Referring to the amount of time devoted by the children to gainful employment outside of school, the committee reported, "On a review of the evidence we consider it is proved that in England and Wales a substantial number of children, amounting probably to 50,000, are being worked more than twenty hours a week in addition to twenty-seven and one-half hours at school, that a considerable proportion of this number are being worked to thirty or forty and some even to fifty hours a week, and that the effect of this work is in many cases detrimental to their health, their morals and their education, besides being often so unremitting as to deprive them of all reasonable opportunity for recreation. For an evil so serious, existing on so large a scale, we think that some remedy ought to be found."[34] The committee estimated the total number of children selling newspapers and in street hawking at 25,000.[35] With reference to conditions in Edinburgh, an English writer says, "Of the 1406 children employed out of school hours in Edinburgh, 307 are ten years of age or under. Four of them are six years old, and eleven are seven years of age. We hear of boys working seventeen hours (from 7 A.M. to 12 P.M.) on Saturday. For children to work twelve, thirteen and fourteen hours on Saturday is quite common. The average wage seems to be three farthings an hour, but one hears of children who are paid one shilling and sixpence for thirty-eight hours of toil."[36] In New South Wales boys are permitted to trade on the streets at the age of ten years, and up to fourteen years may engage in such work between the hours of 7 A.M. and 7 P.M. except while the schools are in session; after they are fourteen years old they may trade between 6 A.M. and 10 P.M. Such children are licensed, and during the six months ending March 31, 1910, 714 licenses were issued, 72 per cent of them being to children under fourteen years of age; 92 per cent of these children were engaged in hawking newspapers, the others being scattered through such occupations as peddling flowers, fruit and vegetables, fish, fancy goods, matches, bottles, pies and milk.[37] _Conditions in Germany_