Child Labor in City Streets

by Edward Nicholas Clopper

The lack of proper training during childhood almost invariably brings about a tragedy in the lives of working people. The premature employment of children at any kind of labor which interferes with their education and their training in work for which they are fitted is most disastrous in its effects and far outweighs in future misery the little income thus secured in childhood. A careful student of the working class declares: "Many bright and capable men and women in this neighborhood [Greenwich Village, New York City] would undoubtedly have been able to occupy high positions in the industrial world if they had not been forced into unskilled work when young."[90]

With reference to the effects of street trading an English writer says: "It is difficult to imagine a life which could be worse for a young boy. Apart from the moral dangers, it is a means of earning a livelihood which perhaps more than any other is subject to the most violent fluctuations. But the uncertainty of the income is a trifling evil by comparison with the certainty of the bad moral effects of street trading on boys and youths. The life of the street trader is a continual gamble, unredeemed by any steady work; it is undisciplined and casual, and exposed to all the temptations of the street at its worst. The great majority of the boys who sell papers drift away into crime or idleness or some form of living by their wits."[91] The same writer also declares: "Few things could have a worse effect than this street trading on those engaged in it. It initiates them into the mysteries of the beggar's whine and breeds in them the craving for an irregular, undisciplined method of life."[92] And the editor of these English studies adds: "It is part of the street-bred child's precocity that he acquires a too early acquaintance with matters which as a child he ought not to know at all. His language and conversation often reveal a familiarity with vice which would be terrible were it not so superficial."[93]

Speaking of immorality in the narrow sense of the word, the same writer says: "We do not believe that immorality of this kind is universal among the boys and girls of the labouring classes, nor do we believe that the town youth is any worse than his brother and sister of the country. Coarseness and impurity are not the distinguishing mark of any one class or any one place. We question whether comparison of sins and self-indulgence would work out at all to the disadvantage of the town labouring class as a whole. It must be remembered that one commonplace factor, the glaring publicity of the street, is all on the side of the town youth's virtue. The street has its safeguards as well as its dangers."[94]

With reference to the blind alley character of street work, another English writer avers: "As in London, the labours of the school children [in Manchester] are in no wise apprenticeship or preparation for their future lives. The grocer's little errand boy will be discharged when he grows bigger and needs higher wages; the chemist's runner is not in training to become a chemist. The three farthings an hour on the one hand, and the physical, moral and intellectual degeneration on the other, are all that the little ones here, as elsewhere, get out of toil from which many a grown man would shrink."[95]

Another English student of labor conditions declares: "Teachers—together with magistrates, police authorities, ministers of religion and social workers—are practically unanimous in condemning street trading as an employment of children of school age. In this occupation children deteriorate rapidly from the physical, mental and moral point of view."[96]

Still another writer says: "One great evil which results from this life of street trading in childhood is the fact that it is fatal to industrial efficiency in after life."[97]

The testimony of Sir Lauder Brunton, M.D., given in 1904, on the occasion of the inquiry into physical deterioration in Great Britain, is to the point, in spite of the fact that the committee directing the inquiry stated that "The impressions gathered from the great majority of the witnesses examined do not support the belief that there is any general progressive deterioration."[98] Sir Lauder Brunton's testimony was as follows: "The causes of deficient physique are very numerous ... it is very likely that in order to eke out the scanty earnings of the father and mother the child is sent, out of school hours, to earn a penny or two, and so it comes to school wearied out in body by having had to work early in the morning, exhausted by not having had food, and then is sent to learn. Well, it cannot learn."[99] Later the same witness testified, "One of the very worst causes [of physical deterioration] is that children in actual attendance at school, work before and after schooltime."[100]

In a special inquiry into the physical effects of work upon 600 boys of school age made in 1905 by Dr. Charles J. Thomas, assistant health officer to the London County Council's education department, it was found that many of the children suffered from nervous strain, heart disease and deformities as a result of prolonged labor. Of the 600 boys, 134 were shop boys, 63 were milk boys, 87 were newsboys and the others were scattered among various employments. It was found that work during the dinner hour and also the long work-day on Saturday were particularly harmful. As to fatigue among the newsboys, of those working 20 hours or less, 60 per cent were affected; of those working between 20 and 30 hours, 70 per cent; while of those working more than 30 hours per week, 91 per cent showed fatigue. As to anæmia, among the newsboys, of those working 20 hours or less it appeared among only 19 per cent; but of those working 20 to 30 hours, 30 per cent showed it; while of those working over 30 hours per week, 73 per cent were afflicted in this way. As to nerve strain, of those working 20 hours or less 16 per cent were suffering from it; of those working 20 to 30 hours, 35 per cent; while of those working over 30 hours, 37 per cent showed nerve strain. As to deformities, none were noted among boys working less than 20 hours a week, but 10 per cent of those working 20 to 30 hours or more were found to be afflicted. All elementary schoolboys showed deformities to the extent of 8 per cent, but of those engaged in different kinds of work from 20 to 30 hours a week, 21 per cent showed deformities. Flatfoot was found to be the chief deformity produced by newspaper selling, this being caused by the boys' having to be on their feet too much.[101]

One of the most decisive blows delivered against street work by children in Great Britain was the statement of Thomas Burke of the Liverpool City Council, a son of working people, who had lived in a crowded city street for twenty years, had attended a public elementary school until fourteen years of age, where the number of child street traders was very large, and had become convinced that "work after school hours was decidedly injurious to health and character." Referring to the material condition of his street-trading acquaintances, he said: "Almost all the boys sent out to work after school hours from the school referred to have failed in the battle of life. Not one is a member of any of the regular trades, while all who were sent to trade in the streets have gone down to the depths of social misery if not degradation ... a great proportion of those who did not work after school hours, or frequent the streets as newspaper sellers, occupy respectable positions in the city."[102]

Miss Ina Tyler of the St. Louis School of Social Economy in a study of St. Louis newsboys made in 1910, found that of 50 newsboys under 11 years of age, 43 gambled, 42 went to cheap shows and 23 used tobacco; while of 100 newsboys 11 to 16 years of age, 86 gambled, 92 went to cheap shows and 76 used tobacco.[103]