Business Ethic for Boys

George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post from 1899 to 1937, dedicated his magazine to business, businessmen, and business values. As part of an early campaign to increase the Post’s circulation, the Curtis Company extended their interest to the businessmen of the future. The Circulation Bureau devised a plan of recruiting middle-class boys, training them in basic selling techniques, and educating them in business values. These boys delivered the magazines to existing subscribers and solicited new subscribers for Curtis Publishing.

NOTE: The J. C. Leyendecker SANTA card (pictured) was utilized for four consecutive years (1923-1926) during the months of November and December. The card functioned as a business card for the boy-agents…and consistently resulted in increased tips and gifts from subscribers during the holiday months.

Victor Peltz, a boy agent recruited in Seattle, soared to selling stardom between 1902 and 1905. During those years the Post wrote him hundreds of letters, exhorting, praising, sometimes even chastising. Victor’s career (documented in surviving correspondence) fully inscribed the business ethic of the early twentieth century with all its promise and all its contradictions.