Children of the City

by David Nasaw

  There were two possible solutions to the problem the reformers diagnosed: they could cleanse the city of its moral pollutants or quarantine the susceptible. Since the first option was impossible because it necessitated infringing on the right of businessmen to make their living, the reformers were compelled to take the second. They campaigned to remove the children from the street because they were convinced that the less time they spent there, the less vulnerable they would be to its dangers. The street and its extensions—the movie theaters, vaudeville halls, amusement parks, penny arcades, and candy shops—were the only places where the children were free of adult supervision and control, the only places where they were allowed, even encouraged, to act more grown-up than was good for them. By isolating them from the environments that fostered precocity, the reformers would succeed in returning them to the status of full-time children, protected morning, noon, and evening from the temptations, the excitement, the sounds and sights of urban life.

  The task was overwhelming, but the reform community was not without its allies and its resources. Together, the child labor activists, settlement-house workers, juvenile justice authorities, and the legions of professionals and well-meaning amateurs who supported their campaign accomplished a great deal. With the unacknowledged assistance of the economic shifts that had rendered the children less vital a component of the labor force, the reformers succeeded in passing omnibus compulsory schooling and child labor laws in most states outside the south. As the reformers, however, were quick to discover, it was one thing to get laws passed and quite another to get them enforced. Legislation, by itself, accomplished nothing. Only when the parents—and the police—agreed with the aims and ends of the legislation could it be enforced. Such was the case with the statutes that prohibited girls under a certain age from working on the streets. When it came to the large number of statutes that regulated and limited the work of the boys, however, the laws might as well have never been written.

  From the reformers’ perspective, the chief culprits were the police. They not only were sworn to uphold the laws but should have understood—far better than the parents—the necessity for enforcing them. Policemen were ready to hassle child gamblers, junkers, trespassers, but they did not go out of their way to enforce the laws that restricted those without proper licenses from peddling or hawking papers on city streets. The problem with the policemen—again, from the reformers’ perspective—was that they thought too much like the children’s parents. Youngsters trying to earn money on the streets were not, they believed, doing anything terribly wrong. Why then should the police have to waste their time and energy arresting and testifying against them in Children’s Court?13

  Because the police could not be counted on to enforce the street trader ordinances, the reformers tried to secure enforcement powers for civilians—and succeeded. In cities across the country, agents of child welfare organizations, truant officers, factory inspectors, and in some states “any person” who wished to make and prosecute a complaint were empowered to arrest children violating child labor laws.14

  In New York City, the Gerry Society—the children’s nickname for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (taken from the society’s President, Elbridge Gerry)—was able to put its own private policemen onto the streets in great enough numbers to keep the children on their toes. According to Lillian Wald of the Henry Street Settlement, the society’s special officers became such a bugaboo that the children invented their own “Gerryman” game: the child chosen as “it” had to chase the other kids on the block.15

  While the Gerry Society regarded all city kids as within its purview, it devoted special attention to those who worked on the stage. Like the Juvenile Protective Association in Chicago, the society did all it could to “protect” child actors and performers working in amateur shows, on vaudeville stages, and in legitimate theaters. Though, to the audience, the child performers might appear secure and protected, the reformers were convinced that they were endangered by their work: compelled to stay up too late, to linger before and after their performances in darkened theaters, and to spend too much time in the company of actors and actresses, not the most wholesome of adult companions.16

  New York City, July 1910. “Against the Law in New York City—But ‘Who Cares’?” Hine’s caption comments on the fact that the policeman instead of arresting this girl for breaking the law smilingly poses for a photograph with her. (Lewis Hine Collection, NCLC)

  According to Milton Berle, the Gerry Society’s campaign in New York City was so successful that most kiddie acts were forced to flee the Broadway theaters for the neighborhood vaudeville halls, where the Gerrymen were less likely to find them. Even in the sticks, however, the children had to take special precautions. When Milton performed at the Mt. Morris Theater at 116th Street and Fifth Avenue, he sang his songs from a box overlooking the stage so that he would not be arrested by the Gerrymen for performing on the stage.

  As Berle remembered in his autobiography, Eddie Foy had enough clout to perform with his “seven little Foys” whenever he wanted. Buster Keaton “could work because he looked older. (When he was old enough to work without fear of the Society, he took an ad in Variety: ‘Today I am a Theatrical Man—Goodbye, Mr. Gerry!’)” Milton, unfortunately, looked ten when he was ten. With his Buster Brown haircut and kid’s tuxedo—white shirt with dark buttons, jacket, knickers, and long socks—he was a target wherever he appeared. On one memorable evening, he was greeted by a policeman as he left the stage. “Mama was there too, and, just like so many of the heroines she had loved in silent movies, she pushed herself with an arm-outspread gesture between the cop and me. ‘What? What is it, officer? Don’t you dare touch that boy.…’

  “ ‘Well, we’ve had a complaint from the Gerry Society that minors were working on this stage. I’m going to have to take the kid down to the station.’

  “Mama was always a fast thinker. ‘What station house? Which one?’

  “The cop told her. Mama smiled. ‘I don’t think you’ll like it when you bring my son in. Isn’t the sergeant on duty there named McCloskey?’

  Mrs. Berle went on to explain that she was a fellow officer of the law, a store detective, and on the best of terms with all the big shots in the precinct. “ ‘I sure don’t think Sergeant McCloskey’s going to like it when a fellow law-enforcement officer’s child is arrested and put away like a common criminal.’ ”

  “The poor guy was sweating. ‘Well, I didn’t know.… Look, I think we can forget this whole thing, but why don’t you take your son and get out of here fast, okay?’ ”

  Mama and Milton won that battle, but not the war. They eventually had to relocate in Philadelphia, where the society was not strong enough to “protect us [child actors] right into the poor house.”17

  The stage children were a special breed. They were part of an adult world and worked as individual acts rather than as a group. They were, as a result, easy pickings for law enforcement agents. The children who hustled on the streets were more fortunate. They worked their own turf, in groups, and were too numerous to be effectively policed. Periodically, when the pressure from the reform groups grew too great to be deflected, the mayor would contact the police commissioner, who would call out his men in a street trader raid. Unlike the brothel owners, who were also subject to this brand of law enforcement, the children paid no one off and were not warned in advance of the raids.

  On May 20th, 1913, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that “Seventeen little boys and two small girls were arrested at the New York end of the Williamsburg Bridge last night.” The children ranged in age from twelve to fifteen and had been nabbed for selling chewing gum and candy. (Children under sixteen were too young to get licenses to sell anything but newspapers.) Though the newspaper article said only that “a complaint” to the mayor’s office had led to the raid, we can trace its genesis through documents in the Lillian Wald Papers at Columbia University.18

  Miss Wald,
a well-known member of the city’s reform community and one of the founding members of the New York Child Labor Committee, had on May 15th written a long letter complaining to the Gerry Society about the child peddlers at the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. “A little girl, twelve years old, Gussie Cohen of 109 Essex Street sells gum and candy at the head of the stairs leading to track No. 6 every afternoon except when her place is taken by her little brother, who is considerably smaller. Their mother sells papers at the entrance outside. Two or three boys who do not appear to be more than ten years old have been noticed selling gum at other entrances to the Bridge.”

  The Gerry Society, on receipt of the letter, must have contacted the mayor’s office, which pressured the police commissioner to set up the raid that led to the arrest of the “seventeen little boys and two small girls.” On June 11th, a Mr. Walsh of the society wrote back to Miss Wald informing her that the children selling gum had “been taken into custody.… In the case of the Cohen children, the case was brought before Children’s Court where the mother was warned by Justice Mayo who on May 24th released the children to her custody on suspension of sentence.”

  We do not know if Gussie and her brother returned to the bridge to sell gum. We do know, however, that within six weeks of the first raid, enough children had resumed their trade to bring the police back a second time.

  As might have been expected, the second raid was as unsuccessful as the first. Miss Wald, on July 26th, again contacted Mr. Walsh. “For a few days after the arrests made by your Society on July 10, there were very few, if any, children to be seen, but I am sorry to say that there are now as many of them as ever, both girls and boys. On Thursday afternoon of this week, at about five o’clock, I counted fifteen children peddling gum, and I have seen these or other children each afternoon. A boy often, named Tushberg, sells gum at the head of the stairs leading to the Brooklyn Elevated trains.… Three sisters named Rosen, the youngest apparently not more than nine, sell gum at various entrances to the Bridge. They are sharp little things, and run away if they are asked any questions.… I regret to say that some of the child peddlers now recognize me as what they call ‘a detective lady’ and keep out of sight at the time when I usually appear. It may be necessary for me to go to the Bridge at unexpected times hereafter in order to keep track of the situation.”19

  Miss Wald could have moved her parlor onto the bridge; she was not going to clear it of child peddlers. The children were too smart to be intimidated. They knew, perhaps even better than she, that business at the bridge would return to normal the day after each raid. The police were not interested in arresting child peddlers on a daily basis. The Gerry Society might have been, but lacked the resources to do the job.

  The children were also protected by their informal organization. As Miss Wald had discovered, the young street traders had their own early-warning system. Should trouble appear in the form of police, truant officers, “detective ladies,” or other suspicious adults, the word was quickly, quietly, and efficiently passed up the street, round the corner, and down the next one. The “word” and the children moved too fast for the adults.

  The reformers ran themselves—and at times the police—ragged in their attempts to get the children off the streets. In a 1905 issue of Charities magazine, James Paulding described a series of raids on New York City newsies. The New York Child Labor Committee, which had campaigned for and won legislative approval of a newsboy licensing law in 1903, had since then been battling with the police commissioner to get the law enforced. After much stalling, Commissioner McAdoo agreed in the spring of 1905 to detail a special squad to arrest crooked newsies. According to Paulding, the four-man squad, though taking care to disguise themselves in plain clothes, had not succeeded in making many arrests. “The boys are very quick to ‘spot’ a ‘copper’, even when he is in plain clothes, and a rumor of the presence of these particular men was quickly noised abroad.”20

  Nothing united the kids or spurred them into action like the sight of a truant officer or policeman rounding the corner. As Harpo Marx put it, “one way, the only way, that all of us kids stuck together regardless of nationality [or gang] was in our cop-warning system. Much as I loathed and feared the Mickie gang or the Bohunk gang, I’d never hesitate to give them the highsign if I spotted a copper headed their way. They’d do the same for me and the other 93rd Streeters.”

  The children’s cooperation on the streets extended beyond such early-warning systems. In those cities with licensing requirements for street traders* the children did their best—and it was usually enough—to foil the intent of the laws.

  The licensing or badge system was, in theory, an efficient and effective way to regulate street trading. Children who wanted to sell papers (and, in some cities, other items as well) had to secure licenses or badges and wear them when they worked. Those too young or too far behind in their schooling or too weak, sickly, or small would be denied licenses and, thus, barred from the streets.

  Had the children cooperated, the laws might have accomplished their end. Children without licenses would have been easily spotted by law enforcement officials and removed from the streets. Unfortunately for the reformers, the children saw no reason to cooperate. They were not lawless creatures. Their own laws of the street, though unwritten, remained sacrosanct. Only those laws that made no sense or were intended, as they saw it, to harass or limit their mobility, autonomy, and profits had to be broken—and broken they were.

  The children did not subvert the law by organized protest or resistance. They simply played with it and with the officials who tried to make it work. Children eligible for badges applied for them even though they had no intention of using them. Those who had other jobs or were so big no one would ever accuse them of being underage, sold their badges to kids too young or far behind in their schooling to get their own. Some bigger kids secured licenses, sold them to little kids, then—claiming they had lost their badges—got new ones for their own use. Children forged their parents’ signatures, used aliases, and gave wrong addresses to keep the authorities from visiting their homes. In Newark, officials were baffled by the way the children flung open their coats to reveal the badges underneath until they realized that the newsies were mimicking what policemen did in the movies when asked for identification. In New York City, the boys wore their badges close to the body under layers and layers of clothing. When asked to produce them, they protested at first and then began stripping down to their long underwear, embarrassing the officials and giving their friends without badges plenty of time to disappear around the corner.22

  St. Louis, 1910. (Lewis Hine Collection, NCLC)

  In city after city, the officials responsible for the enforcement of the street trader laws were outmaneuvered and outwitted. According to published and unpublished reports from Newark, Birmingham, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, the children either disregarded the law or played with it.23

  In New York State, where the Child Labor Committee undertook two extensive investigations of enforcement, they were dismayed but not surprised to find that in most cities the officials had given up entirely. In Syracuse, the school authorities reported in 1909 that they no longer issued badges because “it was a waste of time and material.” In Albany, the truant officers were overwhelmed with so much other work that “it is impossible for them to give any time to newsboys.” In Utica, the officials had tried their best to enforce the law but had been made fools of by the children. “When the law became effective we announced that all boys must have badges, and immediately there was a rush, and something like four hundred were issued.” Unfortunately, few of the four hundred boys who applied had any intention of using their badges to sell papers. Most bought them to resell to kids too young to obtain theirs legally.24

  In 1918, when the committee dispatched Ethel Hanks to evaluate the enforcement of the child labor laws in the state’s smaller cities, she found that only Auburn among the nine cities she visited was enforcing the laws “with
a fair degree of success.” In Binghamton, the superintendent of schools had stopped issuing badges three years before because “it was impossible to secure full cooperation from the police in keeping small boys off the streets.” In Elmira, Niagara Falls, Poughkeepsie, and Jamestown, the law was enforced only “partially.” Some boys sold with badges, some without. The police didn’t seem to care one way or another. In Tonawanda and North Tonawanda no one wore badges. In Kingston, no badges had been issued because the superintendent of schools did not know—or so he claimed—that the law applied to his city.25

  Supervisor Purcell of New York City’s Second Attendance District and his assistant, Attendance Officer Wheatley, were not far from the mark when they complained that enforcing the laws had become nearly impossible because of a “free masonry among the boys.”26

  Ironically, it was in those cities where the reformers were most active and effective that the laws were most useless. In Boston, often cited by other reformers for its model street trader ordinance, the newsies neither applied for nor wore badges, the truant officers were too few in number to enforce the law themselves, and the School Committee which had been given responsibility for enforcement had no money to hire new truant officers and no way of enforcing the law without them.27 In desperation the School Committee hired Philip Davis, the future author of Street-land, as Supervisor of Licensed Minors and entrusted him with full responsibility for enforcing the street ordinances.

  Davis recognized at once the golden opportunity created by the breakdown of the system. Concluding from recent experience that the only way to establish enforceable laws was to enlist the boys in writing and enforcing them, he set out to interest the newsies and the School Committee in an experimental, self-government, self-enforcement plan.† With the support of the School Committee—and of the boys themselves—elections were held in the local public schools to choose delegates to a “constitutional convention.” On June 17, 1908, Bunker Hill Day, some three thousand newsies gathered in the Boston Theater to ratify their new constitution and officially establish the Boston Newsboys’ Republic, the now official governing body for all city newsies, eleven to fourteen years of age.28