One looks upon these hardened little people with a sense of apology that
educational forces have not been able to break into their first
ignorance of life before it becomes toughened into insensibility, and
one knows that, whatever may be done for them later, because of this
early neglect, they will probably always remain impervious to the
gentler aspects of life, as if vice seared their tender minds with
red-hot irons. Our public-school education is so nearly universal, that
if the entire body of the teachers seriously undertook to instruct all
American youth in regard to this most important aspect of life, why
should they not in time train their pupils to continence and
self-direction, as they already discipline their minds with knowledge in
regard to many other matters? Certainly the extreme youth of the victims
of the white slave traffic, both boys and girls, places a great
responsibility upon the educational forces of the community.

The state which supports the public school is also coming to the rescue
of children through protective legislation. This is another illustration
that the beginnings of social advance have often resulted from the
efforts to defend the weakest and least-sheltered members of the
community. The widespread movement which would protect children from
premature labor, also prohibits them from engaging in occupations in
which they are subjected to moral dangers. Several American cities have
of late become much concerned over the temptations to which messenger
boys, delivery boys, and newsboys are constantly subjected when their
business takes them into vicious districts. The Chicago vice commission
makes a plea for these "children of the night" that they shall be
protected by law from those temptations which they are too young and too
untrained to withstand. New York and Wisconsin are the only states which
have raised the legal age of messenger boys employed late at night to
twenty-one years. Under the inadequate sixteen-year limit, which