author
Edward Nicholas Clopper
1879–1953
Best known for his writing on child labor and child welfare, this early-20th-century American author brought close attention to the lives of working children in city streets. He also turned his eye to family history, producing a large multigenerational genealogy later in life.
1 Audiobook
Child Labor in City Streets
by Edward Nicholas Clopper
About the author
Born in Cincinnati in 1879 and dying there in 1953, Edward Nicholas Clopper was an American writer and reform-minded researcher whose work centered on children’s welfare. His best-known book, Child Labor in City Streets (1912), examined the world of newsboys, bootblacks, and other children working in urban public spaces, and it remains the work most closely associated with his name.
Records of his publications also connect him with the National Child Labor Committee, including Children's Codes (1920), showing his continuing involvement in efforts to study and improve laws affecting children. Contemporary and library sources consistently identify him as Edward N. Clopper, sometimes with the title Ph.D., and list his work alongside major early child-welfare and reform literature.
Later in life, he pursued a long-standing interest in genealogy and family history. That side of his work led to An American Family (1950), an extensive account of the Clopper family across several generations in America, revealing a writer who moved from social investigation to preserving the stories of his own lineage.