Child Labor in City StreetsClopper, Edward Nicholas
History
Child Labor in City Streets
Clopper, Edward Nicholas
Child labor
An eleven-year-old lad who has been a newsboy for three years, selling
on his own account, disposes of most of his copies in saloons located
in the middle of a busy square, earning from 50 cents to $1.25 a day
even when attending school. His mother and father are both living.
Another example of this class is a sixteen-year-old boy who devotes
all his time to the trade, his net income averaging about $7.50 per
week. His attitude toward regular work is both interesting and
significant; he hopes to get a better job, but says that although he
has hunted for one, so little is offered for what he can do ($2 to $3
per week) that it would hardly suffice for spending money. Discussing
this difference between factory wages and street-trading profits, an
English report says: "Working from 11 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M., with
intervals for gambling, newsboys over 14 years old can make from
10_s._ to 14_s._ a week if they have an ordinary share of alertness.
In a factory or foundry, working from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., a boy earns
about 13_s._ a week. The comparison needs no comment. The excitement
of their career tends to make them more and more reluctant to work
steadily.... Many newsboys protest that they want more permanent work,
but they rarely keep it when it is found for them."[45] The life of
the streets lacks the discipline involved in steady work and fixed
earnings.
As an example of the route boy there is a fourteen-year-old lad in
Cincinnati who has a list of fifty customers to whom he delivers
newspapers regularly, earning in this way 25 cents daily, delivering
after school hours. He declares that he finds it much easier to work
on a route than to sell on the corners or at random.
The morning papers employ a man as circulation manager for the
residence districts who controls all the corners in those sections.
When a corner becomes vacant, he assigns a youth to it. These older
boys are not to sell their corners nor to dispose of them in any way,
nor are they allowed to have any one working for them; they must "hop"
all the street cars passing their corners and are expected to put
forth every effort to accomplish a great number of sales. They get
their supply of copies at the branch office at 5 A.M., hurrying then
to their corners, where they remain until nearly noon, averaging in
this time from $2 to $3 per day clear. Nearly all of the afternoon
papers sold in the residence districts are delivered by route boys;
after having gone over their routes, some of these boys go to the
busier localities and sell the sporting extra during the baseball
season until about seven o'clock.
_Environment_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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