Sidewalks of Struggle

Abstract

Long at issue, the moral legitimacy of juvenile street trading became a major concern in the Progressive Era. Parents, publishers and reformers asserted their right to define news peddling as a public good or a social evil. Efforts to control children’s labor underlay the campaigns to abolish newsboys’ night work and stop their fighting, gambling, smoking, spitting, drinking, swearing, and sexual activity. Investigators amassed damning evidence of these practices, but their findings also reveal the industrial pressures, parental logic, and working-class customs that allowed them. Unable to abolish news peddling by children, adults regulated it by establishing newsboy unions, clubs, courts, and “republics.” However, the success of their efforts depended entirely on the boys’ cooperation, making them agents rather than mere targets of progressive reform.