Street trading

“ An intelligent man, a street-seller, and familiar with street-trading generally, whom I questioned on the subject, said: “It’s really hard to tell, sir, but I should calculate this way. It’s the real sellers you ask about; them as tries to live on their selling lucifers, or as their main support. I have worked London and the outside places—yes, I mean the suburbs—in ten rounds, or districts, but six is better, for you can then go the same round the same day next week, and so get known. ”

“ The expression ‘street trading’ includes the hawking of newspapers, matches, flowers, and other articles, playing, singing, or performing for profit, shoe-blacking, and any other like occupation carried on in streets or public places. ”

“ A kind-hearted person readily falls a victim to this ruse, and as soon as he has passed by, the newsboy draws another copy from his hidden supply and repeats his importuning. Commenting on these features of street trading, Dr. Charles P. Neill, United States Commissioner of Labor, has said: "Unless the child is cast in the mold of heroic virtue, the newsboy trade is a training in either knavery or mendicancy. ”

“ A boy under the age of 16 years, whilst engaged in street trading, shall not enter any premises used for public entertainment or licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquor for consumption on the premises for the purpose of trading.
16. A boy under the age of 16 years, whilst engaged in street trading, shall not annoy any person by importuning. ”

“ We think the most suitable age would be seventeen, which gives an interval of three or four years after the ordinary time of leaving an elementary school.... So far as girls are concerned, we feel that the arguments in favor of prohibiting trading increase rather than diminish in force as the age of the traders advances. The entire body of testimony laid before us has forced upon us the conclusion that street trading by girls is entirely indefensible, and that no system of regulation is sufficient to rid the employment of its risks and objections. ”

“ The shopping, however, of the rich is one thing, and the shopping of the very poor is quite another. Most interesting, to those who care to study the book of human nature, are the "street-markets" of the people, those rows of noisy booths and barrows which have stood from time immemorial, by traditional right, in certain streets, and where jets of brilliant, flaring naptha-lights display the kaleidoscopic stock-in-trade. Among such streets are Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road; Leather Lane, Holborn; or, to descend to a yet lower social depth, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. ”

“ These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing, are, on Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with people. Because of the next day's rest, there is, until past midnight, an open market, which invades the pavement with costers' barrows heaped with fruit, butchers' stalls, booths of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all the bric-à-brac of the second-hand suburban shop; vehicular traffic is suspended; all barriers are encroached upon; everyone walks in the middle of the street. ”

“ But when they got out into the street and drew breaths of fresh air, David and Matilda stood still and looked at each other.
"I never knew what good air meant before," said the latter.
"And even this is not good," replied David.
"How does he live, that poor little creature, with not one breath of it?"
"He doesn't live; he is dying slowly," said David.
"Oh David, what can we do?"
"We'll think, Tilly. I'll carry him some grapes presently. I fancy he wants nothing but food and air. We will contrive something."
"I wonder if there are any other sick children in that house, Sarah?" ”

“ David inquired again carefully about the sickness, to be sure that he might take Matilda there; and then they went. Sarah volunteered to guide them. But how shall I tell what they found. It was not far off, a few blocks only; in one of a tall row of tenement houses, grim and dismal, confronted by a like row on the other side of the street. Every one like every other. But inside, Matilda only remembered how unlike it was to all she had ever seen in her life before. Even Lilac lane was pleasantness and comfort comparatively. ”

“ As shops follow the shifting currents of travel, rentals move with them, the value of retail land depending on the number of people passing, qualified by their purchasing power, the causes which bring them past the. property and their method of locomotion. This dependence of retail business on daily traffic is due to the operation of the laws of chance, by which of a given number of passers-by a certain proportion will become customers.
The mention of traffic within a city suggests the double* function of a city street as contrasted with the single function of a country road. ”

“ These traders may be described as partaking more of the characteristics of the street stationers than of the “paper-workers,” as they are not patterers. The trade is less exclusively than the “paper-trade” in the hands of men. Those carrying on this branch of the street-traffic may be divided into the sellers of pictures in frames, and of engravings (of all kinds) , in umbrellas. ”

“ One trade, however, (namely, that of “Comic Exhibition Papers,” gelatine and engraved cards of the Exhibition) is entirely now in the streets. In the broad-sheet trade, again, the “running patterers” work what are called “cocks,” when there are no incidents happening to incite the public mind. Hence, making due allowances for such variations, we may fairly assume that the street-sellers belonging to this class number at least 1,000. The following statistics will show the whole amount of capital, and the gross income of this branch of street traffic. ”

“ Norton got out at the Shadywalk hotel; and the omnibus lumbered on through Butternut Street to the parsonage gate and drew up at last before the old brown door. But it was too dark to see colours. Indeed David had some difficulty in finding the knocker; and meanwhile the omnibus lumbered off, while they were not attending. David knocked and knocked again. Matilda was trembling with delight.
"There's nobody at home," said David. "It is all dark." ”

“ The men in this trade I found generally to be intelligent. They have been, for the most part, engaged in some minor department of the book-selling or newspaper trade, in the regular way, and are unconnected with the street-sellers in other lines, of whose pursuits, habits, and characters, they seem to know nothing.
The street book-stalls are most frequent in the thoroughfares which are well-frequented, but which, as one man in the trade expressed himself, are not so “shoppy” as others—such as the City-road, the New-road, and the Old Kent-road. ”

“ Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. ”

“ But the street-buyer must not only know what to give, for hare-skins for instance, but what he can depend upon getting from the hat-manufacturers, or hat-furriers, and upon having a regular market. Thus a double street-trade knowledge is necessary, and a novice will not care to meddle with any form of open-air traffic but the simplest. Neither is street-buying (old clothes excepted) generally cared for by adults who have health and strength. ”

“ The accounts of the street-trade in second-hand linens, however, need be but brief; for none of the callings I have now to notice supply a mode of subsistence to the street-sellers independently of other pursuits. They are resorted to whenever an opportunity or a prospect of remuneration presents itself by the class of general street-sellers, women as well as men—the women being the most numerous. The sale of these articles is on the Saturday and Monday nights, in the street-markets, and daily in Petticoat and Rosemary lanes. ”

“ There are many street-traders “in second-hand,” perhaps two-thirds of the whole number, who sell indiscriminately anything which they can buy, or what they hope to turn out an advantage; but even they prefer to deal more in one particular kind of merchandize than another, and this is most of all the case as concerns the street-sale of old boots and shoes. ”

“ We sell only by the dozen and to dealers uptown.”
“Over there is the tailor shop. We clean the clothes which come in, sew on the buttons, press them and make them look as good as possible. We are wholesalers only. We sell old things by the dozen just as factory owners sell new things in large quantities only. But there are many shops on Baxter Street which cater to private customers. This part of the city is frequented by “down-and-outers,” men who come from no one knows where. They stay a while; they sleep wherever they are undisturbed, they hang out in our saloons and then they disappear. ”

“ They are chiefly of the costermonger class, some of the street-buyers however, have been carmen’s servants, or connected with trades in which they had the care of a horse and cart, and so became habituated to a street-life.
There are still many other ways in which the commerce in refuse and the second-hand street-trade is supplied. As the windmill-seller for bones, so will the puppet-show man for old bottles or broken table-spoons, or almost any old trifle, allow children to regale their eyes on the beauties of his exhibition. ”

“ The sale of belts, stockings, braces, straps and garters, is mostly in the hands of men, who, from all that I can learn, are regular street-sellers, who “turn their hands first to this and then to that,” but this portion of street-traffic is often combined with the sale of dog-collars, chains, &c. The trade is more a public-house than a distinct traffic in the street. The landlord of a well-frequented inn in Lambeth told me that every day at least 100 of such street-sellers—not including match-girls and [373] women—entered his house to offer their wares ”

“ There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually disappear. ”

“ The costermongers who are the most provident, and either have means or club their resources for a large purchase, often buy early in the morning, and so have the advantage of anticipating their fellows in the street-trade, with the day before them. Those who buy later are the customers of the hagglers, and are street-sellers, whose means do not command an extensive purchase, or who do not care to venture upon one unless it be very cheap. ”

“ The Street Market in Americans is legitimate in a special sense, because business in New York has been going on for less than an hour when our market is closing, and, of course, the trend of prices in New York has a considerable effect upon quotations here. ”

“ As their experience increases they may become general street-sellers. The duller sort will continue to carry on the trades that any one with ordinary lungs and muscles can pursue. “All a fellow wants to know to sell potatoes,” said a master street-seller to me, “is to tell how many tanners make a bob, and how many yenaps a tanner.” [How many sixpences make a shilling, and how many pence a sixpence.] The smarter and bolder lads ripen into patterers, or street-performers, or fall into theft. ”

“ If a mechanic, a labourer, or a gentleman’s servant, resorts to the streets for his bread, or because he is of a vagrant “turn,” he does not become a buyer, but a seller. Street-selling is the easier process. It is easy for a man to ascertain that oysters, for example, are sold wholesale at Billingsgate, and if he buy a bushel (as in the present summer) for 5s., it is not difficult to find out how many he can afford for “a penny a lot.” ”

“ The men who sell these goods have all bought them at the Exchange—the exceptions being insignificant—so that this street-sale is but an extension of the trade of the central mart, with the addition that the wares have been made ready for use. ”

“ This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the sun, is Wall Street: the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of New York. Many a rapid fortune has been made in this street, and many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very merchants whom you see hanging about here now, have locked up money in their strong-boxes, like the man in the Arabian Nights, and opening them again, have found but withered leaves. ”

“ Foot passengers jostled each other; drays and waggons were rolling about; business men were clustered together in some streets, apparently "on change;" with all the accompaniments of noise, and bustle, and turmoil of a city full of life and traffic. The money brokers' shops are very numerous in the two finest streets—Montgomery and California Streets. Nearly every other shop there belongs to a money broker or money changer. Strange to see the piles of glistening gold in the windows—ten to twenty dollar pieces, and heaps of greenbacks. ”

“ Hucksters and pedlars’ carts make two rows of booths in the street itself, and along the houses is still another—a perpetual market doing a very lively trade in its own queer staples, found nowhere on American ground save in “the Bend.” Two old hags, camping on the pavement, are dispensing stale bread, baked not in loaves, but in the shape of big wreaths like exaggerated crullers, out of bags of dirty bed-tick. There is no use disguising the fact: they look like and they probably are old mattresses mustered into service under the pressure of a rush of trade. ”

“ The sellers overflow them and spread out into the streets and by-ways, with no roof above them but the blue sky. Some of these sellers are men, some women, and some mere children. Some have large stationary stands, others roam about with their wares in boxes, bags, or baskets in their hands. They sell all manner of wares. Watches, jewelry, newspapers, fruits, tobacco, cigars, candies, cakes, ice cream, lemonade, flowers, dogs, birds,—in short everything that can be carried in the hand—are sold by the Street Venders. The rich and the poor buy of them. ”