MAY CONTAIN NUTS
HOME
 
JUMP TO PAGE   100  >  200  >  300  >  400  >  500  >  600
VINTAGRAPH • WPA • WWII • YOU MEAN A WOMAN CAN OPEN IT?

Freddie the Newsie: 1915

May 1915. Sacramento, California. "Freddie Kafer, a very immature little newsie selling Saturday Evening Posts and newspapers at the entrance to the State Capitol. He did not know his age, nor much of anything else. He was said to be 5 or 6 years old. Nearby I found Jack, who said he was 8 years old, and who was carrying a bag full of Saturday Evening Posts, which weighed nearly half of his own weight. The bag weighed 24 pounds, and he weighed only 55. He carried this bag for several blocks to the [street]car. Said he was taking them home." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

May 1915. Sacramento, California. "Freddie Kafer, a very immature little newsie selling Saturday Evening Posts and newspapers at the entrance to the State Capitol. He did not know his age, nor much of anything else. He was said to be 5 or 6 years old. Nearby I found Jack, who said he was 8 years old, and who was carrying a bag full of Saturday Evening Posts, which weighed nearly half of his own weight. The bag weighed 24 pounds, and he weighed only 55. He carried this bag for several blocks to the [street]car. Said he was taking them home." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

 

On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5

Possible good news about Freddie!

If his obit is on this page, he went on to have a wonderful life after he graduated from Princeton in '34!

See http://tinyurl.com/ywdhee !

The time frame works...if he turned 87 in Jan. of '98, he was born in 1911 and would have been 4 at the time of the picture...a little younger than Mr. Hine's estimated 5 or 6.

That Bag

is almost as big as he.

Freddie the Newsie

Little Freddie appears to be wearing a child-size version of carpenter's bib overalls. The slim vertical pocket is to hold a carpenter's flat pencil.

I wonder how high these very young children could count. Probably they rarely if ever had to make change for a purchase. But they would have to trust an adult to settle their accounts and pay them their meager earnings.

Syndicate content  Shorpy.com is a vintage photography site featuring thousands of high-definition images. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago. Contact us | Privacy policy | Accessibility Statement | Site © 2024 Shorpy Inc.