Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [19]
When Grozier learned that letters addressed to Santa Claus were dumped in the dead-letter office, he began thinking about the unmet needs of the city’s poor children. He created the Post Santa Claus Fund to raise and distribute money and toys to Boston’s needy during the holidays. Grozier measured the fund’s success less by the number of newspapers it sold than by the number of toys it handed out. His soft spot for children showed just as clearly when the Post received letters about lost pets. “I see that this little girl has lost her dog,” he told a young editor one day. The editor knew what was coming next: “Do you think one of our men could find it for her?” A reporter was quickly dispatched.
The most enduring promotion was Grozier’s 1909 brainstorm to honor the oldest man in every town in the Post’s circulation area. He imported hundreds of the finest ebony canes from Africa and fitted them with polished fourteen-karat-gold heads, on which was inscribed: “Presented by The Boston Post to the oldest citizen of,” followed by the name of the resident’s town. Below that, to make clear that the cane should pass to the next oldest man upon the holder’s death, were the words “To be transmitted.” Grozier wrote to selectmen throughout much of New England asking them to locate the deserving recipients and present the canes, then inform the Post of the selection, ideally with a photo. Eventually, 431 canes were handed out, often with great pomp and ceremony followed by fawning stories in the Post. Holders of the canes variously attributed their longevity to abstinence from, or daily devotion to, alcohol and tobacco. The death of a Post cane holder was cause for another story, as was the token’s passage to the town’s next oldest man. To Grozier, the appeal was obvious: “In many small towns and villages the general store was a place where many men gathered to talk and swap stories. One of the most conspicuous figures in the group was the ‘oldest man.’ Age is a subject of universal interest, no matter whether it is among city folks or country folks. A man who has succeeded in cheating death longer than most of us manage to do it is always an interesting figure.”
Edwin Grozier knew he needed more than fun and games to win readers. He loved a good murder case. Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother turned up dead less than a year after he bought the Post, and the early years of the new century provided an endless stream of other celebrated killings. Circulation always rose when murders involved the rich, the pious, an attractive woman, or a spurned lover. A case involving a minister with two beautiful young fiancées, one of whom turned up dead from poison in what looked like suicide, kept Grozier in gravy for weeks. A Post reporter cracked the case when he tracked down the minister’s purchase of cyanide. A close second was when a diver hired by Grozier found the severed head of a beautiful showgirl at the bottom of Boston Harbor. “Missing Head Found by the Post’s Diver,” the headline blared.
When not covering crime, the paper kept its promise to be a friend to the little guy. Grozier supported the labor movement and shorter work weeks, and fought for lower gas and telephone rates. The paper leaned to the Democratic Party, and Grozier worked to stay in touch with the needs of the common man. It was an approach he had pioneered in New York: “I used to go over among the swarming millions of the East and the West sides of the city; because it was there that we must build up our circulation if it was to be a large one; there, among the masses, not in the narrow strip of millionaires along Fifth Avenue.” In Boston, Grozier was a careful reader of the census, and he recognized that Boston’s surging Irish population would support the Irish nationalist movement. The Post was the first prominent American paper to show solidarity with Sinn Fein, and Grozier personally made large contributions to the nationalist cause.
At a time when “No Irish Need Apply” remained the practice in certain Brahmin quarters, Grozier supported