It is hard to understand how the public conscience can reconcile itself to the chasm between the age limit of fourteen years for messenger service and freedom from all restraint in newspaper selling--both essentially street occupations. Child labor laws are framed in accordance with public sentiment, hence the people by legislative omission practically indorse street trading by little children while condemning their employment in other kinds of work. Thus the state virtually assumes the untenable position that it is right to allow a child of tender years to labor in the streets as a newsboy without any oversight or care whatever, and that it is wrong for him to work in the same field as a messenger, or an errand boy, or a delivery boy, although such occupations are subject to some degree of supervision by older persons. In other words, it is held that little children are capable of self-control in some street occupations, but not able to withstand the dangers of other similar street work, even under the control of adults! After having described the conditions prevailing in Philadelphia among newsboys, Mr. Scott Nearing says: "There are many causes leading up to this condition. Beneath all others lies the fundamental one--the lack of public sentiment in favor of protecting these children. Closely allied to this is another almost equally strong--the lack of public knowledge of the true state of affairs."[5] The Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit pointed out the fact that street trades are quite untouched by child labor legislation in the city and also in the state, declaring that in Illinois a boy or girl too young to be permitted to do any other work may haunt the newspaper offices, the five-cent shows, the theaters and saloons, selling chewing gum and newspapers at all hours of the night.[6] Among the arguments advanced in support of the unsuccessful effort to secure legislation on street trading in Illinois in 1911 was the following: "Each boy or girl street trader is a merchant in his or her own right, and therefore before the law is not considered a wage earner, although there is merely a fine-spun distinction between the child who secures _wages_ as the result of his work and one who obtains his reward in the form of _profits_. The effect on the child of work performed under unsuitable conditions, at unsuitable hours and demanding the exercise of his faculties in unchildish ways, is in no wise determined by the form in which his earnings are calculated. That the results of street trading are wholly bad in the case of both boys and girls is universally recognized."[7] Miss Jane Addams has deplored this situation in a public statement: "A newsboy is a merchant and does not come within the child labor regulations of Illinois. The city of Chicago is a little careless, if not recreant, toward the children who are not reached by the operation of the state law."[8]