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 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.