Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1933-11-19
Jobs for 100000 Boys Saued
BY Ruling in Newspaper Code

"I don't think that I would have
liked to have anybody tell me that ]
couldn't deliver my papers"
The speaker was Hugh S. Johnson,
former newspaper carrier boy
His words, however, carried more
weight than the mere preference Of an
ex-carrier boy, for as Gen. Hugh S
johnson, national recovery admins
traitor, he was reassuring more than a
half million boys in the United States
including approximately $500 in Wash
| ington, that they will not be deprived
Of their jobs and earnings
Gen. Johnson's remark was made
when the proposed code Of fair prac-
tices for newspapers was being con-
sidered and certain welfare groups
made the demand that the code pro-
hibit employment Of younger boys. The
argument was made that their employ
ment was another instance of child
labor, but publishers, many of them
former carrier boys, contended that
child labor was not involved, and they
convinced Gen. johnson.
Limits Imposed.
AS a result he accepted a provision
designed to prevent abuses, providing
only that no boy should be allowed to
deliver newspapers if such work would
interfere with his school hours or be
calculated to impair his health.
When representatives of the various
branches OF newspaper publishing
gathered here last Summer to consider
the code it developed that the largest
group Of individuals 10 come under the
provisions of the proposed code was not
the editorial employees. the printers or
the pressmen, but the boys who sell and
deliver the newspapers.
1t developed further that these boys
earn approximately $l00,000000 a year
by their part-tine work. averaging less
than an hour and a half a day, outside
OF school hours.
Help Support Family.
Thus publicly, and for the first time,
the business of delivering newspapers
the only business in the country largely
conducted by boys-waS recognized for
the big business that it is. Until then
few people, outside the circulation de-
partmentS Of newspapers, had realized
how tremendous is the task of placing
more than SO, 000, 900 newspapers in the
hands Of readers daily, of how large a
section of young America is earning its
spending money and in many cases
helping support the family in this part
time work.
Probably no group of the American
public reads the accounts Of the prog
reSs Of the code hearing more than this
huge group of boys. The objections
raised to their employment, of course,
jeopardized their jobs. Prospective loss
Of the paper route meant to some of
them dropping out of school or the
dropping of plans for college. To 9TH
ers it meant the loss Of an income sore
ly needed at home. To a quarter OF a
million or SO it meant the loss of spend
ing money parents could no longer
supply, dashed hopes for such things
as a new bicycle, a new suit, a trip to
camp, base ball gloves, skates, or fish
ing tackle.
Fight Continued
Publishers, however, continued their
fight for the boys. BY no stretch of the
imagination, they commended, could the
work Of the carrier boys be classed as
child labor" Their arguments ap-
parently carried weight until Gen.
Johnson made his reassuring state
ment.
If in the future their brief daily
chore should again be mistakenly CLASH
fed as child labor" either under some