Child Labor in City StreetsClopper, Edward Nicholas
History
Child Labor in City Streets
Clopper, Edward Nicholas
Child labor
The delivery of newspapers by young boys in the strictly residence
sections of cities appears to be unobjectionable, yet even this simple
work should be under restriction as to hours, because otherwise the
boys would continue to rise at unseemly hours of the night in order to
reach the branch offices in time to get the newspapers fresh from the
press. In fact, every phase of street work should be under control.
Dr. Harold E. Jones, medical inspector of schools to the Essex County
Council, has testified that among the most injurious forms of labor
performed by boys is the early morning delivery of newspapers and
milk.[55] In his Report on Child Labor Legislation in Europe, Mr. C.
W. A. Veditz states, "Delivering milk before school in the morning
must be condemned, because it fatigues the children so that they
become, to say the least, intellectually less receptive."[56]
In his article on "The Newsboy at Night in Philadelphia,"[57] Mr.
Scott Nearing gives a graphic account of conditions in the City of
Brotherly Love. Although this description was written some years ago,
local social workers find that the same conditions still obtain, as
there is neither law nor ordinance to bring about a change. In this
city the closing of the theaters at eleven o'clock marks the beginning
of Saturday night's work. The last editions of the evening newspapers
are offered at this time, often as a cloak for begging. After the
theater, the restaurant patrons are available as customers until
midnight. Then the morning papers begin to come from the press, and
the newsboys abandon their begging and gambling and rush to the
offices for their supplies. A load of forty pounds is often carried by
the smallest newsboys, hurrying along the streets in the early morning
hours. The cream of the business is done at this time, for most of the
purchasers are more or less intoxicated and therefore inclined to be
generous with tips and indifferent as to change; sometimes a newsboy
takes in as much money on Saturday night and Sunday morning as during
the entire remainder of the week. In relating his experiences, Mr.
Nearing says, "On one night we saw fifteen boys in a group just as the
policeman was chasing them out of Chinatown at half-past three Sunday
morning; the youngest boy was clearly not over ten and the oldest was
barely sixteen." At this hour the officers of the law interfere and
quell the revels of the district. The open gratings in sidewalks
through which warm air comes from basements, are then sought, and here
the boys pass the time dozing until dawn, when they go abroad again to
cry the Sunday papers.
_Home Conditions--Poverty_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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