Every Dime Helps

 

This early 1950's ad from the height of the polio crisis shows how even local businesses were effectively inserting themselves in humanitarian causes.  By 1955, the vaccine would be available to an eager public.   Following a mass immunization campaign promoted by the March of Dimes, the annual number of polio cases in the US fell from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 by 1957.  By 1961 only 161 cases were recorded in the United States.  Remarkably, all those dimes given over the years in countless ways contributed to the research that made it all possible.