More than one-fourth of the working boy delinquents were found to be attending day school. More than half of these pupils were newsboys and bootblacks. It was found that the more youthful the worker, the stronger is his tendency toward irregular attendance at school.
Eighty-three boy delinquents were devoting eleven or more hours per day to work, and of these, 31 were errand or delivery boys, 7 were hucksters or peddlers, 6 were messengers and 2 were newsboys or bootblacks.
"For both sexes, the workers show a greater tendency than the non-workers to go wrong, even where home and neighborhood surroundings appear favorable, but this tendency is not so marked among the girls as among the boys."[134]
This report of the government investigation furnishes most conclusive evidence as to the evil character of street trading in general. It bears out the description so aptly made by a recent writer: "The streets are the proverbial schools of vice and crime. If the factory is the Scylla, the street is the Charybdis."[135]
Another American writer has lately declared: "A prolific cause of juvenile delinquency is the influence of the street trades on the working boy. No other form of work has such demoralizing consequences.... These boys are brought into the juvenile court, and their misdemeanors are often so great that reformatory treatment is necessary for them. Accordingly they represent a large proportion of the boys in the different institutions. The demoralization produced by the street trades affects others than those engaged in such trades, but the latter are the chief sufferers; therefore the importance of legislation which will shut off this source of infection."[136]
A Chicago physician took occasion to look into the records of the juvenile court of that city in 1909, and found that the first 100 boys and 25 girls examined that year were representative of the 2500 delinquents brought into the court during the preceding year. Not less than 57 of these boys had been engaged in street work—43 as newsboys, 12 as errand boys and messengers and 2 as peddlers. Only 13 out of the entire number had never been employed. Sixty of them were physically subnormal; the general physical condition of the girls was found to be much better than that of the boys of the same age, although 40 per cent of the girls were suffering from acquired venereal disease.[137]
In the autumn of 1910 there were 647 boys confined in the Indiana state reformatory, which is known as the Indiana Boys' School, at Plainfield. Of this number 219, or 33.8 per cent, had formerly been engaged in street work. To determine the relative delinquency of street workers and boys who have never pursued such occupations, it would be necessary to compare these 219 delinquents with the total number of street workers in Indiana and also to compare the total number of inmates who had never followed street occupations with the total number of boys within the same age limits in Indiana. A comparison of the two percentages would be illuminating, but is impossible because it is not known how many street workers there are in the state. However, it is safe to assume that the number of street-working boys in Indiana is much less than one third of the total number of boys. If we accept this as true, then the figures indicate that street work promotes delinquency, because one third of all the delinquents in the state reformatory had been so engaged. The frequent assertion that, merely because a large percentage of the inmates of correctional institutions were at some time engaged in street work, such employment is therefore responsible for their delinquency, cannot be accepted alone as proof of the injurious character of this class of occupations, as it is not known how long each offender was engaged in such work, nor are the other causes contributing to the delinquency of each boy properly considered or even known. This defect is avoided in the government's Report on Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment, which, with reference to the common practice of jumping at conclusions in this way, says, "This appears to show that selling newspapers is a morally dangerous occupation, but the danger cannot be measured, since it is not known what proportion of the working children are newsboys, or what proportion of the newsboys never come to grief."[138] The following tables are of interest as showing in detail the facts as to Indiana's delinquent boy street workers, who are confined in the state reformatory:—
Street Workers in Indiana Boys' School, 1910
| Committed for | Messengers | Newsboys | Bootblacks | Peddlers | Delivery Boys | Cab Driver | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day | Night | |||||||
| Larceny | 3 | 22 | 88 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 125 | |
| Incorrigibility | 5 | 30 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 40 | ||
| Truancy | 2 | 27 | 3 | 32 | ||||
| Assault and battery | 2 | 5 | 1 | 8 | ||||
| Burglary | 1 | 2 | 3 | |||||
| Forgery | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Manslaughter | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Other charges | 1 | 2 | 5 | 8 | ||||
| Totals | 4 | 36 | 156 | 5 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 219 |
| Under 10 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Totals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day messengers | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | |||||
| Night messengers | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 12 | 11 | 3 | 36 | |
| Newsboys | 29 | 29 | 28 | 36 | 19 | 14 | 1 | 156 | |
| Bootblacks | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |||||
| Peddlers | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 12 | ||
| Delivery boys | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||||
| Cab drivers | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Totals | 34 | 37 | 31 | 45 | 38 | 28 | 4 | 2 | 219 |