Child Labor in City StreetsClopper, Edward Nicholas
History
Child Labor in City Streets
Clopper, Edward Nicholas
Child labor
Another fourteen-year-old messenger boy in the same town told the
agent that there were but few business calls at night, and that nearly
all of their work was in connection with houses of prostitution. This
boy spoke of the money he received in tips from inmates and patrons of
these houses, of his receiving liquor and cigarettes from them, and
remarked, "I do not have to do this work, but I like it; this job is
too good to give up; I'm learning a lot of things." This little fellow
described some extremely revolting scenes of which he had been
witness in these houses, and upon being asked whether his manager was
aware of the kind of places he was called to, he replied, "Sure he
does, for he gets the message over the telephone, then he calls one of
the boys and sends him to the house."
Another messenger in the same city, who was seventeen years old and
had been in this service for four years, working daily until half past
two in the morning, said, in talking about the use of drugs by
prostitutes, "When they are so full of dope that they don't know what
to do, they call up for a messenger, and sometimes I have had them
send me out to a drug store for paris green; they want to kill
themselves, they are crazy with opium; of course I take their money
and never show up again." This boy also bought a small package of
opium for the agent. He declared that he knew every house of
prostitution in the city and was well acquainted with their
proprietresses. To prove this, he wrote out a list of fourteen such
places, putting down the streets and numbers at once from memory.
These were subsequently referred to persons familiar with the city and
verified.
It is very distressing to read the testimony of a fourteen-year-old
messenger boy of another city who had been thrown by his work so much
in contact with evil conditions that he had come to regard these as
normal. Although only fourteen years of age, he had lost all faith in
womankind. In walking through the segregated district with the agent,
this boy called out in advance the number of each house of
prostitution, thus showing his familiarity with the whole region. In
his childish, schoolboy hand, he wrote on a slip of paper a list of
the bawdyhouses, putting down very promptly from memory the names of
the proprietresses, the names of the streets and numbers of the
houses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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