208. Today in 1920s Turkey: 14 December 1927 (Little Hilmi: Both Earning and Learning)
English:
Both Learning and Earning:
This teeny tiny (lad) you see in the picture is the child of a poor but honest family in the town of Mustafakemalpaşa. In the daytime he goes to his school to learn, whereas in the evenings he sells the Karagözs that are distributed by our dealer and earns money. You can be sure that the futures of these hard-working children will be brighter than the children of the wealthy. Because the child of a wealthy person trusts their father and never embraces anything completely. Whereas the wear and tear of life cooks these kinds (of kids) who are left without protection from an early age. Jews, Greeks, and even the English raise their children like this even if they are rich.
Caption: Little Hilmi
Türkçe:
Hem Okuyor, Hem Kazanıyor:
Resmini gördüğünüz şu mini mini Mustafakemalpaşa kazasında fakir ve namuslu bir ailenin evladıdır. Gündüzleri mektebine gidip okuyor, akşamları da ora bayiimizin dağıttı Karagöz’leri satıp para kazanıyor. Emin olun ki böyle çalışkan çocukların istikbali zengin evlatlarından daha parlaktır. Çünkü zengin çocuğu babasına güvenir, adam akıllı bir işe sarılmaz. Halbuki böyle küçükten himayesiz kalanlar hayatta uğraşa didişe yırtılır, pişer. Yahudiler, Rumlar hatta İngilizler zengin olsalar da çocuklarını böyle yetiştirirler.
Altyazı: Küçük Hilmi
Comments
As a self-proclaimed “people’s gazette” (halk gazetesi) Karagöz prides itself on promoting working-class values and Turkish nationalist ideologies. Although the paper’s mascot and namesake, Karagöz came to represent these values by the mid-1920s, he used to be known for his biting critiques and subversive satire as a beloved shadow theater character that predated this periodical by several hundred years. In this way, as a newspaper, Karagöz gradually “sold out” his confrontational and interrogative roots of his original rebellious character.
The short blurb and photograph at hand focus on a young paperboy, Little Hilmi, whom the paper is celebrating for his hard work. This is a common occurrence for the Karagöz paper, which often featured pictures of their young “distributers” or müvezzi, sometimes lauding their exceptional sales rates and always underscoring their admirable work ethic. Here, the paperboy is presented as a shining example of the selfless dedication to earning money as well as attending school and studying while glossing over the fact that he has such immense responsibilities at such a young age. It is apparent from this text (and many like it, see other examples below) that any moral objections to child labor are omitted in favor of enticing others to do the same.
During the earliest years of the Turkish Republic Karagöz regularly included this genre of content meant to celebrate or embellish the pursuit of money, to encourage readers to become (more) productive members of society through tireless work; although the lack of jobs or slow industrial growth remained the silent hinderance to such lofty goals better set on paper than achieved in reality. The level of gaslighting or social engineering aimed at normalizing or mobilizing labor through the promise of material security can be rather high in these kinds of blurbs, which on the surface seem harmless until held up to focused scrutiny. Indeed, the teleological logic of Karagöz explicitly describes children like Little Hilmi as being at an advantage for having no financial security at a young age, reframing this critical and devastating shortcoming as a positive force in making them stronger earners in the long run… as life’s difficulties have “cooked” these children.
But clearly becoming “cooked” or “well-done” at a young age is not proof enough of Karagöz’s wildly tone-deaf assertion of the benefits of child labor. To this end, Karagöz has one last persuasive trick up his sleeve. Accordingly, the final line of the text claims that child labor is not the exclusive burden of the financially vulnerable classes but something that wealthy non-Turks practice in their lives as well! As such, Karagöz strips any inherent prejudice toward the poverty and painful necessity that drives children to have to work to earn money by misrepresenting or rebranding the practice as one that even the upper classes — who don’t need money — engage in.
For further reading, see these other posts from 1920s Turkey on paperboys:
49. Paperboys and Supply & Demand
200. Successful Paperboys from Adana and İzmir
