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“Forbid Them Not“: Child Actor Labor Laws and Political Activism in the Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Benjamin McArthur
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Extract

Political activism among actors has become common in twentieth-century America, from patriotic support for war bonds in the two world wars to antiwar declarations during the Vietnam era; from campaigning for presidential hopefuls to more recent environmental activism. We may forget, then, that actors, wary of social disapproval, traditionally had maintained a low political profile in America. The spread-eagle rhetoric of Edwin Forrest may have made his Democratic sympathies well known in antebellum America, but the subsequent actions of John Wilkes Booth only reinforced actors' belief that they were best served by political quietism.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , November 1995 , pp. 63 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1995

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References

1. Earl See, “The Political Image of the Actor” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Missouri, 1974)Google Scholar; McArthur, Benjamin, Actors and American Culture, 1880–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

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5. Statistics were drawn from annual reports of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. It should be noted that not all applications were for legitimate stage performances.

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13. See Bremner, , ed., Children and Youth in America IIGoogle Scholar; Trattner, Walter I., Crusade for Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and the Child Labor Reform (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970)Google Scholar; Felt, Hostages of Fortune; Claudia Johnson's “Elbridge T. Gerry's Obsession” is the fullest discussion of his theatrical crusade in its cultural context.

14. Johnson, , “Gerry's Obsession,” 18; New York Dramatic Mirror 10 05 1884Google Scholar; New York Star, 7 08 1882; NYSPCC scrapbooks vol. 1Google Scholar; Claudia Johnson argues persuasively that Gerry's opposition to children on the stage was sustained by the vestigial anti-theatricality of American culture.

15. NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 1.

16. The New York Times, 26 Feb. 1893, 4.

17. See Johnson's “Gerry's Obsession” on this propaganda campaign.

18. New York World. 17 Feb. 1890, NYSPCC scrapbooks vol. 2. Gerry's solicitude for Elsie Leslie accompanied his friendship for her parents, who, though having fallen on financially hard times, were of a social standing akin to Gerry's.

19. NYDM, 16 May 1891, NSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 2; Ibid. 9 Jan. 1892, NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 3.

20. NYDM, 30 Jan. 1892, NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 3.

21. NYDM, 6 February 1892, NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 3.

22. New York Morning Advertiser, 1 July 1892; New York Dramatic News, 2 July 1892; New York Herald, 22 July 1892, all in NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 4. When the Gerry Society banned children from the New York extravaganza Bluebeard, Jr., in 1890, the producers had the giant empty shoe from which children normally spilled wheeled empty onto the stage with a large placard reading “The little children are prohibited by order of Elbridge T. Gerry.” Eddie Foy reported that audiences forcefully voiced their displeasure. Foy, Eddie, Clowning Through Life (New York: Dutton, 1928): 239.Google Scholar Early motion pictures found the Gerry Society a source of fun. The Gerry Society's Mistake (Biography 1903) burlesqued Society agent's monitoring efforts. On this point see Czitrom, Daniel, “The Politics of Performance: From Theater Licensing to Movie Censorship in Turn-of-the Century New York,” American Quarterly 44 (12 1991): 540–541Google Scholar.

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24. New York Tribune, 1 Sept. 1892; New York World, 2 Sept. 1892, NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 4. In 1897 managerial forces petitioned the New York legislature to explicitly permit song and dance for children, only to be stymied by a still-potent NYSPCC.

25. Ford, Alexander Hume, “Children of the Stage,” Everybody's Magazine, 09 1903Google Scholar; statistics compiled from annual reports of NYSPCC. Figures from the Child Labor Bulletin, Nov. 1912, are at variance with these for 1910, indicating only 235 applications involving 246 different children. The average age of stage children in 1910 was eleven.

26. Trattner, , Crusade for Children, 41: 45–58Google Scholar; Child Labor Bulletin, 72. Owen Lovejoy claimed that forty-four states had such restrictions by 1911, but that figure is probably too high. Other sources indicate the number to be in the low thirties. Boston had required child actors to have work permits even earlier, in the mid-1880s, and an 1888 school law that made attendance compulsory for children under fourteen also forbade work during hours or after seven o'clock at night. Child Labor in Massachusetts. Report of the Massachusetts State Child Labor Committee on the Legislative Campaign, 1910 (Boston: Massachusetts State Child Labor Committee, 1910)Google Scholar, in Francis Wilson Collection, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts.

27. The New York Times, 6 Feb. 1910, clipping file, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, LCLPA; unidentified clipping, Robinson Locke Collection of Dramatic Scrapbooks, vol. 208, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center; on the situation in Louisiana see Pride, Nancy Burkett, “The Child Acting Controversy as Related to the Louisiana Child Labor Law of 1912” (M.A. Thesis, Louisiana State University, 1972)Google Scholar; Hayes, Helen, On Reflection (New York: M. Evans, 1968): 49Google Scholar.

28. In England a similar though less formal organization of theatrical managers under the leadership of Henry Irving had met in 1903 to consider how to defeat proposals for the removal of children under age fourteen from the stage. They based their arguments on the benefits accruing to the child actor and succeeded in persuading the Home Secretary to decree that the new law would not apply to stage children. See Encore, 14 May 1903; Belfast News Letter, 15 May 1903; Graphic, 23 May 1903; Daily Telegraph, 25 May 1903; all of the above are in clippings file, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center.

29. Earl See, “Political Image of Actors.”

30. See Wilson's, autobiography, Francis Wilson's Life of Himself (1924)Google Scholar, which, strangely, makes no mention of his work with the Alliance. See also the entry on Wilson in Dictionary of American Biography, supplement two, by Eaton, Walter Prichard; New York World, 26 10 1910, NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 15Google Scholar.

31. Leslie, Elsie, Green Book Album, 5 06 1911, 1187–88Google Scholar.

32. New York Telegraph, 28 Feb. 1911, NYSPCC scrapbooks vol. 15.

33. New York American, 25 Jan. 1909; New York Sun, 30 Jan. 1909; The New York Times, 8 Feb. 1909; all in NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 15.

34. The New York Times, 6 Dec. 1911, 6; New York Evening Journal, 6 Dec. 1911; Lovejoy, Owen, “Employment of Children on Stage,” Child Labor Bulletin 1 (11 1912): 72–82Google Scholar.

35. National Child Labor Bulletin (National Alliance for the Protection of Stage Children) 74–77, 80–81; Stage Children of America [n.d.], 10–12; My own sampling of 205 actors and actresses included in Dictionary of American Biography who were active in this era finds that just 45 (22%) of them had appeared on stage by age 15, a percentage very close to that of Lovejoy's.

36. “Child Labor Speech” delivered by Francis Wilson [n.d.], Francis Wilson Collection.

37. National Alliance for the Protection of Stage Children, Stage Children of America 2 (1911)Google Scholar: n.p.; New York Telegraph, 28 Feb. 1911; The New York Times, 24 Dec. 1911; both in NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol 15.

38. New York Evening Journal, 6 12 1911, NYSPCSS scrapbooks, vol. 15Google Scholar.

39. Ligon Johnson to Alf Hayman, 16 April 1910, Francis Wilson Collection.

40. Child Labor in Massachusetts. Report of the Massachusetts State Child Labor Committee on the Legislative Campaign (Boston: Massachusetts State Child Labor Committee, 1910)Google Scholar, Wilson, Francis Collection; Boston Evening Tribune, 21 Feb. 1910Google Scholar, clippings file, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center; Charles W. Eliot to Elbridge Gerry, 3 March 1910, NYSPCC scrapbooks, vol. 15; Ligon Johnson to Alf Hayman, 16 April 1910, Francis Wilson Collection.

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