Shop boy

“ A boy should really have a shop where he can keep his tools and unfinished work with no danger of them being disturbed, and where he need not be afraid of littering the floor with shavings or of making too much noise. ”

“ One evening as he was standing at the door of his shop, a poor dirty boy, without stockings and shoes, came up and asked him for a bit of broken victuals, for he had eaten nothing all day. In spite of his dirt and rags he was a very pretty, lively, civil spoken boy, and Mr. Stock could not help thinking he knew something of his face. He fetched him out a good piece of bread and cheese, and while the boy was devouring it, asked him if he had no parents, and why he went about in that vagabond manner? "Daddy has been dead some years," said the boy; "he died in a fit over at the Grayhound. ”

“ When a boy has learned the proper care and use of tools, and is able to turn out neatly executed work, he will find the occupation a profitable one, there being an unlimited number of things he can make in his shop. ”

“ It is too often the case that here a boy or a young man begins work in a machine shop, not for the avowed purpose of learning the trade, but simply as a helper, with no other object in view than to get his weekly wages. ”

“ There is, however, a great demand for boys, who can earn five shillings a week as shop boys, errand boys, and so forth. Our clever lad, therefore, who has done so well at school, becomes a fruiterer's lad, cleans out the shop, carries round the baskets, and is generally useful; he gets a rise in a year or two, to seven shillings and sixpence ”

“ Young Oliver made a quick progress in the trade. In five years he could work as well as any in the shop. In joiner's shops there are many apprentices and journeymen. Some of them were of a thoughtless disposition, and much inclined to frequent alehouses. Young Oliver had little money ”

“ When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday, filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop [413] where they sold toys for children; and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth; ”

“ The youth himself stands prompt and alert behind his counter, never idling for a moment, nor permitting his shopboy to idle, but both busy, cutting, and brushing, and bustling about, whether there be any thing to do or not. If but an old lady be seen looking up at the window, or glancing in through the avenue of cheap prints that forms the doorway, what an angler-like eagerness in the mind of the trader that she would but walk in!—nothing more required—were she once within the shop, no fear but she is well done for. ”

“ No American small-town father ever understands boys like Gareth Johns, boys with imagination and the creative impulse; they are looked upon with vague distrust and suspicion, at best, with a certain condescension. It seems incredible, indeed, to most small-town minds that any boy should not grow up with the ideal of becoming a retail boot and shoe merchant. ”

“ I now seldom saw my former playmates. Their families traded at a much larger and more fashionable store. Our customers were of an humbler class, mainly from the suburbs and adjoining villages. But a boy does not long remain companionless, be there another boy within reach. I became intimate first with a lad in a grocery store, whereby there was considerable access to sugar, raisins and other sweets ”

“ The little shops pull at one's heart, so simple is their merchandise. A little window beckons us through which we peer with misted eyes. For narrow shops are often kind to tiny folk scarce counter-high. Above a shop, behind a blind, I've heard a little baby cry. Above a shop, I've often seen a mother's anxious face appear. How many customers have been? The closing hour is drawing near. Great shops, like temples dedicate to merchandise from every mart, are over-lords of their own fate—but little shops tug at the heart! ”

“ The boys that one sees in shops, or, with workmen of all kinds, helping in many little ways, are not hirelings, but apprentices, who hope some day to hold just as good positions as their masters, and expect to know as much, if not a great deal more. At the shop or in the home, they not only help in the trades or occupations they are learning, but are willing to do any kind of menial work for their master or his family in return for what they receive from [310] him; for they do not pay for their board nor for what they are taught. ”

“ Kirk has a son of his own, about Ben's age, and will, no doubt, put him into the store, unless you should choose to go in and learn the business."
"What! I become a store boy!" exclaimed Tom, in disgust. "No, thank you. I might be willing to become salesman in a large establishment in the city, but I don't care to go into a country grocery." ”

“ These same tactics are employed by the street gamins in front of those grocery stores where barrels, boxes and cases are placed upon the sidewalk, and it is almost an impossibility for any one but the sharpest to catch them thus stealing, so clever and adroit are they. One of their very neat tricks is for a boy to place himself in view of the proprietor of a store, who, knowing the youth is after some of the goods outside, keeps a sharp eye on him. ”

“ But since the first day the Gary child began going to school he has seen boys and girls in their last year of high school still learning how to do the work that is being done where, perhaps, he expects ultimately to go to work. He knows that these pupils all have a tremendous advantage over him in the shop, that they will earn more, get a higher grade of work to do, and do it better. Through the theory lessons in the school shop he has a general idea of the scope and possibilities in his chosen trade, and what is more to the purpose, he knows how much more he has to learn about the work. ”

“ The weaver, the shoemaker, the tailor, the barber, has the impudence, with the first money he gets, to dress himself like a tradesman of substance; the ordinary retailer, in the clothing of his wife, takes pattern from his neighbor, that deals in the same commodity by wholesale, and the reason he gives for it is, that, twelve years ago, the other had not a bigger shop than himself. ”

“ A shopman was just in the act of removing them for the night, when the patriot called out, ‘Halt!’ and the shopman halted.
‘Why do you bring those foreign boys here? There are plenty of little English boys to do that job. Do you call yourself an Englishman?’ The shopman said it was ‘the governor’s business,’ and he could please himself whether he had English boys or nigger boys. This answer did not please, so, cursing the shopman, he rushed up to the dummies, smote each of them, and kicked them into the mud of the gutter, and rushed into the shop. ”

“ So, with the two boys in the lead, followed by Nell and Nan and Flossie and Freddie, the children entered the second-hand and souvenir store.
A bell on the door rang with a loud clang as Billy opened it, and when the children stepped inside the shop an old man with a black, curly beard and long black hair that seemed as if it had never been combed, came out from a back room.
"What you want to buy, little childrens?" he asked. "I got a lot of nice things, cheap! Very cheap!" ”

“ In the case of both boys and girls the effect of this occupation on future prospects cannot be anything but thoroughly bad, except, possibly, in casual and exceptional cases. We learn that many boys who sell while at school manage to obtain other work upon becoming fourteen, but for those who remain in the street the tendency is to develop into loafers and 'corner boys.' The period between fourteen and sixteen is a critical time in a boy's life. Street trading provides him with no training; he gets no discipline, he is not occupied the whole of his time ”

“ When we remember that twelve out of every one hundred boys between ten and sixteen become delinquent, and that over 60 per cent of these boys come from street trades, it does not take long for a [138] business man to figure out that it is rather poor economy to let a ten-year-old boy go into at least this field of labor.... From an economic standpoint the family that sends out a ten-year-old boy to sell papers loses a great deal more in actual money from the boy's lack of future earning capacity than the boy can possibly earn by his youthful efforts. ”

“ And as for our boys, why, they are men of the world immediately they leave school—men of a world that is growing more rapid in its revolutions, and hardens its inhabitants wonderfully fast. It is a singular fact in the history of shop-keeping, that children's toys are becoming unfashionable. "Bless you, sir, children don't buy toys now, they're much too old for those amusements!" ”

“ The mob of boys—all engaged in the news-trade—is something wonderful: fat boys, lean boys, sandy-haired and red-haired boys, tall boys and short boys, boys with red comforters (though it is summer) , and boys with sacks on their backs and money-bags in their hands; boys with turn-down collars; and boys whose extreme buttonedupness renders the fact of their having any shirts to put collars to, turn-down or stuck-up, grievously problematical. Hard-working boys are these juvenile Bashi-Bazouks of the newspaper trade. ”

“ It gives him skill, a new respect for labor, and a new conception of the value of money, if he has a paper route, mows a lawn, shovels snow, or hoes potatoes. Especially is it desirable that a boy should have some sort of an occupation for a few hours a day during the long summer vacation. The child on the farm has no lack of opportunity, but for the boy of the city streets there is little that is practicable, outside of selling papers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack; for the girl there is little but housework or department-store service. ”

“ The shop-work is designed to familiarize them with the ideas underlying shop practice. Instead of making useless joints and surfaces the boys turn out finished, marketable products. The eighth grade boys, with the aid of the instructor, have built a drill-press from the scraps of machinery which were found lying about. Now they are at work on an engine. Elaborate products you will say, for eighth grade boys, yet these boys are likely interested, they do their task with zest, and linger about [162] the shop after school hours are over—anxious to complete the jobs which the day’s work has begun. ”

“ All the clothing and boots and shoes worn in the establishment are made by the boys, the cloth being made up from the raw cotton, spun, woven and colored. The boys do the cooking and other menial duties in turn. No work is paid for out of the place. It costs nine cents per day to board, dress, and educate each boy, or a total of thirty-six dollars per day for four hundred boys. ”

“ Of the factory I have spoken. Certainly it is to be preferred to the street, if the choice must be between the two. Its offence is that it makes a liar of the boy and keeps him in ignorance, even of a useful trade, thus blazing a wide path for him straight to the prison gate. The school does not come to the rescue; the child must come to the school, and even then is not sure of a welcome. The trades’ unions do their worst for the boy by robbing him of the slim chance to learn a trade which the factory left him. Of the tenement I have said enough. ”

“ The responsibility and duties of parents must not for one moment devolve upon him. The following editorial from a New York evening newspaper puts this idea in a very clear manner, and it should be given careful consideration by every teacher:
"It takes time to point a boy right. The great merchant can touch a desk bell to give orders for a steamship or a draft of a million dollars. But the merchant's young son, age fourteen, cannot be touched off in that way. The lad has just begun to move out among other boys. They do a world of talking, these young chaps. ”

“ On getting up in the morning, instead of washing and dressing for the day, he was obliged to put on some old clothes, take down the shutters of the store,—which were so heavy he could hardly carry them,—then clean the brass signs and the outside of the shop windows, leaving the inside to be washed by the older clerks. When he had done this, he was allowed to go up stairs, wash himself, dress for the day, and to eat his breakfast. Then he took his place behind the counter.
We think it wrong for boys under fourteen to work ten hours a day. ”

“ She took a class in the Sabbath school, and told her husband she meant to have some scholars from the factory. Two or three times she had noticed Johnny running up the steps, and thought, "that boy is too small for such work." ”

“ In none of the books published on boy's handicraft has the question entered into consideration as to how he is to obtain the means with which to buy such materials and apparatus as the work requires. A boy should not expect to draw upon his father's purse for everything his fancy desires. It is important that he learn to earn his spending money, for in doing so he becomes independent and more careful as to how he invests it. ”