A report prepared in 1901 for the Scottish Council for Women’s Trades gives the opinions of 14 head masters, who are practically unanimous as to the detrimental effect upon the children’s progress of long hours of work out of school. No. 3 says: “I consider this exploiting of children is one of the greatest crimes against the children themselves, and the greatest possible hindrance to their education.” No. 6 thinks “there can be no doubt that children who have such long spells of employment are heavily handicapped”; and No. 7 says: “There is no doubt whatever that these long hours stand very much in the way of educational progress.” “Message running,” says No. 14, “certainly tends to sharpen intelligence of a superficial kind but weakens the power of sustained attention and vigorous mental work in school.”[49] When we remember that the Inter-Departmental Committee on the employment of school children—a cautious official body—estimated the _minimum_ number of school children employed in the United Kingdom at 200,000, and that there is no reason to suppose that number materially lessened, we perceive that the deterioration of national education from this cause alone must be by no means trifling. Of moral injury, especially from street selling, there is abundant evidence, both in our own country and in the United States. The committee of 1901 received a statement from the Town Clerk of Newcastle on Tyne that children had been found in the streets afraid to go home, lest they should be punished for not bringing in enough money. The children often, in consequence, slept out, gambled or stole, the girls sinking lower yet in order to procure sufficient money to take home. The number of such children he reported to have increased greatly of late years, and many of them were, he feared, on the threshold of a life of vice and crime. The Chief Constable of Manchester presented a list of 16 women known as degraded characters, who had formerly been street sellers. The Chief Constable of Birmingham produced tables showing that of 713 children engaged in street trading during July 1901, 458 had been prosecuted for various offences during the previous six months. 163 of the number were girls.[50]