The Public Health Committee have now completed the by-laws under the provision of the Employment of Children Act, 1903, and they will be submitted immediately for approval by the Municipal Council. We have already dealt fully with the question of street trading by children, and with the Act of which these by-laws are the outcome. We ventured on one occasion to express the opinion that the measure might work very harshly in a city like Dublin, where there is a vast population constantly on the verge of starvation, whose absolute needs must in part be supplied by the children.
The employment of children is of course objectionable from many points of view. It needs little argument to prove that it is bad for a child to have to hawk small wares at all hours of the day along the streets. At night the evils that beset them are multitudinous. They are exposed to all the vagaries of the weather, and they are not clothed to meet them; they are not well fed either; and, as a rule, they are not sturdy specimens of the human race, who might be trusted to rough it somewhat. But these ills do not end the catalogue of misery. At night they have to vend their goods in places where their morals are constantly in extreme jeopardy. We have the greatest possible sympathy with the objects of the promoters of the Act now in operation.
It must, however, be remembered that this street trading by children is the result of dire distress. We are perfectly well aware of the fact that in many cases it is caused by the laziness and drunken habits of the parents, but we also know that in many cases it is necessary if whole families are not to be thrown on the rates.
It was with that knowledge that we advocated that any by-laws adopted should be most carefully framed; and secondly, that the authority to administer them should not enforce them harshly or indiscriminately. The by-laws before us are not harsh – indeed, on the whole, they are as lenient as could be adopted if the Act was not to remain a dead letter. It now depends on their administration, should they be adopted by the Council, as to whether they will effect the objects intended without working needless hardship.
The first by-law prohibits any person under sixteen years of age from trading in the streets unless while holding a licence, and then it is provided that no licence shall be granted to any person under eleven years of age. Physical or mental deficiency will be deemed a good reason for the refusal of a licence, and in the case of a boy or girl seeking or holding a licence having no home, or no proper home, the Corporation shall be empowered to require that he or she reside in lodgings approved of by the Corporation.
The principal by-laws are those which detail the conditions upon which licences will be issued. First of all no girl, actually or apparently–we do not like the word apparently–under the age of sixteen years, shall trade in the streets after seven o’clock during what are practically the winter nights, that is between October 1st and March 31st. During the remainder of the year eight o’clock is the limit fixed. Boy licence-holders have an extra hour granted. It is a concession to the sterner sex, but we confess that we do not see any valid reason for making the difference. If the object of the Act and the resulting by-laws be the preservation and protection of children, the boys require quite as much paternal care as the girls.
We are not quite satisfied with the regulation that "no licence-holder shall trade in the streets unless decently and sufficiently clothed." We know that the Police-Aided Children's Clothing Society does a good deal for those aimed at in these provisions, but that excellent organisation cannot clothe the myriads of youngsters who swarm in the streets selling trifles. And in the summer months the miniature merchants need comparatively little in the way of clothes. "Decently and sufficiently clothed" is a provision which might easily give rise to hardship.
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Selected by Joe Joyce; email fromthearchives@irishtimes.com
