A Beggar On Broadway Peddling Gum

New York City has a lot of beggars with children. It always has.

If you look up from your phone you’ll see them weaving through subway cars or standing or sitting mid-block or on corners with children close by.

Beggars and peddlers offering chocolate, candy, gum and sanitarily questionable fruit. Many passengers who give money do not take the product.

In 2024 a migrant outreach group found that 84% of illegal vending was conducted with small children out of necessity, with nowhere for the mother’s to leave their children according to NBC news.

In one hundred years time the situation is essentially the same in New York. The scene above is from about 1915.

This news photograph from the George Grantham Bain collection, was captured on a commercial stretch of Broadway with a woman holding a sleeping child while peddling.

Some pedestrians take notice of the bedraggled woman. Abject poverty and complete desperation have her offering individual sticks from packs of Wrigley’s spearmint chewing gum to passerby.

The main difference between then and now?

In 1915 if the police came upon this scene, they would tell her to move on or risk arrest.

From what I have seen, today the police will rarely issue a summons or tell a peddler to stop selling.

Is there a solution?