Child Labor in City StreetsClopper, Edward Nicholas
History
Child Labor in City Streets
Clopper, Edward Nicholas
Child labor
1 boy over 50 hours
4 boys over 40 hours
5 boys over 35 hours
7 boys over 30 hours
18 boys over 20 hours
Their average earnings per week were found to be as follows:[18]--
5th grade children $1.18
4th grade children .85
3d grade children .60
2d grade children .43
1st grade children .36
In referring to the weekly income of the children from this source,
the Handbook of the Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit declared that it was
"a pitiable sum to compensate for the physical weariness and moral
risk attending street trades in a large city. School reports show that
street trades, when carried on by young children, lead to truancy,
low vitality, dullness and the breaking down of parental control.
Since the children are on the streets at all hours, careless habits
are developed which often lead to moral ruin to both boys and
girls."[19]
An instance was related wherein the teacher of a fifth grade in a
Chicago school asked those of her pupils who worked for money to raise
their hands. In the class of 38 pupils, 26 acknowledged that they were
little breadwinners! One boy said he worked ten hours a day besides
attending school; others had less striking records, spending from
twenty to forty hours a week selling chewing gum and newspapers,
blacking boots and pursuing the various other street occupations which
the Illinois law leaves open to children of all ages.[20]
Referring to the economic and home conditions surrounding young
children in Chicago and the many phases of danger to their moral
well-being, the Vice Commission of that city reported that its agents
had found small boys selling newspapers in segregated districts and
that one night an investigator had counted twenty newsboys from eleven
years upwards so engaged at midnight and after. Besides these
newsboys, many little boys and girls were found peddling chewing gum
near disorderly saloons where prostitutes were soliciting. Numerous
examples of employment in vicious environment are cited, principally
of the peddling of newspapers and chewing gum by young children at all
hours of the night in the "red light" districts, about saloons and
museums of anatomy. Even in the rear rooms of saloons, boys were seen
offering their wares and heard to join in obscene conversation with
the patrons of these resorts.[21]
A folder published in Chicago by the advocates of street-trade
regulation calls attention to these conditions, and states, with
regard to little newsgirls who sell papers in the vice regions: "It is
not surprising if some of them, becoming so familiar with the
practices of the district, take up the profession of the neighborhood.
The Juvenile Protective Association reports one little girl who
entered the life of a professional prostitute at the age of fourteen,
after having sold newspapers for years in the district."[22]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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