The Neglected Youth of Seattle
Rev. Thomas Baldwin speaks to sixty-six local newsboys, challenging the congregation to integrate young people into civic and religious life.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A congregation filling the house to the doors heard Rev. Thomas Baldwin preach at the Baptist church last night. For his subject, he took 'Give the Boy a Chance.' A special invitation to boys to be present had been extended and sixty-six newsboys had accepted it, but the sermon was directed at their elders. Mr. Baldwin said that one of the great troubles of society is that there is not proper sympathy for the boy. 'If he is one of a picnic or other party, he is likely as not forgotten. If the congregation is full, he may leave his seat, they say, for he is only a boy.' Mr. Baldwin then asserted that the heart of many a good lad was turned from the church by the habit of attending and taking an interest in it not being cultivated by the parent. Throughout the sermon, the thing most dwelt upon was that the boy should have a chance in the work of the churches and in Christian society, and the public was enjoined to devote a larger share of its attention to the boys.
“One of the great troubles of society is that there is not proper sympathy for the boy.”
Newsboys were the invisible street-level labor force of 1890s Seattle. The tension between adult civic structures and the actual lived reality of youth remains a perennial theme in local social work and city planning.
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