To insure a good yield, a field requires cultivation as well as planting; to effect a cure, a patient requires nursing as well as prescription. So with the aim of the state--to insure a strong, intelligent citizenship, its children must be cared for, as well as provided with schools. If a patient is not nursed while the physician is absent, his treatment is of little avail; if children are not protected out of school hours, the purpose of the school is defeated. No manufacturer would allow his machinery to run, unwatched, outside regular work hours, for he knows how disastrous would be the consequences; yet this is precisely what the state is doing by ignoring the activities of children in our city streets--the delicate machinery of their minds and bodies is allowed to run wild out of schools hours, and the state seems to think nothing will happen! These thoughts impel us to the conclusion that the state must watch over the child at least until he has reached the age limit for school attendance, and in the matter of labor regulation its care must not be confined to the prevention of one form of exploitation while other forms, equally injurious, are permitted to flourish unchecked. Legislation regulating street trading by children in this country is now in the stage corresponding to that of the English factory acts in the early part of the nineteenth century,--the first meager restrictions are being tried. Several of the street occupations, viz. messenger service, delivery service and errand running, are ordinarily included among those prohibited to children under fourteen years by state child labor laws, because to engage in such work children have to be employed by other persons. These occupations are covered by the provision common to such laws which forbids employment of such children "in the distribution or transmission of merchandise or messages." The street "trades" of newspaper selling, peddling and bootblacking are, as yet, almost untouched by legislation in the United States, for there exist only a very few state laws and city ordinances relative to this matter, and these of the most primitive kind. The public does not yet realize the injustice of permitting young children to engage, uncontrolled, in the various street-trading activities. It was slow to appreciate the dangers involved in the unrestricted employment of children in factories, mills and mines, but when the awakening finally came, the demand for reform was insistent. This gradual development of a sentiment favoring regulation characterizes also the problem of street employment; the present stage is that of calm indifference, ruffled only by occasional misgivings. Even this is an encouraging sign, inasmuch as the factory agitation passed through the same experience, and emerged triumphant, crystallized in statute form.