Child Labor in City Streets

by Edward Nicholas Clopper

Another eighteen-year-old messenger boy, who has been in the service four years and is afflicted with an exceptionally bad venereal infection, said among other things, "There are lots of messengers who are kept by women. The boys work only for appearances. I knew two messengers who worked with me who were kept by two prostitutes for a year, then they gave up the job at the same time and took the prostitutes to Chicago, where the women worked for them. One of these boys is only about nineteen years old now. You don't learn anything in the messenger business except to knock down (overcharge a patron) and to go around with prostitutes and gamblers. It kills a fellow. I know, because I went down the line, and I'm coming out the wrong end." When asked why he didn't quit the job, he replied: "You don't suppose I want to work for $3 or $4 a week? I'm used to making pretty good money and having a good time." He said that he made from $40 to $75 a month according to the tips he received, and spent it as fast as he got it. Most of it went in gambling.

A fourteen-year-old messenger boy in another city who works from 6 P.M. to 7 A.M., in speaking of the use of whisky in houses of prostitution, said: "We get it for them; the saloons know the messengers, and we stand in with them; the more a house sends for whisky the better they stand in with the saloon keeper. If the proprietress gets locked up, she will always be bailed out by the saloon keeper, but if she don't buy enough stuff from him, he will refuse to do it. When a proprietress is put in jail, the cops ring up for a messenger from the station house, and they send me to the cell where the woman is, and she always gives me a note to take to the saloon keeper and he goes down and gets her out." This boy said his manager knew the kind of places he visited, but was not in the office all night. During the late hours of the night the telegraph operator and the clerk were left in charge, and the boy remarked that they had told him to try to get a woman into the office if he found one on the street, and related instances in which this had been done. He was paid a salary of $22 a month.

Another fourteen-year-old messenger in this town is paid $17 a month salary and makes $10 or $12 a month in tips.

A thirteen-year-old messenger in another city, after having related some of his experiences in the segregated district, said: "I tell you, it's mighty dirty work for a boy to be in, but I suppose a fellow has to learn these things somehow, and I may as well learn them in the messenger service as in any other way. I smoke perique so I can sleep in the daytime."

A fourteen-year-old messenger in the same city, employed from noon to midnight, had been in the service only one week when interviewed by the agent; among other things he said: "All the last week I have been doing nothing but go to the red light district. I didn't know what this messenger business was until I got into it, and I am going to quit just as soon as I see a little more of that kind of thing."

In a certain Indiana city there was found a "kid line" messenger service, so called because the proprietor was a mere boy who was formerly in the service of another messenger company. He had two day boys, but at night answered the calls himself. He was fourteen years old and told the agent that he had lived in the "red light" district more than at his home on account of the number of calls he had to answer there, but of course this was exaggeration intended to convey the fact that most of his business was with that region. When he entered into business for himself, he went to all the prostitutes in the "red light" district and told them that he was commencing on his own account and that he wanted them to be his customers. "I get a good deal of their business. I get it because I know how to treat them. I can get them beer on Sunday and can sneak it into their houses. I know all the women and can introduce you to any of them, and can get you any amount of beer or whisky that you want. When I was working for the—— messenger company there was another boy on the force who tried to take all the good calls; he divided his tips with the manager, so he was sent to all the houses where good tips were given. There was one prostitute who liked me pretty well and gave me ten or fifteen cents for myself every time I went to her house. I started to answer a call there one night, and the other boy ran after me. We got to the place at the same time and had a fight in the hall; the men and women in the place gathered around us and offered to give us two dollars each if we would scrap for them, so we started right in, and before I was through with him he had two black eyes and his face was bleeding, then he pulled out a knife, but they took it away from him, and the next day I was fired. There is a young girl in one of the houses who is a chambermaid and wants me to live with her, and maybe I will but I'm afraid my mother will get wise."

The fifteen-year-old messenger of another office showed the agent the list of about one hundred calls sent in the previous night, nearly every one of which came from the "red light" district.

After weighing such evidence we can readily comprehend the justice of the opinion rendered by Dr. Charles P. Neill in the following words: "The newsboys' service is demoralizing, but the messenger service is debauching.... And, saddest of all, this service appeals strongly to the children. The prurient curiosity of the developing boy would itself incline him to like these calls to houses of prostitution, but they quickly learn also that women who live in these sections are more generous with their earnings in the way of tips than are the people in the more respectable sections of the city.... It can be said that all the boys who go into the messenger service do not go to the bad, but it can be said with equal truth that it ruins children by the dozens, and that if any boy comes out of this service without having suffered moral shipwreck he can thank the mercy of God for it, and not the protecting arm of the community that stands idly by and makes no attempt to save him from temptation."[73]

In 1908 Congress passed a child labor law for the District of Columbia which provided, among other restrictions, that no messenger boy under sixteen years should be employed between 7 P.M. and 6 A.M.,—sixteen years, the beginning of the period of adolescence, when boys have the greatest need of protection from the vices running riot in cities!

The Chicago Vice Commission devotes several pages of its report to a recital of the experiences of messenger boys in connection with their work in the segregated districts. One of the telegraph companies maintains a branch office close to one of these districts, where eight boys from fifteen to eighteen years of age are employed as messengers. These boys are called upon to work at all hours of the day and night, their tasks being the same as those of the messengers in other cities. A number of specific instances of the wretched environment into which these boys are thrown, are given. One of them who works from midnight until 10 A.M. was sent by a prostitute to a drug store for a package of cocaine hydrochloride, for which he paid $5.78, receiving $1 from the prostitute as a tip for the service. Another messenger was sent out on a similar errand by another prostitute two weeks later and purchased for her a hypodermic needle for a syringe; he was charged $2 for this needle, the cost to the druggist being 19 cents. A few days later a boy was called by another prostitute who confided to him that she had discontinued the use of messenger boys for purchasing "dope" because she found that they talked too much and could not be trusted, adding that she now had a newsboy, who sold papers at a near-by corner, buy the cocaine for her. A woman who lives in an apartment house and is the owner and proprietor of houses of prostitution in the restricted district, is in the habit of sending in an order for cocaine to a druggist, who calls a messenger boy to deliver it to her residence. This messenger opened one of the packages and, suspecting that it was cocaine, sniffed a little of it himself. He confessed that he had done this quite often since, and it appeared that he had derived a good deal of pleasure from it. The same messenger is sent about three times monthly by a certain man to a Chinaman, from whom he buys a package of opium for $4. On returning from one of these trips he watched the man open the package, take a quantity of the stuff, roll it and heat it, but at this point the messenger was told to leave the room. Another messenger boy has been employed at this particular branch office for more than three years, although he is now only seventeen years old; his earnings average about $10 per week, including tips. He is of small stature, not mentally bright and at present is afflicted with syphilis of three months' duration. Another messenger is a boy of foreign parentage, only fifteen years of age, who said he had recently been called quite often to a certain house of prostitution where an inmate gave him a box with a note to a druggist; the contents cost $1.75, but upon returning to the woman he would declare that he had paid $2.50, thus obtaining 75 cents on false pretenses, and in addition a tip of half a dollar. On one of his trips for this prostitute he had opened the note and found that it was a requisition for cocaine; on returning he placed some of the contents upon his tongue, but did not like the sensation and never repeated it. He is in the habit of picking up discarded cigarettes and smoking them. In spite of his age, he knows the name of nearly every prostitute in this district and can recognize these women at sight; he stated that whenever he entered a house of prostitution they would nearly always kiss him, and at different times he had had sores on his lips.