BUT IT’S SUCH A NICE CHILD LABOR WORK CAMP

Without doubt, both the farmer and the orphanage had the best of intentions. Giving disadvantaged kids a summer in the Sonoma County countryside? What’s not to like?

“The Boys and Girls Aid Society” of San Francisco, described as a home for boys “not sufficiently wayward to require assignment to the reform school, and too hard to manage to be placed in family homes or orphanage,” had a deal with a Sebastopol berry grower to operate a “summer camp” for the boys. There, according to a 1911 profile of the farmer, the boys enjoyed “a pleasant outing in the country as well as an opportunity to earn money.” Living in tents set up in a eucalyptus grove, the kids and their supervisors earned up to $5,000 for the summer’s work. A 1915 survey of the child welfare societies put the organization’s annual expenses at about $37K, so we can safely assume that the money from this farm labor represented a sizable chunk of income for both the Aid Society and the youths.

RIGHT: According to “Child Welfare Work in California” (William Henry Slingerland, Russell Sage Foundation, New York Dept. of Child-Helping, 1915), at the Sebastopol farms “boys pick berries and other fruits for pay, each one retaining his own wages and priding himself on amount earned.” Other pictures in the book portray the boys under their camp tent and at Sunday religious services

But the 1905 Press Democrat story below suggests a less idyllic interpretation. Here boys desperately try to escape, with local police acting as low-rent bounty hunters, earning ten bucks for each child they drag back to the fields in handcuffs. And say, here’s an interesting question: Do you think that the $10 reward came from the kid’s meager earnings, or the Aid Society’s take?

BOYES CORRALS TWO MAVERICKS
BOY PRISONERS SLIP THEIR HANDCUFFS AND THEN SLIP THEMSELVES

They Are Strays From the Band of Juvenile Berry Pickers on the Barlow Ranch

Two runaway boys, one calling himself Riley and the other Roddick, gave Police Officer Boyes his run of the summer Wednesday afternoon. Boyes is no colt with a crack speed record but the street commissioner’s gravel flies when John M. gets action on his 200 pounds avoirdupois.

They boys are part of a delegation of the San Francisco Boys & Girls Aid Society lads who are picking fruit on Mrs. Barlow’s ranch near Sebastopol. The people in charge of the youngsters have enjoyed themselves for several weeks standing guard and the officers of the surrounding towns have made considerable pin money rounding up the young mavericks at $10 per head.

Riley, Roddick, and a third lad made a jump last week and were overhauled near Petaluma. When they were returned to the Barlow camp handcuffs were slipped on their wrists, probably as a means of future identification. [illegible] the lively trio got underway Tuesday night and fetched up in this city.

One got his slim hands out of the iron [illegible] and another borrowed a file at the merry-go-round with which he skillfully filed off his metal ornaments, Boyes caught sight of his prey and the chase was on. They ran well together at first and the big officer grabbed the two R’s, the other runaway escaping. His captives wiggled convulsively in his grasp and Riley tore loose, disappearing over the creek bank. Boyes hurried Roddick to the lock-up and after a hot rush through the creek brush found the boy stowed away in a thicket like a coon. The third lad was seen hanging around a Southern Pacific freight train but got out of sight before being caged.

The Roddick lad hails from Guerneville, and he has been in trouble before. They boys will be returned to the officers of the Society. If they still persist in misbehaving they will get themselves into very serious trouble.

– Press Democrat, August 31, 1905

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PROHIBITION COMETH

Although Prohibition was still about fifteen years on the horizon, the drums of temperance were heard louder in the 1905 Santa Rosa newspapers. Reports of W.C.T.U. meetings began appearing regularly; news stories about restrictive alcohol laws elsewhere in the state and nation were reported with greater frequency.

Press Democrat editor Ernest L. Finley, with his terrible track record on matters of race, politics, and other basic Twentieth Centuryisms, produced a remarkably prescient editorial boldly stating that outright prohibition would never work: “Few have been ‘snatched from the depths’ in comparison to the immense amount of energy [temperance] organizations have expended.” The Press Democrat likely received some grief for that commentary, as well as its regular advertisements promoting whiskey and beer.

DRINKING TO EXCESS

A statement has just been issued by the Bureau of Statistics to the effect that the drinking habit is increasing in the United States, and the figures accompanying the statement appear to bear it out. But while this may be the case, it cannot be denied that drunkenness is decreasing. Men are learning by experience and also by example that they can no longer hope to maintain their standing either in the social or business world if they allow themselves to indulge in liquors to excess. The employer has no use for such men; he demands that those to whom he entrusts the details of his business be men with clear heads and men upon whom he can depend. The same thing can be said as to the social side of life — nobody nowadays has much use for the man who cannot be depended upon to keep straight, when out with his friends. The agitation carried on by the various temperance organizations during recent years has contributed to the results here noted, of course, but students of sociology are pretty well agreed that their influence is indirect rather than direct; while they have helped to create a sentiment against excessive drinking, few have been “snatched from the depths” in comparison to the immense amount of energy such organizations have expended. It is sober, every-day common sense rather than enthusiasm and hysteria that is contributing most to the abolition of the habit of drinking to excess, which, speaking in the broader sense, now appears to be well under way.

– Press Democrat editorial, May 5, 1905

NEW LIQUOR LAW
Yolo County Supervisors Pass Stringent Regulating Ordinance

Woodland, May 5 – The Supervisors have passed a stringent liquor ordinance which materially affects the saloon business in Yolo county outside the incorporated towns of Woodland and Winters. The new ordinance limits saloons in the county to 34, but does not deprive any now in business of license. The Stringent provisions require saloons to close from Sunday at 6 p. m. till Monday at 5 a. m. and every night at 12. They are prohibited from selling liquor to minors, to any person unfit to attend to ordinary busines affairs on account of drink and to any female. Gambling in saloons is also prohibited.

– Press Democrat, May 6, 1905

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“I AIN’T GOT NO NAME”

An 8 year-old runaway, child laborer, or early media cynic? We’ll never know the truth about this virtual cousin of Huck Finn.

HERE’S A LAD WHO “AINT GOT NO NAME”

“I ain’t got no name,” said an eight year old lad who fell almost to his death from a schooner into Petaluma creek on Monday and who was rescued from a watery grave by a brave young fellow who dived in after him. When asked his name the rescued boy, after a reminder from an older brother that “you don’t want no newspaper notoriety,” replied, “I aint got no name.” And he stuck to it too.

– Press Democrat, August 23, 1905

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