was what sort of solidified the final image of
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Santa Claus. And that was around like the 1860s, 1870s. Uh, and so then from that point, that was
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really where the modern Santa Claus image was, was created. Right. And then also I thought it was
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interesting, like the history of writing letters to Santa, um, that took some time. Yeah. It also
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developed over time and, and around the same time as really the 1800s when, when it first, you know,
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early 1820s where Santa really had started as this kind of disciplinary ecclesiastical figure,
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uh, Santa letters to kind of started in this didactic way where really the earliest letters
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were written from Santa to children. Uh, he would, it would be these parents writing to their kids
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about, you've done this really well during the year, but I think you should be doing this and,
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and just judging them on their behavior, what they, you know, the, the, the, the goods and bads,
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kind of this voice of God they would be creating for their children. Uh, and there would be these
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lessons in there and, and little, uh, you know, requests for how they should behave in the next
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year. But then over time that shifted as well with figures like Thomas Nass drawing illustrations
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of Santa answering his letters, uh, with developments in the postal service where it became easier for
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kids to actually write a letter and drop it in the mail and it would actually be sent out. Uh, it started
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to catch on and you had a lot more kids writing to Santa. You had, uh, uh, kids being more, uh,
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open about requesting gifts. Uh, and this was about around the time when, you know, mass production
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was becoming more common. So they would go from asking for things like apples or, uh, you know,
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little homemade gifts to asking for a specific, uh, you know, doll or a specific, uh, toy that they
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wanted that they could buy at the department store. Um, and soon newsletters were really piling up.
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Right now that'll lead us to, uh, John Gluck and what he did, but besides Santa, like the way we
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just celebrate Christmas in America, um, was pretty much New York city too. Um, you know, for example,
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we offer Christmas is this very domestic family oriented holiday where you just sit with your
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family and, you know, you maybe get together as a community to do these community things, but
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it wasn't always like that, uh, in America. How did, how did people celebrate Christmas in America
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in the early days and how did New York city, uh, change that? Yeah. Yeah. Christmas had really
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kind of gone back and forth in the way it was celebrated. I like to think of it as kind of going
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from outdoor to indoor and back again. Uh, it, you know, we'll go way back and it started really
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as this pagan festival to celebrate the end of the harvest. The church kind of co-opted that
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then like, I think it was like the fourth century, uh, where they then made that officially Christmas
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and tried to make it more of a religious holiday. And there was a lot of tension about that back
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and forth. So you always had these tensions where it was the, the, the, the church trying
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to create a more spiritual, uh, holy day and these pagan roots that kept coming back up where
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it was a time to party. You'd done all the work for the year. You had all this food and drink,
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so you're going to enjoy it. Uh, and in New York kind of during the early 1800s, really that
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was when the, the outdoor celebration sort of pagan roots were on full display where when people would
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celebrate Christmas, it was just going into the streets, partying, they would sing, uh, drink,
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be shooting off guns and fireworks. It was just this, maybe closer to, to what you see as celebrating
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New Year's, but much more anarchy where it would just be, you know, this, this wild partying that
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would be happening in the streets. And that obviously didn't sit well with a lot of the town
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elders or the, you know, the upper classes, the, a lot of these people partying were the,
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the, the working class and the people who didn't have that many opportunities to blow off steam.
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The, the upper class really preferred to celebrate New Year's. They would have more quiet time in,
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in their homes. They might visit with friends, go to go, you know, from, from one house to the other
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and, uh, say hello. But the real party on Christmas day was, was these sort of lower casts and, and, uh,
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the, the, um, more wealthy and the elite wanted to see a shift happen in the holiday. And that's where
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you had folks like John Pintard and others, uh, Clement Clark Moore, they really started to encourage
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this celebration of Christmas as a family holiday and moving it indoors, uh, again. And even with maybe
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less religious connection than it, than it had, uh, in, in some of its earlier versions, but they
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really made it a family holiday. Uh, and that corresponded with the time when, when formal police
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groups were being created so they could actually start enforcing, uh, these laws and, and put a stop to
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the drunken madness happening on the streets. Uh, and it really ended up shifting the holiday into
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the house, uh, where people, if they were going to celebrate Christmas, it would be with their family,
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with, with parents giving gifts to kids rather than say, uh, you know, the, the, the party or the,
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you know, the newspaper boy who was, you know, you know, demanding tips from, uh, from his customers,
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uh, which is what it had been before. And I mean, also things like, uh, Christmas trees became popular
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in New York city. I mean, I'm sure Christmas trees were being used by American immigrants
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throughout America, but like in New York city, like the idea of like a Christmas tree lot where he would
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go and buy a Christmas tree that started in New York city too. Yeah, that's right. And that was around
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1850s. As you were saying, it had been sort of there, there, there had been sort of this tradition
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of Christmas trees from some of the German immigrants and there, it, it, it, it was being
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done, but not really on a large scale basis until there started to be more newspapers covering this
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practice, especially after, uh, Prince, uh, Prince Albert in, uh, England brought that to, uh, when,
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when, uh, he married, uh, Victoria, he brought that, uh, practice into, uh, you know, the, the,
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the, the, into the, that to, to England. And then that was covered in the American papers
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and people started to catch onto that. So it was in New York city where the market for
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it became clear. People were starting to want those Christmas trees. And there was a, uh,
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a merchant in New York who had the idea of, well, why don't I, he was living up, uh, in
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the, uh, you know, upstate New York where they, he had a lot where he just had all these evergreen
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trees that he didn't know what to do with. He had the, struck on the idea of, well, why don't
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I go down to the city and sell these. And he did, uh, I think it was 1851 was the first
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year he went down and, and, uh, just opened up a little shop on the corner of, uh, of the
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Washington market, uh, and immediately sold out. And from, from that point on, uh, Christmas
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tree farms became a staple in the city and in New York and then throughout the United States.
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Right. And then, um, you also, we see the merging of, uh, commercialism with Christmas in
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New York city too, like the FW Woolworth company, um, huge and making Christmas decorations
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Yeah. And it followed a similar pattern is the, the Christmas tree market where it was
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something that, you know, had been done kind of informally. People might make their own
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ornaments or candles light it, you know, actual, uh, ignited candles were very popular for a
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while. So also there every, you know, day after Christmas, there'd be reports of these
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homes burning or, or the fire department would have to be on high alert because, uh, so much
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of that, you know, that where these, these trees would just go up. Uh, and with, uh, as
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it was so much else, uh, around Christmas, there, there was a clear market there that, uh, figures
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like FW Woolworth saw, he was the one who founded the five and dime store and really kind of created
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the idea of, of a department store for people that didn't have a ton of money. He had a lot
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of inexpensive things that he would sell. And this made Christmas ornaments very affordable.
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He, uh, saw the opportunity here of really, you know, doubling down on Christmas. He, he
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partnered with, uh, these glass makers in Germany who made these special, uh, or Christmas ornaments.
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So he would sell those, uh, and first kind of did a test run the first year and they immediately
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sold out. And soon that became one of his biggest sellers each year. Uh, and that really
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kind of pioneered what now we have with, you know, black Friday on where say, you know,
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Christmas decorations, Christmas gifts have become just such a huge part of the holiday,
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but that really originated, uh, in that, in that timeframe around the eight late 1800s.
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Yeah. All right. So this brings us back to John Gluck and his Santa Claus association. So we have
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this sentiment, we have this idea of Christmas being very sentimental. This idea of Santa who is a,
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a jolly guy, he's not disciplinarian, but he's there to give gifts to children. Um, and Gluck had
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this idea of answering letters from, uh, poor New Yorkers, children, um, to fulfill their Christmas
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wishes. So let's talk about like, why, why was, what happened to these letters, uh, before Gluck decided
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I'm going to be the guy to answer them. Yeah. Yeah. So these letters as you know, children were
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riding them. They started, uh, getting, uh, more, more and more stacking up where they would put
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them in the mailbox and they would go to the post office. Obviously there wasn't a Santa Claus that
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they could actually deliver them to. So generally either the post office would pass them off to
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newspapers and they would sometimes publish the letters or, uh, occasional groups would volunteer
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to take them. Uh, but the, the law was that if a letter came that couldn't be delivered to a
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recipient, they, they were supposed to go to the dead letter office and be destroyed. So that's what
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would end up happening with most of these letters. Uh, there was some back and forth with, they tried
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to change the, the, the rules or, uh, there was a lot of protests from different, uh, both, you know,
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different private groups and individuals. And, and even, uh, the New York times weighed in saying
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the post office should really release these letters, uh, and be put a lot of pressure on
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the post office to do something about all these Santa letters. There was this outcry that all
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these children's wishes are just being ignored and destroyed. And this just seemed like a tragedy for
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sometimes tens of thousands of kids who just weren't getting, uh, you know, we're, we're having
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these innocent letters just to go to the garbage. So the post office finally relented. There was enough
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pressure put on them that, uh, in 1912, they changed the rule and they said, all right, on the
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local level, if, if any city's post, uh, postmaster wants to give these letters to a charitable group
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that's interested in answering them, or even an individual, they can do that. Uh, it's, it's,
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you know, up to the postmaster's discretion. And it's depends on if there's somebody or a group
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that's willing to answer these letters, but, uh, we will, we will, you know, grant them. Uh, so this
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was a very popular decision. Once this was made, it got a lot of attention. People were excited that
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Santa's letters were going to be answered, but in the biggest city in the country, uh, nobody really
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came forward. There was still thousands of children's letters that were going to the New York post office
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and just having to end up at the dead letter office in 1912. Nobody came forward, uh, to claim them. So
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they just ended up getting destroyed. And that's where John Gluck saw an opportunity. He was reading
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these stories about all these letters and, and thought this might be, uh, a worthwhile project
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to undertake. Prior to that, he had been this, uh, press agent and a publicist and, uh, uh, working as
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a, um, uh, like as a customs broker where it was this job that he had inherited from his dad. He's
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been working for the family company doing things. He wasn't very particularly interested in. So he
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really moved into more work as, as this publicist trying to get generate interest in for, for clients
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and, uh, got started getting, uh, good with creating press contacts and getting news into, you know,
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about various events or, uh, you know, uh, different, you know, business opportunities and things like
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that. He would get, uh, the press to cover. So he thought, well, his combination of business savvy
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and ability to generate press combine that with this idea of answering Santa letters. And it was
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just too irresistible of opportunity for him. So he, he founded this group in 1913 called the Santa
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Claus association, requested the letters from the post master who granted it to him. Uh, and so in 1913,
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this was the first year that the New York city's children's Santa letters would be answered.
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And did he start off like with sincere intentions? Like he thought like I could,
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we could do something good here. Or was he looking at this like, this could actually
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help me out some way. It really, it, from, from what I can tell, it certainly seems like he had
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some good intentions. Obviously if he was somebody just out to make a quick buck, this was not the
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easiest way to do that. Uh, he, and he may took a lot of steps, made, made a real show of
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verifying that these letters, the way he set up the association and kind of what set it apart from
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efforts to answer Santa letters in the past was he would, uh, he, he, he wouldn't actually handle
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any of the gifts or any donations himself. And he made a major, uh, point of that when he first
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founded the group, he had a lot of volunteers that would help out. And all it really did, it was more of
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a clearing house for these letters where the postman would give the Santa Claus association,
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this stack of Santa letters, uh, Gluck and his volunteers would then send these letters out
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to individuals who volunteered to, to receive them or just people who he had, he'd gotten their names
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and maybe prominent members of society, Vanderbilts and others, uh, and would just send them these
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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.
00:36:18.320
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
00:44:59.540
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