In the first week of January 1913, the same odd words started showing up all over Honolulu: “201 January 10.” They were on cards in store windows, on signs at almost every street corner, and in big type in the newspaper ads. Nobody said what they meant. On Monday, January 6, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin gave up and put it plainly: “All Honolulu is mystified!”
“201 January 10,” the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 6, 1913, page 2. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
Guesses on the street car
The paper listened in on a street car that morning. One man figured some cab driver with a new number was going into business. Another said it had to be “the pure food number of a new brand of kippered herring.” Canned goods in those days carried a serial number under the new pure food law, so it wasn’t a crazy guess. A third man said 201 was the number of Republicans about to lose their government jobs, since a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, had just won the White House.
Even the movies didn’t help. People who went to the picture shows on Saturday night to get away from it saw the number on the big screen at the end of every reel.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 6, 1913, page 2. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
Ten cents at the pictures
That Saturday, the Star-Bulletin carried an ad for the Empire Theatre. It promised moving pictures, all features, with a matinee every day for 10 and 15 cents. The paper didn’t say which houses ran the 201 slide, but a dime bought a seat at an afternoon show and a few reels of film.
An Empire Theatre advertisement, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 4, 1913, page 5. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
A pup and a fly
The man behind it was Charles R. Frazier, the publicity manager for the Young Men’s Christian Association. For a week his little pup, with his eye on a fly, had been running in the newspapers’ ads. On the morning of January 9 the pup turned up again, but this time he was staring at the slogan about 201 new members on January 10. The Star-Bulletin joked that now the secret was out, “the sale of headache powders has diminished alarmingly.”
The YMCA had a new building at Hotel and Alakea streets and room for more than 200 new members. The plan was to sign up 201 of them in a single day.
A YMCA advertisement, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 9, 1913, page 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
A thermometer ten feet high
They ran it like a battle. Volunteers were split into the Reds and the Blues, under Captains George Angus and Emil Berndt. Headquarters was the office of the C. M. Cooke estate on Fort Street below King, with private telephones so the teams could call in every five minutes. A thousand invitations went out to men and boys who looked likely to join, and teams of boys worked the schools, Punahou and McKinley High among them.
Out front stood a thermometer ten feet high. Every new member would push the mercury up one degree. “The boiling point will be at the 201 mark,” the paper said.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 8, 1913, page 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
Two hours
On Friday, January 10, twenty-six teams started at nine in the morning. Crowds gathered in front of the bulletin boards, where a secretary kept posting little red and blue men as the calls came in. The paper said headquarters looked more like an excited stock exchange than an office.
A little before eleven, the big thermometer “gave a snort of disgust and broke.” The two hundredth member was Stanley Mott-Smith. Everybody gave three cheers, and Secretary Cross set off bunches of firecrackers in the street. The job had taken two hours.
Then the chairman, Ed Towse, had another idea. “I believe that the association can accommodate three hundred and one members instead of two hundred and one,” he said. The teams were told to keep going.
“Y. M. C. A. Teams Raise the Figure,” the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 10, 1913, page 1. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
By noon they had passed 300. At half past one the treasurer, F. C. Atherton, was seen heading for the bank with two bundles of checks and a bag holding “something that jingled.” The Reds caught the Blues in the afternoon and finished ahead.
Five hundred and one
When the campaign closed at five o’clock, the total was “five hundred and one, three hundred more than the association expected.”
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 11, 1913, page 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
Four days later the YMCA’s directors voted all 501 in. That brought the Honolulu association to 1,600 men and boys. The Star-Bulletin reported that among cities of 55,000 people or fewer, only Lincoln, Nebraska, and Hamilton, Ohio, had bigger ones.
Sources
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Honolulu, Hawaii), January 4, 1913, page 5 (Empire Theatre advertisement).
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 6, 1913, page 2 (“201 January 10”).
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 8, 1913, page 8 (“Reds and Blues to Battle for Y.M.C.A. Members”).
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 9, 1913, page 7 (the fly pup) and page 8 (YMCA advertisement).
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 10, 1913, page 1 (“Y. M. C. A. Teams Raise the Figure”) and page 3 (continued).
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 11, 1913, page 8 (the final count).
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 15, 1913, page 3 (the directors’ meeting).
- All newspaper images: Library of Congress, Chronicling America. No known copyright restrictions.
- Cover: “[Stores on Fort Street, Honolulu, Hawaii],” between 1900 and 1915, George Grantham Bain Collection (cropped). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, 91796057. No known restrictions on publication.
