Children of the City: At Work and at Play [Paperback]

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. InChildren of the City,David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams.

Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published,Children of the Cityoffers a vibrant portrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.Acknowledgements

Preface

1.  The City They Called Home

2.  At Play in the City

3.  Child Labor and Laborers

4.  The Littlest Hustlers

5.  The Newsies

6.  Junkers, Scavengers, and Petty Theives

7.  The “Litter Mothers”

8.  All That Money Could Buy

9.  The Battle for Spending Money

10. The Children and the Child-Savers

11. Working Together

12. Unions and Strikes

13. End of an Era

Epilogue

Appendix:  A Note on Sources: The Newsboy Studies

Abbreviations

Notes

Index A skillfully written, engrossing and memorable portrait of a unique moment in American life. --Los Angeles Times

“Nasaw . . . has amassed a surprising amount of information about the lives of working-class city children from the turn of the century. . . . Most of Nasaw’s best anecdotes come from show business biographies—George Burns, Phil Silvers and Milton Berle, for instance. . . . And, as any old fan of the Little Rascals or the Bowery Boys can attest, there is something irresistl1