August 31: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1913, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “A nationwide movement to reduce the cost of living by making oysters a staple article of diet has been started by the Oyster Growers and Dealers Association of North America. This organization, which includes in its membership the largest growers, packers and distributors of oysters in the United States and Canada, has set the week of October 20 as a national ‘Oyster Week,’ during which oysters and oyster dishes will be featured all over the land to acquaint the general public with the value of this bivalve as a meat substitute. At the recent convention of oyster men in New York, Dr. Carl L. Alsberg, head of the United States Bureau of Chemistry, gave the oyster a clean bill of health, saying that people ran less danger of ‘contracting typhoid fever from oysters than they do from drinking raw milk or the water supplied in many communities.’”
***
ON THIS DAY IN 1924, Eagle columnist Frederick Boyd Stevenson wrote, “Said a business man who employs several hundred young men and young women, to me the other day: ‘The first question we ask the young people seeking employment here is: What newspaper do you read? On that answer hinges their chances of success.’ In other words, the newspaper of today is the character molder of the coming generation. It can guide the young men and the young women along lines of thought that will make men and women of them, or it can inculcate in them — insidiously and insistently — the germs of wrong thinking that will make of them insincere, inefficient, rattle-brained men and women, if it does not actually make crooks and wantons out of them. A newspaper does not have to be dull, stale, flat and unprofitable. Its business is to print the news. It has to take the news as it comes. If there are scandals, the readers are entitled to know about them. If there are murders or holdups or frauds in finance — they are all a part of the day’s work and play. One must not be a prude. But is it necessary for a newspaper to cater entirely to the sensual — to the sordid — the lowest edge of human thought in order to achieve journalistic success?”
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.