LONDON'S CHILD STREET TRADERS

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 313, 2 May 1911, Page 7

LONDON'S CHILD STREET TRADERS

The proposal of the London County Council to abolish street trading by children is that has the warm approval of all who have had the opportunity to watch its-ill-effects. The dangers of street trading are numerous. Apart from its ill effects on health and rubral character, it leaves the children stranded iri later years and entirely unfitted for any respectable occupation. As street traders ohildren seldom learn anything useful. They get their wits sharpened, but there is no real intellectual development, aud the result is that m many cases they drift, sooner or later, into the class which fills our gao!s v . . *

At the present time there are m London nearly 14,000 boys and over a thousand girls under, the age of sixteen hawking newspapers, matches, flowers, penny toys, playing, singing, shoeblacking. In a vast number of cases — especially among the match and flower sellers — "trading" is a mere euphemism for begging. Some, of these juvenile hawkers are mites of six or seven, who fill m the time they do not spend at school m going the rounds of local public-houses with perhaps only a single box of matches as their entire stock-in-trade. A number of them are undoubtedly parentally educated up to the. begging business, and it is quite certain that the home curriculum includes more subjects than the gentle art of begging. And as linguists some of these wizened little street hawkers would give points to a. Dublin fishwife or a back-block bullock puncher m the matter of luridity and obscenity If the proposals of the L.C.C; become law, a certain amount of hardship must be inflicted on scores of hardworking widows .and others who. cannot keep / the home together unless assisted by their children. But the parents to whom the banning of child street trading will mean real hardship are m a great minority. By far the greater number are the children of people with little or no sense of parental responsibility, and to whom their children's earnings^ are only important because they give them*, more money to spend m self-indulgencef*

There can, however, be no question that juvenile street trading as at present carried on is a social evil requiring drastic remedies. A few may suffer by its suppression," -but m the long run the Sbate,;at large must benefit, providing a schemed can be devised whereby. the children thrown out of employment are enabled to turn their spare -time to good account m other directions;

L Mr, Mundella, vice-chairman of the Committee : on Wage-earning Children; who is I entirely m agreement with . the London County Council proposal, believes that the •solution of the problem should be found m a system. of trade classes for^children combined with the old system of apprenticeship .run on modern lines. He thinks that if moire advantage were taken by the trade schools which exist at present all over the country children would learn something useful, which would, stand; them .m good stead for the rest of their lives. This. might be brought about iby a? law compelling parents to send their children to a certain number of trade' classes each week until they reached the age of -fif b<een or sixteen. Pressure would ,~ of course, Lhave' to be brought to bear also oh employers; to see that children had the opportunity br attending these - classes. — London correspondent, March 10.