THE CHARITY STAMP

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 258, 28 September 1935, Page 12

THE CHARITY STAMP

STORY OF ITS ORIGIN. The following account of the origin of Christmas labels was supplied by the secretary of the Post and Telegraph Department to the New Zealand Stamp Collector in 1929. Twenty-six years ago a young mail clerk in a small post office in Denmark was working far into the night on Christmas Eve distributing holiday greeting cards and letters. ITe saw that as a rule they would go to comfortable homes, housing happy, vigorous families. But he,knew,too, that where kind Christmas wishes and good Christmas deeds were most needed, there likely would not come even a brief word of greeting. An inspiration seized him. Why not spend this money to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate? Perhaps by a tax on greeting cards this could be accomplished. His fertile imagination soon pictured a device to encourage the practice and put a voluntary tax on it too —and thus in Denmark was born the idea of the Christmas Seal on 1903. Now let us permit this erstwhile postal clerk, the father of the seal, Einar Holboell, to tell the stor" of the evolution of his dream into reality.

“The people of Denmark regard Christmas as the greatest holiday of the year," stated Mr Holboell. who is now postmaster at Charlottenbund, on a recent visit to New York. “Everybody observes it and all hearts and hands are open at this season. . “I saw at once that the Christmas stamp ought to be sold at post offices and should cost only a trifle, so that everyone could afford to buy it. The well-to-do, who send many letters, would spend more money, but the poor could have the pleasure of helping too. “A committee of men of distinction was formed and through their influence, I obtained the permission of the Ministry to sell the stamps at post offices for the benefit of a fund to erect a hospital for tuberculous children. So a year after the idea came to me, the first tuberculosis Christmas stamps 1 were sold in 1904. “The return far exceeded our expectations, totalling 70,000 Danish crowns or about 10.000 dollars. 5 ear bv year the income has increased. Last year it was 217,000 crowns and during the twenty years they have been sold, a total sum of 2,700,000 crowns has been realised. “Our committee lias erected a hospital accommodating 165 tuberculous children, and since it was opened, a total of 3000 little girls and boys have gone to the institution at Holding Fjord and been healed. We now have three homes for weak and undernourished children, and besides have contributed generously to societies which aim to help sick and poor children in various ways.” . , The first sale in the United States was in 1907, when Miss Emily P. Bissell, of Wilmington, Delaware, adopted the idea to raise funds to maintain a tuberculosis shack of eight beds on the banks of the Brandywine, securing 3000 dollars. She in turn had read a magazine article by the great philanthropist, Jacob A. Riis, describing the Danish tuberculosis stamp he had recsived on the, back of a letter from the city of his birth—Copenhagen. Miss Bissell next aspired to extend the work by a national campaign, and interested the American Red Cross. The first national Christmas Seal sale occurred in 1908, and brought m 135,000 dollars. Each year since .the sum lias increased just as it has in Den-

mark. , . ~ Einar Holboell, the inventor of the Christmas Seal, could not possibly have foreseen its magic health value todav, not only in raising funds to continue the work, but in carrying to millions of people every holiday season the stimulus to guard against disease. These tiny pieces of paper, multiplied a billion fold, have had an inestimable part in teaching the public that tuberculosis can be prevented—can be cured. The double-barred cross which one bears is the emblem, of the antituberculosis work throughout the world. , , • i . The Christmas Seal lias carried to the furthermost parts of America the news that people need not die from tuberculosis. During the period the seal has been in existence, the death rate in the U.S.A. from the disease has fallen from 198 per hundred thousand of population to 95, a saving of over 100,000 lives this year. Who would have guessed that Mr Holboell s little penny Christmas Seal could grow to be so big? c , , [Note.—These are Christmas Seals and have no postal value The full price paid goes to the health fund, it lias been suggested by “Philatelist that tire local committed* could produce n seal, in addition to boosting the sale of the health stamp, and thus provide themselves with a happy method of increasing the fund for district allocation, and at the same time enable Palmerston Forth to take the Fad for the Dominion in initiating this novel idea for helping a worthy cause.]