Although the British departmental committee of 1910 was not favorably impressed by the results of regulation as a cure for the evils of street trading, nevertheless it gave due credit to the city of Manchester for what had been accomplished there under the license system. Referring to this city, the report says: "In Manchester such good results as can be arrived at by the method of regulation were, perhaps, more apparent than anywhere else. In that city the entire evidence testified to the fact that the regulation of street trading is very highly organized; a special staff of selected, plain-clothes officers, giving their whole time to the work, knowing the traders personally, visiting the homes, advising the parents, clothing the children and apparently exerting a most beneficial influence. All that can be done through the instrument of regulation seems to be done there, the various authorities working together to that end."[168]
An English writer says that regulation in Manchester "has greatly improved the conditions of the newspaper boys and others who earned their living by hawking goods in the streets. It is something to the good at any rate that a boy should be compelled to be decently dressed and so avoid the obvious temptation of appealing to the sympathies of the public by the picturesque raggedness of his clothing. At the same time one cannot help feeling that halfway legislation of this sort is only playing with the problem and that the only really satisfactory law would be one which prohibited street trading by children altogether."[169]
The British Colony of New South Wales has adopted some mild restrictions under the Employment of Children Act, 1903, and the president of the State Children Relief Board for New South Wales states in his report for the year ending April 5, 1910, that "the Board is not favorably impressed with the principle of street trading by juveniles, realizing that even under the most careful administration children, when once licensed to engage in street trading, are exposed to great temptations."
The province of Manitoba, Canada, forbids children under twelve years from trading in the streets at any time; licenses are issued to boys twelve to sixteen years old, who are not allowed to sell after 9 P.M. Some boys have been denied licenses because of their poor school record, others because of lack of proof as to age, others on account of not being physically qualified, and still others because there was no need for their earning money in this way. The licensed boys are kept under supervision; their attendance at school is watched; and if they persist in selling after 9 P.M. or disobey instructions, their licenses are revoked.[170]