"I want to earn some money," he said, "I want to go to work."
If the boy had come to me a year ago with that suggestion I should have felt hurt. I would have thought it a reflection upon my ability to support my family. We salaried men used to expect our children to be dependent on us until they completed their educations. For a boy to work during his summer vacation was almost as bad form as for the wife to work for money at any time. It had to be explained that the boy was a prodigy with unusual business ability or that he was merely seeking experience. But Dick did not fall into any of these classes. This was what made his proposal the more remarkable to me. It meant that he was willing to take just a plain every-day plugging job.
And underlying this willingness was the spirit that was resurrecting us all. Instead of acting on the defensive, Dick was now eager to play the aggressive game. I hadn't looked for this spirit to show in him so soon, in his life outside of school. I was mighty well pleased.
"All right," I said, "what do you think you can do?"
"I've talked with some of the fellows," he said, "and the surest thing seems to be selling papers."
I gave a gasp at that. I hadn't yet lost the feeling that a newsboy was a sort of cross between an orphan and a beggar. He was to me purely an object of pity. Of course I'd formed this notion like a good many others from the story books and the daily paper. I connected a newsboy with blind fathers and sick mothers if he had any parents at all.
"I guess you can get something better than that to do," I said.
"What's the matter with selling papers?" he asked.
When I stopped to think of the work in that way—as just the buying and selling of papers—I couldn't see anything the matter with it. Why wasn't it like buying and selling anything? You were selling a product in which millions of money was invested, a product which everyone wanted, a product where you gave your customers their money's worth. The only objection I could think of at the moment was that there was so little in it.
"It will keep you on the streets five or six hours a day," I said, "and I don't suppose you can make more than a dollar a week."