The large percentage of former newsboys among the inmates of boys' reformatories recently induced an active social worker to send an inquiry to the superintendents of such institutions and to juvenile court judges in different parts of the country relative to the effect of newspaper selling on schoolboys. The statements received in reply are set forth in a leaflet which was published in 1910.[82]
These officials are practically unanimous in condemning street trading by boys, declaring that newsboys are generally stupid and almost always morally defiled; that the pittance they earn is bought at great sacrifice; that the spending of their earnings without supervision is the worst thing that can befall them; that the life leads to gambling, dishonesty and spendthrift habits; that it is a dead-end occupation leading to nothing; that it abounds in evil temptations; that the boys are comparatively idle and see and hear the worst that is to be seen and heard on the street; that the work subjects boys to bad influences before they are strong enough to resist them; that delinquency results from their enforced association with all classes of boys; and concluding that every possible protection should be thrown about the young boy. Some of these officers gave due consideration to the advantages of street trading, and one made the naïve statement that newspaper selling was not a bad business for a boy who could withstand its temptations.
Although the law of New York State provides a modicum of regulation for street trading, nevertheless it has not been effective because of extremely indifferent enforcement. Like almost all other street-trading laws in the United States, it places the age limit at the ridiculous age of ten years. A movement was started recently in Buffalo to remedy the situation, and the following statement was published:—
"During the past year we have sought to discover, not by theorizing, but by uncovering the facts, what is the effect of street work on the boy. School records of 230 Buffalo newsboys were secured. Eighteen per cent were reported as truants; 23 per cent stood poor or very poor in attendance and deportment. Twenty-eight per cent stood poor or very poor in scholarship, while only 15 per cent of the other children in the same schools failed in their work. An investigation at the truant school showed that 46.6 per cent of the boys there had been engaged in the street trades. On the basis of these facts and studies made in connection with the schools, juvenile courts and reformatories elsewhere, we hope to secure legislation raising the age below which boys may not engage in the street trades to twelve years, and making it illegal for boys under fourteen to sell after 8 P.M. We are also striving to secure better enforcement of this law in Buffalo and other cities."[83]
This folder also states that circular letters were sent to all Buffalo school principals asking about the effect on scholarship of the early morning delivery of newspapers by their pupils, and also to physicians inquiring about the effect of such work on physical development. The hours for such newspaper delivery were from 4.30 A.M. to 7 A.M. Eight principals and six physicians denounced such work to every one who favored it. Referring to the occupational history of reformatory inmates, a recent report for New York City says: "The parental school (school for truants) statistics show that 80 out of its 230 inmates were newsboys, while 60 per cent of the entire number have been street traders. The Catholic Protectorate, full of Italians (noted as street traders), gives us a record of 469 or 80 per cent out of their 590 boys interviewed, who have followed the street profession, and 295 or 50 per cent had been newsboys selling over three months. The New York Juvenile Asylum gives us 31 per cent of its inmates as newsboys and 60 per cent as street traders. The House of Refuge repeats the same story: 63 per cent of those committed to that institution had been street traders, of whom 32 per cent were newsboys. If 63 per cent of the House of Refuge inmates have been street traders, and if the majority of such have begun their so-called criminal careers, which end invariably in the state penitentiary, why do we permit children to trade on our streets?"[84]
Another American writer says: "Whatever the cause, the effect on the newsboy is always the same. He lives on the streets at night in an atmosphere of crime and criminals, and he takes in vice and evil with the air he breathes. If he grows into manhood and escapes the tuberculosis which seizes so many of these boys of the street, the things that he has learned as a professional newsboy lead in one direction,—toward crime and things criminal. The professional newsboy is the embryo criminal."[85]
The dangers to the morals of children are particularly emphasized by those who have given this subject any attention. Mr. John Spargo says: "Nor is it only in factories that these grosser forms of immorality flourish. They are even more prevalent among the children of the street trades,—newsboys, bootblacks, messengers and the like. The proportion of newsboys who suffer from venereal diseases is alarmingly great. The superintendent of the John Worthy School of Chicago, Mr. Sloan, asserts that 'one third of all the newsboys who come to the John Worthy School have venereal diseases and that 10 per cent of the remaining newsboys at present in the Bridewell are, according to the physician's diagnosis, suffering from similar diseases.' The newsboys who come to the school are, according to Mr. Sloan, on an average of one third below the ordinary standard of physical development, a condition which will be readily understood by those who know the ways of the newsboys of our great cities—their irregular habits, scant feeding, sexual excesses, secret vices, sleeping in hallways, basements, stables and quiet corners. With such a low physical standard the ravages of venereal diseases are tremendously increased."[86]
The economic aspect of this work is magnified by most people beyond its true proportion; the earnings of street-working children are not needed by their families in most cases, and even in those instances where their poverty demands such relief it is wrong to purchase it at the price paid in evil training and bad effects of every kind. Commenting on this point the chief truant officer for Indianapolis says: "A large number of truants are recruited from that large unrestricted class whose members are to be found competing with one another on our street corners from early until late. The pennies which many of them earn are a material aid in replenishing the depleted resources of some of our homes. Yet, it is a question whether such child laborers will not in the future bequeath to society an abundant reward of human wreckage which may be traced to such traffic and its many temptations."[87]
As to the bad judgment of parents in seeking the premature earnings of their children, a Chicago physician says: "The average newsboy, if he works 365 days a year, does not earn over a hundred dollars; if he becomes delinquent it costs the state at least two hundred dollars a year to care for him. When we remember that twelve out of every one hundred boys between ten and sixteen become delinquent, and that over 60 per cent of these boys come from street trades, it does not take long for a business man to figure out that it is rather poor economy to let a ten-year-old boy go into at least this field of labor.... From an economic standpoint the family that sends out a ten-year-old boy to sell papers loses a great deal more in actual money from the boy's lack of future earning capacity than the boy can possibly earn by his youthful efforts. In other words, this sort of labor from an economic standpoint is an absurdity."[88]
In its splendid report on street trading, the British departmental committee of 1910 stated: "We learnt that much of this money, so readily made, is spent with equal dispatch. The children spend it on sweets and cigarettes, and in attending music halls, and in very many cases only a portion, if any, of the daily earnings is taken home.... In many towns the traders are drawn from the poorest of homes, but numerous witnesses have emphatically stated that their experience leads them to think that cases where real benefits accrue to the home are rare."[89]