If many relatively wealthy Canadians continued to want exclusive and advanced education for their children, a different kind of concern was expressed on behalf of the children of the poor. Reformers complained that, especially in urban centres, many children did not go to school at all or, if they did, attended only irregularly. This continued to be the case despite the fact that the free school movement had been in large part designed to bring the children of the poor into the schools. Some children found school lessons of little practical use; others felt discriminated against in the schools; and some were expelled or excluded from school for one reason or another. Many though, simply had to work. Parental poverty, family illness, or the intemperance, neglect or death of their parents, propelled many into the factories, shops or streets to earn their livings. A common occupation for children in the later part of the nineteenth century was selling newspapers on the streets. Both girls and boys hawked the popular press, often from early morning to late at night. Child labour had been common and was generally accepted in pre-industrial society, but had usually been within the context of the household or family. Nineteenth-century reformers feared that child factory and street workers would succumb to the many temptations and vices of the city; crime, gambling, drinking and prostitution, reformers charged, often claimed them. One solution was to try to compel attendance at school. Provinces passed compulsory attendance laws and many cities had hired truant officers by the end of the nineteenth century. Laws were also passed in the later part of the century to prevent factory, shop and mine owners from hiring children considered too young to work, or to make sure that they had received a certain amount of schooling before they went to work. In some cities, philanthropists founded group homes especially for newsboys in which they could get inexpensive but protected lodging on a temporary or permanent basis.
