In the 1900’s, the birthrate in the United States was 32.2 births per thousand people, the average number of children in a family being 3.56. As more people immigrated into the city, and with the lack of any birth control, the population grew. However, there was not enough housing, most people had to work at demeaning jobs to survive, and not many people were around to take care of the children. Most poverty working class children had to fend for themselves. Jobs in the mills were common, as well as jobs in mines and being newsboys.
Boys enjoy lighting up a cigarette as much as a grown man would. They look kind of smug.
As usual, working class children did not have a normal childhood. The boys worked alongside men in mines and lumber plants, playing pool during break time and smoking. Newboys could be found shooting craps in alleyways as a past time. They also fought for fun.
Boys fight for fun
A group of newsboys playing craps in the jail alley at 10 p.m. Albany, New York.
Children, both boys and girls began working as young as five years old to help support their families. This meant that most spent their childhoods working and risking their lives working at dangerous jobs. Newsboys jumped out of moving trolleys and often caught pneumonia and other illnesses because of standing out late at night in the cold weather. Boys in the mines aged quickly and their health diminished rapidly. The fact that some boys enjoyed visiting whore houses adds to the fact that childhood just didn’t exist or ended around age five before they started working.
Richard Pierce, age 14, a Western Union Telegraph Co. messenger, works from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Smokes and visits whore houses.
Dirty miner boys
Their faces still have baby fat but they already have lines and wrinkles.
City girls worked in mills spinning cotton. Most earned around 40¢ a day. Farms girls both African American and white picked pails of berries from 4AM till sunset. Some boys as young as six picked cotton and tobacco, carrying bags as heavy as 40 pounds.
Girl in the mill who didn't remember her age when asked. She worked nights sometimes.
There isn’t much information provided on what girls did for fun, but maybe they went to the library and checked out books like Francie (From the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which depicted this time period from a young girl’s point of view).
As always, the fortunate middle class or high class children went to school or got private education. For fun girls played with dolls and had tea-time. The boys went horseback riding or played sports. Higher class children were usually healthy (with the exception of natural illnesses such as colds). For the working class children who eventually attended school: the dropout rate for children over the age of 12 was 96%.
During this time period, many children had to work long hours to survive. Their families depended on them, and most families had around three children. They were usually all sent to work. Some children stayed at home and helped their parents at their at-home sweat shop businesses. Even at home they worked in unsanitary conditions. It’s disconcerting to realize children from age 5 were working from sunrise to sundown. Children nowadays go to school for less than those hours, even high schoolers and some college students. It’s even more disturbing to know that they started smoking at an early age and went to whore houses, with some young girls as prostitutes. As much as I wish these kids didn’t have to go through this, this was reality, and the Gilded Age. Beneath all the productivity and the prosperity were the dirty children who were exploited for their labor. How disillusioning.
Citations:
Childhood in American History 
oops forgot about citing the work
10.