Eli and Morris Marks, Page One

"That I should receive the National Medal of Science from the President at the White House, just a few blocks from where this picture was taken, is amazing and says something important about our country." - Professor Tobin Marks, son of Eli Marks

Lewis Hine and the National Child Labor Committee were concerned about children who worked in what was commonly called the street trades, such as newsboys, messenger boys, and in this case, gum sellers. These children were often on the street late in the evening, and since there were no responsible adults supervising them, they were vulnerable to the presence of unsavory characters, and to the temptations of urban night life.

This was one of the first photos I worked on when I began this project in June 2006. I decided to concentrate on Eli and Morris, who appeared to be brothers. Since I have access to the Washington Post digital archives at my local college library, I was hopeful I could find the obituary for at least one of these boys. I did, for Eli, who passed away in 1984. Listed among his survivors was a Prof. Tobin Marks. So I looked him up and found him listed on the faculty at Northwestern University, near Chicago. His listing even included a photograph of him. According to a brief biography, he grew up in Washington, DC.

I emailed him, explaining about my project, and attached the Library of Congress photo and caption. The next day, I received this reply:

"Thank you for the uncanny photo and impressive detective work. The boy in the center is surely my father, and the rightmost, his brother Morrie. He spoke many times of selling gum and newspapers with his brother on the Washington streets. They could earn 25 cents in an evening. They got pretty good at it. Their favorite ploy was when it rained, my father would stand in the rain with one newspaper and stop passersby and say, 'Sir, if I can sell this last newspaper, I can go home.' The guy would buy a newspaper from him, and then his brother would be waiting under an awning ready to hand my father another newspaper, and he would stop another passerby and do the same thing, etc., etc."

"My paternal grandparents were born near the town of Rypin, northwest of Warsaw, near the old border with East Prussia, in Russian Poland in the late 1860s/early 1870s. My grandfather, David Marks, came to New York about 1892, then brought his wife to Brooklyn. He became prosperous enough to own a wrecking business, but he was killed in a wrecking accident about 1905, and is buried in New York."

"His wife, Rachel Brown Marks, then moved with her seven children to Washington because she had relatives there. It was obviously a very hard life for her (she spoke little English), and all of the children had to find some employment to bring in money while going to school. The wages cited in the photo seem typical. One of my father's older sisters worked at the Hecht Company department store as a kid, wrapping packages. She put in 10 hours on a Saturday, got 50 cents for it, and was charged 25 cents for her uniform and locker."

"My father was the next-to-youngest, born in 1904. He completed high school (McKinley Technical), then worked in the retail meat business, and then in construction and real estate in the Washington area. His brother Morris worked his way through law school and was successful in Washington-area real estate and construction. With the exception of the older brother who worked to support the family and never finished high school, all of the children completed high school. All married, raised families, and the great majority of that generation and many who followed remained in the Washington area. Eli's youngest sister, Dora, is still alive at age 100."

We kept up a running email conversation about it for several months, and then I interviewed him. Later he provided me with an amazing family history commentary written by Charlotte Appella, daughter of Eli's youngest sister Dora. See excerpts from that commentary on the next page, which is then followed by my interview with Tobin Marks.