AMERICAN NOTES: A Gift of Jobs

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Pupils at the all-black Holy Angels School on Chicago's South Side realized that handing out their usual holiday food baskets to the poor would not make a dent in local hardship; unemployment in the parish runs to 30%. So the kids sent 800 letters to Chicago businessmen, asking them to put the unemployed to work. They even read some of their letters aloud at Mass one Sunday. Wrote Tiannia Easter, 9, to the Peoples Gas Co.: "There are many people out of work in my neighborhood, but I would like you to hire just one for me." George Charles, a department manager for the gas company, was among the many executives who were moved. "It was a very innovative approach," he says. "Luckily, we had some positions coming open." The company has hired one 24-year-old man as a laborer so far. Some 80 people have got jobs — with the House of Vision, Thor Power Tool Co., F. W. Means & Co. and other firms — as a result of the children's crusade. The effort has had such singular success that offers are still coming in. An A+ to the kids at Holy Angels.