The state recognizes the need of an intelligent citizenship and accordingly provides a system of public schools, requiring the attendance of all children up to the age of fourteen years. In order that nothing shall interfere with the operation of this plan for general education, the state forbids the employment of children of school age. In respect of both these mandates, the state has really assumed the guardianship of the child; it has accepted the principle that the child is the ward of the state and has based its action on this principle. A guardian should be ever mindful of the welfare of his wards, and so, to be consistent, the state should carefully shield its children from all forms of exploitation as well as from other abuses.
However, in the matter of the regulation of child labor, a curious anomaly has arisen—no one may employ a child under fourteen years in a factory for even one hour a day without being liable to prosecution for disobeying the law of the state, because such work might interfere with the child's growth and education; all of which is right and indorsed by public opinion, but—merely because a child is working independently of any employer, he is allowed to sell newspapers, peddle chewing gum and black boots for any number of hours, providing he attends school during school hours! Could anything be more inconsistent? To this extent the state, as a guardian, has neglected the welfare of its ward.
This lack of consideration for street workers was emphasized in a British government report a number of years ago. Referring to the statutory provisions for preventing overwork by children in factories, workshops and mines, the report declared: "But the labour of children for wages outside these cases is totally unregulated, although many of them work longer than the factory hours allowed for children of the same age, and are at the same time undergoing compulsory educational training, which makes a considerable demand on their energies. We think this is inconsistent. In the interests of their health and education, it seems only reasonable that remedies which have proved so valuable in the case of factory children should in some form be extended to cover the whole field of child labour."[4]
To insure a good yield, a field requires cultivation as well as planting; to effect a cure, a patient requires nursing as well as prescription. So with the aim of the state—to insure a strong, intelligent citizenship, its children must be cared for, as well as provided with schools. If a patient is not nursed while the physician is absent, his treatment is of little avail; if children are not protected out of school hours, the purpose of the school is defeated. No manufacturer would allow his machinery to run, unwatched, outside regular work hours, for he knows how disastrous would be the consequences; yet this is precisely what the state is doing by ignoring the activities of children in our city streets—the delicate machinery of their minds and bodies is allowed to run wild out of schools hours, and the state seems to think nothing will happen! These thoughts impel us to the conclusion that the state must watch over the child at least until he has reached the age limit for school attendance, and in the matter of labor regulation its care must not be confined to the prevention of one form of exploitation while other forms, equally injurious, are permitted to flourish unchecked.
Legislation regulating street trading by children in this country is now in the stage corresponding to that of the English factory acts in the early part of the nineteenth century,—the first meager restrictions are being tried. Several of the street occupations, viz. messenger service, delivery service and errand running, are ordinarily included among those prohibited to children under fourteen years by state child labor laws, because to engage in such work children have to be employed by other persons. These occupations are covered by the provision common to such laws which forbids employment of such children "in the distribution or transmission of merchandise or messages." The street "trades" of newspaper selling, peddling and bootblacking are, as yet, almost untouched by legislation in the United States, for there exist only a very few state laws and city ordinances relative to this matter, and these of the most primitive kind. The public does not yet realize the injustice of permitting young children to engage, uncontrolled, in the various street-trading activities. It was slow to appreciate the dangers involved in the unrestricted employment of children in factories, mills and mines, but when the awakening finally came, the demand for reform was insistent. This gradual development of a sentiment favoring regulation characterizes also the problem of street employment; the present stage is that of calm indifference, ruffled only by occasional misgivings. Even this is an encouraging sign, inasmuch as the factory agitation passed through the same experience, and emerged triumphant, crystallized in statute form.
It is hard to understand how the public conscience can reconcile itself to the chasm between the age limit of fourteen years for messenger service and freedom from all restraint in newspaper selling—both essentially street occupations. Child labor laws are framed in accordance with public sentiment, hence the people by legislative omission practically indorse street trading by little children while condemning their employment in other kinds of work. Thus the state virtually assumes the untenable position that it is right to allow a child of tender years to labor in the streets as a newsboy without any oversight or care whatever, and that it is wrong for him to work in the same field as a messenger, or an errand boy, or a delivery boy, although such occupations are subject to some degree of supervision by older persons. In other words, it is held that little children are capable of self-control in some street occupations, but not able to withstand the dangers of other similar street work, even under the control of adults! After having described the conditions prevailing in Philadelphia among newsboys, Mr. Scott Nearing says: "There are many causes leading up to this condition. Beneath all others lies the fundamental one—the lack of public sentiment in favor of protecting these children. Closely allied to this is another almost equally strong—the lack of public knowledge of the true state of affairs."[5]
The Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit pointed out the fact that street trades are quite untouched by child labor legislation in the city and also in the state, declaring that in Illinois a boy or girl too young to be permitted to do any other work may haunt the newspaper offices, the five-cent shows, the theaters and saloons, selling chewing gum and newspapers at all hours of the night.[6]
Among the arguments advanced in support of the unsuccessful effort to secure legislation on street trading in Illinois in 1911 was the following: "Each boy or girl street trader is a merchant in his or her own right, and therefore before the law is not considered a wage earner, although there is merely a fine-spun distinction between the child who secures wages as the result of his work and one who obtains his reward in the form of profits. The effect on the child of work performed under unsuitable conditions, at unsuitable hours and demanding the exercise of his faculties in unchildish ways, is in no wise determined by the form in which his earnings are calculated. That the results of street trading are wholly bad in the case of both boys and girls is universally recognized."[7] Miss Jane Addams has deplored this situation in a public statement: "A newsboy is a merchant and does not come within the child labor regulations of Illinois. The city of Chicago is a little careless, if not recreant, toward the children who are not reached by the operation of the state law."[8]
Even in the few localities where regulation of street trading has been attempted, the delusion that there is some essential difference between child labor in factories and child labor in streets persists in the legislation itself. The latter form of exploitation is assumed to merit a wider latitude for its activity, hence it is hedged about by much less stringent rules. Attention is invited to this inconsistency by the report of a recent investigation in New York City: "We have in New York 4148 children between 14 and 16 years employed in factories with their daily hours of labor limited from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., while in mercantile establishments there are 1645 more of similar age limit, none of whom can work before 8 in the morning or after 7 in the evening. But on the streets of New York City we have approximately 4500 boys licensed (to say nothing of the little fellows too young to be licensed) to sell newspapers. That means 4500 legalized to work at this particular trade from 6 o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock in the evening (save during the school year, when they are supposed to attend school from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M.) any day and every day, seven days to the week if they so desire to do."[9]