After weighing such evidence we can readily comprehend the justice of the opinion rendered by Dr. Charles P. Neill in the following words: "The newsboys' service is demoralizing, but the messenger service is debauching.... And, saddest of all, this service appeals strongly to the children. The prurient curiosity of the developing boy would itself incline him to like these calls to houses of prostitution, but they quickly learn also that women who live in these sections are more generous with their earnings in the way of tips than are the people in the more respectable sections of the city.... It can be said that all the boys who go into the messenger service do not go to the bad, but it can be said with equal truth that it ruins children by the dozens, and that if any boy comes out of this service without having suffered moral shipwreck he can thank the mercy of God for it, and not the protecting arm of the community that stands idly by and makes no attempt to save him from temptation."[73] In 1908 Congress passed a child labor law for the District of Columbia which provided, among other restrictions, that no messenger boy under sixteen years should be employed between 7 P.M. and 6 A.M.,--_sixteen years_, the beginning of the period of adolescence, when boys have the greatest need of protection from the vices running riot in cities! The Chicago Vice Commission devotes several pages of its report to a recital of the experiences of messenger boys in connection with their work in the segregated districts. One of the telegraph companies maintains a branch office close to one of these districts, where eight boys from fifteen to eighteen years of age are employed as messengers. These boys are called upon to work at all hours of the day and night, their tasks being the same as those of the messengers in other cities. A number of specific instances of the wretched environment into which these boys are thrown, are given. One of them who works from midnight until 10 A.M. was sent by a prostitute to a drug store for a package of cocaine hydrochloride, for which he paid $5.78, receiving $1 from the prostitute as a tip for the service. Another messenger was sent out on a similar errand by another prostitute two weeks later and purchased for her a hypodermic needle for a syringe; he was charged $2 for this needle, the cost to the druggist being 19 cents. A few days later a boy was called by another prostitute who confided to him that she had discontinued the use of messenger boys for purchasing "dope" because she found that they talked too much and could not be trusted, adding that she now had a newsboy, who sold papers at a near-by corner, buy the cocaine for her. A woman who lives in an apartment house and is the owner and proprietor of houses of prostitution in the restricted district, is in the habit of sending in an order for cocaine to a druggist, who calls a messenger boy to deliver it to her residence. This messenger opened