After midnight April 17, 1912, and still selling extras. There were many of these groups of young news-boys selling very late these nights. Youngest boy in the group is Israel Spril (9 yrs. old), 314 I St., N.W., Washington D.C. Harry Shapiro, (11 yrs. old), 95 L St., N.W., Washington, D.C. Eugene Butler, 310 (rear) 13th St., N.W. The rest were a little older. 12th St. near G [or C?] Sundays. Location: Washington (D.C.), District of Columbia, Lewis Hine.

"They did anything they could to make money. It was a very poor family, with lots of children. Their parents were from Russia. My father lost his mother at a young age." -Patricia Coshland, daughter of Israel April

"Night after night hundreds of boys and men hung around the newspaper offices, fought their way to the distributing counters and out into the street. For three consecutive nights, this week, I found them wandering about...hanging onto the job until one or two in the morning, simply to make a record sale, perhaps, or to unload the heavy bunch of papers in which they had unwisely invested." -Lewis Hine, Child Labor at the National Capital, 1912, National Child Labor Committee publication 264, Library of Congress

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In 1881, anti-Jewish riots, called "pogroms," swept through Russia. Thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, families were driven into poverty, and many people were seriously injured. The pogroms continued for more than three years, and led many Jews to emigrate from their homeland. Most fled to the United States.

According to the 1900 census, Mitchell April, a Jew born in Russia in 1871, was working as a farm laborer in Millville, New Jersey. He had arrived in the US in 1882, with his parents, Reuben and Elizabeth April, who were farmers. Mitchell had married Mollie (maiden name not determined) in 1891. She was also from Russia. They had three children, Annie, Ethel and David. In 1908, the family, including Mitchell's parents, moved to Washington, DC, where, according to the 1910 census, Mitchell ran a grocery store, and 17-year-old daughter Ethel worked in a dry goods store. They had three more children, sons Samuel, Israel and Ellis.

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, killing 1,517 passengers. As word spread around the globe, newspapers rushed to keep up with developing events. Almost daily, the Washington Post published "extras" to meet the demand for information such as the names and the fate of the passengers. Newsboys worked into the night to take advantage of the opportunity to make some extra change. Among them were Samuel, David and Israel "Izzy" April.

This story is yet one more example of how the lives of child laborers and their families intersected with great historical events - how they were affected by those events, and how they helped to shape those events. Farther along in the story, we will see more evidence of that.

In the above photo of the newsboys, we can see the headline on the April 17 edition. Since it was an extra edition, it does not appear in the Washington Post searchable archives. But the daily editions do, and they give us a sense of what was happening from day to day.