Johnny Morrow and the Dangerous Classes

Abstract

Poor people of all ages and races peddled papers to eke out a living during the hard times of the 1850s. Vast numbers of children in New York slept on the streets, scrounged for food, and washed at public pumps. One of them, Johnny Morrow, recorded his experiences in a memoir. Genre painters exploited their picturesqueness, while philanthropist Charles Loring Brace founded lodging houses and orphan trains for them through the auspices of the Children’s Aid Society. Sabbatarians tried to sweep newsboys off the streets on Sundays but those in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC fought back. Some built their businesses into giant distribution companies. All became embroiled in the raging sectional crisis over slavery.