Читать книгу Child Labor in City Streets - Edward Nicholas Clopper - Страница 5

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Let us consider the matter from another point of view and discuss the opportunities for constructive work rather than confine our attention to the need of the merely negative remedy of restrictive legislation.

The street is painted as a black monster by some social workers, who can discern nothing but evil in it. Nevertheless the street is closely woven into the life of every city dweller, for his contact with it is daily and continuous. If it is all evil, it ought to be abolished; as this is impossible, we must study it to see what it really is and what needs to be done with it. It is the medium by which people are brought into closer touch with one another, where they meet and converse, where they pass in transit, where they rub elbows with all the elements making up their little world, where they absorb the principles of democracy,—for the street is a great leveler.

Dr. Delos F. Wilcox, in speaking to the subject "What is Philadelphia Doing to Protect Her Citizens in the Street?" recently said: "The street is the symbol of democracy, of equal opportunity, the channel of the common life, the thing that makes the city.... I fancy that the civic renaissance which must surely come, ... will never get very far until we have awakened to a realization of the dignity of the street—the common street where the city's children play, through which the milk wagon drives, where the young men are educated, along which the currents of the city's life flow unceasingly."[10]

An English writer has expressed a similar thought: "We have spoken of the street as a dangerous environment from which we would gladly rescue the children if we could, and so it undoubtedly is in so far as it supplants the influence of the home, tends to nullify that of the school and lets the boys and girls run wild just when they most need to be tamed.... It is, in fact, so strange a mixture of good and evil, so complex an influence in the growth of boy and girl, of youth and man, among our great city population, that it is necessary to attempt to analyze it a little more exactly. It is for the majority the medium in which the social conscience is formed, and through which it makes its power felt. In it the all-powerful agents of progress, example, imitation, the spread of ideas and the discussion of good and evil are incessantly at work."[11]

It is only natural that such a general agency for communication should have been abused. Its popularity alone would inevitably lead to such a result, with no restrictions imposed upon street intercourse. The very popularity of the games of billiards, pool and cards and of dancing led to their abuse and consequent disrepute in the eyes of many persons who were blinded to their intrinsic worth as diversions, by the abuses to which they were subjected. The marked success attending the proper use of all these amusements in social settlements and parish houses stimulates the imagination as to what might be accomplished with the street if its abuses also were eliminated.

It is of course absurd to pass judgment summarily upon the street, for the street can exert no influence of itself; the evil issues from its abuse by those who frequent it, and it is this abuse that should be suppressed. This immediately raises the question as to what constitutes this abuse. We must bear in mind that the real purpose of the street is to serve as a means of communication, a passageway for the transit of passengers and commerce. It was never intended for a playground, nor a field for child labor, nor a resort for idlers, nor a depository for garbage, nor a place for beggars to mulct the public. These fungous growths from civic neglect ought to be cut away. "A place for everything and everything in its place" would be an efficacious even if old-fashioned remedy: playgrounds for the children, workshops for the idlers, reduction plants for the garbage and asylums for the beggars. With these reforms effected and carefully maintained, the street would soon become much more wholesome and attractive.

These considerations have been advanced to indicate the intimate relation which exists between the problem of the child street worker and many other problems with which social workers are now struggling. Child labor in city streets must be abolished, but at the same time coöperation with other movements is necessary before a satisfactory solution of the problem can be assured.

For example, it would be a short-sighted policy to prohibit young children from selling goods in home market stands without reporting to the housing authorities cases in which large families live in one or two filthy rooms, displaying and selling their wares in the doorway and from the window. Our Italian citizens are not committing race suicide, but in spite of their numerous progeny they crowd together in extremely limited space, combining their home life with the customary business of selling fruit. Their young children assist in tending the stands on market days and nights or sit on the sidewalk selling baskets to passers-by; at closing time their goods are often stored in the same room that serves for sleeping quarters, cots being brought out from some dark hiding place. In such circumstances the mere prevention of child labor is not sufficient—the housing conditions also should be remedied so as to give the children a more suitable place in which to play, study and sleep, a better home in which to use their leisure.

Again, a movement to prohibit street work by children should give impetus to that which seeks to make the public school a social center, and especially to that for public vacation schools. Many of the homes of city children very largely lack the element of attractiveness which is so essential in holding children under the influence of their parents, and this want must be filled as far as possible by making the school an instrument not merely for instruction, but also for the entertainment and socializing of the entire neighborhood.

Again, the regulating of street trading should be undertaken jointly with the movement to supply adequate playground facilities. Playgrounds are not a municipal luxury, but a necessary. Children must have some suitable place for recreation. It is not a function of the street to furnish the space for play, and as children cannot and should not be kept at home all the time, it follows that ground must be set apart for the purpose. On these points a British report says: "We have no doubt that insanitary homes and immoral surroundings, with the want of any open spaces where the children could enjoy healthy exercise and recreation, are strong factors in determining towards evil courses in the cases of the children of the poor."[12] The need for more playgrounds in Chicago was partially supplied by having one block in a congested district closed to traffic during August, 1911, so that children could play there without risking their lives, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening. In providing this emergency playground, Chicago has set an example that will undoubtedly be imitated by other cities.

In this way the abolition of child labor in city streets would result in benefit not only to the children, but to the entire community as well. It would promote a general civic awakening that would make each town and city a better place to live in, a better home for our citizens of the future.