Among the conclusions of the British interdepartmental committee of 1901 is the following: "Street hawking is not injurious to the health if the hours are not long, and the work is not done late at night; but its moral effects are far worse than the physical, and this employment in the center of many large towns makes the streets hotbeds for the corruption of children who learn to drink, to gamble and to use vile language, while girls are exposed to even worse things."[104]
The British departmental committee of 1910 declared: "In the case of both boys and girls the effect of this occupation on future prospects cannot be anything but thoroughly bad, except, possibly, in casual and exceptional cases. We learn that many boys who sell while at school manage to obtain other work upon becoming fourteen, but for those who remain in the street the tendency is to develop into loafers and 'corner boys.' The period between fourteen and sixteen is a critical time in a boy's life. Street trading provides him with no training; he gets no discipline, he is not occupied the whole of his time; for a few years he makes more money and makes it more easily than in an office or a workshop, and he is exposed to a variety of actively evil influences."[105]
An important division of the study of street-working children concerns their standing in the schools. In New York City a few figures are available through a study recently made there. The distribution of 200 newsboys under fourteen years of age among the school grades is shown in the following table:[106]—
| Ages | Grades | Special | Totals | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |||
| 7 | 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 8 | 3 | 2 | 5 | |||||||
| 9 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 8 | ||||||
| 10 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 12 | ||||||
| 11 | 5 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 36 | ||
| 12 | 1 | 1 | 19 | 21 | 9 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 62 | |
| 13 | 15 | 10 | 23 | 17 | 7 | 3 | 75 | |||
| Totals | 2 | 10 | 22 | 48 | 41 | 36 | 25 | 8 | 8 | 200 |
Applying the rule that in order to be normal a child must enter the first grade at the age of either six or seven years and progress with enough regularity to enable him to attend the eighth grade at the age of either thirteen or fourteen, it is found that of the 177 newsboys ten to thirteen years of age inclusive, 118 are backward, 57 are normal and 2 are beyond their grades. This is shown in the following table:—
| Ages | Backward | Normal | Ahead | Total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 12 | ||||
| 11 | 22 | 11 | 1 | 34 | ||||
| 12 | 42 | 16 | 1 | 59 | ||||
| 13 | 48 | 24 | 0 | 72 | ||||
| Totals | 118 | 57 | 2 | 177 | ||||
| Percentages | 67 | % | 32 | % | 1 | % | 100 | % |
This table shows that of the 177 newsboys ten to thirteen years of age, 67 per cent are backward and 32 per cent are normal, while only 1 per cent are ahead of their grades. Boys of these ages are subject to the restrictions prescribed by the state law as to hours, and it is probable that the percentage of retardation would have been even greater if work at night had not been to some extent prevented.
A report of New York City conditions made in 1907, before the newsboy law was enforced, says: "The shrewd, bright-eyed, sharp-witted lad is stupid and sleepy in the schoolroom; 295 newsboys compared with non-working boys in the same class were found to fall below the average in proficiency. They were also usually older than their classmates, that is, backward in their grades."[107]
Referring to Manchester newsboys above the age of fourteen years, an English report[108] says: "They are not stupid, or even markedly backward, judged by school standards.... As they grow older they sink to a lower level, both morally and economically—in fact, little better than loafers, without aspiration, and content with the squalor of the common lodging-houses in which they live, if only they have enough money for their drink and their gambling." Concerning the younger newsboys the same report continues: "Those who are the children of extremely poor, and often worthless parents, are often upon the streets selling their papers during school hours, and their attendance at the schools, in spite of prosecution of their parents, is so irregular that they make very little progress. These boys take to the streets permanently for their livelihood; a few of them continue, after the age of fourteen, to earn their living by selling newspapers, but most of them sink into less satisfactory kinds of occupation." In connection with these statements it should be remembered that they portray conditions existing prior to the adoption in 1902 of local rules on street trading. With reference to the alleged cleverness of street Arabs, a British observer draws this distinction: "Street-trading children are more cunning than other children, but not more intelligent."[109]
In St. Louis there was no regulation until the Missouri law of 1911 was passed; and in 1910 Miss Ina Tyler, in a study of 106 newsboys of that city, found the following conditions:—