One billion eight hundred million Christ mas Seals went into the mails last week, despatched to penny philanthropists by the 2,084 sub-organizations of the National Tuberculosis Association. The Association does not expect to realize the $18,000,000 which the stamps represent. But it does hope to surpass the $5,300,000 raised last year. The 2,084 local headquarters are utilizing the most insistent names they can enlist for their collection work. In the Manhattan district the name is Thomas William Lament; in Chicago, David Forgan; in St. Louis, John E. Edwards; in Boston, Dr. John B. Hawes II; in Cleve land, Dr. Robert Bishop; in San Francisco, William H. Crocker; in New Orleans, Dr. Chaille Jamison.
The seal—green, red & black—this year has an unusual connotation of personality.
The design represents an old English coach & four. For seal-sale publicity, rich, sporting William Kissam Vanderbilt did a thing he thoroughly enjoys. He dressed as a conventional coachman, mounted his coach Venture and tooled a spanking four-in-hand before newsreel cameras.
This year's is the 25th annual seal in the U. S. In 1904 a Danish postal clerk named Einar Holboell suggested selling seals to finance a children's hospital in Copenhagen. The late Danish immigrant Jacob Riis suggested U. S. adoption of the idea. At Wilmington, Del., Emily Perkins Bissell, Red Cross and social worker, wanted $300 for a tuberculosis shack on the Brandywine. She persuaded the Philadelphia North American to publicize a small seal sale. She realized $3,000. That was in 1907. The National Red Cross snapped up the idea. Until 1919 the Christmas Seals were called Red Cross Seals, bore that organization's bold Grecian red cross and signature. The seal sales, however, hindered Red Cross collec tions for its own purposes. So the 1919 seal also carried the double-barred Lor raine cross, symbol of the National Tuberculosis Association. Since 1920 the seals have made no reference to the Red Cross. That has not eradicated confusion. There are no Red Cross Seals, never were any "White Cross Seals." There are only Christmas Seals.
Emily Perkins Bissell, the lady who first used the seal idea in the U. S., remains active at her social work, begun in 1889. She is now a pleasant, motherly sort of woman in her early sixties, stout, grey-haired. She has a summer home at Paris, Maine, which she calls "Right-of-way" and where she pleases herself by writing semi-religious poetry. Two years ago she published Happiness & Other Verses, giving the royalties to Christmas Seal campaigns. Although her seal work has had national effect, her personal activity has remained localized in & about Wilmington. Her sole decoration : a medal from the local Kiwanis Club.