Referring to Manchester newsboys above the age of fourteen years, an English report[108] says: "They are not stupid, or even markedly backward, judged by school standards.... As they grow older they sink to a lower level, both morally and economically--in fact, little better than loafers, without aspiration, and content with the squalor of the common lodging-houses in which they live, if only they have enough money for their drink and their gambling." Concerning the younger newsboys the same report continues: "Those who are the children of extremely poor, and often worthless parents, are often upon the streets selling their papers during school hours, and their attendance at the schools, in spite of prosecution of their parents, is so irregular that they make very little progress. These boys take to the streets permanently for their livelihood; a few of them continue, after the age of fourteen, to earn their living by selling newspapers, but most of them sink into less satisfactory kinds of occupation." In connection with these statements it should be remembered that they portray conditions existing prior to the adoption in 1902 of local rules on street trading. With reference to the alleged cleverness of street Arabs, a British observer draws this distinction: "Street-trading children are more cunning than other children, but not more intelligent."[109] In St. Louis there was no regulation until the Missouri law of 1911 was passed; and in 1910 Miss Ina Tyler, in a study of 106 newsboys of that city, found the following conditions:-- NUMBER BELOW NORMAL YEARS SCHOOL GRADE 10 10 out of 16 62% 11 12 out of 16 75% 12 16 out of 28 57% 13 25 out of 33 75% 14 11 out of 13 84% -- --- --- 74 106 70% These figures were copied by the writer from charts displayed at the child labor exhibit of the National Conference of Charities and Correction in St. Louis in 1910, but efforts to ascertain the method of determining these percentages were unavailing. Therefore they cannot be compared with the figures in the preceding tables, because it is by no means certain that the standard ages for normal school standing were adopted in the compilation of this table. In Toledo, Ohio, there is no regulation governing street work by children, although a local association makes an effort to look after the welfare of newsboys. In October, 1911, the writer visited the four public common school buildings nearest the business district of this city and found 287 children in attendance who were regularly engaged in some form of street work out of school hours. The great majority of them were newsboys. The distribution of these children according to age and grade is given below:--