The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-11-30
LoNDoN's CHILD WORKERS.
Divers and Quaint Occupation by Which Many Little Toilers
 Earn Pittances.
London Daily Mail.

London Daily Mail.
 Poor children hit upon queer expedients when they must help to make ends met.
 In the East End of London a boy was found not simply lead the blind man to and from some pitch two three times day or walk M,b Sh dT%h S,m n sbe time and part of the time the blind man passed in public houses wneTe charity. 1t seems, is sometimes freer than m the streets When found and sent to school again this boy confessed that he had led the mendicant about for twelve hours every day had been employed eighty hours in the week for 3s. Sd. The standard rate is penny an hour.
 Liverpool like the more established class of step cleaners in third-rate London suburbs, owe their trade to the discovery that many proud to be seen doing housework. The pay is a penny a step, and in Finshuty giris are known who earn much as ls pence in morning. They go to school tired
 The strictness of the Jewish Sabbath has Jews fire lighters. These are girls who make the house fires for Jewish women on Saturday mornings, or boys who bank up the n;es of Jewish bakeries. The work Is light, and they efrn a shilling two bv a murning's work
 It is noteworthy that there are no com plaints of work interfering with the school ing of Jewish children. They do little. except to carry bundles for their rarents.
 These humble industries in most Of whicn. though not in all there are victims Of long hours. have grades and social differences no less marked than any in the great world
  than to run about the streets with matches which ranks next to begging. To uundls a barrow with cats meat is to have trade me newsboy, selling a known article looks down upon those casual peddlers of the retail mar kets, common in all the poorer parts Of Lon; don, who deal on commission in studs and bootiacrs for the stallholders. Much higher fin the scale. boys think small beer or er- wand boys and the contemptuous pity of the choir boy for boys employed in theatres Is superior to considerations of pay.
 The common sense of this is that child work
 
 sell songs a boy must have capital or credit to the extent of Sd For cough tablets the to do with the case On an average the 5000 schoolboys in London shops work longer than the 5000 or 20, 1000 who haunt the markets. These informal and toll-less markets of the side streets. of which there are no fewer than 30 in the metropolitan area swarm with boys and girls to the latest hour of night. Attendance officers rarely try an inglorious hunt there. and the police never. There Is bylaw of the London County Council forbid, ding girls under Is and boys under II to sell in the streets after g p m. but 1t has broken down at weak point; 1t requires proof CT Boys who like the life go from one market et,, to another and sleep out. It Is hard to run them down. There have been cases Of boys fte- quenting such markets for seventy hours Other boys have set up a new trade there. that of replenishing costermonsers' lamps with oil at penny each. It is an irony that children work uncon- scionable hour+ at making children toys, m A playtime and oets no pocket money. Another bow cuts wire and tin for nothing thirty-two hours a week. to make the penny gimcracks his father shows on a board in Ludgate Hill.
 Pantomime children earn from s. to 3s 6d. per week-as the theatre is out of the wai O. central and they are small or big. Callboys are worth &. or 3s: Sd. at least and the ac- tors tip them well. Many working lads go later sill to bed than they do. Besides who has numbered the illustrious men that once were caIlboys from Mfr. Toole to Shakespeare? In davs gone by they did not usually get of with four and-twenty hours 6 week. and the same amount of time spent in managing Is paid Wit Is. Sd. l.,
 homes by women who would earn more they were strong enough to take in washing Weary little chaps help with these. too. How much better 1t must be. though still little tiresome when the novelty goes. to work on 3 merry round till II st night and all day long Saturdays! ,,..,- The best-payinR game seems to be skittleS' A hoy of Il earns Ss weekly by setting up the pins in an alley. But then he is never In bed ill after midnight.