regulates night work for children in Illinois, boys constantly come to
grief through their familiarity with the social evil. One of these, a
delicate boy of seventeen, had been put into the messenger service by
his parents when their family doctor had recommended out-of-door work.
Because he was well-bred and good-looking, he became especially popular
with the inmates of disreputable houses. They gave him tips of a dollar
and more when he returned from the errands which he had executed for
them, such as buying candy, cocaine or morphine. He was inevitably
flattered by their attentions and pleased with his own popularity.
Although his mother knew that his duties as a messenger boy occasionally
took him to disreputable houses, she fervently hoped his early training
might keep him straight, but in the end realized the foolhardiness of
subjecting an immature youth to these temptations. The vice commission
report gives various detailed instances of similar experiences on the
part of other lads, one of them being a high-school boy who was merely
earning extra money as a messenger boy during the rush of Christmas
week.

The regulations in Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and St. Louis
for the safeguarding of these children may be but a forecast of the care
which the city will at last learn to devise for youth under special
temptations. Because the various efforts made in Chicago to obtain
adequate legislation for the protection of street-trading children have
not succeeded, incidents like the following have not only occurred once,
but are constantly repeated: a pretty little girl, the only child of a
widowed mother, sold newspapers after school hours from the time she was
seven years old. Because her home was near a vicious neighborhood and
because the people in the disreputable hotels seldom asked for change
when they bought a paper and good-naturedly gave her many little
presents, her mother permitted her to gain a clientele within the