Messenger service not only gives boys the opportunity to learn what life is at night in "tenderloin" districts, but the character of the work actually _forces_ them into contact with the vilest conditions and subjects them to the fearful influences always exerted by such associations. Some believe that this evil could be prevented by forbidding the office to allow messenger boys to go on such errands, but this is not practicable for two reasons: first, because an essential feature of the messenger service is secrecy--the office does not inquire into the nature of the errand to be performed, and even if it did so, a false statement could easily be made by the patron over the telephone; and second, it would be necessary to send a detective along with the boy on each trip to see that he observed the rules. Boys are eager to run errands for prostitutes for various reasons, one being the extra income assured, as these women give tips with liberal hand. Like other street occupations, the messenger service is a blind alley; it leads nowhere. A very few boys are promoted to the position of check boy in the telegraph office, and fewer still have an opportunity to learn telegraphy. Some of the boys become cab drivers because they have familiarized themselves with the city streets; others become saloon keepers because they have become well acquainted with this method of making a livelihood; some are attracted by the life of "ease" which opens before them and enter into agreement with prostitutes, upon whose earnings they subsist; others have the courage to get away from these influences and secure work as office boys or in some other line entirely different from the messenger service. A considerable number of the inmates of state reform schools were formerly messenger boys, indicating that this service is one of the roads to delinquency. As the immoral influences surrounding this work are especially active among youths, the age limit for such employment at night should be made high enough to prevent their being so exposed. New York State was first to declare that if this work is to be done at night it must be done by men, and has fixed the age limit at twenty-one years. The late Judge Stubbs, of the Indianapolis Juvenile Court, speaking before the Conference of Juvenile Court Officers held in that city in November, 1910, said that messenger boys, and newsboys who sell papers in the downtown streets, were the boys most frequently charged with delinquency before his court, and declared that twenty-one years was low enough as an age limit for night messenger service.