A London health officer has testified as follows: "There is a very large employment of boy labour now, boys employed as messengers and errand boys, which teaches them nothing useful for their future life; and when they have outgrown the age at which they can be employed in this way, the risk of drifting into the ranks of the unskilled labourer is a very large one."[77]
"The government post office telegraph messengers are not employed unless they have passed the seventh standard at school and each candidate has to provide a satisfactory certificate of health from his own medical attendant. A boy of fourteen must also be over four feet eight inches in height. The minimum starting wage in London is seven shillings a week, rising by a shilling a week annually to eleven shillings. On reaching the age of sixteen the boy has to pass a further examination in order to qualify for retention. The various private telegraph companies offer much the same terms, though in some cases they are able to get boys slightly cheaper, as the qualifying standard is not such a high one. It is only during the rare periods when the supply of boy labour is more plentiful than usual that the private telegraph companies will refuse a boy on account of his size. The varied nature of the work they are called upon to perform is an undoubted attraction in the eyes of many.... That it is bad for them morally is less open to doubt. Even when they are more actively employed the most that they can hope to learn is a very small amount of discipline. A more serious point is the future of the boys when they cease to be messengers."[78]
"It is well to point out that the commonest of these occupations, that of errand boy or messenger boy, is seldom a desirable one, quite apart from the fact that it generally leads nowhere. It lacks almost necessarily what the boy most needs—the compulsory training of the habit of disciplined effort."[79]
As Mrs. Florence Kelley says, "The test of the work, however, should be not whether boys can do it, but what it does to boys."[80]
[CHAPTER VI]
EFFECTS OF STREET WORK UPON CHILDREN
All the evil effects of street work upon children observed by students of the problem have been here divided into three groups, under the headings of physical, moral, and material deterioration. It must be understood that this is a summary of such effects and that while the influences of the street are unquestionably bad, any one child exposed to them is not likely to suffer to the full extent suggested below. However, deterioration in one form or another is invariably noted in children who have been engaged in street work for any length of time, and this is sufficient proof of the undesirability of such employment for our boys and girls.
| Material Deterioration | { | Form distaste for regular employment. |
| Small chance of acquiring a trade. | ||
| Drift into large class of casual workers. | ||
| Physical Deterioration | { | Night work. |
| Excessive fatigue. | ||
| Exposure to bad weather. | ||
| Irregularity of sleep and meals. | ||
| Use of stimulants—cigarettes, coffee, liquor. | ||
| Disease through contact with vices. | ||
| Moral Deterioration | { | Encouragement to truancy. |
| Independence and defiance of parental control. | ||
| Weakness cultivated by formation of bad habits. | ||
| Form liking for petty excitements of street. | ||
| Opportunities to become delinquent. | ||
| Large percentage of recruits to criminal population. |
These are the insidious influences permeating street work and rampant in all our cities. They are minimized and even denied by certain ignorant or interested parties who base their assertions upon the fact that prominent men of to-day were once newsboys or bootblacks, and therefore jump to the conclusion that their success is due to the training received in this way when young. The truth is more likely to be that such individuals have succeeded, not because of this early training, but in spite of it. Boys of exceptionally strong character will force themselves out of such an environment unscathed, but the great majority of children have not sufficient mental and moral stamina to withstand these influences. The minority will take care of itself under any circumstances,—it is with the weaker majority that we must deal. The problem is an urgent one, but generally ignored, for, as Myron E. Adams says, the public sees the street worker at his best and neglects him at his worst.
The charge that in street work a child has small chance of acquiring a suitable trade is one of the worst counts in the indictment. Street work leads to nothing else; the various occupations are so many industrial pitfalls, and the children who get into them must sooner or later struggle out and begin over again at some other line of work, if they would succeed.
"These children (street traders) furnish a very large proportion of recruits to the criminal population. Those who do not graduate into crime form a liking for the petty excitements of the street and a distaste for regular employment. They lack skill and perseverance, shun the monotony of a permanent job, and as they grow older either follow itinerant and questionable trades or become ill-paid and inefficient casual laborers. Therefore these young people are a source of waste to society rather than of profit."[81]