the remainder. Jones agreed, and the resulting Chronicle Building was one of the finest in the South." Under Foster, the paper's circulation grew from about 7,000 in 1901 to 75,000 on weekdays and 85,000 on Sundays by 1926. Foster continued to write columns under the pen name Mefo, and drew much attention in the 1920s for his opposition to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). He sold the rest of his interest to Jesse H. Jones on June 26, 1926, and promptly retired. Goodfellows In 1911, city editor George Kepple started Goodfellows. On Christmas Eve 1911, Kepple passed a hat among the Chronicles reporters to collect money to buy toys for a shoe-shine boy. Goodfellows continues today through donations made by the newspaper and its readers. It has grown into a citywide program that provides needy children between the ages of two and ten with toys during the winter holidays. In 2003, Goodfellows distributed almost 250,000 toys to more than 100,000 needy children in the Greater Houston area. 1926–1956: Jesse H. Jones era In 1926, Jesse H. Jones became the sole owner of the paper. He had approached Foster about selling, and Foster had answered, "What will you give me?" Jones described the buyout of Foster as follows: In 1937, Jesse H. Jones transferred ownership of the paper to the newly established Houston Endowment Inc. Jones retained the title of publisher until his death in 1956. According to the Handbook of Texas online, the Chronicle generally represented very conservative political views during the 1950s: ... the Chronicle generally represented the very conservative political interests of the Houston business establishment. As such, it eschewed controversial political topics, such as integration or the impacts of rapid economic growth on life in the city. It did not perform investigative journalism. This resulted in a stodgy newspaper that failed to capture the interests of newcomers to the city. By 1959, circulation of the rival Houston Post had pulled ahead of the Chronicle. Jones, a lifelong Democrat who organized the Democratic National Convention to be in Houston in 1928, and who spent long years in public service first under the Wilson administration, helping to found the Red Cross during World War I, and later famously under the Roosevelt administration, described the paper's mission in these terms: I regard the publication of a newspaper as a distinct public trust, and one not to be treated lightly or