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Chapter Six - Child Savers and St. Louis Newsboys
- University of Missouri Press
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Chapter Six Child Savers and St. Louis Newsboys At 7:30 on one of the coldest nights of last winter [1909–1910] Little Cock-Eye, aged 6, was found standing on the corner with two papers [in] his hand. His stockings were down over the tops of his shoes, his overcoat open and his shirt unbuttoned. First one little hand and then another was put into his pocket to get warm as he cried, “Last edition of the . . . “ —Ora aurilla Kelley, “The Newsboy Problem in St. Louis” A 68 T THE END oF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY and the beginning of the twentieth, progressive reformers aimed to get children out of the workplace, off the streets, and into well-organized educational and recreational programs. As a highly visible presence at busy intersections, St. Louis’s newsboys drew attention from child savers, who perceived them as potential victims of the city’s dangers and temptations. By the turn of the century, these young salesmen had become noisy and colorful fixtures on the urban landscape. In the eyes of reformers, however, they were a daily reminder that children in the industrial city grew up too fast and joined the labor force too early.1 Progressives around the country tried to solve the problems of working children. Most of the reform efforts occurred at the local and state levels. In connection with this widespread movement, Missouri adopted protective legislation aimed at keeping children under age fourteen out of mines, factories, and other dangerous workplaces. In 1911, the state prohibited any child under the age of ten from selling newspapers or other kinds of merchandise in streets, hotels, railway stations, saloons, or public buildings. Between 1915 and 1919, the state created three children’s-code commissions to examine and improve the state’s laws relating to child welfare. Despite these efforts, however, children, parents, and employers often ignored the law, and newsboys continued to ply their trade.2 Child Savers and St. Louis Newsboys 69 Selling newspapers was a common way for ambitious eleven- to fifteenyear -old boys to make money. Famous men have reminisced about their early days as “newsies.” Baseball legend Yogi Berra sold newspapers on St. Louis street corners at night and practiced his sport in parks during the day. Historian David Nasaw insists that most young newspaper sellers enjoyed their experience in the “ideal workplace” of the bright and bustling city streets. These young boys, Nasaw maintains, were flesh-andblood heroes, straight out of the pages of Horatio Alger’s novels, living the American dream.3 At the turn of the century, the newspaper business was highly competitive , and young salesmen played an important role in it. According to Nasaw, newspaper publishers needed the children as much as the children needed their jobs. In many cases, newsboys functioned as independent contractors, setting their own hours and defining their own territories. In school, they had to obey their teachers, and at home, their parents ruled the roost, but on the streets the boys were independent. The harder they worked, the more money they made. It was a simple and effective lesson in self-reliance.4 Bernard “Barney” Mussman fit the American mold of the hardworking young man who lifted himself up by his own bootstraps. In 1899, he won recognition as St. Louis’s top-selling north-side newsboy. Mussman worked for a news dealer named H. M. Dixon at 2141 Cass Avenue. In one week in February, he sold 1,143 copies of the Post-Dispatch on the corner of Nineteenth and Cass. The newspaper described him as “a fine husky lad with a fog-horn voice and a positive manner” who stood at his corner in any kind of weather.5 The reason Mussman worked so hard may have been that he was supporting not only himself but also his younger stepbrother. In 1900, Mussman and his sibling, James Croke, lived in a multifamily dwelling at 1852 Cass Avenue. The federal census for 1900 listed Mussman as the head of the household and reported his age as twenty-one. At that time, his stepbrother was sixteen, and both of them worked as newsboys. Ten years later, according to the 1910 federal census, Mussman had a wife named Annie and a five-year-old son named Harry. Croke still lived in his household, and both brothers worked as salesmen for a soda works.6 Mussman differed from the typical St. Louis newsboy, who was under sixteen and still lived at home...