I picked this 1910 issue of The Railroad Echo magazine out of a folder because I’m always interested in anything about the ship channel, which has been from its creation the beating heart of the Houston economy. I especially enjoyed the photo caption: “Houston’s pleasure loving people own over two hundred pleasure boats.” Try this today and I don’t expect you’d last too long:
Surprises abound everywhere in the archives and the most interesting thing in this magazine proved to be on the inside: an enthusiastic endorsement of the fledgling home for Houston’s newsboys by the new Rice President Edgar Odell Lovett. I was really not expecting this. During the years before the Institute opened (and afterwards too) Lovett tirelessly talked all over the state, apparently to any group that wanted to hear him from the Texas Lumberman’s Association to the Houston Woman’s Club but I can’t recall ever seeing anything quite like this:
The Emma R. Newsboys’ Home was established at 1600 Washington Street by the publisher of the Railroad Echo to provide shelter and training for homeless boys. Despite what seems to have been good support from Houston’s philanthropic families it shuttered sometime in 1919.
Bonus:
