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| Seven-year-old Phares D. Beville sells the Mobile Item in Bienville Square in 1914. Photo by Lewis W. Hine. |
In
the early 1900s, America’s socialists made the colorful newsboys on the streets
of Mobile another exhibit in their campaign against youths working in paying
jobs.
The
activists especially disapproved of newsies. They said the youths were
corrupted by profanity, gambling, fast women, and even “the dubious
frankfurter,” which the authors of the 1914 book Children in Bondage claimed
was the boys’ chief nourishment. And horror of horrors, “Frequently in one
night a boy drinks from five to six cups of coffee.”
A
group of wealthy and influential Northern leftist progressives founded the
National Child Labor Committee on April 15, 1904, to campaign against children
working such jobs. New York sociology teacher and highly talented photographer
Lewis Wickes Hine quit his job at the Ethical Culture School in 1908 to become
the committee’s official photographer. Hine traveled the country photographing
children and adults at work.
Hine
brought his camera to Alabama in 1910, 1911, 1913, and
1914. Alabama was an odd
choice for Hine to spend so much time in. In 1903, the Yellowhammer State had
made it illegal for children under 12 to work in factories. And Pennsylvania
had more kids working in non-farm jobs than all the states of the former
Confederacy combined.
In
Alabama, Hine photographed youths servicing machines in cotton mills and
laboring for coal mines. On the Gulf Coast, he took photos of boys working on
oyster boats and girls shucking oysters for a canning company. In the cities,
he shot images of boys delivering telegraphs and dry goods and selling
newspapers on street corners.
Hine
arrived in the Port City in 1914. Among other subjects, he photographed several
newsboys, all of whom appeared to be selling the afternoon Mobile Item.
This choice of newspaper street sellers likely wasn’t by chance. The competing
morning Mobile Register was owned by Frederick I. Thompson, a leftist progressive
Democrat. Although the Register also used newsboys, they don’t appear in
Hine’s photos.
It
seems highly possible that Thompson invited Hine to Mobile and helped him find subjects
for his photo shoots. Hine needed some local contacts to acquaint him with
places that employed the children he photographed. Not all of the locations
were obvious or easy to find.
According
to the National Archives, Hine recorded information about every photograph. He created
a ruse to interview the children he photographed and then scribbled notes on
paper hidden inside his pocket. He believed that he had to be “double-sure that
my photo data was 100% pure—no retouching or fakery of any kind.” While Hine
may not have faked his info, he wasn’t always accurate. Or his assumptions
about his subjects didn’t accurately reflect the facts.
Of
Hine’s four photos of Mobile newsies, he recorded the name of just one of his
subjects, and then only a first name, “Ferris.” Thanks to the research of
historian Joe Manning, who has been identifying the children in Hine’s photos
and interviewing descendants, we know that “Ferris” is actually Phares
Demoville Beville. Friends and family just called him “P. D.,” or Pee Dee.
Hine’s
photo shows a 7-year-old Phares selling the Mobile Item on the sidewalks
of Bienville Square on October 22, 1914. His caption read, “Tiny newsie who did
not know enough to make change for investigator. There are still too many of
these little ones in the larger cities.”
Hine photographed Phares and his other subjects
sympathetically. He believed his photos would more effectively serve his cause
if the children looked likable and deserving of attention.
 |
Peter D. Beville, top left, father of Phares,
and a story about his International Motor Truck
company in Mobile.
|
Phares,
and others like him, weren’t penniless orphans sentenced to living on the
streets in dirty shirttails. At the time Hine took the photo, the Beville
family was quite well off. In 1912, Phares’ parents moved from Florida to
Mobile, where his father Peter founded the P. D. Beville Supply Co., an International
Motor Truck distributor, in 1915. The Bienville Square corner where Hine
photographed the young Phares was just two blocks north from his father’s
business.
Peter
Beville’s business merged with a competitor in 1918 and in 1922 Peter built a
four-story building to house his dealership on the northwest corner of Government
and Conception streets at a cost of $100,000, more than $1.5 million in today’s
dollars.
The
Beville family lived at a fashionable address, 902 Government Street just west
of Broad Street. By the time Phares was a teen, his family had moved about a
mile away to the just as fashionable western edge of the city to a large
two-story home at 110 South Georgia Avenue.
The
Bevilles paid pricey tuitions for Phares and his older brother Newell to attend
the University Military School in Mobile and later to enroll in Washington
& Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. So the Beville family wasn’t poor
and dependent on the few pennies Phares brought in selling newspapers on
downtown streets. And, even though at 7 years old Phares “did not know enough
to make change” for Hine, the youngster’s education clearly wasn’t neglected.
Many
of Hine’s other photographic subjects had similar stories. One of those other
subjects was a 9 year old cash girl in Gayfer’s Department Store. Of her, Hine
wrote, “At first glance the home conditions with a one-armed father and several
children in the family would indicate that her small wages were needed, but
when we found that the father is able to do certain kinds of work, and that
they have relatives who are well-to-do, there was no doubt that the family
could get along without her working. In almost all the cases investigated, the
need for the child's earning was very small.”
In
fact, that was the point that Hine and others of the NCLC wanted to make: The
families didn’t need the income from their children’s work. Dad, and maybe mom,
too, earned enough to sustain the family. Hine’s photos meant to evoke a
Dickensian nightmare of greedy capitalists employing children for low wages.
The photographer, as much as said so. “The object of employing children is not
to train them, but to get high profits from their work.”
Selfish
employers were the only reason children worked, according to this view. Somehow,
the children and their parents had been stripped of their free will by the free
market. Hine and his socialist buddies never explained how low wages enticed
children to work when families didn’t need their incomes.
Modern
audiences are conditioned to reflexively reject any notion of children working.
In the 1600s and 1700s, however, adults expected children to work. Until the
1940s and perhaps later, parents moving from rural areas to mill towns and
cities believed children needed to help support the family, just as they had on
the farm. Many other adults believed that disciplined work helped build an
individual’s character.
As
the U.S free market made families more prosperous, fewer kids worked. The
number of U.S. children working reached a high point around 1910, not long
before Hine came to Mobile. In that year, about 20 out of 100 kids worked. Of
each of those 20, more than 14 worked on farms. Out of those 14, more than 12
worked on family acres. By 1930, just a little more than 6 out of 100 children
worked. Of that statistical 6, nearly 5 worked on the family farm. Prosperity
essentially allowed parents to buy their children’s education out their earnings,
going without extra income brought in by their kids.
By
1938 when Congress passed the Fair Labor Act, the law against child labor that
also gave us the minimum wage, it was mostly a symbol of a state of affairs
that already existed.
In
the early 1900s, Hine and his socialist allies had been in a hurry to create
the impression that work was a form of exploitation from which children must be
protected. The only way to do that was to place the government between parents
and their children. The parents had to be prevented through law from letting
their children work and then forced to send their kids to schools operated by local
governments. Then the government would confiscate the parents’ hard-earned
income to pay for the schools. Socialists never seem to worry about the
government taking the income parents needed to raise their families.
Hine’s
photos and the NCLC investigations unwittingly confirmed that newsboys and
other working youths were growing up in good homes. In fact, P. D. Beville’s
life after Hine photographed him was a testament to the solid family life his
father and mother provided and to the fact that Phares’ work as a youth helped
build his character.
Phares
left Washington & Lee University in late 1929, a few months before he was
to graduate and returned home because his 12-year-old brother Lewis had died. The
Great Depression had started and Phares stayed in Mobile to help his parents.
He sold trucks with his father and served as treasurer for the business.
Apparently, Phares had learned how to make change. But they weren’t selling
many trucks during the Depression and the family business eventually closed its
doors in the early ’30s.
In
1934, the Mobile Press Register, successor to both the Item that
Phares had worked for as a child and its Register competitor, hired Phares
in the circulation department. After 18 months he entered the accounting
department for a year before switching to the advertising department for nearly
17 years.
Not
long after starting at the paper, Phares took to the petite and pretty Alice
Barclay Lesesne, who worked for the Society Department. They may have known
each other through their families’ social connections before working together.
The couple announced their engagement in September 1939 and were married on January 15, 1940. The Press Register
provided a honeymoon cruise to Cuba.
Phares
served in the Army for two years during World War II and returned to the
newspaper at the end of the war. In Mobile, Phares and Alice raised two
daughters, volunteered in community groups such as the YMCA and Kiwanis, and
were active members in their Presbyterian Church.
From
starting as an advertising salesman at the Press Register, Phares worked
his way up to local display advertising manager and eventually became national
advertising manager. He also was a major stockholder before the paper was sold
to the Newhouse family in 1966. Phares worked until retiring in 1977 at age 70.
Phares
died in 1991 at the age of 83. His wife Alice died in 2004 at the age of 92.
By
the time Phares died, paperboys selling newspapers on the street had nearly
disappeared from Mobile. Seven-year-old little merchants were long gone. Mobile
had grown far beyond the compact small city it had been in Phares’ paperboy days.
After World War II, newspaper carriers delivered papers to suburban subscribers
from bicycles.
By
the late 1960s, adults often replaced teen paper carriers as schools developed
more programs that took up boys’ time. Supermarkets and fast-food restaurants,
with better working hours and conditions, competed for the teen work force. The
rising affluence of the general population also made it less necessary for many
teens to go to work.
As
newspaper prices rose in the late 1990s, the vending machines began to lose
favor with the public and publishers alike. The machines were mechanical and
couldn't accept dollar bills, only coins. The only choice customers had was to
carry a pocket full of quarters or dollar coins. At the same time, Sunday
editions had become so bulky that only a limited number of copies could be
placed in the boxes.
The
few youths who still sold papers on the street could be found at busy
intersections during rush hours. When traffic stopped for the red light, the
youths rushed into the street to hawk papers to the motorists waiting for the
light to change to green. Because of the danger of injury from moving cars, the
city eventually cracked down on the practice.
By
the time Phares’ wife Alice had died, people were switching to getting their
news, entertainment, and other information online. The newspaper vending boxes,
like the paperboys they replaced, became less and less necessary. The Press
Register began pulling its vending machines from the streets and they have
all but disappeared now as well.
Edwin
Markham et al. Children in Bondage: A Complete and Careful Presentation of
the Anxious Problem of Child Labor-its Causes, Its Crimes, and Its Cure. (Hearst's
international library Company, 1914) 223; Joe
Manning, “Phares Beville, Mobile, Alabama,” Lewis Hine Project, Mornings on
Maple Street. Online: https://morningsonmaplestreet.com/2015/01/01/phares-beville. Accessed January 13, 2020; “It’s
His Castle of Achievement,” The Harvester World, Volume 14, number 12,
December 1923, 5-6. Online: http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/ihc/id/11531/.
Accessed January 15, 2020; Bill Kauffman, “The Child Labor Amendment Debate of
the 1920's,” Mises Institute. January 29, 2018. Online: https://mises.org/library/child-labor-amendment-debate-1920s-0.
Accessed January 12, 2020; Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Trouble With Child Labor Laws,”
Mises Institute. February 11, 2008. Online: https://mises.org/library/trouble-child-labor-laws.
Accessed January 14, 2020; “Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine:
Documentation of Child Labor,” National Archives. Online: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos.
Accessed January 9, 2020; Mobile Press Register,
Inc., et al. v. Joseph F. McGowin, II, Individually and as Executor and Trustee
under the last Will and Testament of Everette Leonard McGowin et al. 1 Div.
680. Supreme Court of Alabama. November 17, 1960. Online: https://law.justia.com/cases/alabama/supreme-court/1960/124-so-2d-812-1.html
