"Some of the youngsters photographed by Lewis Hine had been selling newspapers on street corners since they were six or seven years old. These ‘newsies' received no salary or commission. They paid cash for each armload of newspapers, and took a loss for any papers they couldn't sell. Groups of newsies gathered at newspaper offices in the middle of the night, waiting for early-morning editions to roll off the presses. Then each of them staked out a territory that was forbidden to others."

"People liked to think of them as enterprising youngsters starting out on the road to success. Like the heroes of so many popular dime novels of the time, kids could work their way from rags to riches. It was true that some successful men started out as newsboys. But many others who began that same way found themselves at a dead end. They faced a bleak future, their prospects dimmed by their lack of education and skills." - Kids At Work, Russell Freedman, Clarion Books (1994)

In May of 1910, Lewis Hine took at least 80 photos of "newsies," at work on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. Many show them smoking or hanging around pool halls, looking like the Dead End Kids of movie fame. Realistic as they are, these photos might not evoke much sympathy. After all, the kids look like the kind we would cross the street to avoid. But what are we to think of Little Fattie, cute, smiling and utterly lovable? Hine was a clever man. He knew that once we stopped staring at the boy's face, we would notice the caption, provoking us to ask, "What's this kid doing out there on the street at that age? There ought to be a law."

Little Fattie had a real name, but it wasn't easy finding it, until I contacted the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in December of 2007. At my request, reporter Matthew Hathaway wrote an article about my search and published the photo. Several weeks later I received an email, which said in part:

"I am writing on behalf of my mother, Phyllis Foerstel. My great aunt has had that picture in her home since it appeared in the Post-Dispatch in 1974. She told us that the boy in the picture was her brother, George Okertich. He was a paperboy during that period. He became a mail carrier and was known as the 'singing mailman.'"

My subsequent interview of Mrs. Foerstel, George's niece, appears on the next page. But here is some of what I found in the census and other official records.

George (officially Slavko Ocretic) was born in Croatia (Yugoslavia) on April 22, 1905, which means that he was actually only five years old when he was photographed by Hine. His father, known in this country as August Okertich, came to the US in 1905, and settled in St. Louis. In 1906, his wife, Angela Borcic, who he married in 1903, joined him, along with George and his older sister Emma. In 1910, they had two more children, and August was working as a "laborer." In 1920, they lived at 2755 La Salle Street, and had four additional children. Emma, now 15, was a stenographer and George an errand boy.

In the 1930 census, they are listed as owning their home, at 1729 Ohio Avenue. It was valued at $4,000, and, in a curious item that appeared only in this census, they owned a radio. August was working for the city street department, and George, still living at home, was a mail carrier. Nine years later, George married Mary Philibert. They were to divorce and have no children. George passed away on September 24, 1958, at the age of 53.