Child Labor in City StreetsClopper, Edward Nicholas
History
Child Labor in City Streets
Clopper, Edward Nicholas
Child labor
An English writer has expressed a similar thought: "We have spoken of
the street as a dangerous environment from which we would gladly
rescue the children if we could, and so it undoubtedly is in so far as
it supplants the influence of the home, tends to nullify that of the
school and lets the boys and girls run wild just when they most need
to be tamed.... It is, in fact, so strange a mixture of good and evil,
so complex an influence in the growth of boy and girl, of youth and
man, among our great city population, that it is necessary to attempt
to analyze it a little more exactly. It is for the majority the medium
in which the social conscience is formed, and through which it makes
its power felt. In it the all-powerful agents of progress, example,
imitation, the spread of ideas and the discussion of good and evil are
incessantly at work."[11]
It is only natural that such a general agency for communication should
have been abused. Its popularity alone would inevitably lead to such a
result, with no restrictions imposed upon street intercourse. The very
popularity of the games of billiards, pool and cards and of dancing
led to their abuse and consequent disrepute in the eyes of many
persons who were blinded to their intrinsic worth as diversions, by
the abuses to which they were subjected. The marked success attending
the proper use of all these amusements in social settlements and
parish houses stimulates the imagination as to what might be
accomplished with the street if its abuses also were eliminated.
It is of course absurd to pass judgment summarily upon the street, for
the street can exert no influence of itself; the evil issues from its
abuse by those who frequent it, and it is this abuse that should be
suppressed. This immediately raises the question as to what
constitutes this abuse. We must bear in mind that the real purpose of
the street is to serve as a means of communication, a passageway for
the transit of passengers and commerce. It was never intended for a
playground, nor a field for child labor, nor a resort for idlers, nor
a depository for garbage, nor a place for beggars to mulct the public.
These fungous growths from civic neglect ought to be cut away. "A
place for everything and everything in its place" would be an
efficacious even if old-fashioned remedy: playgrounds for the
children, workshops for the idlers, reduction plants for the garbage
and asylums for the beggars. With these reforms effected and carefully
maintained, the street would soon become much more wholesome and
attractive.
These considerations have been advanced to indicate the intimate
relation which exists between the problem of the child street worker
and many other problems with which social workers are now struggling.
Child labor in city streets must be abolished, but at the same time
coöperation with other movements is necessary before a satisfactory
solution of the problem can be assured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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