Child Labor in City Streets

BY EDWARD N. CLOPPER, Ph.D. SECRETARY OF NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE FOR MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1913 All rights reserved
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
Copyright, 1912, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1912. Reprinted January, 1913.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

This volume is devoted to the discussion of a neglected form of child labor. Just why the newsboy, bootblack and peddler should have been ignored in the general movement for child welfare is hard to understand. Perhaps it is due to the illusion of the near. Street workers have always been far more conspicuous than any other child laborers, and it seems that this very proximity has been their misfortune. If we could have focused our attention upon them as we did upon children in factories, they would have been banished from the streets long ago. But they were too close to us. We could not get a comprehensive view and saw only what we happened to want at the moment—their paltry little stock in trade. Now that we are getting a broader sense of social responsibility, we are beginning to realize how blind and inconsiderate we have been in our treatment of them.
The first five chapters of the book review present conditions and discuss causes, the next two deal with effects, and the final ones are concerned with the remedy. The scope has been made as broad as possible. All forms of street work that engage any considerable number of children have been described at length, and opinions and findings of others have been freely quoted. I have attempted to show the bad results of the policy of laissez-faire as applied to this problem. Simply because these little boys and girls have been ministering to its wants, the public has given them scarcely a passing thought. It has been so convenient to have a newspaper or a shoe brush thrust at one, it has not occurred to us that, for the sake of the children, such work would better be done by other means. Although good examples have been set by European cities, we have not introduced any innovations to clear the streets of working children.