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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dangerous Classes of New York, by 
+Charles Loring Brace
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Dangerous Classes of New York
+       And Twenty Years' Work Among Them
+
+Author: Charles Loring Brace
+
+Release Date: August 14, 2010 [EBook #33431]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANGEROUS CLASSES OF NEW YORK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gary Sandino, from scans by Google.
+
+
+
+
+
+Digitized by Google.
+
+                                  THE
+
+                    DANGEROUS CLASSES OF NEW YORK,
+
+                                  AND
+
+                    TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM.
+
+                                  BY
+
+                        CHARLES LORING BRACE,
+
+                              AUTHOR OF
+
+              "HUNGARY IN 1851," "HOME LIFE IN GERMANY,"
+
+               "THE RACES OF THE OLD WORLD," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+ "Ameliorer l'homme par le terre et le terre par l'homme."--_Demetz._
+
+                              NEW YORK.
+
+                  WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK, PUBLISHERS,
+
+                          113 FULTON STREET.
+
+                                -----
+
+                                1872.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: LODGING-HOUSES FOR HOMELESS BOYS--AS THEY WERE. NO. 1.]
+
+
+
+           ------------------------------------------------
+
+      ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
+
+                        CHARLES LORING BRACE,
+
+      in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
+
+           ------------------------------------------------
+
+WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK,
+
+FINE BOOK PRINTERS.
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION.
+
+                                -----
+
+To the many co-laborers, men and women, who have not held their comfort
+or even their lives dear unto themselves, but have striven, through many
+years, to teach the ignorant, to raise up the depressed, to cheer the
+despairing, to impart a higher life and a Christian hope to the outcast
+and neglected youth of this city, and thus save society from their
+excesses, this simple record of common labors, and this sketch of the
+terrible evils sought to be cured, is respectfully dedicated.
+
+
+
+                            INTRODUCTION.
+
+                                -----
+
+The great pioneer in the United States, in the labors of penal Reform
+and the prevention of crime,--EDWARD LIVINGSTON,--said as long ago as
+1833, in his famous "Introductory Report to the Code of Reform and
+Prison Discipline": "As prevention in the diseases of the body is less
+painful, less expensive, and more efficacious than the most skillful
+cure, so in the moral maladies of society, to arrest the vicious before
+the profligacy assumes the shape of crime; to take away from the poor
+the cause or pretence of relieving themselves by fraud or theft; to
+reform them by education and make their own industry contribute to their
+support, although difficult and expensive, will be found more effectual
+in the suppression of offences and more economical than the best
+organized system of punishment."--(p. 322.)
+
+My great object in the present work is to prove to society the practical
+truth of Mr. Livingston's theoretical statement: that the cheapest and
+most efficacious way of dealing with the "Dangerous Classes" of large
+cities, is not to punish them, but to prevent their growth; to so throw
+the influences of education and discipline and religion about the
+abandoned and destitute youth of our large towns, to change their
+material circumstances, and draw them under the influence of the moral
+and fortunate classes, that they shall grow up as useful producers and
+members of society, able and inclined to aid it in its progress.
+
+In the view of this book, the class of a large city most dangerous to
+its property, its morals and its political life, are the ignorant,
+destitute, untrained, and abandoned youth: the outcast street-children
+grown up to be voters, to be the implements of demagogues, the "feeders"
+of the criminals, and the sources of domestic outbreaks and violations
+of law.
+
+The various chapters of this work contain a detailed account of the
+constituents of this class in New York, and of the twenty years' labors
+of the writer, and many men and women, to purify and elevate it; what
+the principles were of the work, what its fruits, what its success.
+
+So much interest at home and abroad has been manifested in these
+extended charities, and so many inquiries are received continually about
+them, that it seemed at length time to give a simple record of them, and
+of the evils they have sought to cure.
+
+If the narrative shall lead the citizens of other large towns to
+inaugurate comprehensive and organized movements for the improvement of
+their "Dangerous Classes," my object will be fully attained.
+
+I have the hope, too, that these little stories of the lot of the poor
+in cities, and the incidents related of their trials and temptations,
+may bring the two ends of society nearer together in human sympathy.
+
+The discussion of the Causes of Juvenile Crime contained in this work
+must aid others who would found similar reformatory and preventive
+movements, to base them on principles and motives which should reach
+similar profound and threatening evils.
+
+                                          CHARLES LORING BRACE.
+
+                                          19 EAST 4TH STREET, NEW YORK.
+
+June 1, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+                        CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS.
+
+                                -----
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+CHRIST IN CHARITY AND REFORM, AND CONDITION OF NEGLECTED CHILDREN BEFORE
+                            CHRISTIANITY.
+
+Exposure of Children in Rome--Comments by Latin Authors upon the
+Practice--Terence--Seneca--Suetonius--Rebukes by Early Christian
+Preachers--Quintilian--Tertullian--Lactantius--First "Children's Asylum"
+under Trajan--Charity of the Antonines--Legislation of the Christian
+Emperors--Influence of the Germanic Races--Legislation on the Exposure
+of Children--First Children's Asylums in the Christian Era--Brother
+Guy--Neglected Children the only Remains of Ancient "Dangerous
+Classes"--Change Wrought by Christianity--Influence of Christianity in
+Reform........................................................pp. 13-24
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                     THE PROLETAIRES OF NEW YORK.
+
+Not so Numerous as in London, but more Dangerous--Dens of Crime and
+Fever-nests--Advantage of Breaking them up--The Unrestrained Vices of
+this Class--Their Ignorance and Brutality--Dependence on
+Politicians--Gangs of Youthful Criminals--Similar Dangers here as in
+Paris--The Riots of 1863--Numbers of the Vagrant Class--Composition of
+this Dangerous Element........................................pp. 25-31
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                           CAUSES OF CRIME.
+
+Preventible and Non-preventible--Ignorance--Numbers of Illiterates in
+City Prisons and Reformatories--Orphanage--Statistics--Orphans in
+Mettrai--Emigration--Effect in Producing Crime--Numbers of Prisoners of
+Foreign Births--Figures--Hopeful Features--Fewer Paupers Immigrate--Want
+of Trade--Selfishness of Unions--Aversion to Steady Industry..pp. 32-38
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+              CAUSES OF CRIME--WEAKNESS OF MARRIAGE-TIE.
+
+Reasons why Second Marriage is Productive of Crime among the Poor--Force
+of Public Opinion in Preserving Marriage-bond--Weakening of it by
+Emigration--Fruits of Free Love among the Poor--INHERITANCE--Power of
+Transmitted Tendencies in Producing Crime--Hopeful Feature in New
+York--Few Continued Families of Paupers and Criminals--Action of Natural
+Selection in Favor of Virtue--Vicious Organizations Die Out--Explanation
+of Extraordinary Improvement in Children under Reformatory
+Influences--The Immediate Influences of Bad Parents Overcome by the
+Transmitted Tendencies of Virtuous Ancestors, and by New
+Circumstances--The Incessant Change of our People Favorable to
+Virtue--Villages more Exposed to Criminal Families than
+Cities--Causes................................................pp. 39-50
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                    CAUSES OF CRIME--OVERCROWDING.
+
+Form of New York--Its Effect on Population--Bad Government Increases
+Rents--Rate of Population to the Square Mile in the Eleventh Ward--In
+the Tenth, Seventeenth, and other Wards--In London--Greater Overcrowding
+in New York--Instance of Overcrowding in the First Ward--Effect on the
+Criminal Habits of Girls--The Dens of Criminal Boys--Cellar
+Population--Effect of Overcrowding on the Death-rate--Upon the Crime of
+the City-Remedies--Better Means of Distributing Population--Improved
+Communications with the Country--Cheap and Honest Government--Organized
+Movement for Transferring Labor to the Country--Remedy in Sanitary
+Legislation--Effect of British Lodging-house Acts--Cellar Population
+of Liverpool--The Model Lodging-houses--Great Need of them in New
+York..........................................................pp. 51-63
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                    CAUSES OF CRIME--INTEMPERANCE.
+
+The Power of Alcoholic Stimulus on the Laboring-man--Attraction of the
+Liquor-shop--Terrible Effects of Drunkenness--Number of Criminals in
+City Prisons Intemperate--Little Drunkenness among Children--Great
+Effects of the Total Abstinence Reform--Good Influence of the Irish
+Catholic Clergy--Necessity for other Remedies--Cultivation of Higher
+Tastes--Influence of the Sydenham Palace Gardens in England--Effects of
+Parks and Pictures--Open-Air Drinking not so Dangerous--Museums, Parks,
+Gardens, and Reading-rooms, the beat Temperance Societies--Few Children
+of the Industrial Schools become Drunkards--Comparative Good Effects of
+Light Wines--Liquor Laws--Former Sunday Law a Happy
+Medium--The Habits of the Germans should have been considered--Mistake
+of the Reformers--Intemperance, next to War, the Greatest Evil of
+Humanity--Other Remedies than Total Abstinence must be
+employed......................................................pp. 64-73
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                      ORGANIZATION OF A REMEDY.
+
+Necessity of One Organization to Deal with Youthful Criminal
+Classes--Error made of using too Technical Religious Methods--Error
+of Following too much European Precedents--Asylums not so much Needed
+in America--Pioneer Work among the Dangerous Classes Twenty Years
+Ago--Captain Matsell's Report--Labors of the Writer in the Five
+Points--Numbers of Homeless Children in the Streets--Sad Sight of
+Child-Prisoners--"The Social Evil"--Mr. Pease's Labors--The Necessity
+Felt of a General Organization--Novel Method of Reforming Young
+"Roughs"--BOYS' MEETINGS--The Chaffing of Street-boys--Quick
+Repartees--Kind of Oratory Necessary--The Lads Open for Earnest
+Words--The Meetings only Pioneer Work--Succeeded by more Thorough
+Influences--The Founders of the Different Meetings............pp. 74-83
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                          A NEW ORGANIZATION.
+
+Foundation of the CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY--Touching Procession of
+Homeless Children to the Office--The Feeling at its Foundation--Its
+Objects--To Found Reading-rooms, Industrial Schools, Lodging-houses, and
+Provide Homes for the Homeless--Dens of Misery and Crime--Thieves'
+Lodging-houses--"Rotten Row"--"Poverty Lane"--Haunts of the Young
+Wood-stealers--Hopes of the New Work--Workshops--Want of
+Success--Causes--Necessity of General Education, rather than Industrial,
+for Street-children...........................................pp. 84-96
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+              HOMELESS BOYS--THE NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.
+
+Their Relation to the World, like that of the Indians to
+Civilization--Life of the Street-boy--His Lightheartedness--His Moral
+Code--His Religion--Few Addicted to Drinking--Their
+Generosity--Policy-tickets--Choice of Night Resting-places--Necessity to
+treat them as Independent Dealers--First Lodging-house for Newsboys In
+the World--Mr. Tracy--Plans of the Boys for a Scrimmage--Their
+Defeat--Remarks about their Beds--Origin of the Night-school--And the
+Sunday Meeting--Surprise at the Golden Rule--Belief in Miracles--Pathos
+of their songs--The Savings'-bank--Breaking up of Gambling and Money
+Wasting--Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor--Their Fitness for the Work--Immense
+Number of Lodgers--The Influence of the House--Payments by the
+Lads--Description of Rooms--The New Building--Extracts from Journal
+Statistics...................................................pp. 97-113
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+               STREET-GIRLS--THEIR SUFFERING AND CRIME.
+
+Hard Lot of A Girl-vagrant--Sexual Vice--Dark Questions--Girls' Vices
+More Degrading than the Boys'--Effect on her Habits and Character--Great
+Difficulty of Reform--History of Prostitutes not Romantic--Their lives
+the Fruit of Neglect in Early Childhood, and of Lazy Habits--Their Good
+Qualities--Remedies for the Social Evil--Sad Incident of a Young Girl in
+the Tombs...................................................pp. 114-122
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+                    LEGAL TREATMENT OF PROSTITUTES.
+
+Should License be Allowed?--The Views of Physicians--Foolish Arguments
+on the Other Side--Duties of a Physician Purely Medical--Objections to
+License under the Moral Aspect--Bitter Misery of this Class of
+Women--Effect of License to Encourage the Crime--The Recognition by
+Law--Prostitution can be Checked--Condition of this Class in New York
+Terrible--Necessity of Hospitals or Dispensaries for this Class in the
+City--The Absurdity of the Berlin License Laws--Non-licensing a Terror
+to Evil-doers--This Not a Proper Object for Legislators--Effect of
+License in Paris--Superiority of New York to other Great Cities in this
+Matter Partly Due to Non-licensing..........................pp. 123-131
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE BEST PREVENTIVE OF VICE AMONG CHILDREN--INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.
+
+Public Schools not Reaching the Poorer Children--Numbers of Vagrant
+Children Twenty Years Ago--Foundation of the Wilson School--The
+Rookeries of the Fourth Ward--Dance-saloons--Crime of the Ward--Numbers
+of Wild Children--Efforts to Form an Association among the Rich to
+connect the Two Ends of Society--All Sects, and those of no Sect,
+Invited--Foundation of Fourth-ward Industrial School--Description of the
+Children--Influence of Volunteer Teachers--Their
+Self-sacrifice--Description of some of the Ladies Engaged--Effects of
+the Work on Crime in the Fourth Ward--Marked Improvement--Dr. Robert
+Ray's Services--Remarkable Diminution of Vagrancy in the Ward--Instance
+from our Journal--Average Expense of the School.............pp. 139-146
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                          GERMAN RAG-PICKERS.
+
+Their Quarters on the Eastern Side--Number in the Eleventh
+Ward--Formation of an Association for their Benefit--Its Moving
+Spirit--Social Influences in the School--Its Effect on the
+Rag-pickers--Aid from the German Merchants--A Devoted Teacher--Dutch
+Hill and the Swill-gatherers--Description of the Squatters'
+Village--Character of the People--Drunkenness--Faith of the
+Children--Personal Efforts--Discouraging Features of the Work--Influence
+of Roman Catholicism--Difficulties of a Protestant--Influence of the
+Priests--Formation of an Association of Ladies on Murray
+Hill--Foundation of East River Industrial School--Mrs. Hurley--Her
+Devoted Labors for Seventeen Years--Attachment of Children to
+Her--Reform among the Children--Influence of Volunteer
+Teachers--Incidents among the Poor--A Heroic Girl--Happy Changes of
+Fortune--Remarkable Success among Two Thousand Children--"Our
+Failures"--The Beggar's Family..............................pp. 147-164
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                        SCENES AMONG THE POOR.
+
+The Street-child--Effects of Drunkenness--A Mother Fleeing her
+Daughter-The Dying Sewing-woman--Severe Labor--Christian Faith--Changes
+of Fortune--Discouragement--The Iron-worker's Wife--A Little
+Beggar--Religious Trouble--The Swill-gatherer's Child--Danger of Ruin--A
+Reform--Present Condition of East River School..............pp. 165-173
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+                THE PROTESTANT POOR AND STREET-ROVERS.
+
+Formation of an Association of Ladies on the West Side--Hudson River
+Industrial School--Perseverance of Volunteer Teachers--Protestant Poor
+no Better than Catholic--"Muscular Orphans"--Wild Boys near East Thirty
+fourth Street--Skillful Thieves--Efforts of the School--Transference to
+Eleventh Street--Dock Pilferers--Success of our Efforts--Need of
+Lodging-house in Thirty-fourth Street.......................pp. 174-180
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                       NEW METHODS OF TEACHING.
+
+Generous Proposal of a Benevolent Lady--Her Labors among the Poor--Miss
+Andrew's Teaching--Pestalozzi's System--Old Systems too Mechanical and
+too much Memorizing--Effects in Loose Habits of Thinking--Inaccurate
+Observation--Children Found Incompetent for Practical Life--Object
+System begins with the Senses--First Learning of Colors and of
+Numbers--Sounds Taught before Names of Letters--Dr. Leigh's System--Mr.
+Caulkins's Views--Words to be Learned First, Letters Afterward--Spelling
+to be Learned After Reading--Quotation from Mr. Caulkins's Work--New
+Method of learning Geography--Geography Becomes a Natural
+Science--Natural History Taught by Objects--Lessons in Morality and
+Religion given in a Similar Manner--Weights, Measures, and Geometry thus
+Taught--Definition Learned through Objects--Spelling and Grammar in like
+Manner--Great Effort on part of the Teacher.................pp. 181-193
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                  THE LITTLE ITALIAN ORGAN-GRINDERS.
+
+Italian Quarter in Five Points--Cruelty of the Padroni--Rev. Dr.
+Hawks--Signor Cerqua--Description of the Five Points' Italian
+Settlement--Characteristics of Poor Italians--Foundation of Italian
+School in 1855--Opposition of Bigoted Italians--Anathemas of the
+Priest--Increase of the School--Mental Improvement--Moral
+Progress--Gratitude of Poor Italians--Visits among the Rookeries of the
+Five Points--Dens in Baxter Street--Feeling of Italian Children towards
+their Teacher--Assistants by American-Italians--Co-operation of the
+Italian Government--Generosity of Italian Children to other
+Charities...................................................pp. 194-211
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                    THE "LAMBS" or COTTAGE PLACE.
+
+Mr. Macy's Efforts--A Free Reading-room--Earnest Nature of the
+Work--Self-sacrifice of Lady Volunteers--Miss Macy's Treatment of
+Colored Children during the Riots--Good Effects of the School in
+Preventing Thieving and Begging--Cottage-place School--The Little
+Beggars of the First Ward--Application to Trinity Church--Mr. Lord's
+Valuable Assistance--Interesting Incident--Reform of a Street-sweeper in
+the "Lord School"--A Ragged School on St John's Park--Fourteenth-ward
+Industrial School--The Colored Poor--Other Industrial Schools--The
+Shanty People near the Park--Interesting Night-school--Efforts to
+prevent a New "Nineteenth street Gang"--No Children Admitted who can
+attend Public Schools--Improvement In the Teaching--Superintendent of
+Schools and Visitors........................................pp. 212-222
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                THE BEST REMEDY FOR JUVENILE PAUPERISM.
+
+Effects of Overcrowding--No Local Charities a Complete Remedy--Asylums
+not Sufficient--Best Asylum, the "Farmer's Home"--Advantage in the
+United States--Unlimited Demand for Labor--Best Remedy Emigration to the
+West--Objections to the Plan--How they were Met--Incident of a
+Waif--Humanity of our Countrywomen--Method of Placing Out the
+Children--Difficulties of the Local Committees..............pp. 223-233
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+ PROVIDING COUNTRY HOMES--THE OPPOSITION TO THIS REMEDY--ITS EFFECTS.
+
+Hostility of Ignorant Roman Catholics--Objections of the
+Poor--Opposition of the Asylum Interest--Arguments of the Asylum Plan
+and for the Emigration Method--A Practical Test to Apply--Advantages of
+the Discussion--Effort to Obtain Statistics--Figures of the Results in
+the West--Testimony from Great Numbers of People--Wonderful
+Improvement--Changes of Fortune--The Great Majority become Honest
+Producers--Unlimited Demand from the West--No Indentures
+Required--Virtues in both Plans--Opposition of Priests--Our Action
+Unsectarian--Net Expenses for Each Emigrants--Amount of Returned Fares
+Collected--All the Pauper Children of the City could be thus
+Placed--Answer to Prof. Fawcett's Objection--Our Western Agents--Mr.
+Tracy's Quaint Humor--Defective Children--No Accident has ever
+Happened....................................................pp. 234-245
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+             RESULTS AND FACTS OF EMIGRATION TO THE WEST.
+
+Our First Party of Little Emigrants--A Description of the Waifs--Hard
+Journey in Emigrant Cars--Excitement of the Boys in the
+Country--Reception in the Western Village--Their Sweet Songs--The
+Runaway--The Placing-out of the Boys--The Lost Boy Returned--A Later
+Party to the West--Eagerness to Obtain the Children--Sympathy for the
+Boys--The Fortune of the Deaf-mute--A Hungry Child Placed in a Good
+Home--From the Gutter to the College--Once a New-York Pauper, now a
+Western Farmer..............................................pp. 246-270
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+          A PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST AMONG THE YOUNG ROUGHS.
+
+A Description of the Office of the Children's Aid Society--Central
+Figure--Mr. Macy--Labors with his "Lambs" in Cottage Place--Stormy
+Meetings--His Influence over the Young Vagrants--The Growth of the
+Mission--His Humor--The Effect of His Sermon on Stealing--Contest of
+Wits--His Torments from the Girls--His Dread of Paupers--Efforts among
+the German Children--His Diplomatic Tact in Office-work--His Letters to
+the Children Stereotyped by the Thousand....................pp. 271-279
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                     RAISING MONEY FOR A CHARITY.
+
+Sensation to be Avoided--All Raffles and Pathetic Exhibitions
+Declined--Our Experience with a Concert--Labors through the Pulpit and
+the Press--Character of the Trustees who entered in the Work--Sources of
+Income--Mr. Barnard's Bequest--Mr. Chauncy Rose's Great Benefaction--The
+Income of a Single Year--Different Sources from which it is
+Derived.....................................................pp. 280-285
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+            REFORM AMONG THE ROWDIES--FREE READING-ROOMS.
+
+They Require Peculiar Management to be Successful--The Eleventh-ward
+Reading-room--Its Failure--A Reformed Pugilist--"Awful Gardner"-His
+Career--The Death of His Son--His Reform--His Words to His Old
+Associates--The Effect of Christianity--The Drunkard's Club in the
+Fourth Ward--Mr. Beecher's Address--Gardner's Speech--His Influence over
+the Rowdies--His Theory of Reform--Great Numbers Rescued from
+Drunkenness--Failure of his Health--Genuineness of his Reform--Mr.
+Macy's Reading-room--The First-ward Room--Mr. J. Couper Lord--Mr.
+Hawley's Exertions--The Free Reading-room a Recognized Means of Moral
+Improvement.................................................pp. 286-297
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                            HOMELESS GIRLS.
+
+The President of the Society--Mr. William A. Booth--His Character and
+Capacity--His Policy in Regard to the Lodging-houses--His Suggestion
+about the Street-girls--The Histories of these Girls--Causes of their
+Condition--Their Unstable Character--Their Condition Fifteen Years Ago
+Hopeless--THE GIRLS' LODGING-HOUSE--Its Plan--Means of Filling
+it--Miserable Girls who Applied for Admission--Great Difficulties
+Encountered--Necessity of Confining it to the Young, and Those not
+Vicious--Principal Frequenters, Young Girls between Fourteen and
+Eighteen--The Matron--Her Characteristics--The House was not to be an
+Asylum--Our Effort to put the Girls in Places--Struggles of Mr. and Mrs.
+Trott--Incidents from the Journal--Cases of Reform--THE SEWING-MACHINE
+SCHOOL--Its Great Success--TRAINING SCHOOL FOR SERVANTS--Results from
+the Work of the Lodging-house...............................pp. 298-315
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+    THE NINETEENTH-STREET GANG OF RUFFIANS--"A MORAL DISINFECTANT."
+
+History of the Formation of the Nineteenth-street Gang--Our Efforts to
+Reform it--Mr. Slater's Labors--Improvement of Vagabond Boys--Reform of
+Petty Thieves--Good Fortune of a Homeless Lad--Warning, in 1854, from
+the Danger of these Lads--Their Extraordinary Crimes--Murder of Mr.
+Swanton--Murder of Mr. Rogers--Failure at that time of our Reformatory
+Efforts--Renewed In 1865--Lodging-house Founded in Eighteenth
+Street--The Superintendent--His Characteristics--The Assistance of a
+Benevolent Gentleman--His Influence over the Boys--Mr. Gourley's
+Economy--A Test of his Patience--The Ingratitude of Two Boys--Their
+Improvement--The Reformatory Effects of the Lodging-house--Its Tabular
+Statement...................................................pp. 316-329
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+   THE MINISTRY OF FLOWERS--THE LITTLE VAGABONDS OF CORLEAR'S HOOK.
+
+The Rookeries of the "Hook"--The "Gavroches" and "Topsies" of the
+Quarter--Great Number of Homeless Children--A School-building turned
+into a Lodging-house--The Superintendent--His Artistic
+Faculty--Flowers--A Novel Reward for the Children--Distribution of
+Flowers among the Poor--An Aquarium and Green-house--The Industrial
+School--An Earnest Teacher--The Children Like Little Indians--The
+Night-school and Free Reading-room--Sunday-evening Meetings--Assistance
+by various Gentlemen--A Young Army Officer and others--The Effect of
+these Meetings--The Purchase of the House--Begging Money for
+Charities--A Disagreeable Duty--Liberality of New York Merchants--Labors
+of Two of the Trustees--Gift of a Beautiful Conservatory to the
+Lodging-house--The Attractions of the School-room--Mothers'
+Meetings--Statistics of the Lodging-house--ELEVENTH-WARD
+LODGING-HOUSE--The Little Copper-stealers--Difficulties of the
+Superintendent in this House--Final Success--The Night-school,
+Day-school, and Bank--Sunday-evening Meetings--Labors of One
+Trustee--Our Hopes to Secure Better
+Lodging-house--Statistics...................................pp. 330-338
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                          THE CHILD VAGRANT.
+
+Passion for Roving Among Children--A Rover Reformed--Sent to the West,
+and Wanders over the Woods and Mountains--The Habits of Little
+Street-Vagrants--Unaccountable Preference for Particular
+Lodging-houses--Greatest Number in the Spring--Different Class of Boys
+in each House--Mystery of what Becomes of a Great Number of
+Them--Down-town Boys Sharper than the Up-town--Influence of Theatres
+upon them--The Salvation of New York its Climate--A Corrective--A
+License should be Required of each Street-trader--A License to be
+Accompanied by a School Certificate--Such a Law could be
+Executed--Success of similar Boston Laws--School-training Preventing
+Vagrancy and Pauperism--Truant-schools not Needed--Compulsory
+Education--Half-time Schools--Such a Law not Needed Formerly, Now
+Required Everywhere--Statistics of Illiteracy--The Ignorant Form the
+Dangerous Classes in this City--The Power of Prussia in the Compulsory
+Law--An Approach to in the Legislation in the Different States on
+Factory children............................................pp. 339-352
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+              FACTORY-CHILDREN AND THE NEW LAW PROPOSED.
+
+Experience in the Night-schools--Great Numbers of Young Children
+Employed in Factories--Their Eagerness to Learn--Experience of
+England--Statistics of Children Employed in Factories in New York--Facts
+and Incidents--Mr. Mundella's Views of the Evils in this
+Country--Massachusetts Legislation--Effects of the Law--Half-time
+Schools--"Double Gangs"--Rhode Island Legislation--Connecticut
+Legislation--Description of the Act--Defects of the Law--Hearty
+Co-operation of the Manufacturers--The New York Law Proposed, Drawn up
+by Mr. C. E. Whitehead, Secures Education for all Children Employed, and
+Protects them from Dangers..................................pp. 353-365
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                      ORGANIZATION OF CHARITIES.
+
+Enthusiasm of Humanity--Necessity of Machinery--Danger of
+Routine--Importance of Interested Motives--Duties of
+Trustees--Compensation--Charity should not be Too Much of a
+Business--Importance of other Pursuits for an Agent of a Charity--Best
+Constitution of a Board of Trustees--Importance of their Personal Share
+in the Work--Rigid Inspection Necessary--Duties of the Executive
+Officers....................................................pp. 366-376
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                        STATE AID TO CHARITIES.
+
+Discussion How Far the State should Aid in Charities--Dangers of State
+Endowments--Weakness of Individual Charities--Danger of Machinery Taking
+Place of Work--The Natural Family Better than the Asylum Machinery--The
+Needless Multiplication of Charities--Bad Effects on the Poor and on the
+Public--A Trade in Alms--Necessity of a Bureau--Should be Directed by
+the State Board of Charities................................pp. 377-387
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+               HOW BEST TO GIVE ALMS--"TAKE, NOT GIVE."
+
+Reply of the missionary in East London--The Evil of
+Alms-giving--Experience of the English--Everything given but
+Education--Charity Expenses of London--Good Fortune of this
+Country--Degrading Influence of Alms--Able-bodied Paupers in New
+York--Transmitted Pauperism--Terrible Instance in an Alms-house in
+Western New York--Outdoor Relief very Dangerous--Ought to be Limited in
+this City--Private Alms Better--Abuse of Private Benefactions--Great
+Number of Deserving Poor in the City--Policy of the Children's Aid
+Society--They Desire to Prevent the Demand for Alms--Our Lodging-houses
+Cultivate Independence--Boys Obliged to Pay--The "Howland
+Fund"--Distribution of Gifts on Christmas--Objection to the "Bootblack
+Brigade"--Our Industrial Schools Reformatories of Pauperism--Garments
+given as Rewards for Good Conduct--Begging Discouraged--Parents Induced
+to Save--Principle of this Society to give Education rather than
+Alms........................................................pp. 388-397
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                HOW SHALL CRIMINAL CHILDREN BE TREATED?
+
+The Child, above all, an Individual--Unsuited to be put in a large
+Institution--Influence of a Number of Criminal Children on One
+Another--Absence of the Most Powerful Forces of the Outside World--The
+Work of a Reformatory not suited for After-life--Working the Ground the
+Best--Garden-work very Useful for Criminal Young Girls--Mr. Pease's
+Success--The True Plan--The "Family System"--Each Child does the Small
+Work of the Cottage--Children near the Natural Condition--Only Defect
+the Unprofitableness of the Labor--The Most Successful Reformatories of
+Europe on the Family System.................................pp. 398-403
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                  WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH FOUNDLINGS?
+
+The Need of Shelter for Illegitimate Children--Their Numbers in European
+Cities--Estimated Number in New York--Number of Still-births--Relation
+of Illegitimacy to Crime--Statistics in France--Foundling
+Asylums--Terrible Mortality of London Foundling Hospital, also of St
+Petersburg and Paris Hospitals--Former Great Mortality of
+Infant-Hospital in New York--Recent Improvement--Mortality of the
+Massachusetts Alms-house, and in Dorchester Infant-Asylum--Great
+Difficulty in Raising a Child without a Nurse or its Mother--Best Course
+is, "PLACING-OUT SYSTEM"--Great Success of "Bureau of Ste.
+Apolline"--Mortality Greatly Reduced--Children Scattered over
+France--The Outlay by the Government--The Moral Effects--This Bureau to
+be Distinguished from Private Bureaus--The Boarding out in Hamburg, in
+Berlin, in Dublin--The FAMILY PLAN--Tendency of all Civilized Countries
+towards this Plan--All the Illegitimate Children in this City might be
+Placed out in Country Homes--Duties of the Legislature in regard to
+Illegitimacy--Objections to the French Turning-tables--Too Great Laxness
+Injurious--The New York Law too Severe......................pp. 404-417
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+              RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION FOR STREET-CHILDREN.
+
+The Difficulties of Religious Teaching--Street-children not to be
+Influenced like Sunday Schools--Rhetoric and Sentiment do not Touch
+Them--True Oratory and the Dramatic Method always Reach them--They are
+Peculiarly Open to Religion, but Exposed to Overwhelming
+Temptations--Solemn Aspect of their Position to the Speaker--The
+Problem--The Object to Implant Religious Love and Faith--Moral
+Influences not Sufficient--"Bread-and-Butter Piety" Doubtful--Objection
+to Prizes or Rewards--Religious Instruction not so desirable as
+Religious Inspiration--The New Testament to be Preferred to the Old--The
+Knowledge and Faith in Christ, Most of all Needed--What this Faith Has
+Done, and What it Can Do--Mistakes of Sunday-school Oratory--Rhetorical
+Pyrotechnics not Wanted--Allegory the Best Method--Our Best Speaker a
+Sportsman--His Sympathies with Boys and with Nature--"BIBLE IN
+SCHOOLS"--Religious Instruction in Public Schools Desirable, if all were
+of the same Faith--Bible-reading used by the Priests Against the
+Schools--Free Schools the Life-blood of the Nation--Protestants should
+Never Allow Them to be Broken Up--Protestant Pluck--Are School Religious
+Exercises of Much Use--Separation of Church and State--Experience of
+England--Free Schools without Religion, rather than no Free
+Schools.....................................................pp. 418-428
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+    DECREASE OF JUVENILE CRIME--COST OF PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT.
+
+Instance of the Three Brothers in the Newsboys' Lodging-house--The
+Damage Inflicted by One on the Community--The Gain brought by the Labor
+of the Others--Cost of Our Criminals last Year--Amount of Property
+Taken--Expenses of Prevention--Average Cost of each Child in our
+Industrial Schools--In our Lodging-houses--And when sent to the
+West--Number Provided for in the Country--Crime Checked--Commitments of
+Female Vagrants--Arrests of Female Vagrants--Commitments for
+Thieving--For "Juvenile Delinquency"--Number of Girls under Fifteen
+Years Old Imprisoned--Great Decrease of Crime among Girls--Crime Checked
+among Boys--Commitment of Boys for Vagrancy--For Petit Larceny--Number
+of Boys under Fifteen Years Old Imprisoned--Number between Fifteen and
+Twenty--Arrests of Pickpockets--Of Petty Thieves--Of Girls under
+Twenty--Estimate of Money Saved in One Year by Reduction of
+Commitments.................................................pp. 429-439
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+                THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS OF THE WORK.
+
+This Charity has always Encouraged Self-help--No Pauperism Stimulated
+under it--The Laborer in this Field sees the Fruit--Harmony with Natural
+Laws sought for constantly--Advantage Taken of Demand for Labor--The
+Family Home sought for, rather than the Asylum--Lodging-houses not
+Permitted to become Homes--Evening-schools--Savings'-bank, Religious
+Meeting, and Day-school--All Stimulates Self-help--The Forces under the
+Society the Strongest Forces of life--The Work Founded on Natural
+Principles--Just Treatment of the Employes by the Trustees--This Charity
+as well served as any Business-house--The Aim of the Executive Officer
+with the Employes--Great Success of many of them--One Million of Dollars
+passed through the Treasury, and not One Squandered--High Character of
+the Board of Trustees--The Success much Dependent on them--Tabulation of
+the Accounts--Long Services of the Treasurer, Mr. J. E. Williams--The
+Sectarian Danger--Great Care to Avoid this--The Utmost Publicity a
+Necessity--Need for State Aid--Sensation to be Avoided--Hopes that this
+Charity will Scatter its Blessings for Generations to come..pp. 440-448
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE DANGEROUS CLASSES
+
+                             OF NEW YORK;
+
+                  AND TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM.
+
+                                 ----
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                    CHRIST IN CHARITY AND REFORM.
+
+       THE CONDITION OF NEGLECTED CHILDREN BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.
+
+The central figure in the world's charity is CHRIST. An eloquent
+rationalistic writer--Mr. Lecky--speaking of the Christian efforts in
+early ages in behalf of exposed children and against infanticide, says:
+
+"Whatever mistakes may have been made, the entire movement I have traced
+displays an anxiety not only for the life, but for the moral well-being,
+of the castaways of society, such as the most humane nations of
+antiquity had never reached. This minute and scrupulous care for human
+life and human virtue in the humblest forms, in the slave, the
+gladiator, the savage, or the infant, was indeed wholly foreign to the
+genius of Paganism. It was produced by the Christian doctrine of the
+inestimable value of each immortal soul.
+
+"It is the distinguishing and transcendent characteristic of every
+society into which the spirit of Christianity has passed."
+
+Christ has indeed given a new value to the poorest and most despised
+human being.
+
+When one thinks what was the fate before He lived, throughout the
+civilized world, of for instance one large and pitiable class of human
+beings--unfortunate children, destitute orphans, foundlings, the
+deformed and sickly, and female children of the poor; how almost
+universal, even under the highest pagan civilization--the Greek and
+Roman--infanticide was; how Plato and Aristotle both approved of it; how
+even more common was the dreadful exposure of children who were
+physically imperfect or for any cause disagreeable to their parents, so
+that crowds of these little unfortunates were to be seen exposed around
+a column near the Velabrum at Rome--some being taken to be raised as
+slaves, others as prostitutes, others carried off by beggars and maimed
+for exhibition, or captured by witches to be murdered, and their bodies
+used in their magical preparations; when one remembers for how many
+centuries, even after the nominal introduction of Christianity, the sale
+of free children was permitted by law, and then recalls how utterly the
+spirit of the Founder of Christianity has exterminated these barbarous
+practices from the civilized world; what vast and ingenious charities
+exist in every Christian country for this unfortunate class; what time
+and wealth and thought are bestowed to heal the diseases, purify the
+morals, raise the character, and make happy the life of foundlings,
+outcast girls and boys and orphans, we can easily understand that the
+source of the charities of civilized nations has been especially in
+Christ; and knowing how vital the moral care of unfortunate children is
+to civilization itself the most skeptical among us may still put Him at
+the head of even modern social reform.
+
+                        EXPOSURE OF CHILDREN.
+
+The "exposure of children" is spoken of casually and with indifference
+by numerous Latin authors. The comedians include the custom in their
+pictures of the daily Roman life, usually without even a passing
+condemnation. Thus, in Terence's play (Heauton: Act iii., sc. v.), the
+very character who uttered the apothegm which has become a proverb of
+humanity for all ages--"I am a man, and nothing belonging to man is
+alien to me"--is represented, on the eve of his departure on a long
+journey, as urging his wife to destroy the infant soon to be born, if it
+should prove to be a girl, rather than expose it. She, however, exposes
+it, and it was taken, as was usual, and brought up as a prostitute. This
+play turns in its plot, as is true of many popular comedies, on this
+exposition of the abandoned child.
+
+It is frequently commented on by Roman dramatists, and subsequently by
+the early Christian preachers, that, owing to this terrible custom,
+brothers might marry sisters, or fathers share in the ruin of their
+unknown daughters in houses of crime.
+
+Seneca, who certainly always writes with propriety and aims to be
+governed by reason, in his treatise on Anger (De Ira: i., 15), comments
+thus calmly on the practice: "Portentos foetus extingnimus; liberos
+quoque si debiles, monstrosique editi sunt, mergimus. Non ira, sed
+_ratio_ est, a sanis, inutilia secernere." (Monstrous offspring we
+destroy; children too, if weak and unnaturally formed from birth, we
+drown. It is not anger, but reason, thus to separate the useless from
+the sound.)
+
+In another work (Controversi, lib. v., 33), he denounces the horrible
+practice, common in Rome, of maiming these unfortunate children and then
+offering them to the gaze of the compassionate. He describes the
+miserable little creatures with shortened limbs, broken Joints, and
+carved backs, exhibited by the villainous beggars who had gathered them
+at the _Lactaria,_ and then deformed them: "Volo nosse," "I should like
+to know" says the moralist, with a burst of human indignation, "illam
+calamitatum humanarum officinam--illud infantum spoliarium!"--"that
+workshop of human misfortunes--those shambles of infants!"
+
+On the day that Germanicus died, says Suetonius (in Calig., n. 5),
+"Subversae Deam arae, partus conjugum expositi," parents exposed their
+new-born babes.
+
+The early Christian preachers and writers were unceasing in their
+denunciations of the practice.
+
+Quintilian (Decl. 306, vol vi., p. 236) draws a most moving picture of
+the fate of these unhappy children left in the Forum: "Rarum est ut
+expositi vivant! Yos ponite ante oculos puerum statim neglectum * * *
+inter feras et volucres."
+
+"It is rare that the exposed survive!" he says.
+
+Tertullian, in an eloquent passage (Apol., c. 9), asks: "Quot vultis ex
+his circumstantibus et in christianum sanguinem hiantibus * * * apud
+conscientias pulsem, qui natos sibi liberos enecent?"
+
+"How many, do you suppose, of those standing about and panting for the
+blood of Christians, if I should put it to them before their very
+conscience, would deny that they killed their own children?"
+
+Lactantius, who was the tutor of the son of Constantine, in a book
+dedicated to Constantine, protests: "It is impossible to grant that one
+has the right to strangle one's new-born children"; and speaks of
+exposition as exposing one's own blood--"ad servitutem vel ad
+lupanar"--"for slavery or the brothel." "It is a crime as execrable to
+expose a child as to kill him."
+
+So fearfully did the numbers increase, under the Roman Empire, of these
+unfortunate children, that the spark of charity, which is never utterly
+extinguished in the human breast, began to kindle. Pliny the Younger is
+said to have appropriated a sum equivalent to $52,000 (see Epist., v.,
+7), to found an asylum for fathers unable to support their children.
+
+                     THE FIRST CHILDREN'S ASYLUM.
+
+Probably the first society or asylum in history for poor children was
+the foundation established by the Emperor Trajan (about A. D. 110) for
+destitute and abandoned children. The property thus established in
+perpetuity, with real estate and money at interest (at five per cent.),
+was equivalent in value to $920,000, and supported some five thousand
+children of both sexes. Singularly enough, there seems to have been only
+one illegitimate child to one hundred and fifty legitimate in these
+institutions.
+
+The Antonines, as might be expected, did not neglect this charity; but
+both Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius founded associations for
+destitute girls. Alexander Severus established one also for poor
+children. These form the only organized efforts made for this object,
+during many centuries, by the most civilized and refined state of
+antiquity.
+
+The number, however, of these wretched creatures, increased beyond all
+cure from scattered exceptional efforts like these. Everywhere the poor
+got rid of their children by exposure, or sold them as slaves. The rich,
+if indifferent to their offspring, or unwilling to take the trouble of
+rearing them, sent them out to the public square, where pimps, beggars,
+witches, and slave-dealers gleaned their horrible harvest. At length,
+under the influence of Christianity, legislation began to take
+cognizance of the practice.
+
+The Emperor Constantine, the Emperor Valentian, Valens, and Gratian,
+sixty years later, continued this humane legislation.
+
+They ordered, under strict penalties, that every one should nourish his
+own children, and forbade exposition; declaring also that no one had the
+right to reclaim the children he had abandoned; the motive to this law
+being the desire to make it for the interest of those "taking up"
+exposed children to keep them, even if necessary, as slaves, against any
+outside claims.
+
+Unfortunately, at that period, slavery was held a less evil than the
+ordinary fate to which the poor left their children.
+
+The punishment of death was also decreed against Infanticide.
+
+It is an interesting fact that a portion, and probably the whole, of our
+ancestral tribes looked with the greatest horror on abortion and
+infanticide. The laws of the Visigoths punished these offenses with
+death or blindness. Their influence, of course, should always be
+considered, as well as that of Christianity, in estimating the modern
+position of woman and the outcast child, as compared with their status
+under Greek and Roman civilization.
+
+At a later period (412 A. D.) the imperial legislation again endeavored
+to prevent the reclaiming of exposed children from compassionate persons
+who had taken them. "Were they right to say that those children belonged
+to them when they had despised them even to the point of abandoning them
+to death?"
+
+It was provided also, that in future no one should "take from the
+ground" exposed children except in the presence of witnesses, and that
+the archbishop should put his signature on the document of guardianship
+which was prepared. (Cod. Theod., lib. 5, tit. 7, De Expositis.)
+
+Hitherto, exposed children had generally been taken and reared as
+slaves; but in A. D. 529, Justinian decreed that not only the father
+lost all legitimate authority over the child if he exposed it, but also
+that the child itself preserved its liberty.
+
+This law applied only to the Eastern Empire; in the Western the slavery
+of exposed children continued for centuries. (Lecky: Hist. of Europ.
+Morals, vol. ii, p. 32.) The Christian churches throughout the early
+centuries took especial care of orphans, in parish orphan nurseries, or
+_orphanotrophioe._
+
+The first asylums for deserted and foundling children which are recorded
+in the Christian era are one in Treves in the sixth century, one at
+Angiers in the seventh, and a more famous one in Milan, A. D. 787.
+
+Societies for the protection of children were also formed in Milan in
+the middle of the twelfth century.
+
+At the end of that century a monk of Montpelier, Brother GUY, formed
+what may be called the first "Children's Aid Society," for the
+protection, shelter, and education of destitute children, a fraternity
+which subsequently spread over Europe.
+
+One great cause of the final extreme corruption and extinction of
+ancient pagan society was the existence of large classes of unfortunate
+beings, whom no social moral movement of renovation ever reached--the
+slaves, the gladiators, the barbarian strangers, and the outcast
+children.
+
+To all these deep strata of misery and crime Christianity gradually
+penetrated, and brought life and light, and finally an almost entire
+metamorphosis. As criminal and unfortunate classes, they have--with the
+exception only of the children--ceased to exist under modern
+civilization. We have no longer at the basis of modern society the
+dangers of a multitude of ignorant slaves, or of disaffected barbarous
+foreigners, or of a profession of gladiators--brutal, brutalizing; but
+we do still have masses of unfortunate youth, whose condition, though
+immensely improved, and lightened by the influences of Christianity, is
+still one of the most threatening and painful phenomena of modern
+society in nearly all civilized countries.
+
+Still, unlike the experience of Paganism under the Roman Empire and
+before it, rays of light, of intelligence, and of moral and spiritual
+influence penetrate to the depths of these masses. The spirit of Christ
+is slowly and irresistibly permeating even this lowest class of
+miserable, unfortunate, or criminal beings; inspiring those who
+perseveringly labor for them, drawing from wealth its dole and from
+intelligence its service of love, educating the fortunate in the habit
+of duty to the unfortunate, giving a dignity to the most degraded, and
+offering hope to the despairing.
+
+CHRIST leads the Reform of the world, as well as its Charity.
+
+Those who have much to do with alms-giving and plans of human
+improvement soon see how superficial and comparatively useless all
+assistance or organization is, which does not touch habits of life and
+the inner forces which form character. The poor helped each year become
+poorer in force and independence. Education is a better preventive of
+pauperism than charity. The best police and the most complete form of
+government are nothing if the individual morality be not there. But
+Christianity is the highest education of character. Give the poor that,
+and only seldom will either alms or punishment be necessary.
+
+When one comes to know the peculiar overpowering temptations which beset
+the class of unfortunate children and similar, classes; the inducements
+to sharpness, deception, roguery, lying, fraud, coarseness, vice in many
+forms, besides toward open offenses against the law; the few restraining
+influences in social opinion, good example, or inherited self-control;
+the forces without and the organization within impelling to crime, and
+then sees how immensely powerful the belief in and love for a
+supernatural and noble character and Friend is upon such wild natures;
+how it inspires to nobleness, restrains low passions, changes bad
+habits, and transforms base hearts; how the thoughts of this
+supernatural Friend can accompany a child of the street, and make his
+daily hard life an offering of loving service; how the unseen sympathy
+can dry the orphan's tears, and throw a light of cheerfulness around the
+wan, pale face of the little vagrant, and bring down something of the
+splendor of heaven to the dark cellars and dreary dens of a great city:
+whoever has had this experience--not once, but many times--will begin to
+understand that Christ must lead Reform as well as Charity, and that
+without Him the worst diseases of modern society can never be cured.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (First Stage.)]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                     THE PROLETAIRES OF NEW YORK.
+
+New York is a much younger city than its European rivals; and with
+perhaps one-third the population of London, yet it presents varieties of
+life among the "masses" quite as picturesque, and elements of population
+even more dangerous. The throng of different nationalities in the
+American city gives a peculiarly variegated air to the life beneath the
+surface, and the enormous over-crowding in portions of the poor quarters
+intensifies the evils, peculiar to large towns, to a degree seen only in
+a few districts in such cities as London and Liverpool.
+
+The _mass_ of poverty and wretchedness is, of course, far greater in the
+English capital. There are classes with inherited pauperism and crime
+more deeply stamped in them, in London or Glasgow, than we ever behold
+in New York; but certain small districts can be found in our metropolis
+with the unhappy fame of containing more human beings packed to the
+square yard, and stained with more acts of blood and riot, within a
+given period, than is true of any other equal space of earth in the
+civilized world.
+
+There are houses, well known to sanitary boards and the police, where
+Fever has taken a perennial lease, and will obey no legal summons to
+quit; where Cholera--if a single germ-seed of it float anywhere in
+American atmosphere--at once ripens a black harvest; where Murder has
+stained every floor of its gloomy stories, and Vice skulks or riots from
+one year's end to the other. Such houses are never reformed. The only
+hope for them is in the march of street improvements, which will utterly
+sweep them away.
+
+It is often urged that the breaking-up of these "dens" and "fever-nests"
+only scatters the pestilence and moral disease, but does not put an end
+to them.
+
+The objection is more apparent than real. The abolishing of one of these
+centres of crime and poverty is somewhat like withdrawing the virus from
+one diseased limb and diffusing it through an otherwise healthy body. It
+seems to lose its intensity. The diffusion weakens. Above all, it is
+less likely to become hereditary.
+
+One of the remarkable and hopeful things about New York, to a close
+observer of its "dangerous classes," is, as I shall show in a future
+chapter, that they do not tend to become fixed and inherited, as in
+European cities.
+
+But, though the crime and pauperism of New York are not so deeply
+stamped in the blood of the population, they are even more dangerous.
+The intensity of the American temperament is felt in every fibre of
+these children of poverty and vice. Their crimes have the unrestrained
+and sanguinary character of a race accustomed to overcome all obstacles.
+They rifle a bank, where English thieves pick a pocket; they murder,
+where European _proletaires_ cudgel or fight with fists; in a riot, they
+begin what seems about to be the sacking of a city, where English
+rioters would merely batter policemen, or smash lamps. The "dangerous
+classes" of New York are mainly American-born, but the children of Irish
+and German immigrants. They are as ignorant as London flash-men or
+costermongers. They are far more brutal than the peasantry from whom
+they descend, and they are much banded together, in associations, such
+as "Dead Rabbit," "Plug-ugly," and various target companies. They are
+our _enfants perdus,_ grown up to young manhood. The murder of an
+unoffending old man, like Mr. Rogers, is nothing to them. They are ready
+for any offense or crime, however degraded or bloody. New York has never
+experienced the full effect of the nurture of these youthful ruffians as
+she will one day. They showed their hand only slightly in the riots
+during the war. At present, they are like the athletes and gladiators of
+the Roman demagogues. They are the "roughs" who sustain the ward
+politicians, and frighten honest voters. They can "repeat" to an
+unlimited extent, and serve their employers. They live on _"panem et
+circenses,"_ or City-Hall places and pot-houses, where they have full
+credit.
+
+We shall speak more particularly of the causes of crime in future
+chapters, but we may say in brief, that the young ruffians of New York
+are the products of accident, ignorance, and vice. Among a million
+people, such as compose the population of this city and its suburbs,
+there will always be a great number of misfortunes; fathers die, and
+leave their children unprovided for; parents drink, and abuse their
+little ones, and they float away on the currents of the street;
+step-mothers or step-fathers drive out, by neglect and ill-treatment,
+their sons from home. Thousands are the children of poor foreigners, who
+have permitted them to grow up without school, education, or religion.
+All the neglect and bad education and evil example of a poor class tend
+to form others, who, as they mature, swell the ranks of ruffians and
+criminals. So, at length, a great multitude of ignorant, untrained,
+passionate, irreligious boys and young men are formed, who become the
+"dangerous class" of our city. They form the "Nineteenth-street Gangs,"
+the young burglars and murderers, the garroters and rioters, the thieves
+and flash-men, the "repeaters" and ruffians, so well known to all who
+know this metropolis.
+
+                             THE DANGERS.
+
+It has been common, since the recent terrible Communistic outbreak in
+Paris, to assume that France alone is exposed to such horrors; but, in
+the judgment of one who has been familiar with our "dangerous classes"
+for twenty years, there are just the same explosive social elements
+beneath the surface of New York as of Paris.
+
+There are thousands on thousands in New York who have no assignable
+home, and "flit" from attic to attic, and cellar to cellar; there are
+other thousands more or less connected with criminal enterprises; and
+still other tens of thousands, poor, hard-pressed, and depending for
+daily bread on the day's earnings, swarming in tenement-houses, who
+behold the gilded rewards of toil all about them, but are never
+permitted to touch them.
+
+All these great masses of destitute, miserable, and criminal persons
+believe that for ages the rich have had all the good things of life,
+while to them have been left the evil things. Capital to them is the
+tyrant.
+
+Let but Law lift its hand from them for a season, or let the civilizing
+influences of American life fail to reach them, and, if the opportunity
+offered, we should see an explosion from this class which might leave
+this city in ashes and blood.
+
+To those incredulous of this, we would recall the scenes in our streets
+during the riots in 1863, when, for a short period, the guardians of
+good order--the local militia--had been withdrawn for national purposes,
+and when the ignorant masses were excited by dread of the draft.
+
+Who will ever forget the marvelous rapidity with which the better
+streets were filled with a ruffianly and desperate multitude, such as in
+ordinary times we seldom see--creatures who seemed to have crept from
+their burrows and dens to join in the plunder of the city--how quickly
+certain houses were marked out for sacking and ruin, and what wild and
+brutal crimes were committed on the unoffending negroes? It will be
+recalled, too, how much _women_ figured in these horrible scenes, as
+they did in the Communistic outbreak in Paris. It was evident to all
+careful observers then, that had another day of license been given the
+crowd, the attack would have been directed at the apparent wealth of the
+city--the banks, jewelers' shops, and rich private houses.
+
+No one doubted then, or during the Orange riot of 1871, the existence of
+"dangerous classes" in New York. And yet the separate members of these
+riotous and ruffianly masses are simply neglected and street-wandering
+children who have come to early manhood.
+
+The true preventive of social catastrophes like these, are just such
+Christian reformatory and educational movements as we are about to
+describe.
+
+Of the number of the distinctly homeless and vagrant youth in New York,
+it is difficult to speak with precision. We should be inclined to
+estimate it, after long observation, as fluctuating each year between
+20,000 and 30,000. [The homeless children who come each year under the
+charitable efforts afterwards to be described amount to some 12,000.]
+But to these, as they mature, must be added, in the composition of the
+dangerous classes, all those who are professionally criminal, and who
+have homes and lodging-places. And again to these, portions of that vast
+and ignorant [It should be remembered that there are in this city over
+60,000 persons above ten years of age who cannot write their names.]
+multitude, who, in prosperous times, just keep their heads above water,
+who are pressed down by poverty or misfortune, and who look with envy
+and greed at the signs of wealth and luxury all around them, while they
+themselves have nothing but hardship, penury, and unceasing drudgery.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                         THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
+
+The great practical division of causes of crime may be made into
+preventible and non-preventible. Among the preventible, or those which
+can be in good part removed, may be placed ignorance, intemperance,
+over-crowding of population, want of work, idleness, vagrancy, the
+weakness of the marriage-tie, and bad legislation.
+
+Among those which cannot be entirely removed are inheritance, the
+effects of emigration, orphanage, accident or misfortune, the strength
+of the sexual and other passions, and a natural weakness of moral or
+mental powers.
+
+                              IGNORANCE.
+
+There needs hardly a word to be said in this country on the intimate
+connection between ignorance and crime.
+
+The precise statistical relation between them in the State of New York
+would seem to be this: about thirty-one per cent. of the adult criminals
+cannot read or write, while of the adult population at large about six
+(6.08) per cent. are illiterate; or nearly one-third of the crime is
+committed by six-hundredths of the population. In the city prisons for
+1870, out of 49,423 criminals, 18,442 could not write and could barely
+read, or more than thirty-three per cent.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Second Stage.)]
+
+In the Reformatories of the country, according to the statement of Dr.
+Bittinger before the National Congress on prison-discipline at
+Cincinnati, out of the average number of the inmates for 1868, of 7,963
+twenty-seven per cent. were wholly illiterate.
+
+Very great criminality is, of course, possible with high education; but
+in the immense majority of cases a very small degree of mental training
+or intellectual tastes is a preventive of idleness and consequent crime
+and of extreme poverty. The difference between knowing how to read and
+not knowing will often be the line between utter poverty and a capacity
+for various occupations.
+
+Among the inmates of the city prisons a large percentage are without a
+trade, and no doubt this idle condition is largely due to their
+ignorance and is one of the great stimulants to their criminal course.
+Who can say how much the knowledge of Geography alone may stimulate a
+child or a youth to emigrate, and thus leave his immediate temptations
+and escape pressing poverty?
+
+                              ORPHANAGE.
+
+Out of 452 criminal children received into the House of Refuge in New
+York during 1870, only 187 had both parents living, so that nearly sixty
+per cent. had lost one or both of their parents, or were otherwise
+separated from them.
+
+According to Dr. Bittinger, [Transactions of the National Congress, p.
+279.] of the 7,963 inmates of the reformatories in the United States in
+1870, fifty-five per cent. were orphans or half orphans.
+
+The following figures strikingly show the extent to which orphanage and
+inheritance influence the moral condition of children.
+
+Mettrai, the celebrated French reformatory, has received since its
+foundation 3,580 youthful inmates. Of these, there are 707 whose parents
+are convicts; 308 whose parents live in concubinage; 534 "natural"
+children; 221 foundlings; 504 children of a second marriage; and 1,542
+without either father or mother. [Une visite a Mettrai. Paris, 1868.]
+
+An intelligent French writer, M. de Marsangy, [Moralisation de l'enfance
+coupable, p. 18.] in writing of the causes of juvenile crime in France,
+says that "a fifth of those who have been the objects of judicial
+pursuit are composed of orphans; the half have no father, a quarter no
+mother, and as for those who have a family, nearly all are dragged by it
+into evil."
+
+                              EMIGRATION.
+
+There is no question that the breaking of the ties with one's country
+has a bad moral effect, especially on a laboring class. The Emigrant is
+released from the social inspection and judgment to which he has been
+subjected at home, and the tie of church and priesthood is weakened. If
+a Roman Catholic, he is often a worse Catholic, without being a better
+Protestant. If a Protestant, he often becomes indifferent. Moral ties
+are loosened with the religious. The intervening process which occurs
+here, between his abandoning the old state of things and fitting himself
+to the new, is not favorable to morals or character.
+
+The consequence is, that an immense proportion of our ignorant and
+criminal class are foreign-born; and of the dangerous classes here, a
+very large part, though native-born, are of foreign parentage. Thus, out
+of the whole number of foreigners in New York State, in 1860, 16.69 per
+cent. could not read or write; while of the native-born only 1.83 per
+cent. were illiterate.
+
+Of the 49,423 prisoners in our city prisons, in prison for one year
+before January, 1870, 32,225 were of foreign birth, and, no doubt, a
+large proportion of the remainder of foreign parentage. Of the
+foreign-born, 21,887 were from Ireland; and yet at home the Irish are
+one of the most law-abiding and virtuous of populations--the proportion
+of criminals being smaller than in England or Scotland.
+
+In the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, according to Dr. Bittinger,
+from one-fourth to one-third of the inmates are foreigners; in Auburn,
+from a third to a half; in Clinton, one-half; in Sing Sing, between
+one-half and six-sevenths. In the Albany Penitentiary, the aggregate
+number of prisoners during the last twenty years was 18,390, of whom
+10,770 were foreign-born. [Transact. of Nat. Cong., p. 282.]
+
+It is another marked instance of the demoralizing influence of
+emigration, that so large a proportion of the female criminal class
+should be Irish-born, though the Irish female laboring class are well
+known to be at home one of the most virtuous in the world.
+
+A hopeful fact, however, begins to appear in regard to this matter; the
+worst effects of emigration in this country seem over. The machinery for
+protecting and forwarding the newly-arrived immigrants, so that they may
+escape the dangers and temptations of the city, has been much improved.
+Very few, comparatively, now remain in our sea-ports to swell the
+current of poverty and crime. The majority find their way at once to the
+country districts. The quality, too, of the immigration has improved.
+More well-to-do farmers and peasantry, with small savings, arrive than
+formerly, and the preponderance, as to nationality, is inclining to the
+Germans. It comparatively seldom happens now that paupers or persons
+absolutely without means, land in New York.
+
+As one of the great causes of crime, Emigration will undoubtedly have a
+much feebler influence in the future in New York than it has had in the
+past.
+
+                           WANT OF A TRADE.
+
+It is remarkable how often, in questioning the youthful convicts in our
+prisons as to the causes of their downfall, they will reply that "if
+they had had a trade, they would not have been there." They disliked
+drudgery, they found places in offices and shops crowded; they would
+have enjoyed the companionship and the inventiveness of a trade, but
+they could not obtain one, and therefore they were led into stealing or
+gambling, as a quick mode of earning a living.
+
+There is no doubt that a lad with a trade feels a peculiar independence
+of the world, and is much less likely to take up dishonest means of
+living than one depending on manual labor, or chance means of living.
+
+There is nearly always a demand for his work; the lad feels himself a
+member of a craft and supported by the consciousness of this membership;
+the means of the "Unions" often sustain him when out of employment; his
+associates are more honest and respectable than those of boys depending
+on chance-labor, and so he is preserved from falling into crime.
+
+Of course, if such a lad would walk forth to the nearest country
+village, he would find plenty of healthy and remunerative employment in
+the ground, as gardener or farmer. And to a country-lad, the farm offers
+a better chance than a trade. But many city boys and young men will not
+consent to leave the excitements of the city, so that the want of a
+mechanical occupation does expose them to many temptations.
+
+The persons most responsible for this state of things are the members of
+such "Unions" as refuse to employ boys, or to encourage the training of
+apprentices. It is well-known that in many trades of New York, hardly
+any young laborers or apprentices are being trained. The result of this
+selfish policy will be to reduce the amount of skilled labor in this
+city, and thus compel the importation of foreign labor, and to increase
+juvenile crime and the burdens on the poor.
+
+Another cause of this increasing separation from trades among the young
+is, no doubt, the increasing aversion of American children, whether poor
+or rich, to learn anything thoroughly; the boys of the street, like
+those of our merchants, preferring to make fortunes by lucky and sudden
+"turns," rather than by patient and steady industry.
+
+Our hope in this matter is in the steady demand for juvenile labor in
+the country districts, and the substantial rewards which await industry
+there.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                         THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
+
+                    WEAKNESS OF THE MARRIAGE-TIE.
+
+It is extraordinary, among the lowest classes, in how large a number of
+cases a second marriage, or the breaking of marriage, is the immediate
+cause of crime or vagrancy among the children. When questioning a
+homeless boy or street-wandering girl as to the former home, it is
+extremely common to hear "I couldn't get on with my step-mother," or "My
+step-father treated me badly," or "My father left, and we just took care
+of ourselves." These apparently exceptional events are so common in
+these classes as to fairly constitute them an important cause of
+juvenile crime. When one remembers the number of happy second marriages
+within one's acquaintance, and how many children have never felt the
+difference between their step-mother and their own mother, and what love
+and patience and self-sacrifice are shown by parents to their
+step-children, we may be surprised at the contrast in another class of
+the community. But the virtues of the poor spring very much from their
+affections and instincts; they have comparatively little self-control,
+the high lessons of duty and consideration for others are seldom stamped
+on them, and Religion does not much influence their more delicate
+relations with those associated with them. They might shelter a strange
+orphan for years with the greatest kindness; but the bearing and
+forbearing with the faults of another person's child year after year,
+merely from motives of duty or affection to its parent, belong to a
+higher range of Christian virtues, to which they seldom attain. Their
+own want of self-control and their tendency to jealousy, and little
+understanding of true self-sacrifice, combine to weaken and embitter
+these relations with step-children. The children themselves have plenty
+of faults, and have doubtless been little governed, so that soon both
+parties jar and rub against one another; and as neither have instincts
+or affections to fall back upon, mere principle or sense of duty is not
+enough to restrain them. What would be simply slights or jars in more
+controlled persons, become collisions in this class.
+
+Bitter quarrels spring up between step-son and mother, or step-daughter
+and father; the other parent sometimes sides with the child, sometimes
+with the father; but the result is similar. The house becomes a kind of
+pandemonium, and the girls rush desperately forth to the wild life of
+the streets, or the boys gradually prefer the roaming existence of the
+little city-Arab to such a quarrelsome home. Thus it happens that
+step-children among the poor are so often criminals or outcasts.
+
+It needs a number of years among the lower working-classes to understand
+what a force public opinion is in all classes in keeping the
+marriage-bond sacred, and what sweeping misfortunes follow its
+violation. Many of the Irish peasants who have landed here have married
+from pure affection. Their marriage has been consecrated by the most
+solemn ceremonies of their church. They come of a people peculiarly
+faithful to the marriage-tie, and whose religion has especially guarded
+female purity and the fidelity of husband and wife. At home, in their
+native villages, they would have died sooner than break the bond or
+leave their wives. The social atmosphere about them and the influence of
+the priests make such an act almost impossible. And yet in this distant
+country, away from their neighbors and their religious instructors; they
+are continually making a practical test of "Free-Love" doctrines. As the
+wife grows old or ugly--as children increase and weigh the parents
+down--as the home becomes more noisy and less pleasant,--the man begins
+to forget the vows made at the altar, and the blooming girl he then
+took; and, perhaps meeting some prettier woman, or hearing of some
+chance for work at a distance, he slips quietly away, and the deserted
+wife, who seems to love him the more the more false he is, is left
+alone. For a time she has faith in him and seeks him far and near; but
+at length she abandons hope, and begins the heavy struggle of
+maintaining her little family herself. The boys gradually get beyond her
+control; they are kept in the street to earn something for their
+support; they become wild and vagrant, and soon end with being
+street-rovers, or petty thieves, or young criminals. The girls are
+trained in begging or peddling, and, meeting with bold company, they
+gradually learn the manners and morals of the streets, and after a while
+abandon the wretched home, and break what was left of the poor mother's
+hope and courage, by beginning a life of shame.
+
+This sad history is lived out every day in New York. If any theorists
+desire to see what fruits "Free Love" or a weak marriage-bond can bear
+among the lowest working-classes, they have only to trace the histories
+of great numbers of the young thieves and outcasts and prostitutes in
+this city. With the dangerous classes, "elective affinities" are most
+honestly followed. The results are suffering, crime, want, and
+degradation to those who are innocent.
+
+                             INHERITANCE.
+
+A most powerful and continual source of crime with the young is
+inheritance--the transmitted tendencies and qualities of their parents,
+or of several generations of ancestors.
+
+It is well-known to those familiar with the classes, that certain
+appetites or habits, if indulged abnormally and excessively through two
+or more generations, come to have an almost irresistible force, and, no
+doubt, modify the brain so as to constitute almost an insane condition.
+This is especially true of the appetite for liquor and of the sexual
+passion and sometimes of the peculiar weakness, dependence, and laziness
+which make confirmed paupers.
+
+The writer knows of an instance in an alms-house in Western New York,
+where four generations of females were paupers and prostitutes. Almost
+every reader who is familiar with village life will recall poor families
+which have had dissolute or criminal members beyond the memory of the
+oldest inhabitant, and who still continue to breed such characters. I
+have known a child of nine or ten years, given up, apparently beyond
+control, to licentious habits and desires, and who in all different
+circumstances seemed to show the same tendencies; her mother had been of
+similar character, and quite likely her grandmother. The "gemmules," or
+latent tendencies, or forces, or cells of her immediate ancestors were
+in her system, and working in her blood, producing irresistible effects
+on her brain, nerves, and mental emotions, and finally, not being met
+early enough by other moral, mental, and physical influences, they have
+modified her organization, until her will is scarcely able to control
+them and she gives herself up to them. All those who instruct or govern
+"Houses of Refuge," or "Reform Schools," or Asylums for criminal
+children and youths, will recall many such instances.
+
+They are much better known in the Old World than this; they are far more
+common here in the country than in the city.
+
+My own experience during twenty years has been in this regard singularly
+hopeful. I have watched great numbers of degraded families in New York,
+and exceedingly few of them have transmitted new generations of paupers,
+criminals, or vagrants.
+
+The causes of this encouraging state of things are not obscure. The
+action of the great law of "Natural Selection," in regard to the human
+race, is always towards temperance and virtue. That is, vice and extreme
+indulgence weaken the physical powers and undermine the constitution;
+they impair the faculties by which man struggles with adverse conditions
+and gets beyond the reach of poverty and want. The vicious and sensual
+and drunken die earlier, or they have fewer children, or their children
+are carried off by diseases more frequently, or they themselves are
+unable to resist or prevent poverty and suffering. As a consequence, in
+the lowest class, the more self-controlled and virtuous tend constantly
+to survive, and to prevail in "the struggle for existence," over the
+vicious and ungoverned, and to transmit their progeny. The natural drift
+among the poor is towards virtue. Probably no vicious organization with
+very extreme and abnormal tendencies is transmitted beyond the fourth
+generation; it ends in insanity or cretinism or the wildest crime.
+
+The result is then, with the worst-endowed families, that the "gemmules"
+or latent forces of hundreds of virtuous, or at least, not vicious,
+generations, lie hid in their constitutions. The immediate influences of
+parents or grandparents are, of course, the strongest latent tendencies
+to good, coming down from remote ancestors, be aroused and developed.
+
+Thus is explained the extraordinary improvement of the children of crime
+and poverty in our Industrial Schools; and the reforms and happy change
+is seen in the boys and girls of our dangerous classes when placed in
+kind Western homes. The change of circumstances, the improved food, the
+daily moral and mental influences, the effect of regular labor and
+discipline, and, above all, the power of Religion, awaken these hidden
+tendencies to good, both those coming from many generations of
+comparative virtue and those inherent in the soul, while they control
+and weaken and cause to be forgotten those diseased appetites or extreme
+passions which these unfortunate creatures inherit directly, and
+substitute a higher moral sense for the low moral instincts which they
+obtained from their parents. So it happens, also, that American life, as
+compared with European, and city life, as compared with country,
+produces similar results. In the United States, a boundless hope
+pervades all classes; it reaches down to the outcast and vagrant. There
+is no fixity, as is so often the fact in Europe, from the sense of
+despair. Every individual, at least till he is old, hopes and expects to
+rise out of his condition.
+
+The daughter of the rag-picker or vagrant sees the children she knows,
+continually dressing better or associating with more decent people; she
+beholds them attending the public schools and improving in education and
+manners; she comes in contact with the greatest force the poor
+know--public opinion, which requires a certain decency and
+respectability among themselves. She becomes ashamed of her squalid,
+ragged, or drunken mother. She enters an Industrial School, or creeps
+into a Ward School, or "goes out" as a servant. In every place, she
+feels the profound forces of American life; the desire of equality,
+ambition to rise, the sense of self-respect and the passion for
+education.
+
+These new desires overcome the low appetites in her blood, and she
+continually rises and improves. If Religion in any form reach her, she
+attains a still greater height over the sensual and filthy ways of her
+parents. She is in no danger of sexual degradation, or of any extreme
+vice. The poison in her blood has found an antidote. When she marries,
+it will inevitably be with a class above her own. This process goes on
+continually throughout the country, and breaks up criminal inheritance.
+
+Moreover, the incessant change of our people, especially in cities, the
+separation of children from parents, of brothers from sisters, and of
+all from their former localities, destroy that continuity of influence
+which bad parents and grandparents exert, and do away with those
+neighborhoods of crime and pauperism where vice concentrates and
+transmits itself with ever-increasing power. The fact that tenants must
+forever be "moving" in New York, is a preventive of some of the worst
+evils among the lower poor. The mill of American life, which grinds up
+so many delicate and fragile things, has its uses, when it is turned on
+the vicious fragments of the lower strata of society.
+
+Villages, which are more stable and conservative, and tend to keep
+families together more and in the same neighborhoods, show more
+instances of inherited and concentrated wickedness and idleness. In New
+York the families are constantly broken up; some members improve, some
+die out, but they do not transmit a progeny of crime. There is little
+inherited criminality and pauperism.
+
+                              A QUESTION.
+
+Among these public influences on the young, it has been often a question
+with some, whether the Public Schools did not educate the daughters of
+the poor too much, and thus make them discontented with their condition,
+and exposed to temptation.
+
+It is said that these working-girls, seeing such fine dresses about
+them, and learning many useless accomplishments, have become indifferent
+to steady hand-labor, and have sought in vice for the luxuries which
+they have first learned to know in the public schools. My own
+observation, however, leads me to doubt whether this occurs, unless as
+an exceptional fact. The influence of discipline and regular instruction
+is against the style of character which makes the prostitute. Where
+there is a habit of work, there are seldom the laziness and
+shiftlessness which especially cause or stimulate sexual vice. Some
+working-girls do, no doubt, become discontented with their former
+condition, and some rise to a much higher, while some fall; but this
+happens everywhere in the United States, and is not to be traced
+especially to the influence of our Free Schools.
+
+We have spoken of the greater tendency of large cities, as compared with
+villages, in breaking up vicious families. There is another advantage of
+cities in this matter. The especial virtue of a village community is the
+self-respect and personal independence of its members. No benefits of
+charity or benevolent assistance and dependence could ever outweigh
+this. But this very virtue tends to keep a wicked or idle family in its
+present condition. The neighbors are not in the habit of interfering
+with it; no one advises or warns it. The children grow up as other
+people's children do, in the way the parents prefer; there is no
+machinery of charity to lift them out of the slime; and if any of their
+wealthier neighbors, from motives of benevolence, visited the house, and
+attempted to improve or educate the family, the effort would be resented
+or misconstrued. The whole family become a kind of _pariahs_; they are
+morally tabooed, and grow up in a vicious atmosphere of their own, and
+really come out much worse than a similar family in the city. This
+phenomenon is only a natural effect of the best virtues of the rural
+community.
+
+In a large town, on the other hand, there exist machinery and
+organization through which benevolent and religious persons can approach
+such families, and their good intentions not be suspected or resented.
+The poor people themselves are not so independent, and accept advice or
+warning more readily; they are not so stamped in public repute with a
+bad name; less is known of them, and the children, under new influences,
+break off from the vicious career of their parents, and grow up as
+honest and industrious persons. Moreover, the existence of so much
+charitable organization in the cities brings the best talent and
+character of the fortunate classes to bear directly on the unfortunate,
+far more than is the fact in villages.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                         THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
+
+                            OVERCROWDING.
+
+The source of juvenile crime and misery in New York, which is the most
+formidable, and, at the same time, one of the most difficult to remove,
+is the _overcrowding_ of our population. The form of the city-site is
+such--the majority of the dwellings being crowded into a narrow island
+between two water-fronts--that space near the business-portion of the
+city becomes of great value. These districts are necessarily sought for
+by the laboring and mechanic classes, as they are near the places of
+employment. They are avoided by the wealthy on account of the population
+which has already occupied so much of them. The result is, that the poor
+must live in certain wards; and as space is costly, the landlords supply
+them with (comparatively) cheap dwellings, by building very high and
+large houses, in which great numbers of people rent only rooms, instead
+of dwellings.
+
+Were New York a city radiating from a centre over an almost unlimited
+space--as Philadelphia, for instance--the laborers or the mechanics
+might take up their abode anywhere, and land would be comparatively
+cheap, so that the highest blessing of the laboring class would be
+attainable--of separate homes for each family. But, on this narrow
+island, business is so peculiarly concentrated, and population is so
+much forced to one exit--towards the north--and the poor have such a
+singular objection to living beyond a ferry, that space will inevitably
+continue very dear in New York, and the laboring classes will be
+compelled to occupy it.
+
+To add to the unavoidable costliness of ground-room on this island, has
+come in the effect of bad government.
+
+It is one of the most unpleasant experiences of the student of political
+economy, that the axioms of his science can so seldom be understood by
+the masses, though their interests be vitally affected by them. Thus,
+every thoughtful man knows that each new "job" among city officials,
+each act of plunder of public property by members of the municipal
+government, every loss of income or mal-appropriation or extravagance in
+the city's funds, must be paid for by taxation, and that taxation always
+falls heaviest on labor. The laboring classes of the city rule it, and
+through their especial leaders are the great public losses and
+wastefulness occasioned.
+
+Yet they never know that they themselves continually pay for these in
+increased rents. Every landlord charges his advanced taxation in rent,
+and probably a profit on that. The tenant pays more for his room, the
+grocer more for his shop, the butcher and tailor and shoemaker, and
+every retailer have heavier expenses from the advance in rents, and each
+and all charge it on their customers. The poor feel the final pressure.
+The painful effect has been, that the expense for rent has arisen
+enormously with the laboring classes of this city during the last five
+years, while many of the other living expenses have nearly returned to
+the standard before the war.
+
+The influence of high rents is to force more people into a given space,
+in order to economize and divide expense.
+
+The latest trustworthy statistics on this important subject are from the
+excellent Reports of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1866. From
+these, it appears that the Eleventh Ward of this city, with a population
+of 58,953, has a rate of population of 196,510 to the square mile, or 16
+1/10 square yards to each person; the Tenth Ward, with 31,587
+population, has a rate of 185,512 to the square mile, or 17 1/10 square
+yards to each; the Seventeenth Ward, with 79,563, has the rate of
+153,006; the Fourteenth, with 23,382, has a rate of 155,880; the
+Thirteenth, with 26,388, has 155,224; and so on with others, though in
+less proportion.
+
+The worst districts in London do not at all equal this crowding of
+population. Thus, East London shows the rate of 175,816 to the square
+mile; the Strand, 141,556; St. Luke's, 151,104; Holborn, 148,705; and
+St. Jame's, Westminster, 144,008.
+
+If particular districts of our city be taken, they present an even
+greater massing of human beings than the above averages have shown.
+Thus, according to the Report of the Council of Hygiene in 1865, the
+tenant-house and cellar population of the Fourth Ward numbered 17,611
+packed in buildings over a space less than thirty acres, exclusive of
+streets, which would make the fearful rate of 290,000 to the square
+mile.
+
+In the Seventeenth Ward, the Board of Health reports that in 1868, 4,120
+houses contained 95,091 inhabitants, of whom 14,016 were children under
+five years. In the same report, the number of tenement-houses for the
+whole city is given at 18,582, with an estimate of one-half the whole
+population dwelling in them--say 500,000.
+
+We quote an extract from a report of Mr. Dupuy, Visitor of the
+Children's Aid Society of the First Ward, describing the condition of a
+tenement-house:
+
+"What do you think of the moral atmosphere of the home I am about to
+describe below? To such a home two of our boys return nightly.
+
+"In a dark cellar filled with smoke, there sleep, all in one room, with
+no kind of partition dividing them, two men with their wives, a girl of
+thirteen or fourteen, two men and a large boy of about seventeen years
+of age, a mother with two more boys, one about ten years old, and one
+large boy of fifteen; another woman with two boys, nine and eleven years
+of age--in all, _fourteen persons._
+
+"This room I have often visited, and the number enumerated probably
+falls below, rather than above the average that sleep there."
+
+It need not be said that with overcrowding such as this, there is always
+disease, and as naturally, crime. The privacy of a home is undoubtedly
+one of the most favorable conditions to virtue, especially in a girl.
+
+If a female child be born and brought up in a room of one of these
+tenement-houses, she loses very early the modesty which is the great
+shield of purity. Personal delicacy becomes almost unknown to her.
+Living, sleeping, and doing her work in the some apartment with men and
+boys of various ages, it is well-nigh impossible for her to retain any
+feminine reserve, and she passes almost unconsciously the line of purity
+at a very early age.
+
+In these dens of crowded humanity, too, other and more unnatural crimes
+are committed among those of the same blood and family.
+
+Here, too, congregate some of the worst of the destitute population of
+the city--vagrants, beggars, nondescript thieves, broken-down drunken
+vagabonds, who manage as yet to keep out of the station-houses, and the
+lowest and most bungling of the "sharpers." Naturally, the boys growing
+up in such places become, as by a law of nature, petty thieves,
+pickpockets, street-rovers, beggars, and burglars. Their only salvation
+is, that these dens become so filthy and haunted with vermin, that the
+lads themselves leave them in disgust, preferring the barges on the
+breezy docks, or the boxes on the side-walk, from which eventually they
+are drawn into the neat and comfortable Boys' Lodging-houses, and there
+find themselves imperceptibly changed into honest and decent boys. This
+is the story of thousands every year.
+
+The cellar-population alone of this city is a source of incessant
+disease and crime.
+
+And with the more respectable class of poor who occupy the better kind
+of tenement-houses, the packing of human beings in those great
+caravansaries is one of the worst evils of this city. It sows pestilence
+and breeds every species of criminal habits.
+
+From the eighteen thousand tenement-houses comes seventy-three per cent.
+[In 1865, the deaths in tenement-houses were 14,500 out of 19,813, the
+total for the city. The death-rate has, however, been brought down by
+sanitary improvements from 76 per cent., in 1866, to about 66 per cent,
+in 1871, or a gain of 2,900 lives in these wretched houses.] of the
+mortality of our population, and we have little doubt as much as ninety
+per cent. of the offenses against property and person.
+
+Over-crowding is the one great misfortune of New York. Without it, we
+should be the healthiest large city in the world, [Our annual death-rate
+is now 28.79 per 1,000, while some of the clean wards show 15 per 1,000,
+or about the rate of the Isle of Wight. The rate of London is about 34,
+Liverpool has been as high as 40, but is more healthy now, owing to
+sanitary improvements. Our Sixth Ward reaches 48, and "Gotham Court," in
+Cherry Street, attains the horrible maximum of 195 per 1,000.] and a
+great proportion of the crimes which disgrace our civilization would be
+nipped in the bud. While this continues as it does now, there is no
+possibility of a thorough sanitary, moral, and religious reform in our
+worst wards.
+
+Few girls can grow up to maturity in such dens as exist in the First,
+Sixth, Eleventh, and Seventeenth Wards and be virtuous; few boys can
+have such places as homes and not be thieves and vagabonds. In such
+places typhus and cholera will always be rife, and the death-rate will
+reach its most terrible maximum. While the poorest population dwell in
+these cellars and crowded attics, neither Sunday-schools, nor churches,
+nor charities, can accomplish a thorough reform.
+
+What, then, is to be done to remedy this terrible evil?
+
+Experience has proved that our remedial agencies can, in individual
+cases cure even the evils resulting from this unnatural condensing of
+population. That is, we can point to thousands of lads and young girls
+who were born and reared in such crowded dens of humanity, but who have
+been transformed into virtuous, well-behaved, and industrious young men
+and women, by the quiet daily influence of the charitable organization I
+am about to describe.
+
+Still, these cases of reform are, in truth, exceptions. The natural and
+legitimate influence of such massing of population is all in the
+direction of immorality and degeneracy. Whatever would lessen that,
+would at once, and by a necessary law, diminish crime and poverty and
+disease.
+
+                              REMEDIES.
+
+The great remedies are to be looked for in broad, general provisions for
+distributing population. Thus far, the means of communication between
+business New York and the suburbs have been singularly defective. An
+underground railway with cheap workman's trains, or elevated railways
+with similar conveniences, connecting Westchester County and the lower
+part of the city, or suburbs laid out in New Jersey or on Long Island
+expressly for working people, with cheap connections with New York and
+Brooklyn, would soon make a vast difference in the concentration of
+population in our lower wards. It is true that English experience would
+show that laboring-men, after a heavy day's work, cannot bear the jar of
+railway traveling. There must be, however, many varieties of labor--such
+as work in factories and the like--where a little movement in a
+railroad-train at the close of a day would be a refreshment.
+
+Then, as the laboring class was concentrated in suburban districts, the
+various occupations which attend them, such as grocers, shoemakers,
+tailors, and others, would follow, and be established near them. Many
+nationalities among our working class have an especial fondness for
+gardens and bits of land about their houses. This would be an additional
+attraction to such settlements; and with easy and cheap communications
+we might soon have tens of thousands of our laborers and mechanics
+settled in pleasant and healthy little suburban villages, each, perhaps
+having his own small house and garden, and the children growing up under
+far better influences, moral and physical, than they could possibly
+enjoy in tenement-houses. There are many districts within half an hour
+of New York, where such plots could be laid out with lots at $500 each,
+which would pay a handsome profit to the owner, or where a cottage could
+be let with advantage for the present rent of a tenement attic.
+
+Improved communications have already removed hundreds and thousands of
+the middle class from the city to all the surrounding neighborhood, to
+the immense benefit both of themselves and their families. Equal
+conveniences suited to the wants of the laboring class will soon cause
+multitudes of these to live in the suburban districts. The obstacle,
+however, as in all efforts at improvement for the working people, is in
+their own ignorance and timidity, and their love of the crowd and bustle
+of a city.
+
+More remote even, than relief by improved communications, is a possible
+check to high rents by a better government. A cheap and honest
+government of the masses in New York would at once lower taxation and
+bring down rents. The enormous prices demanded for one or two small
+rooms in a tenement-house are a measure (in part) of the cost of our
+city government.
+
+Another alleviation to our over crowding has often been proposed, but
+never vigorously acted upon, as we are persuaded it might be, and that
+is the making the link between the demand for labor in our country
+districts and the supply in New York, closer. The success of the charity
+which we are about describing in the transfer of destitute and homeless
+children to homes in the West, and of the Commissioners of Emigration in
+their "Labor Exchange," indicate what might be accomplished by a grand
+organized movement for transferring our unemployed labor to the fields
+of the West. It is true, this would not carry away our poorest class,
+yet it would relieve the pressure of population here on space, and thus
+give more room and occupation for all.
+
+But admitting that we cannot entirely prevent the enormous massing of
+people, such as prevails in our Eleventh and Seventeenth Wards, we can
+certainly control it by legislation. The recent Sanitary Acts of New
+York attempt to hold in check the mode of building tenement-houses,
+requiring certain means of ventilation and exit, forbidding the
+filling-up of the entire space between the houses with dwellings, and
+otherwise seeking to improve the condition of such tenement-houses.
+
+There only needs two steps farther in imitation of the British
+Lodging-house Acts--one removing altogether the cellar-population, when
+under certain unhealthy conditions; and the other limiting by law the
+number who can occupy a given space in a tenement-room. The British Acts
+assign 240 cubic feet as the lowest space admissible for each tenant or
+lodger, and if the inspector finds less space than that occupied, he at
+once enters a complaint, and the owner or landlord is obliged to reduce
+the number of his occupants, under strict penalties. A provision of this
+nature in our New York law would break up our worst dens, and scatter
+their tenants or lodgers. The removal of the cellar-population from a
+large proportion of their dwellings should also be made. Liverpool
+removed 20,000 cellar-occupants in one year (1847), to the immense gain,
+both moral and sanitary, of the city. New York needs the reform quite as
+much. There would be no real hardship in such a measure, as the tenants
+could find accommodations in other parts of the city or the suburbs; and
+some would perhaps emigrate to the country.
+
+One often-proposed remedy for the ills of our tenement-house system--the
+"Model Lodging-house"--has never been fairly tried here. The theory of
+this agency of reform is, that if a tenement-house can be constructed on
+the best sanitary principles, with good ventilation, with limited number
+of tenants, no overcrowding, and certain important conveniences to the
+lodgers, all under moral supervision (so that tenants of notoriously bad
+character are excluded), and such a house can be shown to pay, say seven
+per cent. net, this will become a "model" to the builders of
+tenement-houses; some building after the same style, because public
+opinion and their own conscience require it, others because competition
+compels it. Thus, in time, the mode of structure and occupancy of all
+the new tenement-houses would be changed. But to attain this desirable
+end, the model houses must first pay a profit, and a fair one. So long
+as they do not succeed in this, they are a failure, however benevolent
+their object and comfortable their arrangements. In this point of view,
+the "Waterloo Houses," in London, are a success, and do undoubtedly
+influence the mode of building and management of private
+tenement-houses; in this, also, the "Peabody Houses" are not a success,
+and will have no permanent influence.
+
+The Model Houses in London for lodging single men have, as the writer
+has witnessed, changed and elevated the whole class of similar private
+lodging-houses.
+
+The experiment ought to be tried here, on a merely business basis, by
+some of our wealthy men. The evil of crowded tenement-houses might be
+immensely alleviated by such a remedy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                         THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
+
+                            INTEMPERANCE.
+
+The power of the appetite for alcoholic stimulus is something amazing. A
+laboring-man feels it especially on account of the drag on his nervous
+system of steady and monotonous labor, and because of the few mental
+stimuli which he enjoys. He returns to his tenement-house after a hard
+day's work, "dragged out" and craving excitement; his rooms are
+disagreeable; perhaps his wife cross, or slatternly, and his children
+noisy; he has an intense desire for something which can take him out of
+all this, and cause his dull surroundings and his fatigue to be
+forgotten. Alcohol does this; moreover, he can bear alcohol and tobacco,
+to retard the waste of muscle, as the sedentary man cannot. In a few
+steps, he can find jolly companions, a lighted and warmed room, a
+newspaper, and, above all, a draught which, for the moment, can change
+poverty to riches, and drive care and labor and the thought of all his
+burdens and annoyances far away.
+
+ [Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Third Stage.)]
+
+The liquor-shop is his picture-gallery, club, reading-room, and social
+_salon,_ at once. His glass is the magic transmuter of care to
+cheerfulness, of penury to plenty, of a low, ignorant, worried life, to
+an existence for the moment buoyant, contented, and hopeful. Alas that
+the magician who thus, for the instant, transforms him with her rod,
+soon returns him to his low estate, with ten thousand curses haunting
+him! The one thus touched by the modern Circe is not even imbruted, for
+the brutes have no such appetite; he becomes a demonized man; all the
+treasures of life are trampled under his feet, and he is fit only to
+dwell "among the tombs." But, while labor is what it is, and the
+liquor-shop alone offers sociality and amusement to the poor, alcohol
+will still possess this overwhelming attraction. The results in this
+climate, and under the form of alcoholic stimulus offered here, are
+terrible beyond all computation. The drunkards' homes are the darkest
+spots even in the abyss of misery in every large city. Here the hearts
+of young women are truly broken, and they seek their only consolation in
+the same magic cup; here children are beaten, or maimed, or
+half-starved, until they run away to join the great throng of homeless
+street-rovers in our large towns, and grow up to infest society. From
+these homes radiate misery, grief, and crime. They are the nests in
+which the young fledgelings of misfortune and vice begin their flight.
+Probably two-thirds of the crimes of every city (and a very large
+portion of its poverty) come from the over-indulgence of this appetite.
+As an appetite, we do not believe it can ever be eradicated from the
+human race.
+
+If we look at criminal statistics for the effects of this appetite, we
+will find that in the New York City prisons, during 1870, there were,
+out of 49,423 criminals, 30,507 of confessedly intemperate habits, while
+no doubt, with a large portion of the rest, indulgence in liquor was the
+cause of their offenses.
+
+In the Albany Penitentiary there were, in 1869-70, 1,093 convicts, of
+whom 893 admitted they were intemperate. Of this whole number only 563
+could read and write, and only 568 were natives of this country.
+
+Among the children of misfortune in our city, the homeless boys and
+girls, and those compelled by poverty to attend the Industrial Schools
+(which I shall hereafter describe), it would be safe to say that ninety
+out of a hundred are the children of drunkards.
+
+As a direct cause of crime in children, drunkenness takes but a small
+place. This is not an appetite of childhood. Very few boys or girls of
+the poorest class are addicted to it till they become mature.
+
+The effort for Total Abstinence has been, indeed, an untold blessing to
+the working class in this country and many parts of Europe. It may be
+said, in many regions, to have broken the wand of the terrible
+enchantress. It has introduced a new social habit in drinking. It has
+connected abstinence with the ceremonial of religion and the pleasures
+of social organizations. It has addressed the working-man--as, in fact,
+he often is--as a child, and saved him from his own habits, by a sworn
+abstinence. Thousands of men could never have freed themselves from this
+most tyrannical appetite, except by absolute refusal to touch. In fact,
+it may be said that no vice is ever abandoned by gradual steps. The only
+hope for any one under the control of any wrong indulgence is in entire
+and immediate abandonment.
+
+With those, too, who had not fallen under the sway of this appetite,
+especially if of the working class, abstinence was the safest rule.
+
+The "Total Abstinence Reform" in this country, in Great Britain, and in
+Sweden, was one of the happiest events that ever occurred in the history
+of the working classes. Its blessings will descend through many
+generations. But in its nature it could not last. It was a tremendous
+reaction against the heavy and excessive drinking of fifty years since.
+It was a kind of noble asceticism. Like all asceticism, it could not
+continue as a permanent condition. Its power is now much spent. Wherever
+it can be introduced now among the laboring classes, it should be; and
+we believe one of the especial services of the Irish Catholic clergy, at
+this day, to the world, is in supporting and encouraging this great
+reform.
+
+All who study the lower classes are beginning, however, now to look for
+other remedies of the evil of intemperance.
+
+It has become remarkably apparent, during the last few years, that one
+of the best modes of driving out low tastes in the masses is to
+introduce higher. It has been found that galleries and museums and parks
+are the most formidable rivals of the liquor-shops. The experience near
+the Sydenham Palace, in England, and other places of instructive and
+pleasant resort for the laboring masses, is, that drinking-saloons do
+not flourish in opposition. Wherever, in the evening, a laboring-man can
+saunter in a pleasant park, or, in company with his wife and family,
+look at interesting pictures, or sculpture, or objects of curiosity, he
+has not such a craving for alcoholic stimulus.
+
+Even open-air drinking in a garden--as is so common on the Continent--is
+never so excessive as in an artificial-lighted room. Where, too, a
+working-man can, in a few steps, find a cheerfully-lighted reading-room,
+with society or papers, or where a club is easily open to him without
+drinking, it will also be found that he ceases to frequent the saloon,
+and almost loses his taste for strong drink.
+
+Whatever elevates the taste of the laborer, or expands his mind, or
+innocently amuses him, or passes his time pleasantly without indulgence,
+or agreeably instructs, or provides him with virtuous associations,
+tends at once to guard him from habits of intoxication. The Kensington
+Museum and Sydenham Palace, of London; the Cooper Union, the Central
+Park, and free Reading-rooms of New York, are all temperance-societies
+of the best kind. The great effort now is to bring this class of
+influences to bear on the habits of the laboring-people, and thus
+diminish intemperance.
+
+It is a remarkable fact, in this connection, that, though ninety out of
+the hundred of our children in the Industrial Schools are the children
+of drunkards, not one of the thousands who have gone forth from them has
+been known to have fallen into intemperate habits. Under the elevating
+influences of the school, they imperceptibly grow out of the habits of
+their mothers and fathers, and never acquire the appetite.
+
+Another matter, which is well worthy of the attention of reformers, is
+the possibility of introducing into those countries where "heavy
+drinking" prevails, the taste for light wines and the habit of open-air
+drinking. The passion for alcohol is a real one. On a broad scale it
+cannot be annihilated. Can we not satisfy it innocently? In this
+country, for instance, light wines can be made to a vast extent, and
+finally be sold very cheaply. If the taste for them were formed, would
+it not expel the appetite for whisky and brandy, or at least, in the
+coming generation, form a new habit?
+
+There is, it is true, a peculiar intensity in the American temperament
+which makes the taking of concentrated stimulus natural to it. It will
+need some time for men accustomed to work up their nervous system to a
+white heat by repeated draughts of whisky or brandy to be content with
+weak wines. Perhaps the present generation never will be. But the laws
+of health and morality are so manifestly on the side of drinking light
+wines as compared with drinking heavy liquors, that any effort at social
+improvement in this direction would have a fair chance of success. Even
+the slight change of habit involved in drinking leisurely at a table in
+the open air with women and children--after the German fashion--would be
+a great social reform over the hasty bar-drinking, while standing. The
+worst intoxication of this city is with the Irish and American
+bar-drinkers, not the German frequenters of gardens.
+
+                             LIQUOR LAWS.
+
+In regard to legislation, it seems to me that our New York License laws
+of 1866 were, with a few improvements, a very "happy medium" in
+law-making. The ground was tacitly taken, in that code, that it
+subserved the general interests of morality to keep one day free from
+riotous or public drinking, and allow the majority of the community to
+spend it in rest and worship; and, inasmuch as that day was one of
+especial temptation to the working-classes, they were to be treated to a
+certain degree like minors, and liquor was to be refused to them on it.
+Under this law, also, minors and apprentices, on weekdays, were
+forbidden to be supplied with intoxicating drinks, and the liquor-shops
+were closed at certain hours of the night. Very properly, also, these
+sellers of intoxicating beverages, making enormous profits, and costing
+the community immensely in the expenses of crime occasioned by their
+trade, were heavily taxed, and paid to the city over a million dollars
+annually in fees, licenses, and fines. The effects of the law were
+admirable, in the diminution of cases of arrest and crime on the Sunday,
+and the checking of the ravages of intoxication.
+
+But it was always apparent to the writer that, with the peculiar
+constitution of the population of this city, it could not be sustained,
+unless concessions were made to the prejudices and habits of certain
+nationalities among our citizens. Our reformers, however, as a class,
+are exceedingly adverse to concessions; they look at questions of habits
+as absolute questions of right and wrong, and they will permit no
+half-way or medium ground. But legislation is always a matter of
+concession. We cannot make laws for human nature as it ought to be, but
+as it is. If we do not get the absolutely best law passed, we must
+content ourselves with the medium best. If our Temperance Reformers had
+permitted a clause in the law, excepting the drinking in gardens, or of
+lager-beer, from the restrictions of the License Law, we should not,
+indeed, have had so good a state of things as we had for a few years,
+under the old law, but we might have had it permanently. Now, we have
+nearly lost all control over drinking, and the Sunday orgies and crimes
+will apparently renew themselves without check or restraint. If a reform
+in legislation claim too much, there is always a severe reaction
+possible, when the final effects will be worse than the evils sought to
+be corrected.
+
+The true plan of reform for this city would be to cause the License Law
+of 1866 to be re-enacted with certain amendments. The "intoxicating
+drinks" mentioned should be held not to include lager-beer or certain
+light wines; and garden-drinking might be permitted, under strict police
+surveillance.
+
+The Excise Board should be allowed very summary control, however, even
+over the German gardens and lager-beer drinking-places, so that, if they
+were perverted into places of disturbance and intoxication, the licenses
+could be revoked.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Fourth Stage.)]
+
+By separating absolutely the licenses for light drinks and those for
+rum, whisky, and heavy ales, a vast deal of drunkenness might be
+prevented, and yet the foreign habits not be too much interfered with,
+and comparatively innocent pleasures permitted. In small towns and
+villages, a reasonable compromise would seem to be to allow each
+municipality to control the matter in the mode it preferred: some
+communities in this way, forbidding all sale of intoxicating liquors,
+and others permitting it, under conditions; but each being responsible
+for the evils or benefits of the system it adopted.
+
+If a student of history were reviewing the gloomy list of the evils
+which have most cursed mankind, which have wasted households, stained
+the hand of man with his fellow's blood, sown quarrels and hatreds,
+broken women's hearts, and ruined children in their earliest years, bred
+poverty and crime, he would place next to the bloody name of War, the
+black word--INTEMPERANCE. No wonder that the best minds of modern times
+are considering most seriously the soundest means of checking it. If
+abstinence were the natural and only means, the noble soul would still
+say, in the words of Paul: "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to
+drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth."
+
+But abstinence is not thoroughly natural; it has no chance of a
+universal acceptance; and experience shows that other and wider means
+must be employed. We must trust to the imperceptible and widely-extended
+influences of civilization, of higher tastes, and more refined
+amusements on the masses. We must employ the powers of education, and,
+above all, the boundless force of Religion, to elevate the race above
+the tyranny of this tremendous appetite.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                      ORGANIZATION OF A REMEDY.
+
+In New York, we believe almost alone among the great capitals of the
+world, a profound and sustained effort for many years has been made to
+cut off the sources and diminish the numbers of the dangerous classes;
+and, as the records of crime show, with a marked effect.
+
+In most large cities, the first practical difficulty is the want of a
+united organization to work upon the evils connected with this lowest
+class. There are too many scattered efforts, aiming in a desultory
+manner at this and that particular evil, resulting from the condition of
+the children of the streets. There is no unity of plan and of work.
+Every large city should form one Association or organization, whose sole
+object should be to deal alone with the sufferings, wants, and crimes,
+arising from a class of youth who are homeless, ignorant, or neglected.
+The injuries to public morals and property from such a class are
+important enough to call out the best thought and utmost energy and
+inventiveness of charitable men and women to prevent them. Where an
+association devotes itself thus to one great public evil, a thousand
+remedies or ingenious devices of cure and prevention will be hit upon,
+when, with a more miscellaneous field of work, the best methods would be
+overlooked. So threatening is the danger in every populous town from the
+children who are neglected, that the best talent ought to be engaged to
+study their condition and devise their improvement, and the highest
+character and most ample means should be offered to guarantee and make
+permanent the movements devised for their elevation.
+
+The lack of all this in many European capitals is a reason that so
+little, comparatively, has been done to meet these tremendous dangers.
+
+Then, again, in religious communities, such as the English and American,
+there is too great a confidence in _technical religious_ means.
+
+We would not breathe a word against the absolute necessity of
+Christianity in any scheme of thorough social reform. If the Christian
+Church has one garland on its altars which time does not wither nor
+skepticism destroy, which is fresh and beautiful each year, it is that
+humble offering laid there through every age by the neglected little
+ones of society, whom the most enlightened Stoicism despised and
+Paganism cast out, but who have been blessed and saved by its
+ministrations of love. No skeptical doubt or "rationalism" can ever
+pluck from the Christian Church this, its purest crown.
+
+To attempt to prevent or cure the fearful moral diseases of our lowest
+classes without Christianity, is like trying to carry through a sanitary
+reform in a city without sunlight.
+
+But the mistake we refer to, is a too great use of, or confidence in,
+the old technical methods--such as distributing tracts, and holding
+prayer-meetings, and, scattering Bibles. The neglected and ruffian class
+which we are considering are in no way affected directly by such
+influences as these. New methods must be invented for them.
+
+Another obstacle, in American cities, to any comprehensive results of
+reform or prevention among these classes, has been the too blind
+following of European precedents. In Europe, the labor-market is fully
+supplied. There is a steady pressure of population on subsistence. No
+general method of prevention or charity can be attempted which
+interferes with the rights of honest and self-supporting labor. The
+victims of society, the unfortunate, the _enfants perdus,_ must be
+retained, when aided at all, in public institutions. They cannot be
+allowed to compete with outside industry. They are not wanted in the
+general market of labor. They must be kept in _Asylums._
+
+Now, Asylums are a bequest of monastic days. They breed a species of
+character which is monastic-indolent, unused to struggle; subordinate
+indeed, but with little independence and manly vigor. If the subjects of
+the modern monastery be unfortunates--especially if they be already
+somewhat tainted with vice and crime--the effect is a weakening of true
+masculine vigor, an increase of the apparent virtues, and a hidden
+growth of secret and contagious vices. Moreover, the life under the
+machinery of an "Institution" does not prepare for the thousand petty
+hand-labors of a poor man's cottage. But, greatest of all objections,
+the asylum system is, of necessity, immensely expensive, and can reach
+but a comparatively small number of subjects.
+
+These various obstacles and difficulties, which impede thorough work for
+the elevation of our worst classes, can, however, be overcome.
+
+                            PIONEER WORK.
+
+Some twenty years ago, the then Chief of Police of New York, Captain
+Matsell, put forth a report on the condition of the street-children of
+the city, which aroused universal anxiety, and called forth much
+compassion. The writer of this was then engaged (in 1852) outside of his
+professional duties in rather desultory and despairing labors for the
+reform of adult prisoners on Blackwell's Island and the squalid poor in
+the Five Points district. It was a Sisyphus-like work, and soon
+discouraged all engaged in it. We seemed in those infernal regions to
+repeat the toil of the Danaides, and to be attempting to fill the leaky
+vessel of society by efforts which left it as empty as before. What soon
+struck all engaged in those labors was the immense number of boys and
+girls floating and drifting about our streets, with hardly any arguable
+home or occupation, who continually swelled the multitude of criminals,
+prostitutes, and vagrants.
+
+Saddest of all sights was the thin child's face, so often seen behind
+prison-bars, and the melancholy procession of little children who were
+continually passing through that gloomy Egyptian portal, which seemed to
+some of us then always inscribed with the scroll over the entrance of
+the Inferno, "Here leave all hope behind!"
+
+It was evident soon, to all who thought upon the subject, that what New
+York most of all needed was some grand, comprehensive effort to check
+the growth of the "dangerous classes."
+
+The "Social Evil," of course, was pressed continually on the minds of
+those engaged in these labors. Mr. Pease was then making a most heroic
+effort to meet this in its worst form in the Five-Points region. No one
+whom we have ever known was so qualified for this desperate work, or was
+so successful in it. Still, it was but one man against a sea of crime.
+The waves soon rolled over these enthusiastic and devoted labors, and
+the waste of misfortune and guilt remained as desolate and hopeless as
+before. It was clear that whatever was done there, must be done in the
+source and origin of the evil--in prevention, not cure.
+
+The impression deepened both with those engaged in these benevolent
+labors and with the community, that a general Organization should be
+formed which should deal alone with the evils and dangers threatened
+from the class of neglected youth then first coming plainly into public
+view. Those who possessed property-interests in the city saw the immense
+loss and damage which would occur from such an increasing community of
+young thieves and criminals. The humane felt for the little waifs of
+society who thus, through no fault of their own, were cast out on the
+currents of a large city; and the religious recognized it as a solemn
+duty to carry the good news of Christianity to these "heathen at home."
+Everything seemed in readiness for some comprehensive and well-laid
+scheme of benevolence and education for the street-children of New
+York.
+
+A number of our citizens, with the present writer threw themselves into
+a somewhat original method for benefiting the young "roughs" and
+vagabond boys of the metropolis. This was known as the effort of the
+
+                          "BOYS' MEETINGS."
+
+The theory of these original assemblages was, that the "sympathy of an
+audience" might be used to influence these wild and untutored young
+Arabs when ordinary agencies were of no avail. The street-boys, as is
+well-known, are exceedingly sharp and keen, and, being accustomed to
+theatrical performances, are easily touched by real oratory, and by
+dramatic instruction; but they are also restless, soon tired of long
+exhortations, and somewhat given to _chaff._
+
+The early days of those "Boys' Meetings" were stormy. Sometimes the
+salutatory exercises from the street were showers of stones; sometimes a
+general scrimmage occurred over the benches; again, the visitors or
+missionaries were pelted, by some opposition-gang, or bitter enemies of
+the lads who attended the meeting. The exercises, too, must be conducted
+with much tact, or they broke up with a laugh or in a row. The platform
+of the Boys' Meeting seemed to become a kind of chemical test of the
+gaseous element in the brethren's brains. One pungent criticism we
+remember--on a pious and somewhat sentimental Sunday-school brother,
+who, in one of our meetings, had been putting forth vague and
+declamatory religious exhortation--in the words "Gas! gas!" whispered
+with infinite contempt from one hard-faced young disciple to another.
+Unhappy, too, was the experience of any more daring missionary who
+ventured to question these youthful inquirers.
+
+Thus--"In this parable, my dear boys, of the Pharisee and the publican,
+what is meant by the 'publican?'"
+
+"Alderman, sir, wot keeps a pot-house!" "Dimocrat, sir!" "Black
+Republican, sir!"
+
+Or--"My boys, what is the great end of man? When is he happiest? How
+would _you_ feel happiest?"
+
+"When we'd plenty of hard cash, sir!"
+
+Or--"My _dear_ boys, when your father and your mother forsake you, _who_
+will take you up?"
+
+"The Purlice, sir (very seriously), the Purlice!"
+
+They sometimes took their own quiet revenge among themselves, in
+imitating the Sunday-school addresses delivered to them.
+
+Still, ungoverned, prematurely sharp, and accustomed to all vileness, as
+these lads were, words which came forth from the depths of a man's or
+woman's heart would always touch some hidden chord in theirs. Pathos and
+eloquence vibrated on their heartstrings as with any other audience.
+Beneath all their rough habits and rude words was concealed the solemn
+monitor, the _Daimon,_ which ever whispers to the lowest of human
+creatures, that some things are wrong--are not to be done.
+
+Whenever the speaker could, for a moment only, open the hearts of the
+little street-rovers to this voice, there was in the wild audience a
+silence almost painful, and every one instinctively felt, with awe, a
+mysterious Presence in the humble room, which blessed both those who
+spake and those who heard.
+
+Whatever was bold, or practical, or heroic in sentiment, and especially
+the dramatic in oratory, was most intently listened to by these children
+of misfortune.
+
+The Boys' Meetings, however, were not, and could not, in the nature of
+things, be a permanent success. They were the pioneer-work for more
+profound labors for this class. They cleared the way, and showed the
+character of the materials. Those engaged in them learned the fearful
+nature of the evils they were struggling with, and how little any moral
+influence on one day can do to combat them. These wild gatherings, like
+meetings for street-preaching, do not seem suited to the habits of our
+population; they are too much an occasion for frolic. They have given
+way to, and been merged in, much more disciplined assemblages for
+precisely the same class, which again are only one step in a long series
+of moral efforts in their behalf, that are in operation each day of
+every week and month, and extend through years.
+
+The first of these meetings was opened in 1848, under the charge of Mr.
+A. D. F. Randolph by the members of a Presbyterian church, in a hall on
+the corner of Christopher and Hudson Streets. This was followed by
+another in a subsequent year in Wooster Street, commenced by the
+indefatigable exertions of the wife of Rev. Dr. G. B. Cheever, and
+sustained especially by Mr. B. J. Howland and W. C. Russell.
+
+The writer took more or less part in those, but was especially engaged
+in founding one in Sixth Street, near Second Avenue; another in 118
+Avenue D, from which arose the "Wilson School" and the Avenue D Mission;
+one in King Street, near Hudson, from which came the Cottage-Place
+Mission; and another in Greenwich Street, near Vandam Street.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                          A NEW ORGANIZATION.
+
+All those who were engaged in these efforts felt their inadequacy and we
+resolved to meet at different private houses to discuss the formation of
+some more comprehensive effort. At length, in 1853, we organized, and,
+to the great surprise of the writer, his associates suggested that he
+should take the position of executive officer of the new and untried
+Association. He was at that time busied in literary and editorial
+pursuits, but had expected soon to carry out the purpose of his especial
+training, and to become a preacher. He never dreamed of making a
+life-pursuit of it in the beginning, or during a number of years; but
+"the call" of the neglected and outcast was too strong for him, finally,
+to listen to any other, and the humble charity at length became a moral
+and educational movement so profound and earnest as to repay the
+life-endeavors of any man. He has never regretted having cast aside
+whatever chance he may have had for the prizes and honors of life, for
+the sake of the forgotten and the unfortunate, and, above all, for HIS
+sake to whom we owe all. Indeed, he holds himself most fortunate in his
+profession, for it may be said there is no occupation to which man can
+devote himself, where he can have such unmingled happiness, as when he
+is assuaging human misery and raising the ignorant and depressed to a
+higher life.
+
+                            THE TRUSTEES.
+
+One of the most energetic members of this new body, in the beginning,
+was a nephew of Dr. Channing--a Unitarian, Mr. Wm. C. Russell--a man of
+singular earnestness of character, now Professor of History and
+Vice-President in Cornell University. With him was associated a friend,
+Mr. B. J. Howland, of peculiar compassion of nature, whose life almost
+consisted of the happiness it shed on others-he also being a Unitarian.
+Then, on the other side, theologically, was Judge John L. Mason, one of
+the pillars of the Presbyterian Church, from an old and honored
+Presbyterian family. His accurate legality of mind and solidity of
+character were of immense advantage to the youthful Association, while,
+under a formal exterior, he had a most merciful heart for all kinds of
+human misery. He was our presiding officer for many years, and did most
+faithful and thorough work for the charity. With him, representing the
+Congregationalists, was a very careful and judicious man, engaged for
+many years in Sunday-schools and similar movements, Mr. Wm. C. Gilman.
+The Dutch Reformed were represented by an experienced friend of
+education, Mr. M. T. Hewitt; and the Presbyterians again by one of such
+gentleness and humanity, that all sects might have called him
+Brother--Mr. W. L. King. To these was added one who has been a great
+impelling force of this humane movement ever since-a man of large,
+generous nature, and much impulse of temperament, with a high and
+refined culture, who has done more to gain support for this charity with
+the business community, where he is so influential, than any other one
+man--Mr. J. E. Williams, also a Unitarian. Mr. W. had also been engaged
+in similar charities in Boston.
+
+During the first year, we added to our board from the Methodists, Dr. J.
+L. Phelps; from the Episcopalians, Mr. Archibald Russell (since
+deceased), who has accomplished so much as the President of the Board of
+the Five Points House of Industry; Mr. George Bird, and Mr. A. S.
+Hewitt, who is now the managing head of that great educational
+institution, the Cooper Union; from the Presbyterians, the celebrated
+Mr. Cyrus W. Field; and from the "Come Outers," Mr. C. W. Elliott, the
+genial author of the "New England History." Of all the first trustees,
+the only ones in office in 1871 are J. E. Williams, B. J. Howland, M. T.
+Hewitt, and C. L. Brace.
+
+On a subsequent year we elected a gentleman who especially represented a
+religious body that has always profoundly sympathized with our
+enterprise--Mr. Howard Potter, the son of the eminent Episcopal Bishop
+of Pennsylvania, and nephew of the Bishop of New York. And yet, of all
+the members of our Board, no one has been more entirely unsectarian than
+this trustee; and certainly no one has thrown into our charity more
+heart and a more unbiased judgment. Mr. Potter is still trustee. Through
+him and Mr. B. J. Livingston, who was chosen a few years after, the
+whole accounts of the Society were subsequently put in a clear shape,
+and the duties of the trustees in supervision made distinct and
+regular.
+
+It is an evidence of the simple desire for doing good which actuated
+these gentlemen, and of the possibility of a "Christian Union" that,
+though representing so many different sects, and ardently attached to
+them, there never was in all the subsequent years the slightest
+difference among them resulting from their divergent views on
+speculative topics. Nearly all of them were engaged practically in
+laboring among the dangerous classes. Mr. Howland and Mr. Russell had
+struggled most earnestly for a considerable period to reform the morals
+and elevate the character of the degraded population near "Rotten Row,"
+in Laurens street, and their "Boys' Meeting" had been one of the most
+spirited efforts in this direction to be seen in the city.
+
+Several of the gentlemen I have mentioned have become distinguished in
+their various professions, but it maybe doubted if they will look back
+on any action of their public careers with more satisfaction than their
+first earnest efforts to lay firmly the foundations of a broad structure
+of charity, education, and reform.
+
+The organization was happily named
+
+              "THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY OF NEW YORK."
+
+This association, which, from such small beginnings has grown to so
+important dimensions, was thus formed in 1853, and was subsequently
+incorporated in 1856, under the general Act of the State of New York in
+relation to Charitable Associations.
+
+A small office on the corner of Amity Street was opened, with a single
+lad in attendance, besides the present writer.
+
+The public, so profound was the sense of these threatening evils,
+immediately came forward with its subscriptions--the first large gift
+(fifty dollars) being from the wife of the principal property-holder in
+the city, Mrs. William B. Astor.
+
+Most touching of all was the crowd of wandering little ones who
+immediately found their way to the office. Ragged young girls who had
+nowhere to lay their heads; children driven from drunkards' homes;
+orphans who slept where they could find a box or a stairway; boys cast
+out by step-mothers or step-fathers; newsboys, whose incessant answer to
+our question, "Where do you live?" rung in our ears, _"Don't live
+nowhere!"_ little bootblacks, young peddlers "canawl-boys," who seem to
+drift into the city every winter, and live a vagabond life; pickpockets
+and petty thieves trying to get honest work; child beggars and
+flower-sellers growing up to enter courses of crime--all this motley
+throng of infantile misery and childish guilt passed through our doors,
+telling their simple stories of suffering, and loneliness, and
+temptation, until our hearts became sick; and the present writer,
+certainly, if he had not been able to stir up the fortunate classes to
+aid in assuaging these fearful miseries, would have abandoned the post
+in discouragement and disgust.
+
+The following letter, written at this time by the Secretary, is
+appended, as showing the feeling of those founding the Society:
+
+"W. L. KING, Esq.:
+
+"MY DEAR SIR--We were very glad to get your first letter to Mr. Russell,
+giving us your good wishes and your subscription. It was read aloud to
+our committee, and we have several times expressed ourselves as very
+much regretting your absence. I should have certainly written you, but I
+did not know your address. I received yours from Macon yesterday, and
+hasten to reply.
+
+"Everything goes on well. We have taken Judge Mason and Mr. J. E.
+Williams (formerly of Boston) into the committee. I enclose a circular,
+to which, according to the permission which you gave us, we have placed
+your name. We have opened one room for a workshop in Wooster Street,
+where we expect to have forty or fifty boys. The work is shoe-making.
+The boys jump at the chance gladly. Some three 'Newsboys' Meetings' we
+are just getting under way, though the churches move slowly. Our Meeting
+in Avenue D is improving every Sunday, and is very full. Next Thursday
+eve, I have made arrangements for a lecture on the Magic Lantern to the
+boys of our Meeting. We gave out tickets on Sunday. The Girls' meeting
+is large, and you know, perhaps, is now widened into an 'Industrial
+School' ["The Wilson School."] for girls, which meets every day in our
+Building in Avenue D. They have some fifty girls at work there--the
+worst vagrant kind. Public attention is arousing everywhere to this
+matter; and the first two or three days after our Appeal was published,
+we had some $400 sent in, part in cash, without the trouble of
+collecting. We shall begin collecting this week. I have been interrupted
+here by a very intelligent little newsboy, who is here vagrant and
+helpless--ran away from his step-father. One of the pressmen sent him to
+me. We shall put him in our workshop.
+
+"I pray with you, dear sir, for God's blessing on our young enterprise.
+It is a grand one; but without HIM I see how useless it will be. If we
+succeed even faintly, I shall feel that we have not lived in vain.
+Surely Christ will be with us in these feeble efforts for his poor
+creatures.
+                                            "Very truly yours,
+                                                     "CHARLES L. BRACE.
+"NEW YORK, March 7, 1853.
+
+"P. S.--I forgot to tell you the name we have chosen--'Children's Aid
+Society.'
+
+"Office, No. 683 Broadway, 2d floor, New York."
+
+The following is the first circular of
+
+                      THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY.
+
+"This society has taken its origin in the deeply settled feelings of our
+citizens, that something must be done to meet the increasing crime and
+poverty among the destitute children of New York. Its objects are to
+help this class by opening Sunday Meetings and Industrial Schools, and,
+gradually as means shall be furnished, by forming Lodging-houses and
+Reading-rooms for children, and by employing paid agents whose sole
+business shall be to care for them.
+
+"As Christian men, we cannot look upon this great multitude of unhappy,
+deserted, and degraded boys and girls without feeling our responsibility
+to God for them. We remember that they have the same capacities, the
+same need of kind and good influences, and the same Immortality as the
+little ones in our own homes. We bear in mind that One died for them,
+even as for the children of the rich and happy. Thus far, alms-houses
+and prisons have done little to affect the evil. But a small part of the
+vagrant population can be shut up in our asylums, and judges and
+magistrates are reluctant to convict children so young and ignorant that
+they hardly seem able to distinguish good and evil. The class increases.
+Immigration is pouring in its multitude of poor foreigners, who leave
+these young outcasts everywhere abandoned in our midst. For the most
+part, the boys grow up utterly by themselves. No one cares for them, and
+they care for no one. Some live by begging, by petty pilfering, by bold
+robbery; some earn an honest support by peddling matches, or apples, or
+newspapers; others gather bones and rags in the street to sell. They
+sleep on steps, in cellars, in old barns, and in markets, or they hire a
+bed in filthy and low lodging-houses. They cannot read; they do not go
+to school or attend a church. Many of them have never seen the Bible.
+Every cunning faculty is intensely stimulated. They are shrewd and old
+in vice, when other children are in leading-strings. Few influences
+which are kind and good ever reach the vagrant boy. And, yet, among
+themselves they show generous and honest traits. Kindness can always
+touch them.
+
+"The girls, too often, grow up even more pitiable and deserted. Till of
+late no one has ever cared for them. They are the crosswalk sweepers,
+the little apple-peddlers, and candy-sellers of our city; or, by more
+questionable means, they earn their scanty bread. They traverse the low,
+vile streets alone, and live without mother or friends, or any share in
+what we should call a home. They also know little of God or Christ,
+except by name. They grow up passionate, ungoverned, with no love or
+kindness ever to soften the heart. We all know their short wild
+life--and the sad end.
+
+"These boys and girls, it should be remembered, will soon form the great
+lower class of our city. They will influence elections; they may shape
+the policy of the city; they will, assuredly, if unreclaimed, poison
+society all around them. They will help to form the great multitude of
+robbers, thieves, vagrants, and prostitutes who are now such a burden
+upon the law-respecting community.
+
+"In one ward alone of the city, the Eleventh, there were, in 1863, out
+of 12,000 children between the ages of five and sixteen, only 7,000 who
+attended school, and only 2,500 who went to Sabbath School; leaving
+5,000 without the common privileges of education, and about 9,000
+destitute of public religious influence.
+
+"In view of these evils we have formed an Association which shall devote
+itself entirely to this class of vagrant children. We do not propose in
+any way to conflict with existing asylums and institutions, but to
+render them a hearty co-operation, and, at the same time, to fill a gap,
+which, of necessity, they all have left. A large multitude of children
+live in the city who cannot be placed in asylums, and yet who are
+uncared-for and ignorant and vagrant. We propose to give to these work,
+and to bring them under religious influence. As means shall come in, it
+is designed to district the city, so that hereafter every Ward may have
+its agent, who shall be a friend to the vagrant child. 'Boys' Sunday
+Meetings' have already been formed, which we hope to see extended until
+every quarter has its place of preaching to boys. With these we intend
+to connect 'Industrial Schools,' where the great temptations to this
+class arising from want of work may be removed, and where they can learn
+an honest trade. Arrangements have been made with manufacturers, by
+which, if we have the requisite funds to begin, five hundred boys in
+different localities can be supplied with paying work. We hope, too,
+especially to be the means of draining the city of these children, by
+communicating with farmers, manufacturers, or families in the country,
+who may have need of such for employment. When homeless boys are found
+by our agents, we mean to get them homes in the families of respectable,
+needy persons the city, and put them in the way of an honest living. We
+design, in a word, to bring humane and kindly influences to bear on this
+forsaken class--to preach in various modes the gospel of Christ to the
+vagrant children of New York.
+
+"Numbers of our citizens have long felt the evils we would remedy, but
+few have the leisure or the means to devote themselves personally to
+this work with the thoroughness which it requires. This society, as we
+propose, shall be a medium through which all can, in their measure,
+practically help the poor children of the city.
+
+"We call upon all who recognize that these are the little ones of
+Christ; all who believe that crime is best averted by sowing good
+influences in childhood; all who are the friends of the helpless, to aid
+us in our enterprise. We confidently hope this wide and practical
+movement will have its full share of Christian liberality. And we
+earnestly ask the contributions of those able to give, to help us in
+carrying forward the work.
+ * * * * * * *
+ "March, 1858."
+
+                      DENS OF MISERY AND CRIME.
+
+In investigating closely the different parts of the city, with reference
+to future movements for their benefit, I soon came to know certain
+centres of crime and misery, until every lane and alley, with its filth
+and wretchedness and vice, became familiar as the lanes of a country
+homestead to its owner. There was the infamous German "Rag-pickers'
+Den," in Pitt and Willett Streets--double rows of houses, flaunting with
+dirty banners, and the yards heaped up with bones and refuse, where
+cholera raged unchecked in its previous invasion. Here the wild life of
+the children soon made them outcasts and thieves.
+
+Then came the murderous blocks in Cherry and Water Streets, where so
+many dark crimes were continually committed, and where the little girls
+who flitted about with baskets and wrapped in old shawls became familiar
+with vice before they were out of childhood.
+
+There were the thieves' Lodging-houses' in the lower wards, where the
+street-boys were trained by older pickpockets and burglars for their
+nefarious callings; the low immigrant boarding-houses and vile cellars
+of the First Ward, educating a youthful population for courses of guilt;
+the notorious rogues' den in Laurens Street--"Rotten Row"--where, it was
+said, no drove of animals could pass by and keep its numbers intact;
+and, farther above, the community of young garroters and burglars around
+Hamersley Street and Cottage Place. And, still more north, the dreadful
+population of youthful ruffians and degraded men and women in "Poverty
+Lane," near Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets and Ninth Avenue, which
+subsequently ripened into the infamous "Nineteenth-street Gang."
+
+On the east side, again, was "Dutch Hill," near Forty-second Street, the
+squatters' village, whence issued so many of the little peddlers of the
+city, and the Eleventh Ward and "Corlear's Hook," where the
+"copper-pickers," and young wood-stealers, and the thieves who beset the
+ship-yards congregated; while below, in the Sixth Ward, was the Italian
+quarter, where houses could be seen crowded with children, monkeys,
+dogs, and all the appurtenances of the corps of organ-grinders, harpers,
+and the little Italian street-sweepers, who then, ignorant and
+untrained, wandered through our down-town streets and alleys.
+
+Near each one of these "fever nests," and centres of ignorance, crime,
+and poverty, it was our hope and aim eventually to place some agency
+which should be a moral and physical disinfectant--a seed of reform and
+improvement amid the wilderness of vice and degradation.
+
+It seemed a too enthusiastic hope to be realized; and, at times, the
+waves of misery and guilt through these dark places appeared too
+overwhelming and irresistible for any one effort or association of
+efforts to be able to stem or oppose them.
+
+How the somewhat ardent hope was realized, and the plan carried out,
+will appear hereafter.
+
+The first special effort that we put forth was the providing of work for
+these children, by opening
+
+                              WORKSHOPS.
+
+These experiments, of which we made many at different times, were not
+successful. Our object was to render the shops self-supporting. But the
+irregularity of the class attending them, the work spoiled, and the
+necessity of competing with skilled labor and often with machinery, soon
+put us behind. We had one workshop for pegging boots and shoes in
+Wooster Street, where we soon got employment for numbers of street-boys;
+but a machine was suddenly invented for pegging shoes, which drove us
+out of the field. We tried then paper box and bag-making, carpentering,
+and other branches; but it may be set down as an axiom, that
+"Benevolence cannot compete with Selfishness in business." Philanthropy
+will never cut down the expenses of production, as will individual
+self-interest.
+
+Moreover, these artificial workshops excite the jealousy of the trades,
+while they are not so necessary in this country as in Europe, because
+the demand is so great here for children's labor.
+
+We soon discovered that if we could train the children of the streets to
+habits of industry and self-control and neatness, and give them the
+rudiments of moral and mental education, we need not trouble ourselves
+about anything more. A child in any degree educated and disciplined can
+easily make an honest living in this country. The only occasional
+exception is with young girls depending on the needle for support,
+inasmuch as the competition here is so severe. But for these we often
+were enabled to provide instruction in skilled labor, which supported
+them easily; and, if taught cleanliness and habits of order and
+punctuality, they had no difficulty in securing places as upper
+servants, or they soon married into a better class.
+
+[Illustration: LODGING-HOUSES FOR HOMELESS BOYS--AS THEY ARE. (The
+Newsboys' House.) NO. 2.]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                            HOMELESS BOYS.
+
+                     THE NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.
+
+The spectacle which earliest and most painfully arrested my attention in
+this work, were the _houseless_ boys in various portions of the city.
+
+There seemed to be a very considerable class of lads in New York who
+bore to the busy, wealthy world about them something of the same
+relation which Indians bear to the civilized Western settlers. They had
+no settled home, and lived on the outskirts of society, their hand
+against every man's pocket, and every man looking on them as natural
+enemies; their wits sharpened like those of a savage, and their
+principles often no better. Christianity reared its temples over them,
+and Civilization was carrying on its great work, while they--a happy
+race of little heathens and barbarians--plundered, or frolicked, or led
+their roving life, far beneath. Sometimes they seemed to me, like what
+the police call them, "street-rats," who gnawed at the foundations of
+society, and scampered away when light was brought near them. Their life
+was, of course, a painfully hard one. To sleep in boxes, or under
+stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter-nights, for a mere
+child, was hard enough; but often to have no food, to be kicked and
+cuffed by the older ruffians, and shoved about by the police, standing
+barefooted and in rags under doorways as the winter-storm raged, and to
+know that in all the great city there was not a single door open with
+welcome to the little rover--this was harder.
+
+Yet, with all this, a more light-hearted youngster than the street-boy
+is not to be found. He is always ready to make fun of his own
+sufferings, and to "chaff" others. His face is old from exposure and his
+sharp "struggle for existence;" his clothes flutter in the breeze; and
+his bare feet peep out from the broken boots. Yet he is merry as a
+clown, and always ready for the smallest joke, and quick to take "a
+point" or to return a repartee. His views of life are mainly derived
+from the more mature opinions of "flash-men," engine-runners,
+cock-fighters, pugilists, and pickpockets, whom he occasionally is
+permitted to look upon with admiration at some select pot-house; while
+his more ideal pictures of the world about him, and, his literary
+education, come from the low theatres, to which he is passionately
+attached. His morals are, of course, not of a high order, living, as he
+does, in a fighting, swearing, stealing, and gambling set. Yet he has
+his code; he will not get drunk; he pays his debts to other boys, and
+thinks it dishonorable to sell papers on their beat, and, if they come
+on his, he administers summary justice by "punching;" he is generous to
+a fault, and will always divide his last sixpence with a poorer boy.
+"Life is a strife" with him, and money its reward; and, as bankruptcy
+means to the street-boy a night on the door-steps without supper, he is
+sharp and reckless, if he can only earn or get enough to keep him above
+water. His temptations are, to cheat, steal, and lie. His religion is
+vague. One boy, who told me he "didn't live nowhere," who had never
+heard of Christ, said he had heard of God, and the boys thought it "kind
+o' lucky" to say over something to Him which one of them had learned,
+when they were sleeping out in boxes.
+
+With all their other vices, it is remarkable how few of these smaller
+street-boys ever take liquor. And their kindness to one another, when
+all are in the utmost destitution, is a credit to human nature. [Only
+recently, a poor hump-backed lad in the Newsboys' Lodging-house gave his
+dollar, and collected nine more from the boys, for the family of the
+children who were lost in New Jersey.]
+
+Their money is unfortunately apt to slip away, especially for gambling
+and petty lotteries, called "policy-tickets." A tradition in the remote
+past of some boy who drew a hundred dollars in these lotteries still
+pervades the whole body, and they annually sink a considerable portion
+of their hard-earned pennies in "policy-tickets."
+
+The choice of these lads of a night's resting-place is sometimes almost
+as remarkable as was Gavroche's in "Les Miserables." Two little newsboys
+slept one winter in the iron tube of the bridge at Harlem; two others
+made their bed in a burned-out safe in Wall Street. Sometimes they
+ensconced themselves in the cabin of a ferry-boat, and thus spent the
+night. Old boilers, barges, steps, and, above all, steam-gratings, were
+their favorite beds.
+
+In those days the writer would frequently see ten or a dozen of them,
+piled together to keep one another warm, under the stairs of the
+printing-offices.
+
+In planning the alleviation of these evils, it was necessary to keep in
+view one object, not to weaken the best quality of this class--their
+sturdy independence--and, at the same time, their prejudices and habits
+were not too suddenly to be assailed. They had a peculiar dread of
+Sunday Schools and religious exhortations--I think partly because of the
+general creed of their older associates, but more for fear that these
+exercises were a "pious dodge" for trapping them into the House of
+Refuge or some place of detention.
+
+The first thing to be aimed at in the plan was, to treat the lads as
+independent little dealers, and give them nothing without payment, but
+at the same time to offer them much more for their money than they could
+get anywhere else. Moral, educational, and religious influences were to
+come in afterward. Securing them through their interests, we had a
+permanent hold of them.
+
+Efforts were made by the writer among our influential citizens and in
+various churches, public meetings were held, articles written, the press
+interested, and at length sufficient money was pledged to make the
+experiment. The board of the new Society gave its approval, and a loft
+was secured in the old "Sun Buildings," and fitted up as a lodging-room,
+and in March, 1854, the first Lodging-house for street-boys or newsboys
+in this country was opened.
+
+An excellent superintendent was found in the person of a carpenter, Mr.
+C. C. Tracy, who showed remarkable ingenuity and tact in the management
+of these wild lads. These little subjects regarded the first
+arrangements with some suspicion and much contempt. To find a good bed
+offered them for six cents, with a bath thrown in, and a supper for four
+cents, was a hard fact, which they could rest upon and understand; but
+the motive was evidently "gaseous." There was "no money in it"--that was
+clear. The Superintendent was probably "a street preacher," and this was
+a trap to get them to Sunday Schools, and so prepare them for the House
+of Refuge. Still, they might have a lark there, and it could be no worse
+than "bumming," _i.e.,_ sleeping out. They laid their plans for a
+general scrimmage in the school-room--first cutting off the gas, and
+then a row in the bedroom.
+
+The Superintendent, however, in a bland and benevolent way, nipped their
+plans in the bud. The gas-pipes were guarded; the rough ring-leaders
+were politely dismissed to the lower door, where an officer looked after
+their welfare; and, when the first boots began to fly from a little
+fellow's bed, he found himself suddenly snaked out by a gentle but
+muscular hand, and left in the cold to shiver over his folly. The others
+began to feel that a mysterious authority was getting even with them,
+and thought it better to nestle in their warm beds.
+
+Little sleeping, however, was there among them that night; but
+ejaculations sounded out--such as, "I say, Jim, this is rayther better
+'an bummin'--eh?" "My eyes! what soft beds these is!" "Tom! it's 'most
+as good as a steam-gratin', and there ain't no M. P.'s to poke neither!"
+"I'm glad I ain't a bummer to-night!"
+
+A good wash and a breakfast sent the lodgers forth in the morning,
+happier and cleaner, if not better, than when they went in. This night's
+success established its popularity with the newsboys. The "Fulton Lodge"
+soon became a boys' hotel, and one loft was known among them as the
+"Astor House."
+
+Quietly and judiciously did Mr. Tracy advance his lines among them.
+
+"Boys," said he, one morning, "there was a gentleman here this morning,
+who wanted a boy in an office, at three dollars a week."
+
+"My eyes! Let _me_ go, sir!" And--_"Me,_ sir!"
+
+"But he wanted a boy who could write a good hand."
+
+Their countenances fell.
+
+"Well, now, suppose we have a night-school, and learn to write--what do
+you say, boys?".
+
+"Agreed, sir."
+
+And so arose our evening-school.
+
+The Sunday Meeting, which is now an "institution," was entered upon in a
+similarly discreet manner. The lads had been impressed by a public
+funeral, and Mr. Tracy suggested their listening to a little reading
+from the Bible. They consented, and were a good deal surprised at what
+they heard. The "Golden Rule" struck them as an altogether impossible
+kind of precept to obey, especially when one was "stuck and short," and
+"had to live." The marvels of the Bible--the stories of miracles and the
+like--always seemed to them natural and proper. That a Being of such a
+character as Christ should control Nature and disease, was appropriate
+to their minds. And it was a kind of comfort to these young vagabonds
+that the Son of God was so often homeless, and that he belonged humanly
+to the working classes. The petition for "daily bread" (which a
+celebrated divine has declared "unsuited to modern conditions of
+civilization") they always rolled out with a peculiar unction. I think
+that the conception of a Superior Being, who knew just the sort of
+privations and temptations that followed them, and who felt especially
+for the poorer classes, who was always near them, and pleased at true
+manhood in them, did keep afterward a considerable number of them from
+lying and stealing and cheating and vile pleasures.
+
+Their singing was generally prepared for by taking off their coats and
+rolling up their sleeves, and was entered into with a gusto.
+
+The voices seemed sometimes to come from a different part of their
+natures from what we saw with the bodily eyes. There was, now and then,
+a gentle and minor key, as if a glimpse of something purer and higher
+passed through these rough lads. A favorite song was, "There's a Rest
+for the Weary," though more untiring youngsters than these never frisked
+over the earth; and "There's a light in the Window for Thee, Brother,"
+always pleased them, as if they imagined themselves wandering alone
+through a great city at night, and at length a friendly light shone in
+the window for them.
+
+Their especial vice of money-wasting the Superintendent broke up by
+opening a Savings-bank, and allowing the boys to vote how long it should
+be closed. The small daily deposits accumulated to such a degree that
+the opening gave them a great surprise at the amounts which they
+possessed, and they began to feel thus the "sense of property," and the
+desire of accumulation, which economists tell us, is the base of all
+civilization. A liberal interest was also soon allowed on deposits,
+which stimulated the good habit. At present, from two hundred to three
+hundred dollars will often be saved by the lads in a month.
+
+The same device, and constant instruction, broke up gambling, though I
+think policy-tickets were never fairly undermined among them.
+
+The present Superintendent and Matron of the Newsboys' Lodging-house,
+Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor (at Nos. 49 and 51 Park Place), are unsurpassed in
+such institutions in their discipline, order, good management, and
+excellent housekeeping. The floors, over which two hundred or two
+hundred and fifty street-boys tread daily, are as clean as a
+man-of-war's deck. The Sunday-evening meetings are as attentive and
+orderly as a church, the week-evening school quiet and studious. All
+that mass of wild young humanity is kept in perfect order, and brought
+under a thousand good influences.
+
+The Superintendent has had a very good preliminary experience for this
+work in the military service--having been in the British army in the
+Crimea. The discipline which he maintains is excellent. He is a man,
+too, of remarkable generosity of feeling, and a good "provider." One
+always knows that his boys will have enough to eat, and that everything
+will be managed liberally--and justly. It is truly remarkable during how
+many years he controlled that great multitude of little vagabonds and
+"roughs," and yet with scarcely ever even a complaint from any source
+against him. For such success is needed the utmost kindness, and, at the
+same time, the strictest justice. His wife has been almost like a mother
+to the boys.
+
+In the course of a year the population of a town passes through the
+Lodging-house--in 1869 and '70, _eight thousand eight hundred and
+thirty-five_ different boys. Many are put in good homes; some find
+places for themselves; others drift away--no one knows whither. They are
+an army of orphans--regiments of children who have not a home or
+friend--a multitude of little street-rovers who have no place where to
+lay their heads. They are being educated in the streets rapidly to be
+thieves and burglars and criminals. The Lodging-house is at once school,
+church, intelligence-office, and hotel for them. Here they are shaped to
+be honest and industrious citizens; here taught economy, good order,
+cleanliness, and morality; here Religion brings its powerful influences
+to bear upon them; and they are sent forth to begin courses of honest
+livelihood.
+
+The Lodging-houses repay their expenses to the public ten times over
+each year, in preventing the growth of thieves and criminals. They are
+agencies of pure humanity and almost unmingled good. Their only possible
+reproach could be, that some of their wild subjects are soon beyond
+their reach, and have been too deeply tainted with the vices of
+street-life to be touched even by kindness, education, or religion. The
+number who are saved, however, are most encouragingly large.
+
+The Newsboys' Lodging-house is by no means, however, an entire burden on
+the charity of the community. During 1870 the lads themselves paid
+$3,349 toward its expense.
+
+The following is a brief description of the rooms during the past five
+years:
+
+The first floor is divided into various compartments--a large
+dining-room, where one hundred and fifty boys can sit down to a table; a
+kitchen, laundry, storeroom, servants' room, and rooms for the family of
+the superintendent The next story is partitioned into a school-room,
+gymnasium, and bath and wash rooms, plentifully supplied with hot and
+cold water. The hot water and the heat of the rooms are supplied by a
+steam-boiler on the lower story. The two upper stories are filled with
+neat iron bedsteads, having two beds each, arranged like ships' bunks
+over each other; of these there are two hundred and sixty. Here are also
+the water-vats, into which the many barrelsful used daily are pumped by
+the engine. The rooms are high and dry, and the floors clean.
+
+It is a commentary on the housekeeping and accommodations that for
+eighteen years no case of contagious disease has ever occurred among
+these thousands of boys.
+
+The New York Newsboys' Lodging-house has been in existence eighteen
+years. During these years it has lodged 91,326 different boys, restored
+7,278 boys to friends, provided 5,126 with homes, furnished 576,485
+lodgings and 469,461 meals. The expense of all this has been $132,888.
+Of this amount the boys have contributed $32,306.
+
+That the Lodging-house has had a vigorous growth, is shown by the
+following table:
+
+                 TABULAR STATEMENT SINCE ORGANIZATION
+
+========================================================
+              |        |          |          |         |
+              |        |          |          | Return- |
+    YEAR      | No. of | No. of   |  No. of  | ed to   |
+              | Boys.  | Lodgings.|  Meals.  | friends.|
+              |        |          |          |         |
+              |        |          |          |         |
+--------------------------------------------------------
+1854 to 1855..|    408 |    6,872 | ........ | ....... |
+1855 to 1856..|    374 |    7,599 | ........ | ....... |
+1856 to 1857..|    387 |    5,157 | ........ | ....... |
+1857 to 1858..|    800 |    8,026 |   11,923 | ....... |
+1858 to 1859..|  3,000 |   14,000 |   13,114 | ....... |
+1859 to 1860..|  4,500 |   19,747 |   13,341 |     100 |
+1860 to 1861..|  4,000 |   27,390 |   16,873 |     247 |
+1861 to 1862..|  3,875 |   32,954 |   19,809 | ....... |
+1862 to 1863..|  3,000 |   29,409 |   20,000 |     396 |
+1863 to 1864..|  6,325 |   36,572 |   25,506 |     437 |
+1864 to 1865..|  6,793 |   42,446 |   30,137 |     576 |
+1865 to 1866..|  7,256 |   43,797 |   32,867 |     633 |
+1866 to 1867..|  8,192 |   49,519 |   33,633 |     719 |
+1867 to 1868..|  8,599 |   51,740 |   35,617 |     819 |
+1868 to 1869..|  8,944 |   53,610 |   54,092 |     896 |
+1869 9 months.|  7,383 |   39,077 |   33,207 |     642 |
+1869 to 1870..|  8,655 |   55,565 |   56,128 |     713 |
+1870 to 1871..|  8,835 |   53,005 |   53,214 |   1,100 |
+              |--------|----------|----------|---------|
+       Total..| 91,326 |  576,485 |  469,461 |   7,278 |
+
+                      OF NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.
+
+=============================================================
+              |            |            |        |
+              |            |            | No. of |
+    YEAR      | Expenses.  |   Paid by  | Boys   |Am'nt saved
+              |            |    Boys.   | using  | by them.
+              |            |            | Bank.  |
+              |            |            |        |
+-------------------------------------------------------------
+1854 to 1855..|  $1,199.76 |    $397.56 | ...... | .........
+1855 to 1856..|   1,431.82 |     391.26 |     16 |   $643.58
+1856 to 1857..|   1,762.56 |     262.56 |    116 |    270.70
+1857 to 1858..|   1,925.03 |     298.03 | ...... | .........
+1858 to 1859..|   2,199.34 |     807.15 | ...... | .........
+1859 to 1860..|   2,113.56 |     955.44 |     23 |    110.10
+1860 to 1861..|   3,420.57 |   1,036.98 |    230 |  1,259.77
+1861 to 1862..|   2,736.08 |   1,138.88 |    388 |  1,376.59
+1862 to 1863..|   3,402.82 |   1,102.33 |    347 |  1,315.10
+1863 to 1864..|   5,758.16 |   1,599.10 |    405 |  2,080.06
+1864 to 1865..|   7,159.95 |   1,944.22 |    499 |  2,565.92
+1865 to 1866..|  10,058.13 |   2,127.44 |    599 |  2,486.43
+1866 to 1867..|  10,847.79 |   2,718.79 |    542 |  2,121.76
+1867 to 1868..|  12,094.00 |   3,177.69 |    703 |  2,203.45
+1868 to 1869..|  23,333.45 |   3,644.49 |    796 |  2,057.76
+1869 9 months.|  13,445.24 |   3,180.35 |    659 |  1,688.22
+1869 to 1870..|  15,102.11 |   4,214.42 |  1,107 |  2,433.60
+1870 to 1871..|  14,898.03 |   3,349.77 |  1,065 |  2,588.31
+              |------------|------------|--------|-----------
+       Total..|$132,888.40 | $32,306.96 |  7,495 |$25,141.35
+
+
+
+Extracts from the journal of a visitor from the country:
+
+                       A VISIT TO THE NEWSBOYS.
+
+"It requires a peculiar person to manage and talk to these boys.
+Bullet-headed, short-haired, bright-eyed, shirt-sleeved, go-ahead boys.
+Boys who sell papers, black boots, run on errands, hold horses, pitch
+pennies, sleep in barrels, and steal their bread. Boys who know at the
+age of twelve more than the children of ordinary men would have learned
+at twenty; boys who can cheat you out of your eye-teeth, and are as
+smart as a steel-trap. They will stand no fooling; they are accustomed
+to gammon, they live by it. No audience that ever we saw could compare
+in attitudinizing with this. Heads generally up; eyes fall on the
+speaker; mouths, almost without an exception, closed tightly; hands in
+pockets; legs stretched out; no sleepers, all wide-awake, keenly alive
+for a pun, a point, or a slangism. Winding up, Mr. Brace said: 'Well,
+boys, I want my friends here to see that you have the material for
+talkers amongst yourselves; whom do you choose for your orator?'
+
+"'Paddy, Paddy,' shouted one and all. 'Come out, Paddy. Why don't you
+show yourself?' and so on.
+
+"Presently Paddy came forward, and stood upon a stool. He is a
+youngster, not more than twelve, with a little round eye, a short nose,
+a lithe form, and chuck-full of fun.
+
+[Illustration: THE NEWSBOY. (From a photograph.)]
+
+"'Bummers,' said he, 'snoozers, and citizens, I've come down here among
+ye to talk to yer a little! Me and my friend Brace have come to see how
+ye'r gittin' along, and to advise yer. You fellers what stands at the
+shops with yer noses over the railin', smellin' ov the roast beef and
+the hash--you fellers who's got no home--think of it how we are to
+encourage ye. [Derisive laughter, "Ha-ha's," and various ironical kinds
+of applause.] I say, bummers--for you're _all_ bummers (in a tone of
+kind patronage)--_I was a bummer once_ [great laughter]--I hate to see
+you spendin' your money on penny ice-creams and bad cigars. Why don't
+you save your money? You feller without no boots, how would you like a
+new pair, eh? [Laughter from all the boys but the one addressed.] Well,
+I hope you may get 'em, but I rayther think you won't. I have hopes for
+you all. I want you to grow up to be rich men--citizens, Government men,
+lawyers, generals, and influence men. Well, boys, I'll tell you a story.
+My dad was a hard 'un. One beautiful day he went on a spree, and he came
+home and told me where's yer mother? and I axed him I didn't know, and
+he clipt me over the head with an iron pot, and knocked me down, and me
+mither drapped in on him, and at it they went. [Hi-hi's, and
+demonstrative applause.] Ah! at it they went, and at it they kept--ye
+should have seen 'em--and whilst they were fightin', I slipped, meself
+out the back door, and away I went like a scart dog. [Oh, dry up! Bag
+your head! Simmer down!] Well, boys, I wint on till I kim to the 'Home'
+[great laughter among the boys], and they took me in [renewed laughter],
+and did for me, without a cap to me head or shoes to me feet, and thin I
+ran away, and here I am. Now boys [with mock solemnity], be good, mind
+yer manners, copy me, and see what you'll become.'
+
+"At this point the boys raised such a storm of hifalutin applause, and
+indulged in such characteristic demonstrations of delight, that it was
+deemed best to stop the youthful Demosthenes, who jumped from his stool
+with a bound that would have done credit to a monkey.
+
+"At this juncture huge pans of apples were brought in, and the boys were
+soon engaged in munching the delightful fruit, after which the Matron
+gave out a hymn, and all joined in singing it, during which we took our
+leave."
+
+                A NEWSBOY'S SPEECH. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
+
+"Some of these boys, in all their misfortunes, have a humorous eye for
+their situation--as witness the following speech, delivered by one of
+them at the Newsboys' Lodging-house, before the departure of a company
+to the West. The report is a faithful one, made on the spot. The little
+fellow mounted a chair, and thus held forth:
+
+"'Boys, gintlemen, chummies: Praps you'd like to hear summit about the
+West, the great West, you know, where so many of our old friends are
+settled down and growin' up to be great men, maybe the greatest men in
+the great Republic. Boys, that's the place for growing Congressmen, and
+Governors, and Presidents. Do you want to be newsboys always, and
+shoeblacks, and timber-merchants in a small way by sellin' matches? If
+ye do you'll stay in New York, but if you don't you'll go out West, and
+begin to be farmers, for the beginning of a farmer, my boys, is the
+making of a Congressman, and a President. Do you want to be rowdies, and
+loafers, and shoulder-hitters? If ye do, why, ye can keep around these
+diggins. Do you want to be gentlemen and independent citizens? You
+do--then make tracks for the West, from the Children's Aid Society. If
+you want to be snoozers, and rummeys, and policy-players, and Peter
+Funks men, why you'll hang up your caps and stay round the groceries and
+jine fire-engine and target companies, and go firin' at haystacks for
+bad quarters; but if ye want to be the man who will make his mark in the
+country, ye will get up steam, and go ahead, and there's lots on the
+prairies a waitin' for yez.
+
+"'You haven't any idear of what ye may be yet, if you will only take a
+bit of my advice. How do you know but, if you are honest, and good, and
+industerous, you may get so much up in the ranks that you won't call a
+gineral or a judge your boss. And you'll have servants ov all kinds to
+tend you, to put you to bed when you are sleepy, and to spoon down your
+vittles when you are gettin' your grub. Oh, boys! won't that be great!
+Only think--to have a feller to open your mouth, and put great slices of
+punkin pie and apple dumplings into it. You will be lifted on hossback
+when you go for to take a ride on the prairies, and if you choose to go
+in a wagon, or on a 'scursion, you will find that the hard times don't
+touch you there; and the best of it will be that if 'tis good to-day,
+'twill be better to-morrow.
+
+"But how will it be if you don't go, boys? Why, I'm afraid when you grow
+too big to live in the Lodging-house any longer, you'll be like lost
+sheep in the wilderness, as we heard of last Sunday night here, and
+you'll maybe not find your way out any more. But you'll be found
+somewhere else. The best of you will be something short of judges and
+governors, and the feller as has the worst luck--and the worst behaver
+in the groceries-will be very sure to go from them to the prisons.
+
+"I will now come from the stump. I am booked for the West in the next
+company from the Lodging-house. I hear they have big school-houses and
+colleges there, and that they have a place for me in the winter time; I
+want to be somebody, and somebody don't live here, no how. You'll find
+him on a farm in the West, and I hope you'll come to see him soon and
+stop with him when you go, and let every one of yous be somebody, and be
+loved and respected. I thank yous, boys, for your patient attention. I
+can't say more at present, I hope I haven't said too much.'"
+
+                          THE BUILDING FUND.
+
+An effort was made in the Legislature, a few years since, to obtain a
+building-fund for the Newsboys' Lodging-house. This was granted from the
+Excise Fund of the city for the legitimate reason, that those who do
+most to form drunkards should be compelled to aid in the expense and
+care of the children of drunkards. Thirty thousand dollars were
+appropriated from these taxes, provided a similar amount was raised by
+private subscription. This sum was obtained by the kindness and energy
+of the friends of the enterprise, and the whole amount ($60,000) was
+invested in good securities.
+
+In 1872 it had accumulated to $80,000, and the purchase was made of the
+"Shakespeare Hotel," on the corner of Duane and Chambers Streets, which
+is now being fitted up and rebuilt as a permanent Lodging-house for
+Homeless Boys. The building has streets on three sides, and, plenty of
+air and light. Shops will be let underneath, so that the payments of the
+boys and the rents received will nearly defray the annual expenses of
+this charity, thus insuring its permanency.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                            STREET GIRLS.
+
+                     THEIR SUFFERINGS AND CRIMES.
+
+A girl street-rover is to my mind the most painful figure in all the
+unfortunate crowd of a large city. With a boy, "Arab of the streets,"
+one always has the consolation that, despite his ragged clothes and bed
+in a box or hay-barge, he often has a rather good time of it, and enjoys
+many of the delicious pleasures of a child's roving life, and that a
+fortunate turn of events may at any time make an honest, industrious
+fellow of him. At heart we cannot say that he is much corrupted; his
+sins belong to his ignorance and his condition, and are often easily
+corrected by a radical change of circumstances. The oaths,
+tobacco-spitting, and slang, and even the fighting and stealing of a
+street-boy, are not so bad as they look. Refined influences, the checks
+of religion, and a fairer chance for existence without incessant
+struggle, will often utterly eradicate these evil habits, and the rough,
+thieving New York vagrant make an honest, hardworking Western pioneer.
+It is true that sometimes the habit of vagrancy and idling may be too
+deeply worked in him for his character to speedily reform; but, if of
+tender years, a change of circumstances will nearly always bring a
+change of character.
+
+With a girl-vagrant it is different. She feels homelessness and
+friendlessness more; she has more of the feminine dependence on
+affection; the street-trades, too, are harder for her, and the return at
+night to some lonely cellar or tenement-room, crowded with dirty people
+of all ages and sexes, is more dreary. She develops body and mind
+earlier than the boy, and the habits of vagabondism stamped on her in
+childhood are more difficult to wear off.
+
+Then the strange and mysterious subject of sexual vice comes in. It has
+often seemed to me one of the most dark arrangements of this singular
+world that a female child of the poor should be permitted to start on
+its immortal career with almost every influence about it degrading, its
+inherited tendencies overwhelming toward indulgence of passion, its
+examples all of crime or lust, its lower nature awake long before its
+higher, and then that it should be allowed to soil and degrade its soul
+before the maturity of reason, and beyond all human possibility of
+cleansing!
+
+For there is no reality in the sentimental assertion that the sexual
+sins of the lad are as degrading as those of the girl. The instinct of
+the female is more toward the preservation of purity, and therefore her
+fall is deeper--an instinct grounded in the desire of preserving a
+stock, or even the necessity of perpetuating our race.
+
+Still, were the indulgences of the two sexes of a similar character--as
+in savage races--were they both following passion alone, the moral
+effect would not perhaps be so different in the two cases. But the sin
+of the girl soon becomes what the Bible calls "a sin against one's own
+body," the most debasing of all sins. She soon learns to offer for sale
+that which is in its nature beyond all price, and to feign the most
+sacred affections, and barter with the most delicate instincts. She no
+longer merely follows blindly and excessively an instinct; she perverts
+a passion and sells herself. The only parallel case with the male sex
+would be that in some Eastern communities which are rotting and falling
+to pieces from their debasing and unnatural crimes. When we hear of such
+disgusting offenses under any form of civilization, whether it be under
+the Rome of the Empire, or the Turkey of to-day, we know that disaster,
+ruin, and death, are near the State and the people.
+
+This crime, with the girl, seems to sap and rot the whole nature. She
+loses self-respect, without which every human being soon sinks to the
+lowest depths; she loses the habit of industry, and cannot be taught to
+work. Having won her food at the table of Nature by unnatural means,
+Nature seems to cast her out, and henceforth she cannot labor. Living in
+a state of unnatural excitement, often worked up to a high pitch of
+nervous tension by stimulants, becoming weak in body and mind, her
+character loses fixedness of purpose and tenacity and true energy. The
+diabolical women who support and plunder her, the vile society she
+keeps, the literature she reads, the business she has chosen or fallen
+into, serve continually more and more to degrade and defile her. If, in
+a moment of remorse, she flee away and take honest work, her weakness
+and bad habits follow her; she is inefficient, careless, unsteady, and
+lazy; she craves the stimulus and hollow gayety of the wild life she has
+led; her ill name dogs her; all the wicked have an instinct of her
+former evil courses; the world and herself are against reform, and,
+unless she chance to have a higher moral nature or stronger will than
+most of her class, or unless Religion should touch even her polluted
+soul, she soon falls back, and gives one more sad illustration of the
+immense difficulty of a fallen woman rising again.
+
+The great majority of prostitutes, it must be remembered, have had no
+romantic or sensational history, though they always affect this. They
+usually relate, and perhaps even imagine, that they have been seduced
+from the paths of virtue suddenly and by the wiles of some heartless
+seducer. Often they describe themselves as belonging to some virtuous,
+respectable, and even wealthy family. Their real history, however, is
+much more commonplace and matter-of-fact. They have been poor women's
+daughters, and did not want to work as their mothers did; or they have
+grown up in a tenement-room, crowded with boys and men, and lost purity
+before they knew what it was; or they have liked gay company, and have
+had no good influences around them, and sought pleasure in criminal
+indulgences; or they have been street-children, poor, neglected, and
+ignorant, and thus naturally and inevitably have become depraved women.
+Their sad life and debased character are the natural outgrowth of
+poverty, ignorance, and laziness. The number among them who have "seen
+better days," or have fallen from heights of virtue, is incredibly
+small. They show what fruits neglect in childhood, and want of education
+and of the habit of labor, and the absence of pure examples, will
+inevitably bear. Yet in their low estate they always show some of the
+divine qualities of their sex. The physicians in the Blackwell's Island
+Hospital say that there are no nurses so tender and devoted to the sick
+and dying as these girls. And the honesty of their dealings with the
+washerwomen and shopkeepers, who trust them while in their vile houses,
+has often been noted.
+
+The words of sympathy and religion always touch their hearts, though the
+effect passes like the April cloud. On a broad scale, probably no remedy
+that man could apply would ever cure this fatal disease of society. It
+may, however, be diminished in its ravages, and prevented in a large
+measure. The check to its devastations in a laboring or poor class will
+be the facility of marriage, the opening of new channels of female work,
+but, above all, the influences of education and Religion.
+
+An incident occurred daring our early labors, which is worth
+preserving:
+
+                  EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL DURING 1854.
+
+                              THE TOMBS.
+
+"Mrs. Forster, the excellent Matron of the Female Department of the
+prison, had told us of an interesting young German girl, committed for
+vagrancy, who might just at this crisis be rescued. I entered these
+soiled and gloomy Egyptian archways, so appropriate and so depressing,
+that the sight of the low columns and lotus capitals is to me now
+inevitably associated with the somber and miserable histories of the
+place.
+
+"After a short waiting, the girl was brought in--a German girl,
+apparently about fourteen, very thinly but neatly dressed, of slight
+figure, and a face intelligent and old for her years, the eye passionate
+and shrewd. I give details because the conversation which followed was
+remarkable.
+
+"The poor feel, but they can seldom speak. The story she told, with a
+wonderful eloquence, thrilled to all our hearts; it seemed to us, then,
+like the first articulate voice from the great poor class of the city.
+
+"Her eye had a hard look at first, but softened when I spoke to her in
+her own language.
+
+"'Have you been long here?'
+
+"'Only two days, sir.'
+
+"Why are you here?'
+
+"'I will tell you, sir. I was working out with a lady. I had to get up
+early and go to bed late, and I never had rest. She worked me always;
+and, finally, because I could not do everything, she beat me--she beat
+me like a dog, and I ran away; I could not bear it.'
+
+"The manner of this was wonderfully passionate and eloquent.
+
+"'But I thought you were arrested for being near a place of bad
+character,' said I.
+
+"'I am going to tell you, sir. The next day I and my father went to get
+some clothes I left there, and the lady wouldn't give them up; and what
+could we do? What can the poor do? My father is a poor old man, who
+picks rags in the streets, and I have never picked rags yet. He said, "I
+don't want you to be a rag-picker. You are not a child now--people will
+look at you--you will come to harm." And I said, "No, father, I will
+help you. We must do something now, I am out of place;" and so I went
+out. I picked all day, and didn't make much, and I was cold and hungry.
+Towards night, a gentleman met me--a very fine, well-dressed gentleman,
+an American, and he said, "Will you go home with me!" and I said, "No."
+He said, "I will give you twenty shillings," and I told him I would go.
+And the next morning I was taken up outside by the officer.'
+
+"'Poor girl!' said some one, 'had you forgotten your mother? and what a
+sin it was!'
+
+"'No, sir, I did remember her. She had no clothes, and I had no shoes;
+and I have only this (she shivered in her thin dress), and winter is
+coming on. I know what making money is, sir. I am only fourteen, but I
+am old enough. I have had to take care of myself ever since I was ten
+years old, and I have never had a cent given me. It may be a sin, sir
+(and the tears rained down her cheeks, which she did not try to wipe
+away). I do not ask you to forgive it. Men can't forgive, but God will
+forgive. I know about men.
+
+"'The rich do such things and worse, and no one says anything against
+them. But I, sir--_I am poor!_ (This she said with a tone which struck
+the very heart-strings.) I have never had any one to take care of me.
+Many is the day I have gone hungry from morning till night, because I
+did not dare spend a cent or two, the only ones I had. Oh, I have wished
+sometimes so to die! Why does not God kill me!'
+
+"She was choked by her sobs. We let her calm herself a moment, and then
+told her our plan of finding her a good home, where she could make an
+honest living. She was mistrustful. 'I will tell you, _mein Herren;_ I
+know men, and I do not believe any one, I have been cheated so often.
+There is no trust in any one. I am not a child. I have lived as long as
+people twice as old.'
+
+"'But you do not wish to stay in prison?'
+
+"'O God, no! Oh, there is such a weight on my heart here. There is
+nothing but bad to learn in prison. These dirty Irish girls! I would
+kill myself if I had to stay here. Why was I ever born? I have such
+_Kummerniss_ (woes) here (she pressed her hand on her heart)--I am
+poor!'
+
+"We explained our plan more at length, and she became satisfied. We
+wished her to be bound to stay some years.
+
+"'No,' said she, passionately, 'I cannot; I confess to you, gentlemen. I
+should either run away or die, if I was bound.'
+
+"We talked with the matron. She had never known, she said, in her
+experience, such a remarkable girl. The children there of nine or ten
+years were often as old as young women, but this girl was an experienced
+woman. The offense, however, she had no doubt was her first.
+
+"We obtained her release; and one of us, Mr. G., walked over to her
+house or cabin, some three miles on the other side of Williamsburgh, in
+order that she might see her parents before she went to her new home.
+
+"As she walked along, she looked up in Mr. G.'s face, and asked,
+thoughtfully. Why we came there for her? He explained. She listened, and
+after a little while, said, in broken English 'Don't you think better
+for poor little girls to die than live?' He spoke kindly to her, and
+said something about a good God. She shook her head, 'No, no good God.
+Why am I so? It always was so. Why much suffer, if good God?' He told
+her they would get her a supper, and in the morning she should start off
+and find new friends. She became gradually almost
+ungoverned--sobbed--would like to die, even threatened suicide in this
+wild way.
+
+"Kindness and calm words at length made her more reasonable. After much
+trouble, they reached the home or den of the poor rag-picker. The
+parents were very grateful, and she was to start off the next morning to
+a country home, where, perhaps finally, the parents will join her.
+
+"For myself, the evening shadow seemed more somber, and the cheerful
+home-lights less cheerful, as I walked home, remembering such a
+history.
+
+"Ye who are happy, whose lives have been under sunshine and gentle
+influences around whom Affection, and Piety, and Love have watched, as
+ye gather in cheerful circles these autumn evenings, think of these
+bitter and friendless children of the poor, in the great city. But few
+have such eloquent expressions as this poor girl, yet all inarticulately
+feel.
+
+"There are sad histories beneath this gay world--lives over which is the
+very shadow of death. God be thanked, there is a Heart which feels for
+them all, where every pang and groan will find a sympathy, which will
+one day right the wrong, and bring back the light over human life.
+
+"The day is short for us all; but for some it will be a pleasant
+thought, when we come to lay down our heads at last, that we have eased
+a few aching hearts, and brought peace and new hope to the dark lives of
+those whom men had forgotten or cast out."
+
+[Illustration: THE STREET-GIRL'S END.]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+                    LEGAL TREATMENT OF PROSTITUTES.
+
+                      SHOULD LICENSES BE ALLOWED?
+
+The question of the best mode of legally controlling the great evil of
+prostitution, and confining its bad physical effects, is a very
+difficult one.
+
+The merely philosophical inquirer, or even the physician, regarding
+humanity "in the broad," comes naturally to the conclusion that this
+offense is one of the inevitable evils which always have followed, and
+always will follow, the track of civilization; that it is to be looked
+upon, like small-pox or scarlet fever, as a disease of civilized man,
+and is to be treated accordingly, by physical and scientific means, and
+must be controlled, as it cannot be uprooted, by legislation. Or they
+regard it as they do intoxication, as the effect of a misdirected
+natural desire, which is everywhere thought to be a legitimate object
+both of permission or recognition by government, as well as of check by
+rigid laws.
+
+If medical men, their minds are almost exclusively directed toward the
+frightful effects on society and upon the innocent, of the diseases
+which attend this offense. They see that legislation would at once check
+the ravages from these terrible maladies, and that a system of licenses
+such as is practiced in the Continental cities would prevent them from
+spreading through society and punishing those who had never sinned. As
+scientific healers of human maladies, they feel that anything is a gain
+which lessens human suffering, controls disease, and keeps up the
+general health of the community. Their position, too, has been
+strengthened by the foolish and superstitious arguments of their
+opponents. It has been claimed that syphilitic disorders are a peculiar
+and supernatural punishment for sin and wrong-doing; that by interfering
+with their legitimate action on the guilty, we presume to diminish the
+punishments inflicted by the Almighty; and, in so far as we cure or
+restrain these diseases, we lessen one great sanction which nature and
+Providence have placed before the infraction of the law of virtue.
+
+The medical man, however, replies very pertinently that he has nothing
+to do with the Divine sanctions; that his business is to cure human
+diseases and lessen human suffering wherever he find them; and that
+gout, or rheumatism, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, are as much
+"punishments" as the diseases of this vice. If he refused to visit a
+patient whenever he thought that his sins had brought upon him his
+diseases, he would have very little occupation, and mankind would
+receive very little alleviation from the medical art. Nor is he even
+called upon to refuse to cure a patient who, he knows, will immediately
+begin again his evil courses. The physician is not a judge or an
+executioner. He has nothing to do but to cure and alleviate. Influenced
+by this aspect of his duty, the medical man almost universally advocates
+licenses to prostitutes, based on medical examination, and a strict
+legal control of the participants in this offense.
+
+On the other hand, those of us who deal with the moral aspects of the
+case, and who know the class that are ruined body and soul by this
+criminal business, have a profound dread of anything which, to the
+young, should appear to legalize or approve, or even recognize it. The
+worst evil in prostitution is to the woman, and the worst element in
+that is moral rather than physical.
+
+The man has the tremendous responsibility on his soul of doing his part
+in helping to plunge a human being into the lowest depths of misery and
+moral degradation. He has also all the moral responsibility which the
+Divine law of purity places on each individual, and the farther burden
+of possibly causing disease hereafter to the innocent and virtuous.
+
+But the woman who pursues this as a business has seldom any hope in this
+world, either of mental or moral health. The class, as a class, are the
+most desperate and unfortunate which reformatory agencies ever touch.
+Now, any friend of the well-being of society, knowing the strength of
+men's passions, and the utter misery and degradation of these victims of
+them, will dread any public measure or legislation which will tend to
+weaken the respect of young men for virtue, or to make this offense
+looked upon as permissible, or which will add to the number of these
+wretched women by diminishing the public and legal condemnation of their
+debasing traffic.
+
+Among the large class of poor and ignorant girls in a large city who are
+always just on the line between virtue and vice, who can say how many
+more would be plunged into this abyss of misery by an apparent legal
+approval or recognition of the offense through a system of license?
+Among the thousand young men who are under incessant temptations in a
+city like this, who can say how many are saved by the consciousness that
+this offense is looked upon both by morality and law as an offense, and
+is not even recognized as permissible and legal? A city license
+constitutes a profession of prostitutes. The law and opinion recognize
+them. The evil becomes more fixed by its public recognition.
+
+It is true that prostitution will always, in all probability, attend
+civilization; but so will all other sins and offenses. It may be
+possible, however, to diminish and control it. It is already immensely
+checked in this country, as compared with continental countries, partly
+through economical and partly through moral causes. It has been
+diminished among the daughters of the lowest poor in this city by the
+"Industrial Schools." Why should it be increased and established by
+legal recognition?
+
+We admit that the present condition of the whole matter in New York is
+terrible. The humanity and science which ought to minister to the
+prostitute as freely as to any other class, are refused to her by the
+public, unless she apply as a pauper. The consequence is, that the
+fearful diseases which follow this offense, like avenging Furies, have
+spread through not only this class of women, but have been communicated
+to the virtuous and innocent, and are undermining the health of society.
+This fact is notorious to physicians.
+
+Now we think a reasonable "middle course" might be pursued in this
+matter; that, for instance, greater conveniences for medical attendance
+and advice in the city (and not on Blackwell's Island) might be afforded
+by our authorities to this class, both as a matter of humanity and as a
+safeguard to the public health. If there was a hospital or a dispensary
+for such cases within the city, it would avoid the disgrace and
+publicity of each patient reporting herself to the court as a pauper,
+and then being sent to the Island Hospital. Hundreds more would present
+themselves for attendance and treatment than do now, and the public
+health be proportionately improved. No moral sanction would thus be
+given to this demoralizing and degrading business. The simple duties of
+humanity would be performed.
+
+The advocates of the license system would still reply, however, that
+such a hospital would not meet the evil; that Law only can separate the
+sickly from the healthy, and thus guard society from the pestilence; and
+the only law which could accomplish this would be a strict system of
+license. The friend of public order, however, would urge that a wise
+legislator cannot consider physical well-being alone: he must regard
+also the moral tendencies of laws; and the influence of a license system
+for prostitution is plainly toward recognizing this offense as legal or
+permissible. It removes indirectly one of the safeguards of virtue.
+
+Perhaps the _reductio ad absurdum_ in the relation of the State with a
+criminal class, and of the Church with the State, was never so absurdly
+shown as in the Berlin license laws for prostitutes, twenty years since.
+According to these, in their final result, no woman could be a
+prostitute who had not partaken of the communion!--that is, the
+_Schein,_ or license, was never given to this business any more than to
+any other, except on evidence of the person's having been "confirmed,"
+or being a member of the State Church, that is, a citizen! This
+classing, however, the trade of prostitution with peddling, or any other
+business needing a license, did not in the least tend, so far as we have
+ever heard, to elevate the women, or save them from moral and mental
+degradation. On the contrary, the universal law of Providence that man
+or woman must live by labor, and that any unnatural substitute for it
+saps and weakens all power and vigor, applies to this class in
+Continental cities as much as here. Without doubt, too, wherever the
+Germanic races are, no degree of legalizing this traffic can utterly do
+away with the public sentence of scorn against the female participants
+in it; and the contempt of the virtuous naturally depresses the
+vicious.
+
+The "public woman" has a far greater chance of recovery in France or
+Italy than in Germany, England, or America. Still, the wise legislator,
+though regretting the depression which this public sentiment causes to
+the vicious classes, cannot but value it as a safeguard of virtue, and
+will be very cautious how he weakens it by legislation.
+
+There is, no doubt, some force in the position that the non-licensing of
+these houses is in some degree a terror to the community, and that the
+cautious and prudent are kept from the offense through fear of possible
+consequences in disease and infection. This, however, does not seem to
+us an object which legislators can hold before them as compared with the
+duties of humanity in curing and preventing disease and pestilence. They
+have nothing to do with adding to the natural penalties of sin, or with
+punishing sinners. They are concerned only with human law. But they have
+the right, and, as it seems to us, the duty, so to legislate as not to
+encourage so great an evil as this of prostitution. And licensing, it
+seems to us, has that tendency. It certainly has had it in Paris, where
+it has been tried to its full extent, and surely no one could claim the
+population of that city as a model to any nation, whether in physical or
+moral power.
+
+Bad as London is in this matter--not, however, so much through defect of
+licensing as through want of a proper street-police--we do not believe
+there is so wide-spread a degradation among poor women as in Berlin.
+
+New York, in our judgment, is superior to any great city in its smaller
+prostitute class, and the virtue of its laboring poor. Something of
+this, of course, is due to our superior economical conditions; something
+to the immense energy and large means thrown into our preventive
+agencies, but much also to the public opinion prevailing in all classes
+in regard to this vice. Our wealthy classes, we believe, and certainly
+our middle classes, have a higher sentiment in regard to the purity both
+of man and woman than any similar classes in the civilized world. More
+persons relatively marry, and marriages are happier. This is equally
+true of the upper laboring classes. If it is not true of the lowest
+poor, this results from two great local evils--Overcrowding, and the bad
+influences of Emigration. Still, even with these, the poor of New York
+compare favorably in virtue with those of Paris, Berlin, or Vienna. Now,
+how large a part of the public opinion which thus preserves both ends of
+society from vice may be due to the fact that we have not recognized the
+greatest offense against purity by any permissive legislation? The
+business is still regarded, in law, as outside of good morals and not
+even to be tacitly allowed by license.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+              THE BEST PREVENTIVE OF VICE AMONG CHILDREN.
+
+                          INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.
+
+As a simple, practical measure to save from vice the girls of the honest
+poor, nothing has ever been equal to the Industrial School.
+
+Along with our effort for homeless boys, I early attempted to found a
+comprehensive organization of Schools for the needy and ragged little
+girls of the city.
+
+Though our Free Schools are open to all, experience has taught that vast
+numbers of children are so ill-clothed and destitute that they are
+ashamed to attend these excellent places of instruction; or their
+mothers are obliged to employ them during parts of the day; or they are
+begging, or engaged in street occupations, and will not attend, or, if
+they do, attend very irregularly. Very many are playing about the docks
+or idling in the streets.
+
+Twenty years ago, nothing seemed to check this evil. Captain Matsell, in
+the celebrated report I have alluded to, estimated the number of vagrant
+children as 10,000, and subsequently in later years, the estimate was as
+high as 30,000. The commitments for vagrancy were enormous, reaching in
+one year (1857), for females alone, 3,449; in 1859, 5,778; and in 1860,
+5,880. In these we have not the exact number of children, but it was
+certainly very large.
+
+What was needed to check crime and vagrancy among young girls was some
+School of Industry and Morals, adapted for the class.
+
+Many were ashamed to go to the Public Schools; they were too irregular
+for their rules. They needed some help in the way of food and clothing,
+much direct moral instruction and training in industry; while their
+mothers required to be stimulated by earnest appeals to their
+consciences to induce them to school them at all. Agents must be sent
+around to gather the children, and to persuade the parents to educate
+their offspring. It was manifest that the Public Schools were not
+adapted to meet all these wants, and indeed the mingling of any
+eleemosynary features in our public educational establishments would
+have been injudicious. As our infant Society had no funds, my effort was
+to found something at first by outside help, with the hope subsequently
+of obtaining a permanent support for the new enterprises, and bringing
+them under the supervision of the parent Society.
+
+The agencies which we sought to found were the INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS, which
+I shall now attempt to describe.
+
+Each one of these humble charities has a history of its own--a history
+known only to the poor--of sacrifice, patience, and labor.
+
+Some of the most gifted women of New York, of high position and fortune,
+as well as others of remarkable character and education, have poured
+forth without stint their services of love in connection with these
+ministrations of charity.
+
+                          THE WILSON SCHOOL.
+
+The School to which allusion has already been made on page 83, as
+growing out of the Boys' Meeting in Sixth Street, and afterwards in
+Avenue D, was the first of these Schools, and owes its origin especially
+to a lady of great executive power, Mrs. Wilson, wife of the Rev. Dr.
+Wilson. It has always been an exceedingly successful and efficient
+School. It was formed in February, 1853, the writer assisting in its
+organization, and was carried on outside of the Society whose history I
+am sketching.
+
+              THE ROOKERIES OF THE FOURTH WARD--A REMEDY.
+
+In visiting from lane to lane and house to house in our poorest
+quarters, I soon came to know one district which seemed hopelessly given
+over to vice and misery--the region radiating out from or near to
+Franklin Square, especially such streets as Cherry, Water, Dover,
+Roosevelt, and the neighboring lanes. Here were huge barracks--one said
+to contain some 1,500 persons--underground cellars, crowded with people,
+and old rickety houses always having "a double" on the rear lot, so as
+more effectually to shut out light and air. Here were as many
+liquor-shops as houses, and those worst dens of vice, the
+"Dance-Saloons," where prostitution was in its most brazen form, and the
+unfortunate sailors were continually robbed or murdered. Nowhere in the
+city were so many murders committed, or was every species of crime so
+rife. Never, however, in this villainous quarter, did I experience the
+slightest annoyance in my visits, nor did any one of the ladies who
+subsequently ransacked every den and hole where a child could shelter
+itself. My own attention was early arrested by the number of wild ragged
+little girls who were flitting about through these lanes; some with
+basket and poker gathering rags, some apparently seeking chances of
+stealing, and others doing errands for the dance-saloons and brothels,
+or hanging about their doors. The police were constantly arresting them
+as "vagrants," when the mothers would beg them off from the good-natured
+Justices, and promise to train them better in future. They were
+evidently fast training, however, for the most abandoned life. It seemed
+me if I could only get the refinement, education, and Christian
+enthusiasm of the better classes fairly to work here among these
+children, these terrible evils might be corrected at least for the next
+generation.
+
+I accordingly went about from house to house among ladies whom I had
+known, and, representing the condition of the Ward, induced them to
+attend a meeting of ladies to be held at the house of a prominent
+physician, whose wife had kindly offered her rooms.
+
+For some months I had attempted to prepare the public mind for these
+labors by incessant writing for the daily papers, by lectures and by
+sermons in various pulpits. Experience soon showed that the most
+effective mode of making real the condition of the poorest class, was by
+relating incidents from real life which continually presented
+themselves.
+
+The rich and fortunate had hardly conceived the histories of poverty,
+suffering, and loneliness which were constantly passing around them.
+
+The hope and effort of the writer was to connect the two extremes of
+society in sympathy, and carry the forces of one class down to lift up
+the other. For this two things were necessary--one to show the duty
+which Christ especially teaches of sacrifice to the poor for His sake,
+and the value which He attaches to each human soul; and the other to
+free the whole, as much as possible, from any sectarian or dogmatic
+character. Nothing but "the enthusiasm of humanity" inspired by Christ
+could lead the comfortable and the fastidious to such disagreeable
+scenes and hard labors as would meet them here. It was necessary to feel
+that many comforts most be foregone, and much leisure given up, for this
+important work. Very unpleasant sights were to be met with, coarse
+people to be encountered, and rude children managed; the stern facts of
+filth, vice, and crime to be dealt with.
+
+It was not to be a mere holiday-work, or a sudden gush of sentiment;
+but, to be of use, it must be patiently continued, week by week, and
+month by month, and year by year, with some faint resemblance to that
+patience and love which we believed a Higher One had exercised towards
+us. But, with this inspiration, as carefully as possible, all dogmatic
+limitation must be avoided. All sects were invited to take a share in
+the work, and, as the efforts were necessarily directed to the most
+palpable and terrible evils, the means used by all would be essentially
+the same. Even those of no defined religious belief were gladly welcomed
+if they were ready to do the offices of humanity. The fact that
+ninety-nine hundredths of these poor people were Roman Catholics
+compelled us also to confine ourselves to the most simple and
+fundamental instructions, and to avoid, in any way, arousing religious
+bigotry.
+
+In the meeting, gathered at the house of Dr. P., were prominent ladies
+from all the leading sects.
+
+An address was delivered by the writer, and then a constitution
+presented, of the simplest nature, and an association organized and
+officers appointed by the ladies present. This was the foundation of
+the
+
+                   "FOURTH WARD INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL."
+
+In the meanwhile, we went forth through the slums of the ward, and let
+it be widely known that a School to teach work, and where food was given
+daily, and clothes were bestowed to the well-behaved, was just forming.
+
+Our room was in the basement of a church in Roosevelt Street. Hither
+gathered, on a morning in December, 1853, our ladies and a flock of the
+most ill-clad and wildest little street-girls that could be collected
+anywhere in New York. They flew over the benches, they swore and fought
+with one another, they bandied vile language, and could hardly be tamed
+down sufficiently to allow the school to be opened.
+
+Few had shoes, all were bonnetless, their dresses were torn, ragged, and
+dirty; their hair tangled, and faces long unwashed; they had, many of
+them, a singularly wild and intense expression of eye and feature, as of
+half-tamed creatures, with passions aroused beyond their years.
+
+The dress and ornaments of the ladies seemed to excite their admiration
+greatly. It was observed that they soon hid or softened their own worst
+peculiarities. They evidently could not at first understand the motive
+which led so many of a far higher and better class to come to help them.
+The two regular and salaried teachers took the discipline in hand gently
+and firmly. The ladies soon had their little classes, each gathered
+quietly about the one instructing. As a general thing, the ladies took
+upon themselves the industrial branches--sewing, knitting, crocheting,
+and the like; this gave them also excellent opportunities for moral
+instruction, and winning the sympathy of the children.
+
+As these ladies, many of them of remarkable character and culture, began
+to show the fruits of a high civilization to these poor little
+barbarians, the thought seemed to strike them--though hardly capable of
+being expressed--that here was a goodness and piety they had never known
+or conceived. This offspring of poverty and crime veiled their vices and
+bad habits before these angels. They felt a new impulse--to be worthy of
+their noble friends. The idea of unselfish Love dawned on their souls;
+they softened and became respectful. So it continued; each day the wild
+little beggars became more disciplined and controlled; they began to
+like study and industry; they were more anxious to be clean and neatly
+dressed; they checked their tongues, and, in some degree, their tempers;
+they showed affection and gratitude to their teachers; their minds
+awakened; most of all, their moral faculties. The truths of Religion or
+of morals, especially when dramatized in stories and incidents, reached
+them.
+
+And no words can adequately picture the amount of loving service and
+patient sacrifice which was poured out by these ladies in this effort
+among the poor of the Fourth Ward. They never spared themselves or their
+means. Some came down every day to help in the school; some twice in the
+week; they were there in all weathers, and never wearied. Three of the
+number offered up their lives in these labors of humanity, and died in
+harness.
+
+A most gifted intellectual family, the S----s, supplied some of our most
+devoted workers; the wife, since deceased, of one of our leading
+merchants and public men, himself a man much loved for his generosity,
+occupied the place of one of the Directresses; the wife of a prominent
+physician was our Treasurer. A young lady of fortune, since dead, Miss
+G., took the hardest labors upon herself. The wife of a gentleman since
+Governor and United States Senator, was in especial charge of the house,
+and dreaded no labor of humanity, however disagreeable. Two others,
+sisters, who represented one of our most honored historical families,
+but whose characters needed no help of genealogy to make them esteemed
+by all, threw themselves into the work with characteristic earnestness.
+Another of that family, which has furnished the pioneer of all
+reform-work among the youthful criminals, and in criminal law, and which
+in the early days of our history so often led public affairs, visited
+from house to house among the miserable poor of the ward, and twice
+found herself face to face with small-pox in its most virulent form.
+
+The effects of this particular School upon the morals of the juvenile
+population of the Fourth Ward were precisely what they have always been
+in similar schools. These little girls, who might be said to be almost
+the inmates of the brothels, and who grew up in an atmosphere of crime
+and degradation, scarcely ever, when mature, joined the ranks of their
+sisters and neighbors. Though living in the same houses with the gay
+dance-saloons, they avoided them as they would pestilential places.
+Trained to industry and familiar with the modest and refined appearance
+of pure women in the schools, they had no desire for the society of
+these bold girls, or to earn their living in this idle and shameful
+manner. They felt the disgrace of the abandoned life around them, and
+were soon above it. Though almost invariably the children of drunkards,
+they did not inherit the appetites of their mothers, or if they did,
+their new training substituted higher and stronger desires. They were
+seldom known to have the habit of drinking as they grew up. Situations
+were continually found for them in the country, or they secured places
+for themselves as servants in respectable families; and, becoming each
+day more used to better circumstances and more neatly dressed, they had
+little desire to visit their own wretched homes and remain in their
+families. Now and then there would be a fall from virtue among them, but
+the cases were very few indeed. As they grew up they married young
+mechanics or farmers, and were soon far above the class from which they
+sprang. Such were the fruits in general of the patient, self-denying
+labors of these ladies in the Fourth Ward School.
+
+One most self-sacrificing and heroic man, a physician, Dr. Robert Ray,
+devoted his education and something of his fortune to these benevolent
+efforts, and died while in the harness. Singularly enough, I never knew,
+in twenty years' experience, an instance of one of these volunteer
+teachers contracting any contagious disease in these labors, though
+repeatedly they have entered tenement rooms where virulent typhoid or
+small-pox cases were being tended. They made it a rule generally to
+bathe and change their clothing after their work.
+
+For a more exact account of the results of the Fourth-Ward labors, it is
+difficult to obtain precise statistics. But when we know from the Prison
+Reports that soon after the opening of this school there were imprisoned
+3,449 female vagrants of all ages, and that last year (1870), when the
+little girls who then attended such schools would have matured, there
+were only 671; or when we observe that the Prison in that neighborhood
+inclosed 3,172 female vagrants in 1861 and only 339 in 1871, we may be
+assured that the sacrifices made in that Ward have not been without
+their natural fruit.
+
+Extracts from our Journal:
+
+                      A VISIT IN THE FOURTH WARD.
+
+"We Started out a wintry afternoon to see some of our scholars in the
+Industrial School of the Fourth Ward. A number of ragged little girls,
+disdaining to enter, were clustered about the door of the School. As
+they caught a glimpse of some one coming out, the cry of 'Lie low! lie
+low!' passed among them, and they were off, capering about in the
+snow-storm like so many little witches.
+
+"We passed up Oak Street and Cherry. Here is the entrance, a narrow
+doorway on the side. Wind through this dark passage and you are at the
+door of a little back room; it is the home of a German rag-picker who
+has a child in the school. A filthy, close room, with a dark bedroom;
+there is one window, and a small stove, and two or three chairs. The
+girl is neat and healthy-looking. 'I pick rags, sir,' says the mother,
+'and I can't send her to Public School. I am away all day, and she would
+have to be in the streets, and it's very hard to live this winter. It's
+been a great help to send her to that school.' I told her we wanted none
+who could go to Public School, but if it was so with her she might
+continue to send. A miserable hole for a home, and yet the child looked
+neatly.
+
+"Here, beyond, is an old house. We climb the shaking stairs, up to the
+attic--a bare front room with one roof-window. The only furniture a bed
+and stove and a broken chair. Very chill and bare, but the floor is well
+swept. A little humpbacked child is reading away very busily by the
+light of the scuttle window, and another is cleaning up the floor. The
+mother is an Irish woman. 'Shure! an' its nivir none of the schools I
+could sind 'em to. I had no clo'es or shoes for 'em and, it's the truth,
+I am jist living, an' no more. Could ye help us? We told her we meant to
+help her by helping her children, and asked about the little deformed
+one. 'Och! she is sich a swate won! She always larned very quick since
+her accidint, and I used to think, maybe she wont live, and God will
+take her away--she was so steady and good. Yes, I am thankful to those
+ladies for what they are teaching her. She never had no chance before.
+God bless ye, gintlemen!'
+
+"We climbed again one of these rookeries. It is a back garret. A
+dark-eyed, passionate-looking woman is sitting over the little stove,
+and one of our little scholars is standing by--one of the prettiest and
+brightest children in the school. One of those faces you see in the West
+of Ireland, perhaps with some Spanish blood in them; a little oval face,
+with soft brown complexion, quick, dark eyes and harsh, black hair. The
+mother looked like a woman who had seen much of the worst of life. 'No,
+sir, I never did send 'em to school. I know it, they ought to learn, but
+I couldn't. I try to shame him sometimes--it's my husband, sir--but he
+drinks, and then bates me. Look at that bruise!' and she pointed to her
+cheek; 'and I tell him to see what's comin' to his children. There's
+Peggy, goes sellin' fruit every night to those cellars in Water Street,
+and they're _hells,_ sir. She's learnin' all sorts of bad words there,
+and don't get back till eleven or twelve o'clock.' She spoke of a sister
+of the little girl, about thirteen years old, and the picture of that
+sweet, dark-eyed little thing, getting her education, unconsciously,
+every night in those vile cellars of dancing prostitutes, came up to my
+mind. I asked why she sent her there, and spoke of the dangers. 'I must,
+sir; he makes nothing for me, and if it wasn't for this school, and the
+help there, and her earning of a shilling or two shilling in them
+places, I should starve. Oh, I wish they was out of this city! Yes, it's
+the truth, I would rather have them dead than on the street, but I can't
+help it.' I told her of some good families in the country, where we
+could place the children. 'Would they git schoolin', sir?' 'Certainly,
+that is the first condition. We always look especially to that.' The
+little dark eyes sparkled, and she '_should_ like to take care of a baby
+so!' The sister now came in, and we talked with her. 'Oh! no, she didn't
+like to go to those places; but they only buy there at nights'--and she
+seemed equally glad to get a place. So it was arranged that they were to
+come up to the office next day, and then get a home in the country. The
+little girl now wrapped her thin shawl about her head, and ran along
+before us, through the storm, to some of the other children. The harder
+it snowed, the more the little eyes sparkled and the prettier she
+looked.
+
+"Another home of poverty--dark, damp, and chill. The mother an
+Englishwoman; her child had gone to the school barefooted. This girl was
+engaged in the same business--selling fruit at night in the brothels. 'I
+know it, sir,' she said; 'she ought to have as good a chance as other
+people's children. But I'm so poor! I haven't paid a month's rent, and I
+was sick three weeks.'
+
+"'Yes, you're right. I know the city, sir; and I would rather have her
+in her grave than brought down to those cellars. But what can I do,
+sir?'
+
+"We arrange, again, to find a situation in the country, if she
+wishes--and engage her, at least, to keep the child at school.
+
+"Our little sprite flies along again through the snow, and shows us
+another home of one of our scholars--a prostitute's cellar. The elder
+sister of the child is there, and meets us pleasantly, though with a
+shame-faced look. 'Yes, she shall go to school every day, sir. We never
+sent her before, nowheres; but she's learnin' very fast there now.'
+
+"We tell her the general objects of the school, and of the good, kind
+home which can be found for her sister in the country. She seems glad
+and her face, which must have been pretty once, lights up, perhaps, at
+the thought for her sister, of what she shall never more have--a pure
+home. Two or three sailors, sitting at their bottles, say, 'Yes, that's
+it! git the little gal out of this! it ain't no place for her.'
+
+"They are all respectful, and seem to understand what we are doing.
+
+"The little guide has gone back, and we go now to another address--a
+back cellar in Oak Street--damp, dark, so that one at mid-day could
+hardly see to read; filthy, chilly, yet with six or eight people living
+there. Every one has a cold; and the oldest daughter, a nice girl of
+fourteen, is losing her eyes in the foul atmosphere. The old story: 'No
+work, no friends, rent to pay, and nothing to do.' The parents squalid,
+idle, intemperate, and shiftless. There they live, just picking up
+enough to keep life warm in them; groaning, and begging, and seeking
+work. There they live, breeding each day pestilence and disease,
+scattering abroad over the city seeds of fearful sickness--raising a
+brood of vagrants and harlots--retorting on society its neglect by
+cursing the bodies and souls of thousands whom they never knew, and who
+never saw them.
+
+"Yet it is cheering--it cheered me even in that squalid hole--that the
+children are so much superior to their parents. It needs time for vice
+and beggary and filth to degrade childhood. God has given every fresh
+human soul something which rises above its surroundings, and which even
+want and vice do not wear away. For the old poor, for the sensual who
+have steeped themselves in crime, for the drunkard, the thief, the
+prostitute who have run a long course, let those heroically work who
+will. Yet, noble as is the effort, one's experience of human nature is
+obliged to confess, the fruits will be very few. The old heart of man is
+a hard thing to change. In any comprehensive view, the only hopeful
+reform through society must begin with childhood, basing itself on a
+change of circumstances and on religious influences."
+
+The average expense of a school of this nature, with one hundred
+scholars and two salaried teachers, where a cheap meal is supplied, and
+garments and shoes are earned by the scholars, we reckon usually at
+$1,500, or at $15 per head annually for each scholar.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                        THE GERMAN RAG-PICKERS.
+
+Our next great effort was among the Germans. On the eastern side of the
+city is a vast population of German laborers, mechanics, and
+shop-keepers. Among them, also, are numbers of exceedingly poor people,
+who live by gathering rags and bones.
+
+I used at that time to explore these singular settlements, filled with
+the poor peasantry of the "Fatherland," and being familiar with the
+German _patois,_ I had many cheery conversations with these honest
+people, who had drifted into places so different from their
+mountain-homes. In fact, it used to convey to me a strange contrast, the
+dirty yards piled with bones and flaunting with rags, and the air
+smelling of carrion; while the accents reminded of the glaciers of the
+Bavarian Alps or the fresh breezes and wild scenes of the Harz. The poor
+people felt the contrast terribly, and their children most of all.
+
+From ignorance of the language and the necessity of working at their
+street-trades, they did not attend our schools, and seldom entered a
+church. They were growing up without either religion or education. Yet
+they were a much more honest and hopeful class than the Irish. There
+seemed always remaining in them something of the good old German
+_Biederkeit,_ or solidity. One could depend on the children if they were
+put in places of trust, and in school they seemed to grasp knowledge
+with much more tenacity and vigor. The young girls, however, coming from
+a similar low class were weaker in virtue than the Irish.
+
+The number of the Germans in the poor quarters may be somewhat measured
+by the population of the Wards which they inhabited. The Eleventh Ward
+at that time (1854) was reckoned to contain 50,000 inhabitants; at
+present (1870) it contains 64,372, and the Sixteenth Ward, another
+strong German district, has 99,375.
+
+The Association of ladies which we called together for labors among this
+population happened to be composed mainly of Unitarians, a religious
+body that has always felt a peculiar interest in the moral condition of
+our German poor. The moving spirit in the association was a lady of such
+singular grace and delicacy of character, that I hardly venture, even
+after these many years, to make public her name. She occupied then one
+of the foremost positions in New York society--a position accorded in
+part to her name, honored for intellectual services to the Republic,
+beyond almost any other in our history, but above all due to her own
+singular sweetness and dignity of manner and a very highly cultivated
+and strong intellect. Her power, whether with rich or poor, was her
+wonderful consideration for others, and her quick sympathy. The highest
+inspiration of Christian faith breathed through her life and animated
+her in laboring with these children of poverty. The same inspiration
+sustained her subsequently in a prolonged and terrible trial of months
+under a fearful disease, and made her death a sun-set of glory to all
+who knew her. Never did the faith in immortal union with God through
+Christ attain a more absolute certainty in any human being. Her death,
+even to many skeptics who were intimate with her, became a new and
+astonishing argument for Immortality.
+
+She numbered among her friends many of the leading intellects of the
+country, as well as those among the poor who depended on her advice,
+sympathy, and aid.
+
+Into this labor of love among the Germans, Mrs. S. threw herself, in
+company with a few friends, with profound earnestness.
+
+In view of the peculiar temptations of the young German girls, one of
+our objects in this school was to offer a social as well as educational
+resort in the evenings. We furnished the rooms pleasantly and
+tastefully, and proposed to vary our school exercises by games or an
+occasional dance and frolic. Mrs. S. and other ladies consented to be
+often present, to instruct and talk with the girls. Our visitors and
+myself at once gathered in a needy-looking assembly of the poor German
+girls of the Eleventh Ward, not as ragged or wild as the Irish throng in
+the Fourth Ward, but equally poor and quite as much exposed to
+temptation. The School went on day by day in its ministrations of love
+and its patient industry, and gradually produced the same effects as
+have been experienced under all these Schools. The wild became tamer,
+the wayward more docile. The child of the rag-picker soon began to like
+in-door industry better than the vagrant business of the streets, and to
+lose something of her boldness and correct her slovenliness.
+
+After laboring thus for some years with a board of ladies, a strong
+effort was made to secure the assistance of the German merchants of the
+city.
+
+In 1859, a subscription of about $1,000 was obtained from them, and the
+School was enlarged and made still more attractive, so as to reach the
+young working German girls in the evening. At this time a young lady of
+high culture, from one of the prominent intellectual families of New
+England, offered herself for this difficult task, and she was placed at
+the head of the School. For two years she labored unceasingly for this
+wild, uncontrolled class, being present every evening in the school, and
+bringing all her education and earnestness of character to bear upon
+them. They never forgot her, and she left an indelible impression on
+these children, and aided in saving them from the temptations which have
+ruined so many of their companions.
+
+Our German patrons gradually left us, and it was only in 1870 that their
+assistance was secured again for a charity which was saving so many
+thousand children of their countrymen.
+
+The School is now held at No. 272 Second Street, and contains some four
+hundred children.
+
+                "DUTCH HILL" AND THE SWILL-GATHERERS.
+
+On the eastern side of the city, in the neighborhood of Fortieth Street,
+is a village of squatters, which enjoys the title of "Dutch Hill." The
+inhabitants are not, however, "Dutch," but mainly poor Irish, who have
+taken temporary possession of unused sites on a hill, and have erected
+shanties which serve at once for pig-pens, hen-coops, bed-rooms, and
+living-rooms. They enjoy the privilege of squatters in having no rent to
+pay; but they are exposed to the penalty of being at any moment turned
+out from their dens, and losing land and house at once. Usually they
+remain while the quarrymen who are opening streets almost undermine
+their shanties, and then if the buildings are not blown away, they pull
+them down and pack them away like tents to another dwelling-place.
+
+The village is filled with snarling dogs, which aid in drawing the swill
+or coal carts, for the children are mainly employed in collecting swill
+and picking coals through the streets.
+
+The shanty family are never quite so poor as the tenement-house family;
+as they have no rent to pay. But the filth and wretchedness in which
+they sometimes live are beyond description.
+
+It happened that for many years (not wishing to scatter my efforts too
+much), I made this quarter my special "parish" for visitations; and very
+discouraging visits they were, many of them. The people had very little
+regular occupation, many being widows who did occasional "chores" in
+families; others lived on the sale of the coal their children gathered,
+or on the pigs which shared their domicile; others kept fowls, and all
+had vast flocks of goats, though where the profits from these latter
+came I could never discover, as no one seemed to buy the milk, and I
+never heard of their killing them. Money, however, in some way they did
+procure, and one old red-faced swill-gatherer I knew well, whose bright
+child we tried so long to save, who died finally, it was said, with a
+large deposit in the Savings-Bank, which no one could claim; yet one
+corner of her bed-chamber was filled with a heap of smelling bones, and
+the pigs slept under her bed.
+
+Another old rag-picker I remember whose shanty was a sight to behold;
+all the odds and ends of a great, city seemed piled up in it,--bones,
+broken dishes, rags, bits of furniture, cinders, old tin, useless lamps,
+decaying vegetables, ribbons, cloths, legless chairs, and carrion, all
+mixed together, and heaped up nearly to the ceiling, leaving hardly room
+for a bed on the floor where the woman and her two children slept. Yet
+all these were marvels of health and vigor, far surpassing most children
+I know in the comfortable classes. The woman was German, and after years
+of effort could never be induced to do anything for the education of her
+children, until finally I put the police on their track as vagrants, and
+they were safely housed in the "Juvenile Asylum."
+
+Many a time have I come into their shanties on a snowy morning and found
+the people asleep with the snow lying thick on their bed-clothes. One
+poor creature was found thus one morning by the police, frozen stiff.
+They all suffered, as might be expected, terribly from rheumatism.
+Liquor, of course, "prevailed." Every woman drank hard, I suppose to
+forget her misery; and dreadful quarrels raged among them.
+
+The few men there worked hard at stone-quarrying, but were often
+disabled by disease and useless from drunkenness. Many of the women had
+been abandoned by their husbands, as their families increased and became
+burdensome, or as they themselves grew plain and bad-tempered. Some of
+these poor creatures drank still more to heal their wounded affections.
+The children, of course, were rapidly following the ways of their
+parents. The life of a swill-gatherer, or coal-picker, or _chiffonnier_
+in the streets soon wears off a girl's modesty and prepares her for
+worse occupation.
+
+Into this community of poor, ignorant, and drunken people I threw
+myself, and resolved, with God's aid, to try to do something for them.
+Here for years I visited from cabin to cabin, or hunted out every cellar
+and attic of the neighboring tenement-houses; standing at death-beds and
+sick-beds, seeking to administer consolation and advice, and, aided by
+others, to render every species of assistance.
+
+In returning home from these rounds, amidst filth and poverty, I
+remember that I was frequently so depressed and exhausted as to throw
+myself flat upon the rug in front of the fire, scarcely able to move.
+The discouraging feature in such visits as I was making, and which must
+always exist in similar efforts, is that one has no point of religious
+contact with these people.
+
+Among all the hundreds of families I knew and visited I never met but
+two that were Protestants. To all words of spiritual warning or help
+there came the chilling formalism of the ignorant Roman Catholic in
+reply, implying that certain outward acts made the soul right with its
+Creator. The very inner ideas of our spiritual life of free love towards
+God, true repentance and trust in a Divine Redeemer, seemed wanting in
+their minds. I never had the least ambition to be a proselytizer, and
+never tried to convert them, and I certainly had no prejudice against
+the Romanists; on the contrary, it has been my fortune in Europe to
+enjoy the intercourse of some most spiritual-minded Catholics. But these
+poor people seemed stamped with the spiritual lifelessness of Romanism.
+At how many a lonely death-bed or sick-bed, where even the priest had
+forgotten to come, have I longed and tried to say some comforting word
+of religion to the dull ear, closing to all earthly sounds; but even if
+heard and the sympathy gratefully felt, it made scarcely more religious
+impression than would the chants of the Buddhists have done. One
+sprinkle of holy water were worth a volume of such words.
+
+A Protestant has great difficulty in coming into connection with the
+Romanist poor. I was often curious to know the exact influence of the
+priests over these people. The lowest poor in New York are not, I think,
+much cared for by the Romanist priesthood. One reason, without doubt, is
+that their attention has thus far been mainly (and wisely) directed to
+building handsome churches, and that they have not means to do much for
+these persons. Another and more powerful reason is, probably, that the
+old "enthusiasm of humanity" which animated a Guy, a Vincent de Paul, or
+Xavier, has died out among them.
+
+I have known, however; individual cases in our city, where a priest has
+exercised a marked influence in keeping his charge from intoxication.
+There were also occasionally, in this very region, something like
+"Revivals of Religion" among the people, stimulated by the priests, in
+which many young girls joined religious societies, and did lead, to my
+knowledge, for a time more pure and devout lives.
+
+When one thinks what a noble-minded and humane Priest might accomplish
+among the lowest classes of New York, how many vices he could check, and
+what virtues he might cherish, and what public blessings on the whole
+community he might confer, by elevating this degraded population; and
+then as one looks at the moral condition of the Roman Catholic poor, one
+can only sigh, that that once powerful body has lost so much of the
+inspiration of Christ which once filled it.
+
+The plan which I laid out in working in this quarter was in harmony with
+all our previous efforts; it was especially to influence and improve the
+children.
+
+It so happened that near "Dutch Hill" was another hill covered with
+handsome houses and inhabited by wealthy people, "Murray Hill." The
+ladies in this prosperous quarter were visited, and finally assembled in
+a public meeting; and, with the same preliminaries as in the other
+Schools, we at length organized in 1854.
+
+                  THE EAST RIVER INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.
+
+Early in the history of this School, we secured the services of a lady,
+Miss Spratt, now Mrs. Hurley, who has been ever since the main-stay of
+that most useful charity.
+
+For seventeen years this woman of refinement and education has spent her
+days in this School of poor children, and her hours of leisure in those
+wretched shanties--an angel of mercy and sympathy to every unfortunate
+family for miles around. Whatever woman falls into misfortune, loses
+husband or child, is driven from home by poverty, or forced from work by
+depression of business, or meets with troubles of mind or body, at once
+comes to her for sympathy and relief. She has become so used to scenes
+of misery, that to her, she says, "the house of mourning" is more
+natural than "the house of feasting."
+
+The present writer, for his own part, confesses that he could not
+possibly have borne the harrowing and disagreeable scenes with which he
+has been so long familiar, without making a strict rule never to think
+or speak of the poor when he was away from his work, and immediately
+absorbing himself in some entirely different subject. The spring of the
+mind would have been broken.
+
+But Mrs. Hurley lived in and for the poor; her only relaxation was
+hearing Mr. Beecher on Sunday; and yet, when she occasionally visited us
+in the country, she devoured books--her great favorite being a
+translation I had of Plato.
+
+The children, of course, became passionately attached to this missionary
+of charity. During her labors, she was married to a physician, Dr.
+Hurley, who subsequently was killed in the army during the War of the
+Rebellion. While she was temporarily absent, and a strange teacher
+employed, six of the wildest girls were expelled, so unmanageable were
+they. When she came back, they returned and welcomed her eagerly,
+behaving perfectly well; and it was discovered that so attached were
+they to her, they had each carried fragments of her dress as mementos in
+their bosom!
+
+The peculiar value of our common experience in this School was, that we
+were enabled through so many years to follow carefully the results of
+the School on a large class of very destitute little girls. We know
+personally what was here accomplished. A very hopeful feature appeared
+soon in the work. The children rose above the condition of their
+parents; sometimes they improved, by their own increasing neatness and
+good behavior, the habits and appearance of their fathers and mothers.
+More often they became ashamed of their paternal piggeries and nasty
+dens, and were glad to get away to more decent homes or new occupations.
+One great means of influence here was, as in the other Schools, through
+the regular assistance of volunteer teachers, the ladies of the
+Association.
+
+It happened that there was among them more of a certain tenacity of
+character, of the old Puritan faithfulness, than was manifested by some
+of our co-laborers; having put their hands to the plow, they never
+thought of turning back. They gave time and labor, and money freely, and
+they continued at their posts year after year.
+
+The children felt their refining and elevating influence. We soon found
+that the daughters of the drunkards did not follow their mothers'
+footsteps, simply because they had acquired higher tastes. We hardly
+ever knew of one who indulged in drinking; indeed, one old red-faced
+tippler, Mrs. McK., who was the best chore-woman on the Hill when sober,
+eventually was entirely reformed by her children. No child seemed to
+fall back into the degradation of the parents. And recalling now the
+rank foul soil from which so many sweet flowers seemed to spring, one
+can only wonder and be grateful that efforts so imperfect bore such
+harvest.
+
+I remember the F. family--such a cheery, healthy-looking family living
+in a damp, dark basement, and almost always half-starved, wretchedly
+poor, but very industrious! The youngest daughter passed through our
+School, and is now becoming a teacher; another married a mechanic (these
+girls never marry day-laborers). Still another proved herself a heroine.
+We sent her as nursery-maid to a family, and as they were all sailing
+down the Hudson in the _St. John,_ the boiler burst; amid the horrible
+confusion and panic where so many perished, this girl had the courage to
+rush through the steam and boiling water, and save the three children
+entrusted to her charge. Of course, after this, she was no longer a
+servant, but a "sister beloved" in the family. A gentleman of fortune,
+attracted by her appearance and intelligence, ultimately married her. He
+died, and she was left with a nice fortune. She bore her change of
+fortune beautifully.
+
+The following is another similar incident from our Journal:
+
+             A ROMANTIC INCIDENT IN AN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.
+
+"A few years ago I remember an old shanty on 'Dutch Hill,' where a
+wretched-looking man lived with his pigs and goats, called K----. He was
+considered a bad man even among his bad neighbors, and the story of him
+was (I do not know how true), that he had committed murder, and had
+escaped the law by some legal quibble. He was a swill-gatherer, and had
+two little bright daughters to assist him at home. These came to our
+Fortieth-street School. They improved very fast, and one used to attract
+much attention from the ladies by her pretty face and intelligent
+answers. Nellie finally left the school, and was sent by us to the West.
+She improved much there, and, after some time spent in different
+families, came back to the city, where she became an 'operator' on the
+sewing-machine. While at this business and living in a respectable
+boarding-house, she attracted the attention of a gentleman of some means
+and position, much older than herself, who, at length, offered himself
+to her in marriage.
+
+She declined, on the ground that she was so much inferior in position to
+him, and that his family would object. He insisted, and declared that
+'he wished to please himself, not his family,' and they were married.
+
+"He took his wife away to a foreign country, where his business lay, and
+there she has been a number of years, gradually improving in manners,
+taste, and education, living like a lady of fortune, with her maid and
+carriage, and making herself, in every way, a most suitable wife for one
+who had been so much above her. We had often heard of her good fortune.
+But during our Christmas Festival at the East River School, she herself
+came in to see it again and thank those who had been so kind to her. We
+all knew her at once; and yet she was so changed--a pretty,
+tasteful-looking young lady, with a graceful manner and a Spanish accent
+now--all the old stamp of 'Dutch Hill' quite gone, even the brogue lost
+and replaced by foreign intonations. She was perfectly simple and
+unaffected, and thanked us all for our former kindness with the utmost
+heartiness; and told her story very simply, and how anxious she still
+was to improve her education, seemingly not ashamed of her poor origin.
+It is a pleasant circumstance that she has taken out her beloved
+teacher, Mrs. Hurley, a number of times to drive in her carriage."
+
+Several changes of fortune of this kind have made it quite a natural
+question, when I visit Mrs. Hurley's School, "What about the
+heiresses?"
+
+Another girl, I remember, in one of these shanties, who came to school
+in an old petticoat, and barefooted, a most destitute-looking child. She
+was subsequently employed in our own family. I doubt whether many girls
+of the highest classes show a greater natural refinement; and she was as
+clever in every part of household work as she was nice. She finally
+married a hotel-keeper in San Francisco, and is doing well.
+
+Generally, the girls married mechanics and people above their rank of
+life. Some became Protestants; those who married Catholics were never
+bigoted. A number went to the West, and have done well there.
+
+Mrs. Hurley reckons over at least two thousand different girls who have
+been in this school and under its influence, since she has been there
+during the past eighteen years. The condition of all these we know
+probably pretty well. We count _but five_ who have become drunkards,
+prostitutes, or criminals! Such a wonderful result can be shown by
+hardly any preventive efforts in the world. Yet, there were certain
+cases which we used to call
+
+                            "OUR FAILURES."
+
+There was the D. family--they lived on the lucrative spoils of their
+infant, who sold toilet-covers to compassionate ladies. This little
+Julia was an imp of deceit and mischief She had, fortunately for her, a
+worn, sad face, and a capacity and imagination for lying unequaled at
+her years. With inarticulate sobs, and the tears coursing down her thin
+cheeks, she told of her dying mother and her labors to get her bread;
+or, again, she was an orphan supporting herself and her deformed little
+brother; or her disabled father depended on her feeble efforts for his
+slender support. The addresses she gave of her house were always wrong;
+and so, year by year, she gathered in a plenteous harvest from the pity
+of the ladies.
+
+At home, a little band of able-bodied, slatternly sisters were living
+mainly on the money thus begged. They naturally became each day more
+lazy and dissolute; and little Julia more bold and brazen-faced. We
+tried to bribe the young beggar to go to school, we paid her rent, we
+offered the sisters work, we remonstrated and threatened, we even set
+the police on her track, but nothing could check or turn her; she eluded
+the police as easily as she did the ladies. If she came to school, she
+stayed but a day; all effort failed against the ingrained slovenliness
+and vagrancy of the family; day by day they sank; one daughter was
+seduced, and to their number was now added an illegitimate child. They
+grew dirtier and more miserable; and here, years ago, we left them. No
+doubt, Julia is still pursuing her profitable vocation from house to
+house, and the girls are in yet lower depths.
+
+                  A STREET-CHILD. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
+
+"Some ten years ago, I made many efforts to save a little homeless girl,
+who was floating about the quarter near East Thirty-second Street. Her
+drunken mother had thrown her out of doors, and she used to sleep under
+stairways or in deserted cellars, and was a most wretched, half-starved
+little creature. I talked with her often, but could not induce her to go
+to school, or to seek a home in the country. She grew up steadily
+vagrant. At length we succeeded in getting her away to the family of an
+excellent lady in Buffalo. There she speedily gave up her roving habits,
+became neat and orderly under the influence of the lady, attended church
+and Sabbath School, and altogether seemed quite a changed child.
+Unfortunately, the lady was obliged to move to this city, and instead of
+placing the little girl in another family in the country, she brought
+her with her to New York, and, no longer having room for her in her
+house, let her go to her old associates. In a few weeks, the nice, tidy
+little girl began to look like the idle and vagrant young girls who were
+her companions. She became slatternly in her habits, and instead of
+seeking a place in some family, she joined a company of poor
+working-girls, who earned their living by manufacturing children's
+torpedoes. She lodged in the crowded tenement-houses, and gradually fell
+into all their low associations. The next I knew of her, I heard that
+she had been seduced under a promise of marriage, and that she was about
+to be a mother. Again I knew of her, with her unfortunate little babe,
+driven about from one low lodging-house to another, dependent upon
+charity for support. Finally, the child was adopted by the parents of
+her seducer, and she was left free again. Though in extreme destitution,
+she would not take a situation away from the city. She resumed her work
+at torpedoes, and lived about in the tenement-houses, a poor,
+bedraggled-looking creature. Again, after some time, I heard of her as
+having married a low fellow in that district. She had only been married
+a few days when her husband abandoned her, and never returned to her.
+She now hangs about the low lodging-houses between First and Second
+Avenues, in East Thirty-first and Thirty-second Streets, a
+forlorn-looking, slovenly woman, who will almost certainly end in the
+lowest vice and penury."
+
+Thus far in the Journal. Our constant pursuit of this girl did tend, I
+think, to keep her from utter ruin.
+
+She fell no lower; and subsequently connected herself with one of the
+charitable institutions, where she is living a virtuous life.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                        SCENES AMONG THE POOR.
+
+              EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
+
+"It sometimes seems in our Industrial Schools as if each wretched,
+blear-eyed, half-starved, filthy little girl was a living monument of
+the curses of Intemperance. The rags, the disease, the ignorance, the
+sunny looks darkened, the old faces on young shoulders, are not
+necessarily the pitiable effects of overwhelming circumstances. The
+young creatures are not always cursed by poverty principally, but by the
+ungoverned appetites, bad habits and vices of their parents. On 'Dutch
+Hill' one can hardly enter a shanty where is a sober family. The women
+all drink; the men work, and then carouse. The hard earnings go off in
+alcohol. No savings are laid up for the winter. The children are ragged
+and unprotected, and, but for the Industrial School, uneducated. It is
+sometimes the saddest sight to see a neat little shanty grow day by day
+more filthy; the furniture sold, the windows broken, the children
+looking more thin and hungry, the parents falling out of honest
+work--all the slow effects of ungoverned passion for liquor.
+
+"I entered, yesterday, a little hut on the 'Hill,' where a middle-aged
+woman lived, whom I knew. She was sitting near the door, weeping
+violently. I asked her the reason, and, after a little time, she told
+me. Her eldest daughter, a girl of twenty, had just been in drunk, and
+had struck her over the eye; and when her mother was looking at her
+bruise in the glass, she had dashed her fist through the glass.
+
+'"There was no safety there, the mother said, when she came in. If they
+were away she would burst open the doors and break the furniture, and
+cut her sewing-work to pieces. 'She is a devil, sir, when she's in
+liquor!' _Three times_ the mother had had her arrested and sent to
+Blackwell's Island; 'but somehow, sir, she's always worse when she comes
+out, and I niver heard her use bad words till she'd been there.
+
+"'Now, God knows where she lives--they say it's in a bad house; and it's
+I who am afraid she's gittin' Tommy, her broder, into the same way, for
+he doesn't come home now. O God! _I might as well be in hell!_' Nothing
+can convey the tone of despair with which that was said. She told me how
+the girl had been such a bright little one. 'She was so pretty, sir; and
+maybe we flattered her, and made too much of her. And her father, he
+thought she ought to learn the dressmakin' trade, but she felt somehow
+above it, and she went to be a book-folder downtown. And one day we
+missed her till late o' night; and thin the next night it was later, and
+at last her father--bless his poor soul!--he said she shouldn't be out
+so, and whipt her. And thin she niver came back for three nights, and we
+thought, maybe, she's at her work, and has to stay late; and we niver
+suspected how it was, when, suddenly, Mrs. Moore came and said as how
+Maggy said she was at Mrs. Rooney's--the ould divil--and my husband
+wouldn't belave it at all; but I wint and bust open the door wid a
+stone, and found _her_--my own child--there wid a lot of men and women;
+and I swore at 'em, and the M. P.'s they come and cleared 'em all out,
+and there was the last of her. She's niver been an honest woman since,
+when she's in liquor. It broke her father's heart. He died the next
+Saturday; people said it was some sort of dysentry, but I know it was
+this. God help me! And, now, sir (almost fiercely), can't you get me out
+of this? All I want is, to sell my shanty, and wid my two little ones,
+git away from _her._ I don't care how far!'
+
+"The mother fleeing her daughter. The pretty child becomes a drunken
+outcast! So ends many a sad history in our city."
+
+                        THE DYING SEWING-WOMAN.
+
+"In East Thirty-fourth Street, in a tenement-house, a poor sewing-woman
+has lived for the last two years. She had formerly been in very good
+circumstances, and her husband, a respectable mechanic, earned a support
+for her and her children, until at length he fell into intemperate
+drinking. With the appetite for liquor on him, everything that he made
+was spent, and he himself was gradually becoming worse and worse. The
+poor wife was forced to the hardest work to keep her children and
+herself alive. Last winter, in a moment of desperation, the husband put
+his name down for a three-years' whaling voyage, and was taken off to
+sea, leaving the woman with an old father and three children to care
+for. Many a night, the old man says, has the poor creature walked up
+from the lower part of the city (some three or four miles) with four
+dozen shirts on her back, through snow and wet, and then, without fire
+or food, in her wet clothes, has worked till the dawn of day for the
+poor little ones dependent on her. He has seen _the blood_ come from her
+mouth and nose after some of these efforts. Still more bitter than all
+this, was the sense of desertion by her husband. But it was all in vain.
+The children for whom she had slaved, and whom she loved more than her
+own life, were attacked with scarlet fever, and two of them died in the
+mother's arms. One only, a sweet little girl, was left. With them went
+the spring of hope and courage which had sustained the hard-working
+mother. Her father says she never shed a tear, but she lost heart; and,
+though never doubting of the goodness of her Great Father, she had not
+the spirit for the remaining work of life. Her exposures and hard labor
+had brought on a cough, and finally a disease of the lungs. She was at
+last unable to work, and could only lie upon her bed and depend on the
+chance charities of strangers.
+
+"The teacher of our Fortieth-street School, who, in a way unseen and
+unknown to the world, is a minister of mercy and goodness to all that
+quarter of the city, first discovered her, and has managed, with a
+little aid here and there, to lighten her dying hours.
+
+"I was called in the other day and held a long conversation with her.
+She has no more fears or anxieties; she is not even troubled about her
+little one. God will care for her. 'Once,' she said, 'I felt it so hard
+to lose the children, but now I am glad they are gone! They will be much
+better where they are than here. I have put everything away now,' she
+added, with an expression of sublime faith and hope on a face whose worn
+features the hectic flush made almost beautiful again. 'I trust all to
+my Redeemer. Through him alone I hope. He will forgive me and receive
+me.' She spoke of her many trials and sorrows--they were all over, and
+she was glad she was soon to be at rest.
+
+"We asked about her food. She said she could not relish many things, and
+she often thought if she could only get some of the good old plain
+things she had in Ireland at her brother's farm she should feel so much
+better.
+
+"I told her we would get her some good genuine oat-meal cake from an
+Irish friend. Her face lighted up at once, and she seemed cheered by the
+promise.
+
+"'Oh, sir! I have thought so much of my mother in this sickness, and
+those happy, happy days. I was such a happy girl! How little she thought
+I would come to this! We lived in the North, you know, and had
+everything very comfortable, as all the Protestant Irish do. But it's
+all gone, gone,' she said, dreamily, 'and I wouldn't have it back again,
+for God is the best friend--He knows,
+
+              "'Oh, how glad I am to die!
+                His rod and His staff they comfort me.'
+
+"The words were simple, but the whole was touching beyond description,
+forcing tears whether one would or not.
+
+"We were glad to find that her clergyman, the Missionary of the Calvary
+Church, had administered the sacraments to her that day. May she soon be
+where the sting of poverty, the rubs and blows of hard circumstances,
+the loneliness of desertion, the anxiety and care, and hopelessness, and
+disappointment which have followed her unhappy path, shall cease
+forever, and the unfortunate one shall enter on her new and blissful
+life of peace and abiding love!"
+
+                            DISCOURAGEMENT.
+
+"I was lately visiting a poor woman, who had seen better circumstances,
+the wife of a worker in an iron-foundry. The room was bare but clean,
+and the woman was neatly dressed, though her face looked thin and worn,
+and her eyes had an unusual expression of settled, sad discouragement. A
+little girl of ten or eleven sat near her tending a baby, with the same
+large sad blue eyes, as if the expression of the mother had come to
+receive a permanent reflection in the child's face. Her husband had been
+sick for several months, which put them all behind, though now he was
+getting work enough.
+
+"'You know how it is, sir,' she said, 'with working people: if a man
+falls out of work for a day, the family feels it for a week after. We
+can hardly make the two ends meet when he's well, and the moment he is
+sick it comes hard upon us. Many's the morning he's gone down to the
+foundry without his breakfast, and I've had to send out the little Maggy
+there, to the neighbors, for bits of bread, and then she's taken it down
+to him.'
+
+"'She is a beggar, then?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, and sorrow of it. We never thought we could come to that. My
+mother brought me up most dacently, and my husband, he's a very good
+scholard, and could be a clark or anything, but we can't help it! We
+must have bread. I would be willing to do anything, wash, scrub, or do
+plain sewing; and I keep trying, but I never find anything. There seems
+no help for us; and I sometimes feel clean gone and down-hearted: and
+I'm troubled at other things, too."
+
+"'What other things?'
+
+"'At my sin, ye see.'
+
+"'What do you mean?'
+
+"'Well, sir, if I could only have peace of mind! But I work on from
+Monday morn to Saturday night, and I never hear or see anything good;
+and when Sunday comes, I can't go out; I haven't any bonnet for my head,
+or any dress fit for a dacent church. I just walk the floor, and I don't
+dare to think of ever meeting God."
+
+"'Are you a Catholic?'
+
+"'Yes, sir; I was brought up one, and so was my husband, but now it's
+little we know, as they say, of mass, meeting, or church; we ain't
+neither Catholics or Protestants; I might as well be a haythen. We
+haven't any books, nor a prayer-book, or anything. I know it, sir, we
+ought to pray," she continued, "but I kneel down sometimes, and I get up
+and say to my husband, 'It's no use my praying, I am too much
+distracted.' If I could only get some good to my soul, for I think of
+dying often, and I see I should not be at all ready. _Life is a burden
+to me._' I spoke of the hopes and consolations which can come to poor as
+well as rich, and of her children. 'Yes, sir; no one can tell the
+patience of the Lord. How much He has borne from me! Oh, if I could only
+have peace of mind, and see those children getting on well, I should be
+glad to die. That little girl cries every time we send her out to beg,
+and she's learning nothing good. But I am afraid nothing will ever come
+lucky to us; and oh, sir, if you could have seen how we started in
+Ireland, and what a home my mother had; she was a very different woman
+from what I am.'
+
+"We spoke of her attending the mission meeting in Fortieth Street, and
+reading a Testament given by us. She seemed glad to do both.
+
+"'Oh, sir, if I could only feel that friendship with God you spoke of, I
+shouldn't care; I could bear anything; but to work as we are doing, and
+to have such trouble, and see the poor wee thing grow thinner and
+poorer, and my man almost down broken, and then to get no nearer--no, we
+keep getting farther from the Lord! Oh, if I was only ready to die! I
+haven't nothing in this world.'
+
+"Let us hope that the peace-giving words of Christ, the love of the
+Redeemer, may at length plant in that poor, weary discouraged soul the
+seeds of hope and immortal faith, even as they have done in so many
+thousands weary and heavy-laden!"
+
+                      THE SWILL-GATHERER'S CHILD.
+
+"Most of those familiar with the East River Industrial School will
+remember a poor widow--a swill-gatherer--who lived in the notorious
+village of shanties near Forty-second Street, known as 'Dutch Hill.' She
+owned a small shanty, which had been put up on some rich man's lot as a
+squatter's hut, and there, with her pigs and dogs and cat in the same
+room, she made her home. From morning till evening she was trailing
+about the streets, filling up her swill-cans, and at night she came back
+to the little dirty den, and spent her evenings--we hardly know how. She
+had one smart little girl who went to the Industrial School. As the
+child came back day by day, improving in appearance, singing her sweet
+songs, and with new ideas of how ladies looked and lived, the mother
+began to grow ashamed of her nasty home. And I remember entering one
+day, and finding, to my surprise, pigs and rubbish cleared out, the
+walls well scrubbed, and an old carpet on the floor, and the mother
+sitting in state on a chair! It was the quiet teachings of the school
+coming forth in the houses of the poor.
+
+"After a while the little girl began to get higher ideas of what she
+might become, and went out with another girl to a place in the West. She
+did well there, and was contented, but her mother was continually
+anxious and unhappy about her, and finally, after some years, forced her
+to return to the city. She was now a very neat, active young girl, far
+above her mother's condition, and the change back to the pig-shanty and
+Dutch Hill was anything but pleasant. The old woman hid away her best
+clothes to prevent her going back, and seemed determined to make her a
+swill-gatherer like herself. Gradually, as might be expected, we began
+to hear bad stories about our old scholar. The people of the
+neighborhood said, she drank and quarreled with her mother, and that she
+was frequenting houses where low company met. Another of the worst Dutch
+Hill girls--the daughter of a drunkard--was constantly with her. Soon we
+heard that the other young girl had been sent to Blackwell's Island, and
+that this one must be saved now, or she would be utterly lost. I went up
+at once to the old woman's shanty, though with but the feeblest hopes of
+doing anything, yet with many unuttered prayers. For who that knows the
+career before the street-girl of the city can help breathing out his
+soul in agony of prayer for her, when the time of choice comes?
+
+"When I entered the shanty, the young girl was asleep on the bed, and
+the mother sat on a box, crooning and weeping.
+
+"'Och, and why did I iver tak ye from that swate place--ye that was
+makin' an honest woman of yoursel'! Ach, God bless your honor! can ye
+help her? She's a'most gone. Can't ye do somethin'?'
+
+"'Well, how is she doing now?'
+
+"'Och (in a whisper), your honor, she brought three bad fellers last
+night, and she brake my own door in, and I tould 'em-says I, I'm an
+honest woman, and I never had ony sich in my kin--and she was
+drunk--yes, yer honor, she, my own darlint, strak me, and wanted to turn
+me out--and now there she's been sleepin' all the mornin'. Ach, why did
+I tak her out of her place!'
+
+"Here the girl woke up, and sat up on the bed, covering her face in
+shame. I said some few sober words to her, and then the mother threw
+herself down on the floor, tears pouring down her cheeks.
+
+"'Ach, darlint! my own swate darlint! will ye not list to the gintleman?
+Sure an' ye wouldn't bring disgrace to yer ould mither and yer family!
+We've had six generations of honest people, and niver wan like this!
+Ach, to think of comin' to your ind on the Island, and be on the town!
+For the love of the blessed Vargin, _do_ give them all up, and say ye
+won't taste a drop--do, darlint!'
+
+"The girl seemed obdurate; so I took up the sermon, and we both pleaded,
+and pictured the shame and pain and wretched life and more wretched
+death before her. There is no need of delicacy in such cases, and the
+strongest old Bible Saxon words come home the deepest. At last, her
+tears began to flow, and finally she gave her full assent to breaking
+off from liquor and from her bad company (it should be remembered she
+was only about sixteen); and she would show her repentance by going back
+to the place where she was, if they would receive her. I hardly expected
+she would do so; but in a day or two she was in the office, and started
+for her old situation. Since that we have had a letter from her and her
+mistress, and she seems to be getting on wonderfully well. May God
+uphold her!
+
+"The following is a letter we have received from her since:
+
+                                            "'B----, PENN., October 11.
+
+"'MY DEAR MOTHER--I have the pleasure of writing a few lines to you, to
+let you know that I am well. I got safe back to my place; kind friends
+took me back again; I have got into the country, where there is plenty
+of everything to live on. Dear mother, I would like very much to hear
+from you. I hope you are all well; please write soon. I want you to show
+this letter to Miss Spratt. [Now Mrs. Hurley.]
+                                                  Good-by, dear mother.
+                                                                     M.
+
+"'DEAR MISS SPRATT--As I was writing to my mother, I thought I would
+like to write a few lines to you. Now that I am so far away, I feel a
+grateful remembrance of your kindness, I am very sorry I did not have a
+chance of going to see you before I left the city. Please tell Mr. Brace
+I am much obliged to him for his kindness: tell him I got safe back to
+Mr. M.'s, and have a very good home. Good-by, Miss Spratt'"
+
+The East River Industrial School (at No. 206 East Fortieth Street)
+still continues its humble but profound labors of love. Mrs. Hurley is
+still there, the "Mend of the poor" for miles around, carrying sympathy,
+advice, and assistance to thousands of unbefriended creatures, and
+teaching faithfully all day in the School. Two gentlemen have especially
+aided her in providing food and clothing for her little ones; and the
+lady-volunteers still give liberally of their means and time. May the
+School long shine as a light in one of the dark places of the city.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+                THE PROTESTANT POOR AND STREET-ROVERS.
+
+It is not often that our efforts carry us among Protestant poor, but it
+happens that on the west side of the city, near Tenth Avenue and
+Twenty-seventh Street, is a considerable district of English and Scotch
+laboring people, who are mainly Protestants.
+
+A meeting of ladies was called in the western part of the city, in like
+manner with the proceedings at the formation of the other Schools; and a
+School was proposed. The wife of a prominent property-holder in the
+neighborhood, a lady of great energy of character, Mrs. R. R., took a
+leading part, and greatly aided the undertaking; other ladies joined,
+and the result was the formation of the
+
+                    HUDSON RIVER INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL,
+
+the fourth of our Schools founded in 1854. With all these Schools, in
+the beginning, the ladies themselves raised all the funds for their
+support, and, as I have related, devoted an incredible amount of time to
+aiding in them, there being usually, however, two salaried teachers.
+
+The experience in the Edinburgh Ragged Schools, I was assured, when
+there, was, that you cannot depend on volunteer help after the first
+enthusiasm has passed by. This is not our experience.
+
+As one set of "volunteers" have withdrawn or leave the work, others
+appear, and there are still in this and some of our other Industrial
+Schools, most active and efficient voluntary helpers. Gradually,
+however, the support and supervision of the Schools fell more and more
+into the hands of the central authority--The Children's Aid Society.
+
+The obtaining a share in the Common School Fund enabled the Society to
+do more for these useful charities and to found new ones.
+
+In the Hudson River School, it cannot be said that the Protestant poor
+proved much better than the Catholic; in fact, it has often seemed to me
+that when a Protestant is reduced to extreme poverty, and, above all, a
+Yankee, he becomes the most wretched and useless of all paupers. The
+work and its results were similar on the west side to those in the other
+districts which I have already described.
+
+                          "MUSCULAR ORPHANS."
+
+Our attention had thus far been directed mainly to girls in these
+Industrial School efforts. They seemed the class exposed to the most
+terrible evils, and besides, through our other enterprises, we were
+sheltering, teaching, and benefiting for life vast numbers of lads.
+
+We determined now to try the effect of industry and schooling on the
+roving boys, and I chose a district where we had to make head against a
+"sea of evils." This was in the quarter bordering on East Thirty-fourth
+Street and Second Avenue. There seemed to be there a society of
+irreclaimable little vagabonds. They hated School with an
+inextinguishable hatred; they had a constitutional love for smashing
+windows and pilfering apple-stands. They could dodge an "M. P." as a fox
+dodges a hound; they disliked anything so civilized as a bed-chamber,
+but preferred old boxes and empty barns, and when they were caught it
+required a very wide-awake policeman, and such an Asylum-yard as hardly
+exists in New York, to keep them.
+
+I have sometimes stopped, admiringly, to watch the skill and cunning
+with which the little rascals, some not more than ten years old, would
+diminish a load of wood left on the docks; the sticks were passed from
+one to another, and the lad nearest the pile was apparently engaged
+eagerly in playing marbles. If the woodman's attention was called to his
+loss, they were off like a swarm of cockroaches.
+
+[Illustration: STREET ARABS.]
+
+We opened a School with all the accessories for reaching and pleasing
+them; our teacher was a skillful mechanic, a young man of excellent
+judgment and hearty sympathy with boys; he offered to teach them
+carpentering and box-making and pay them wages. Common-school lessons
+were given, also, and a good warm meal provided at noon. We had
+festivals and magic-lantern exhibitions and lectures. We taught, and we
+fed and clothed. In return, they smashed our windows; they entered the
+premises at night and carried off everything they could find; they
+howled before the door, and yelled "Protestant School!" We arrested one
+or two for the burglary, as a warning, but the little flibbertigibbets
+escaped from the police like rats, and we let them go with the fright
+they had had. Some few of the worst we induced to go to the country, and
+others we had arrested as vagrants, without appearing ourselves, until a
+kind of dark suspicion spread among them against the writer that he had
+the power of spiriting away bad boys to distant regions by some
+mysterious means. Those that did go to the country proved of the kind
+called by a Western paper "muscular orphans," for an unfortunate
+employer undertaking to administer corporal punishment to two of them,
+the little vagabonds turned and chastised him and then fled.
+
+The following case is noted in our Journal of these up-town boys:
+
+                        A HARD CASE REFORMED.
+
+"MR. BRACE--_Dear Sir:_ You request me to send you some reminiscences of
+the early life of Michael S----n. My most vivid recollection of him is
+his taking the broomstick to me once, as I was about to punish him for
+some misdemeanor. Being the first and last of my pupils who ever
+attempted anything of the kind, it stands out in bold relief in my
+memory. I soon conquered the broomstick, but on the first opportunity he
+ran out, thus ending his Industrial School career.
+
+"His most marked characteristic was a desire to travel, and he presented
+himself with the freedom of the city at a very early age, going off for
+weeks at a time, sleeping in entries and around engine-houses, and
+disdaining bolts and bars when they were turned upon him. One of your
+visitors calling to consult with his mother as to what could be done
+with him, found him vigorously kicking the panels out of the door, she
+having locked him in for safe-keeping till she came home from work. The
+Captain of Police, tired of having him brought in so frequently, thought
+one day of a punishment that he expected would effectually frighten him,
+which was--to hang him. His mother consenting, he was solemnly hung up
+by the feet to a post, till he promised reformation. This failing to
+produce the desired effect, she placed him with "the Brothers," who put
+him in a kind of prison, where he had to be chained by the leg to
+prevent him from scaling the walls. Taking him from there, after some
+months of pretty severe discipline, he very soon went back to his old
+habits, when she had him sent to Randall's Island. Here he was
+discovered in a plan to swim to the opposite shore (something of a feat
+for a boy of twelve). Fearing he would attempt it and be drowned, she
+took him away and put him in the Juvenile Asylum, where he remained
+several months, and finally seemed so much tamed down that she ventured
+on taking him out and sending him to a place which you procured for him
+at Hastings. But, pretty soon, the ruling passion, strong as ever, took
+possession of him, and he started on a tour through the surrounding
+villages.
+
+"Being brought home again, he told his mother very deliberately, one
+morning, that she need not expect him home any more; he was going to
+live with a soldier's wife. Knowing that if he went he would be in a
+very den of wickedness, she came to the resolution to give him to your
+care, and let him be sent to the West.
+
+"It would require a volume to tell of all his freaks and wanderings; his
+scaling of fences, and breaking out of impossible places. Towards the
+last of his New York life he began to add other vices to his original
+stock--such as drinking, smoking, and swearing; yet strange to say, he
+disdained to lie, and was never known to steal; and his face would glow
+with satisfaction when he could take charge of an infant. His mother
+hears, with trembling hope, the good accounts of him from the West,
+scarcely daring to believe that her wild and vagrant son will ever make
+a steady, useful man.
+                                              "Truly yours,
+                                                   "Mrs. E. S. Hurley."
+
+The young rovers gradually became softened and civilized under the
+combined influences of warm dinners, carpentering, and good teaching;
+but we found the difficulty to be that we did not have sufficient hold
+over them out of school hours; we needed more appliances for such
+habitual vagabonds. What was wanted was a Lodging-house and all its
+influences, as well as School, for the former gives a greater control
+than does a simple Industrial School.
+
+We accordingly transferred the whole enterprise to a still worse
+quarter, where I had done my first work in visiting, and which I
+thoroughly knew, the region on East River, at the foot of Eleventh
+Street. Here was a numerous band of similar boys, who slept anywhere,
+and lived by petty pilferings from the iron-works and wood-yards and by
+street jobs.
+
+In this place we combined our carpenters' shop with Day-school,
+Night-school, Reading-room, and Lodging-house, and exerted thus a
+variety of influences over the "Arabs," which soon began to reform and
+civilize them. Here we had no difficulties, and made a steady progress
+as we had done everywhere else.
+
+At present, some gentle female teachers guide the Industrial School. We
+have dropped the carpentering, as what the boys need is the habit of
+industry and a primary school-training more than a trade; and we have
+found that a refined woman can influence these rough little vagabonds
+even more than a man.
+
+Subsequently, another school was founded in the quarter from which we
+removed this, and is now held in East Thirty-fourth Street.
+
+One of the benefactions which we hope for in the future is the erection
+of a suitable building for a Lodging-house, Reading-room, Day-school,
+and Mission, in the miserable quarter on East River, near Thirty-fourth
+Street.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                       NEW METHODS OF TEACHING.
+
+A lady of high culture and position, who felt peculiarly the
+responsibilities of the fortunate toward the unfortunate, conceived the
+idea of doing something to elevate the condition of the destitute
+classes in the quarter of the city between the East River and Avenue B.
+She accordingly made the proposition to us of an Industrial School in
+that neighborhood.
+
+We gladly accepted, and soon secured a room, and gathered a goodly
+company of poor children, mostly Germans. Fortunately for our
+enterprise, we chanced on a teacher of singular ability and earnestness
+of purpose, a graduate of the best Normal School in the country, the
+Oswego Training School, and thoroughly versed in the "Object
+System"--Miss Jane Andrews.
+
+The founder of our school proved as earnest in carrying out, as she had
+been generous in forming, her benevolent plan.
+
+She took part herself, several times each week, in teaching the
+children, and was indefatigable in promoting their pleasures, as well as
+aiding their instruction. For many years now, this kind friend of the
+poor has supported this school and labored among its children. They all
+know and love her, and her memory will not die among them.
+
+The great peculiarity of this school has now been adapted in the other
+Industrial Schools, under the name of the "Object System of Teaching"--a
+method which has proved so singularly successful with the children of
+the poor, that I shall describe it somewhat at length.
+
+                          THE OBJECT SYSTEM.
+
+"I began with children," says Pestalozzi, "as nature does with savages,
+first bringing an image before their eyes, and then seeking a word to
+express the perception to which it gives rise." This statement of the
+great reformer of education expresses the essential principle of the
+Object System. The child's mind grasps first things rather than names;
+it deals with objects before words; it takes a thing as a whole rather
+than in parts. Its perceptive and observing faculties are those first
+awakened, and should be the first used in education; reflection,
+analysis, and comparison must come afterward. The vice of the former
+systems of education has been, that words have so much taken in the
+child's intellect the place of things, and its knowledge has become so
+often a mere routine, or a mechanical memorizing of names. The scholar
+was not taught to look beneath words, and to learn the precise thing
+which the word symbolized. He was trained to repeat like a machine. He
+did not observe closely, he had not been educated to apply his own
+faculties, and therefore he could not think afterward. The old system
+reversed the natural order. It began with what is the ripest fruit of
+the mature intellect-definitions, or the learning of rules and
+statements of principles, and went on later to observing facts and
+applying principles. It analyzed in the beginning, and only later in the
+course regarded things each as a whole.
+
+The consequence was, that children were months and years in taking the
+first steps in education--such as learning to read--because they had
+begun wrong. They had no accurate habits of observation, and, as a
+natural result, soon fell into loose habits of thinking. What they knew
+they knew vaguely. When their acquirements were tested they were found
+valueless. The simplest principles of mathematics were almost unknown to
+them, because they had learned the science by rote, and had never
+exercised their minds on it. They could apply none of them. Algebra,
+instead of being an implement, was of no more practical use to them than
+Sanscrit would be. Geometry was as abstract as metaphysics. They had
+never learned it by solid figures, or studied it intelligently. Grammar
+was a memorized collection of dry abstract rules and examples. Natural
+history was only a catalogue, and geography a dictionary learned by
+heart.
+
+Our manufacturers, who had occasion in former years, to employ these
+youths from our Public Schools, found them utterly incompetent for using
+their faculties on practical subjects. Nor did they go forth with minds
+expanded, and ready to receive the germs of knowledge which might be, as
+it were, floating in the atmosphere. Their faculties had not been
+aroused.
+
+The "Object System" attempts to lay down the principles which have been
+tested in primary education, in the form of a Science; so that the
+teacher not gifted with the genius of invention and the talent for
+conveying knowledge shall be able to awaken and train the child's
+intellect as if he were.
+
+Its first principle is to exercise the senses, but never during any long
+period at once. The play of the children is so contrived as to employ
+their sense of touch, of weight, and of harmony. Colors are placed,
+before them, and they are trained in distinguishing the different
+delicate shades--in the recognition of which children are singularly
+deficient. Numbers are taught by objects, such as small beans or
+marbles, and then when numerals are learned, regular tables of addition
+and subtraction are written on the board by the teacher at the dictation
+of the scholar.
+
+The great step in all education is the learning the use of that
+wonderful vehicle and symbol of human thought, the printed word.
+
+Here the object system has made the greatest advance. The English
+language has the unfortunate peculiarity of a great many sounds to each
+vowel, and of an utter want of connection between the name and the sound
+of the letter. No mature mind can easily appreciate the dark and
+mysterious gulf which, to the infant's view, separates the learning the
+letters and reading. The two seem to be utterly different acquirements.
+The new methods escape the difficulty in part by not teaching the names,
+but the sounds, of the letters first, and then leading the child to put
+his sounds together in the form of a word, and next to print the word on
+the black-board, the teacher calling on the scholar to find a similar
+one in a card or book. By this ingenious device, the modern infant,
+instead of being whipped into reading, is beguiled into it pleasantly
+and imperceptibly, and makes his progress by a philosophical law. He
+reads before he knows it. But here the obstacle arises that each vowel,
+printed in the same type, has so many sounds. One ingenious teacher. Dr.
+Leigh, obviates this by printing on his charts each vowel-sound in a
+slightly different form, and giving the silent letters in hair-lines.
+The objection here might be that the scholar learns a type different
+from that in common use. Still, the deviation from the ordinary alphabet
+is so slight as probably not to confuse any young mind, and the learner
+can go on by a philosophical classification of sounds. Other teachers
+indicate the different vowel-sounds by accents.
+
+One well-known writer on the "Object System," Mr. Caulkins, seems to
+approve of what we are inclined to consider even more philosophical
+still--the learning the word first, and the letters and spelling
+afterward.
+
+Most children in cultivated families learn to read in this way. The word
+is a symbol of thought--a thing in itself--first, perhaps, connected
+with a picture of the object placed at its side, but afterward becoming
+phonetic, representing arbitrarily any object by its sound. Then other
+words are learned--not separately, but in association, as one learns a
+foreign language. Farther on, the pupil analyzes, spells, considers each
+letter, and notes each part of speech.
+
+An objection may occur here, that the habit of correct and careful
+spelling will not be so well gained by this method as by the old.
+
+Mr. Caulkins's remarks on this topic in his Manual on "Object Lessons"
+are so sensible that we quote them _in extenso:--_
+
+                          THE A B C METHOD.
+
+This old, long, and tedious way consists in teaching, first, the name of
+each of the twenty-six letters, then in combining these into unmeaning
+syllables of 'two letters,' 'three letters,' and, finally, into words of
+'two syllables' and 'three syllables.' Very little regard is had to the
+meaning of the words. Indeed, it seems as if those who attempt to teach
+reading by this method supposed that the chief object should be to make
+their pupils fluent in oral spelling; and it ends in spelling, usually,
+since children thus taught go on spelling out their words through all
+the reading lessons, and seldom become intelligent readers. They give
+their attention to the words, instead of the ideas intended to be
+represented by them. When the child has succeeded in learning the names
+of the twenty-six letters, he has gained no knowledge of their real use
+as representatives of sounds, and, consequently, little ability in
+determining how to pronounce a new word from naming its letters.
+Besides, the names of the letters constantly mislead him when formed
+into words.
+
+"He may have made the acquaintance of each of the twenty-six individual
+letters, so as to recognize their faces and be able to call them by name
+singly; but when these same letters change places with their fellows, as
+they are grouped into different words, he is frequently unable to
+address many of them in a proper manner, or to determine what duties
+they perform in their different places.
+
+"Again, the words that are learned by naming over the letters which
+compose them seldom represent any ideas to the young learner; indeed,
+too many of the words learned by this method are only meaningless
+monosyllables. The children begin to read without understanding what
+they read, and thus is laid the foundation for the mechanical,
+unintelligible reading which characterizes most of that heard in schools
+where the A B C method is used. This plan is in violation of fundamental
+laws of teaching; it attempts to compel the child to do two things at
+the same time, and to do both in an unnatural manner, viz., to learn
+reading and spelling simultaneously, and reading through spelling.
+Reading has to deal with sounds and signs of thought.
+
+"Spelling rests on the habit of the eye, which is best acquired as the
+result of reading. In attempting to teach reading through spelling, the
+effort of the pupil in trying to find out the word by naming the letters
+that compose it distracts the attention from the thought intended to be
+represented by it; the mind becomes chiefly absorbed with spelling
+instead of reading. When properly taught, reading furnishes natural
+faculties for teaching spelling; but spelling does not furnish a
+suitable means for teaching reading. Thus it will be seen that the usual
+plans for teaching reading by the A B C method compel children to do
+that for which their minds are not fitted, and thus cause a loss of
+power by restraining them from attending to the thoughts represented by
+the words, and to other things which would greatly promote their
+development. The results are that a love for reading is not enkindled,
+good readers are not produced. The few cases in which the results are
+different owe both the love for reading and the ability in this art to
+other causes.
+
+"The pupils learned to love reading, and became able to read well, in
+spite of poor teaching during their first lessons. There is consolation
+in believing that this method, which produced so many halting, stumbling
+readers, is now abandoned by all good teachers of reading. May the
+number of such teachers be greatly increased.
+
+                 *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"The 'word method' begins at once with teaching the words in a manner
+similar to that by which children learn to distinguish one object from
+another, and learn the names. It proposes to teach words as the signs of
+things, acts, and qualities, etc. It does not propose to teach children
+the alphabet, but to leave them to learn this after they have become
+familiar with enough words to commence reading."
+
+The Object System teaches geography very ingeniously. The pupil begins
+by getting into his mind the idea of a map. This is by no means so
+simple an idea as might be supposed, as witness the impossibility almost
+of making a savage understand it. The child is first told to point to
+the different points of the compass; then he marks them down on a
+blackboard; next he draws a plan of the room, and each scholar attempts
+to locate an object on the plan, and is corrected by the school, if
+wrong. Next comes a plan of the district or town; then a globe is shown,
+and the idea of position on the globe given, and of the outlines of
+different countries. Soon the pupil learns to draw maps on the board,
+and to place rivers, bays, lakes, and oceans. The book-questions now to
+be presented will not be on purely political geography or merely
+arbitrary lists of names. The child is taken on imaginary journeys up
+rivers, over mountains, by railroads, and must describe from the lesson
+he has learned the different productions, the animals, the character of
+the scenery, the vegetation, and the occupations of the people. Thus
+geography becomes a kind of natural science, deeply interesting to the
+pupil, and touching his imagination. Certain dry geographical names are
+forever after associated in his mind with certain animals and plants and
+a peculiar scenery.
+
+Natural history is also taught in this system, but not by the usual dry
+method. The teacher brings in a potato, for instance, and carries the
+pupil along by questions through all its growth and development. Or she
+takes flowers, or leaves, or seeds, and stamps the most important
+phenomena about them on the scholar's mind by an objective lesson.
+Prints of animals are presented, and the teacher begins at the lowest
+orders, and rises up in regular gradation, questioning the children as
+to the uses and purposes of every feature and limb. They work out their
+own natural philosophy. They observe, and then reason; and what they
+learn is learned in philosophical order, and imprinted by their own
+efforts on their memories. It is astonishing how much, in these simple
+methods, may be learned in natural science by very young children; and
+what nutritive but simple food may be supplied to their minds for all
+future years.
+
+From lessons in science thus given, the teacher rises easily to lessons
+of morality and religion. Nothing even in moral teaching impresses a
+child's mind like pictures, stories, or parables, or some form of
+"object-teaching." The modern charts and books are extremely ingenious
+in giving religious lessons through the senses.
+
+The beginning of the higher mathematics may be taught children perfectly
+well under this method. Straight lines and angles are drawn, or
+constructed with little sticks, and named, and various figures thus
+formed. With blocks, the different geometrical figures are constructed
+and named--all being finished by the pupils themselves. On the
+blackboard certain lines are given, and with them "inventive drawing"
+goes on under the pupil's own suggestion.
+
+Weights and measures are learned by practical illustrations with real
+objects, and are thus not easily forgotten.
+
+Definition is very agreeably taught by the teacher's producing some
+object, say, an apple, and then making each scholar describe some
+quality of it, in taste, color, form, or material, and then write this
+word on the board. Very difficult adjectives, such as "opaque," or
+"pungent," or "translucent," or "aromatic," may thus be learned, besides
+all the simpler, and learned permanently.
+
+The old bugbear to children, spelling, is by no means so terrible under
+these methods. The teacher writes two initial consonants, say, "th," and
+each scholar makes a new word with them, and it is written on the board;
+or a terminal consonant is given, or certain combinations of letters are
+written down--say, _ough,_ in "though" and words of corresponding sound
+must be written underneath, or the different sounds of each vowel must
+be illustrated by the scholar, and the varying sounds of consonants, and
+so on endlessly--spelling becoming a perfect amusement, and, at the same
+time, training the pupil in many delicate shades of sound, and in
+analyzing and remembering words.
+
+Grammar is conveyed, not by that farce in teaching, and that cross to
+all children, grammatical rules, which are, in fact, the expressions of
+the final fruit of knowledge, but the teacher writes incorrectly on the
+blackboard, both in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and the children
+must correct this; thus learning from the senses and usage, instead of
+from abstract rules. Reading is given as nearly as possible in
+conversational tones, and the old loud, mechanical sing-song is
+forbidden.
+
+The principle most insisted on in all this system is, that the child
+should teach himself as far as possible; that his faculties should do
+the work, and not the teacher's; and the dull and slow pupil is
+especially to be led on and encouraged. But, as might be supposed, the
+teacher's task, under the object method, is no sinecure. She can no
+longer slip along the groove of mechanical teaching. She must be
+wide-awake, inventive, constantly on the _qui vive_ to stir up her
+pupils' minds. The droning over lessons, and letting children repeat,
+parrot-like, long lists of words, is not for her. She must be always
+seeking out some new thing and making her pupils observe and think for
+themselves. Her duty is a hard one. But this is the only true teaching;
+and we trust that no Primary School in New York will be without a
+well-trained "Object-teacher."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                  THE LITTLE ITALIAN ORGAN-GRINDERS.
+
+Among the various rounds I was in the habit of making in the poorest
+quarters, was one through the Italian quarter of the "Five Points."
+Here, in large tenement-houses, were packed hundreds of poor Italians,
+mostly engaged in carrying through the city and country "the everlasting
+hand-organ," or selling statuettes. In the same room I would find
+monkeys, children, men and women, with organs and plaster-casts, all
+huddled together; but the women contriving still, in the crowded rooms,
+to roll their dirty macaroni, and all talking excitedly; a bedlam of
+sounds, and a combination of odors from garlic, monkeys, and most dirty
+human persons. They were, without exception, the dirtiest population I
+had met with. The children I saw every day in the streets, following
+organs, blackening boots, selling flowers, sweeping walks, or carrying
+ponderous harps for old ruffians. So degraded was their type, and
+probably so mingled in North Italy with ancient Celtic blood, that their
+faces could hardly be distinguished from those of Irish poor
+children--an occasional liquid dark eye only betraying their
+nationality.
+
+I felt convinced that something could be done for them. Owing to their
+ignorance of our language and their street-trades, they never attended
+school, and seldom any religious service, and seemed growing up only for
+these wretched occupations. Some of the little ones suffered severely
+from being indentured by their parents in Italy to a "Bureau" in Paris,
+which sent them out over the world with their _"padrone,"_ or master,
+usually a villainous-looking individual with an enormous harp. The lad
+would be frequently sent forth by his _padrone,_ late at night, to
+excite the compassion of our citizens, and play the harp. I used to meet
+these boys sometimes on winter-nights half-frozen and stiff with cold.
+
+The bright eyes among these children showed that there was mind in them;
+and the true remedy for their low estate seemed to be our old one, a
+School.
+
+Rev. Dr. Hawks, at this time, brought to my attention a very intelligent
+Italian gentleman of education, a Protestant and patriot, who had taken
+refuge here-Signor A. E. Cerqua. I will let him tell his own story of
+the formation and success of the School:
+
+            THE ITALIAN SCHOOL--THE FIVE POINTS SETTLEMENT.
+
+"Coming up Chatham Street and bending your course to the left, you turn
+into Baxter Street, a dark, damp, muddy street, forming one of the Five
+Points. On each side of the way are stores of old clothes and
+heterogeneous articles, kept by Polish and German Jews. Numerous
+'Unredeemed Goods for Sale,' in the shape of coats, vests, and other
+unmentionable garments, are suspended on wooden stands in front of the
+doorways. There are also junk-stores, rags, bones, and old metal depots,
+and two Italian groceries, one opposite the other. Advancing farther,
+you reach the centre of the Five Points, synonymous of whatever is
+degraded and degrading, loathsome and criminal. Hero Park Street runs
+parallel to Chatham Street and crosses Baxter Street at right angles,
+thus forming four of the Five Points. The fifth point is formed by the
+junction of Worth Street, leading from this common centre in a northerly
+direction. This locality is very dimly lighted, and the few lamps
+scattered around only add to the repulsive nature of the place. The
+pestiferous exhalations of the filthy streets, and not less filthy
+shanties, inhabited by the lowest and most disreputable characters, are
+disgusting beyond any description. Scattered over this neighborhood,
+densely settled by the most depraved classes of all nationalities, there
+lived, and still live, some fifteen hundred of the poorest class of
+Italians, who traditionally cling to that locality. They are generally
+from the Ligurian coasts, which are over-populated. When the farms
+require working, the inhabitants usually have something to do; but, at
+some seasons, want of employment compels them to turn elsewhere. Men,
+women, and lads went in ordinary times to the largest cities of Northern
+Italy for temporary occupation, leaving behind their children to the
+care of relatives or acquaintances, who, owing to their business,
+inability, or carelessness, neglected in most cases to exercise over
+them parental duties. When the hand-organ came into vogue, they found it
+the easiest way to employ their unoccupied time. Seeing, afterward, that
+they could realize more by the organ than by the shovel, they went
+grinding all the year, and spread all over Italy at first, then over
+Europe and America. Some of the children left were sent for, while
+others were hired out to those who proposed a grinding-tour to America.
+Those who arrived here first having done well, others followed, and the
+tide of the organ-grinding emigration set in on a gradual rise. The
+failure of the Revolutionary movements of 1848 and 1849 having
+impoverished, to a greater or smaller extent, the several Italian
+provinces, gave a great impetus to this emigration, and it was not long
+before the Five Points were crowded to overflowing. Accustomed as they
+were to agricultural pursuits and out of the reach of better social
+influences, and totally ignorant of the language, they formed a separate
+colony, associating only with those of their own country in the Five
+Points. Had they displayed the vices or criminal inclinations which
+prevail to a deplorable extent among the low classes of other
+nationalities, they would soon have been brought to public notice and
+taken care of by our benevolent and religious societies; but they cannot
+be reproached with intoxication, prostitution, quarreling, stealing,
+etc; and thus, escaping the unenviable notoriety of the criminal, they
+fell into a privacy that deprived them of the advantages of American
+benevolence; and there is no instance of any visitor having ever been
+appointed to explore this fruitful field of operation.
+
+                        OPENING OF THE SCHOOL.
+
+"Early in December, 1855, the writer, with Mr. Brace, visited several
+families. Our reception was not such as to promise success, although,
+considering their distrustful and suspicious disposition, consequent
+upon their isolated existence, they did not treat us disrespectfully.
+Having thus prepared and informed them, on the evening of the tenth of
+the same month we opened our School in a room kindly furnished by Rev.
+Mr. Pease, on the north side of the Five Points' square.
+
+"On the first night of our operation we had an attendance of ten boys,
+six girls, seven young men, four young women, two men, and one woman
+(thirty in all), attracted, as may be evident by the age of the
+attendants, more by the novelty of the undertaking than by any definite
+purpose. Of that number, only two could read a little in Italian--not
+one in English; hence I formed a single class of the whole in the
+alphabet.
+
+"By more frequent visiting, the attendance was, after a little while,
+nearly doubled; but toward spring it dwindled to such an insignificant
+number, that it was deemed expedient to close the school.
+
+"Instead of being deterred by this discouraging feature, we determined
+to examine the field more carefully, and endeavor to discover the
+immediate cause of the unexpected check our hopes had experienced.
+Proper exertions in visiting, and cautious and timely investigations,
+soon brought out the fact that some absurd rumors had been circulated
+among them to the effect that our purpose was to turn them away from
+their own church, alleging, as conclusive evidence, that our school-room
+was used for Sunday religious meetings. These mischievous insinuations
+called for the utmost prudent activity on our part, for, although these
+people are not fanatics in religion, they, at that time, still clung
+with tenacity to the infallibility of their priest. I say at that time,
+because the unnatural and unchristian attitude assumed since by their
+spiritual guides toward Italy has forced even the uneducated class into
+a certain use of comparative rational freedom, and, beyond the
+spiritual, they will not follow their religious leaders. Meeting with
+only partial success by persuasion, I then promised shoes and clothing
+to pupils who would attend for three months consecutively; and having
+thus prepared the way, and without ever failing to visit the most
+unapproachable, it was deemed advisable to reopen the School in
+November, 1856. The attendance increased by some thirty, with a minor
+sprinkling of men and women. Shoes and clothes were distributed in
+March, but the number soon after commenced diminishing, until June,
+1857, when the School, as in the previous year, had to be closed for a
+second time. Two great advantages had, however, been developed. Their
+ready acceptance of shoes and clothes given and distributed in our room
+was a powerful argument in my hands to answer their objection to the
+room; and among the floating attendance I had noticed a score or so of
+regular pupils upon whom I concentrated my best attention and every
+possible encouragement, in the conviction that the result of my efforts
+in that direction would prove efficacious to attract others. And, in
+fact, when the improvement of these twenty attendants became known, it
+was found comparatively easy to persuade others to school.
+
+"It had now become evident to me that, with adequate exertions and
+inducements, the School could be established on a permanent and working
+order; and on the following September we recommenced operations with
+better promise. But a narrow-minded opposition partially marred our
+success this year. An Italian priest, called Rebiccio, from the
+confessional and from the pulpit, flung ferocious anathemas at all who
+permitted their children to attend our School. He even went from house
+to house to use his influence in the same direction. I sent a deputation
+of my oldest scholars to remonstrate with him and correct his
+misapprehensions by assuring him that we had no sectarian teachings.
+These same boys I took with me in visiting a number of the most
+superstitious families, and for the same purpose, but in both cases of
+no avail; only, instead of justifying myself, I found that these boys
+were equally suspected of complicity, some even assuming that they had
+already been converted. I felt disheartened, not because I did not hope
+to overcome all obstacles by patience, prudence, and perseverance, but
+because I could scarcely realize the actual occurrence of such an
+unflinching, unprincipled, and unjust persecution, or, what was still
+worse, of such credulous stupidity as was shown by the very people we
+intended to elevate.
+
+Prompted by these feelings, I then wrote a letter to that worthy priest,
+inviting him to assist me in teaching, to take my place, to teach these
+poor children himself--in short, to do what he pleased, provided they
+were furnished with proper means to better their condition. The letter
+was couched in the most unexceptionable terms, and closed by entreating
+him to desist from his unjust attacks, and not to compel me to appeal to
+the public through the dally press, the last resort in this free
+country. Discouraged by the suspicious reception I met with from the
+majority of these people, and by the fruitless result of my aforesaid
+letter, I was then preparing a statement for the newspapers, when the
+whole opposition scheme exploded. Under the false pretext that he was
+going to hire a building to open a school for these children, in
+connection with a church, which he proposed also to build for them, this
+worthy priest had collected considerable money in the Five Points, when
+all at once he disappeared, and it was only after months that he was
+heard of in affluent circumstances in Italy. A natural and desirable
+reaction then took place among our people, and since then the School has
+been yearly in operation for eleven months, and with gradual prosperity.
+In June, 1866, desiring to extend our work and absorb all children
+exposed to the bad influences and examples of the streets that attended
+no day-school, we added also successfully a day session, so that now,
+with two hundred and twenty-eight (228) names on our books since October
+1, 1867, we have a daily average of sixty-five (65), and one hundred and
+eighty-six (186) for day and evening sessions respectively. By these
+figures it will be seen that, while in other schools the proportion of
+the average to the names entered is, at the best, seventy-five per
+cent., nearly all our pupils on the roll-book attend regularly one of
+the two, and several both sessions. The attendants vary from five to
+twenty-two years of age, averaging about nine and a half. A little less
+than one-half of the whole are females.
+
+                          MENTAL IMPROVEMENT.
+
+"Whoever has not associated with this class of Italians before our
+School was opened cannot form an adequate idea of the result attained
+both in moral and mental improvement. Out of the whole number entered
+since the commencement of operations, say, in round numbers, eight
+hundred and fifty (850), not over forty had a little and imperfect
+knowledge of reading the Italian, and only about ten had a slight
+acquaintance with the English. My first endeavors were directed to
+induce them to attend day-schools, and during the first three years over
+twenty became pupils of Public Schools. Later on, this number received
+accessions, amounting at one time to about fifty.
+
+"Our course of study comprises the gradual series of English reading,
+spelling, and writing adopted in most of the Public Schools; geography,
+arithmetic, history, and grammar. The class in the last two branches
+this year is very small, as the students thereof, being mostly adults,
+cannot well attend regularly.
+
+"Some twelve years ago, and for a time after, there were only two among
+them who had some knowledge of letters, and on them the whole colony had
+to depend for writing and reading letters in Italian and interpreting in
+English, on payment of charges varying from twenty-five to fifty cents.
+On becoming acquainted with this fact, I resolved upon teaching also the
+Italian to the most advanced in the English, which addition met with
+general favor, for, a year after, the pupils who could and did
+gratuitously perform the offices of the two literati increased to such
+an extent that one was usually found within each family or a circle of
+relatives. The time being limited, these studies are, of course, taught
+alternately, and the progress therein is not as speedy as would be
+desirable; but, everything considered, they show remarkable
+intelligence, aptitude, and willingness to learn. I might quote from
+reports of the principal press of this city on our last examination;
+but, as the School is free and always open to visitors, I will content
+myself with inviting our friends to look into the subject for
+themselves.
+
+How gratifying when I enter the School to see the oldest of the
+attendants, but a few years ago illiterate and totally ignorant of
+everything around them, reading papers, and quoting, discriminating, and
+discussing the topics of the day, and forming a more or less correct
+idea of the state of things in the land of their adoption and in other
+parts of the world! Gratifying, indeed, to see these children, but a few
+years ago without any idea of patriotism, without any other principle to
+guide their judgment and actions than the natural impulses of a degraded
+selfishness, exchange intelligent views upon the moral standing and
+tendency of the political parties in this and in their native country!
+Many times I have been astonished at the extensive information and sound
+opinions they display in commenting upon contemporaneous events. The
+
+                          MORAL IMPROVEMENT.
+
+which has been accomplished is still more extensive and sensible. At
+first sight the visitor is enabled to draw a line between old and new
+pupils by noticing the intelligent and clean appearance, quick
+perception, and admirable behavior of the former, and the dull,
+downcast, rough, and thoughtless countenances of the latter. It is
+surprising that all these children were accustomed to wash their faces
+only on Sundays, and it takes even now some time to induce them to do it
+daily. Still, it is undeniable that, as a class, they possess an earnest
+appreciation of good habits, only it is, to say so, an abstract idea as
+yet with them, and needs development.
+
+"When the School opened, and for some time after, the attendance was
+generally composed of organ-grinders and beggars, which vocations they
+indifferently acknowledged to follow, whenever asked, by analogous
+gestures. To redeem them from those ignoble vocations was, in my
+opinion, of paramount importance, and to that end I devoted part of my
+time in visiting their parents, to impress them with a sense of
+self-respect and human dignity, and talk them into the apprenticing into
+trades their offspring. As, however, these boys brought home from fifty
+cents to a dollar per day, it was quite a difficult task to persuade
+them to give up this source of income for comparatively nominal wages.
+With guardians and relatives my efforts remained entirely fruitless. I
+then concluded that if we could show them practically that trades in the
+end would pay better, it would become easy to accomplish our purpose. I
+concentrated, therefore, my exertions on three families, the most
+approachable, and succeeded. One consented to place a boy of fourteen in
+the Printing Department of the American Tract Society; another soon
+followed in the same line: the third, a boy of thirteen, entered a
+machine-shop. All three did very well, and at the end of two years they
+were earning five and six dollars per week. Their success caused a moral
+revolution, and had I been able to place all, not one would at this day
+be blacking boots, which many do for want of better employment. It is a
+fact that speaks very highly of these Italians, that in every instance,
+whenever one has been employed, Italians are preferred. I have seen
+certificates given by manufacturers to some of them, speaking
+enthusiastically of their honesty, industry, and faithfulness. There are
+also instances of extraordinary interest taken by employers in their
+behalf, and in no case has any ever been discharged for any other reason
+than for want of work. A large number of girls also find occupation in
+artificial flowers and confectionery. All now look with scorn upon their
+former vocations, and the term '_pianist_' is ironically applied to
+newly, landed organ-grinders. Now it is a fact that can stand the
+strictest scrutiny, that _all_ those who follow decent vocations or
+attend day-schools, public or otherwise, either are or have been our
+regular attendants for years and that _all grinders, beggars,_ and
+_vagrants,_ in general, are not and have not, attended at all, or at
+most a few weeks, attracted only by the hope of getting shoes or
+clothes.
+
+"Without mentioning the many present pupils who are engaged in honorable
+pursuits, I can readily name about fifty old attendants who have left
+school, now employed in this or other States as printers, confectioners,
+jewelers, shoemakers, machinists, carpenters, waiters, carvers, and
+farm-hands. To these must be added two who keep and own a neat
+confectionery and ice-cream saloon in Grand Street; a shoemaker in
+business for himself; another, one of the first three above-mentioned, a
+foreman in the very machine-shop in which he served as an apprentice;
+one a patented machinist in a steam chocolate manufactory; and, lastly,
+one who for the last three years has been foreman in a wholesale
+confectionery. I omit to mention those who have gone back to Italy and
+are doing well. As a rule, they all remember with gratitude their
+friends, to whose efforts and liberality they acknowledge they owe their
+present position. From every State in which they settle we receive now
+and then encouraging news from some boy; and not long ago we heard, for
+the second time, from a boy in Italy, who, after having mentioned that
+he was studying Latin, etc., gives vent to his feelings by conveying his
+most hearty thanks to all the teachers, mentioning them one by one--to
+Mr. Brace, to Mr. Macy, and, not remembering the name of our good
+friend, John C. Havemeyer, Esq., he adds, "also to that kind gentleman
+who has an office at No. 175 Pearl Street." His letter is very touching,
+and reveals noble feeling and mind.
+
+"Nor are parents less grateful and ready to acknowledge the good of
+American benevolence. I was conversing one evening with a widow woman,
+while her boy was writing to her father in Italy, and called her
+attention to the advantage her son had derived from our School, adding
+that I still remembered how indifferently she received at first my
+advices. She felt a little mortified and replied: '_Caro Maestro_ (Dear
+Teacher), having never received any good from anybody, but plenty of
+harm, we could not believe that all at once we had become worthy of so
+much kindness. We used to have hard treatment at the hand of everybody,
+had no friends; even our countrymen in better circumstances despised us,
+and, to tell you the truth, we had made up our mind that we would find
+charity only in the other world.'
+
+                              VISITING.
+
+"I will not attempt to give an idea of the difficulty attending visiting
+in the Five Points, nor can I dwell at length on the extensive suffering
+and wretchedness that have fallen under my observation. Notwithstanding
+my comparative familiarity with those places, I cannot dispense yet with
+a guide and a light, and, in many instances, two of both. The rickety
+shanties, with crumbling stairs and broken steps, undergo as many
+changes in the interior as may be suggested by the wants of the
+successive inmates. The rooms have been partitioned and sub-partitioned
+a good number of times, and now and then I have found even part of the
+hall, and the whole thereof on top floors, taken in by new partitions.
+Small wooden rear buildings are mostly tenanted entirely by Italians,
+but in large tenement-houses there is generally found a good Irish or
+Jewish mingling. Visiting, in the latter case, is often attended by most
+unpleasant occurrences, owing to intoxicated and troublesome persons
+that are usually found in the stairs and halls. But to relate some of my
+experience:
+
+"On Christmas-day (1866) a woman with five children--the oldest three
+our pupils--coming from church, fell, breaking her arm and giving
+premature birth to a sixth. Hearing of this sad case, I took a few yards
+of red flannel and went to see her. I found the poor woman in the
+deepest agony and almost frantic from suffering. Her husband kept a
+fruit-stand in Nassau Street, but this accident, as she expressed it,
+had entirely stupified him, and she suffered to a great extent, also,
+morally, from the hopeless condition of her young family. The stove was
+as warm (or cold) as every piece of furniture in the room, and the poor
+patient and the two smallest children had to manage to keep warm by
+lying on the same bed, with a pile of old clothes and carpets over them.
+Presently, however, the three elder children came in, half-frozen and
+barefooted, scarcely able to talk, and discharged near the store the
+contents of their aprons and bags, the result of their coal-picking
+tour. Leaving to their father the care of reviving the fire, they, as of
+a common consent, started for a closet, and drawing out a good-sized tin
+pan full of boiled corn-meal, commenced a furious onslaught thereon. The
+outer room measured some twelve by fourteen feet, and had no beds, but
+its floor afforded sleeping accommodations to the five children. The
+inner room was scarcely large enough to admit a middle-sized bedstead
+used by the parents. When I left, the young ones had taken their places
+for the night, and the man, having made a good fire, proceeded to assort
+a barrel of apples, and his wife said it was the fourth time '_that
+stupid man had gone through the same process without having done
+anything._'
+
+"Among guardians, especially, the custom was prevalent of fixing the
+amount the boy or girl had to bring home in the evening. But not seldom
+fathers were prompted by avarice to act still more cruelly against their
+own offspring, and while the former punished the shortcomings of their
+wards by furnishing them with meals of microscopic proportions, the
+latter, on the presumption, I suppose, of paternal right, went so far as
+to whip and even expel from home the son or sons who failed to come up
+to their greedy expectations. At present, however, such cases are almost
+unknown, owing to the sense of independence felt by the growing
+generation and to our influence on the parents. But as late as three
+years ago I had observed that a boy of twelve, who was very anxious to
+learn, now and then was absent. One evening I called on him for
+explanations, and he related that he was _'taxed'_ for eighty cents a
+day, and every cent short of that amount was balanced by a proportionate
+dose of cowhiding on his bare body. He entreated me most earnestly not
+to say a word to his father on the subject, otherwise he would fare
+still worse. Whenever, therefore, he failed to earn the eighty cents by
+his boot-blacking vocation, he would not go home. This unnatural father
+did not stop here; he did not care in the least how long his son would
+remain out sleeping under market-stands and in newspaper rooms, but he
+insisted on the boy paying over to him, when he would return, at the
+rate of eighty cents per day for all the time of his absence, without
+any allowance for food, etc.
+
+"The case was really heart-rending, especially as the boy was developing
+fine moral and intellectual qualities, and had to be treated with
+uncommon prudence. At first I told the boy to call on me for whatever he
+was short, and he did so on two occasions; but somehow or other the
+transaction was reported to the father, who, rather than desist from his
+pretension, as any other man would certainly have done, increased the
+_tax_ to one dollar, with the remark that _'it would make no difference
+to the teacher, twenty cents, more or less.'_ The very same night this
+happened, seeing the impossibility of curing this man in any other way,
+I paid him a visit, which seemed to have surprised him to a great
+extent. I spoke to him calmly but determinedly, as I never had occasion
+to do before, but without eliciting any answer, and I left him with the
+assurance that if he did not desist at once from the vile abuse of
+parental authority I would have him arrested. After a few days he moved
+to Laurens street, and in about six months from this occurrence
+returned, with the whole family, to Italy. I never could learn anything
+afterward concerning his interesting son.
+
+"The filth prevalent in some of their abodes is really appalling, and in
+some cases incredible. In ---- Baxter Street there is a bedroom, nine by
+twelve feet, occupied by four children and their parents. The door,
+hindered by the bed behind it, opens scarcely enough to give admittance
+to a person of ordinary size. At the foot of the bed there is, and was,
+and will be as long as they stay therein, a red-hot stove, between which
+and the window stands an old chest; opposite the stove a table. The
+fetid air inside I would have thought to be beyond human endurance. The
+woman, at my request, opened the window, remarking 'that she did not see
+the use of burning coal inside, if the freezing air was to be permitted
+to come in freely.' The children sleep on the floor; that is to say, one
+nearly under the bed, another under the table, a third by the stove, and
+the fourth is at liberty to roll over any of her sisters. I could not
+help noticing an old greasy piece of print, of no distinguishable color,
+hanging around the bed, and performing, as I learned with satisfaction,
+the function of a curtain to keep out of view its occupants.
+
+"During the last ten years some fifteen of our girls, and nearly as many
+boys, married--mostly, I ought to say, intermarried--and as the greater
+portion of them have children, say from four to eight years of age, in
+our school, I visit also occasionally among them, the new generation.
+And how different in their habits of cleanliness! Floors, walls,
+ceiling, windows, everything faultlessly clean, their persons neat, so
+that their rooms are really an oasis in that desert called
+tenement-houses; and the cordial civility they extend to me carries
+still farther the comparison by making me realize in their apartments,
+after a visiting tour at the Five Points, all the satisfaction the
+traveler derives by the fertile spot after a fatiguing journey across
+the burning sand.
+
+"I will omit many sad scenes witnessed at the death-bed of several of
+our pupils, it being my aim to dwell only on such facts as may convey an
+idea of the nature of the difficulties we had to overcome. But the
+monotonous scenes of suffering under its various forms are, however,
+succeeded now and then by others peculiarly exciting.
+
+"Often, of my own choice, but sometimes entreated by the pupils'
+parents, I paid visits to billiard-rooms. Those are placed in the
+back-room of groceries, of which there are three in that neighborhood,
+and have, therefore, communication with the yard. Whenever I deemed it
+necessary to go on such errands, I had to organize previously an
+expedition of ten or twelve of our oldest scholars, who, in accordance
+with my instructions, would at a signal prevent all means of egress from
+windows and doors. I would then go in from the front, and a wild rush
+for the rear would ensue; but, finding themselves surrounded, all the
+boys I was looking for, had no other choice but to follow us to school,
+escorted as deserters. Now, it is more than probable that ninety-nine
+out of one hundred of billiard-keepers in New York would not allow such
+proceedings against their interests, for our _descents_ did not
+particularly improve their profits. Still, those Italian grocers not
+only countenanced and aided my endeavors, but gave me also all the
+information I previously demanded. Little by little, by repeated
+expeditions and an occasional _peeping_ in these places before going to
+school, I succeeded in nearly breaking up their vicious habits in this
+respect, and it is only a rare occurrence that one of our boys on
+Saturday nights will go in to _look_ on a game. In corroboration of
+which success I may mention that early last winter (1867), one Saturday
+evening, the police made a regular and truly formidable descent on these
+billiard-saloons, arresting, among others, in all twenty-seven Italians,
+I believe, of whom eleven were boys from seven to fifteen. Next evening
+I had an application to interfere for their release, as it is usual for
+me to do whenever circumstances warrant it, and in looking into the
+subject carefully I found that of them only two--namely, the youngest
+and the oldest--belonged to our school, and that both had gone to buy
+groceries, and, while the grocer was weighing and wrapping the
+provisions, they had walked to the door between the store and the saloon
+to look in, and were under that circumstance arrested. Upon my
+conviction that such was really the case, I applied for and obtained
+their discharge. The other boys mostly belonged to families newly
+arrived from Italy and directed for California, to which State these
+people generally move if unable to make a living in New York.
+
+"Now I will only add that the Maestro (teacher) at the Five Points has
+become an indispensable personage among them. He is assumed to be a
+lawyer, medical doctor, theologian, astronomer, banker--everything as
+well as a teacher. A boy is arrested for throwing stones in the street;
+the Maestro is applied to and the boy is released. One has fifty dollars
+to deposit; the Maestro is consulted as to the soundness of the
+savings-banks--and so on. But, to better appreciate their feelings on
+this subject, it must be known that these poor foreigners have for a
+long while been victimized by the grossest impositions. I have heard of
+as much as one thousand dollars lost by one family, through the sharp
+practice of a man (an Italian) who, taking advantage of their ignorance
+of the English, and of their confidence, deposited and drew in his name
+the money which was intended as part payment for a farm they had bought
+in Massachusetts, and gave them to understand that the bank had failed.
+And this is one of the many cases they had related to me on the subject.
+Nor less shameful imposition they suffered at the hands of the
+"shysters" whenever some juvenile delinquent was arrested for trifles.
+They had to pay from fifty to one hundred dollars, and, what was worse,
+often without obtaining their release. In order to explain the process
+by which poor people possess such cash amounts, I must say that in
+extraordinary circumstances they help each other with the most
+disinterested and prompt liberality. Some of those who go to California,
+having borrowed the money here, remit it generally in drafts payable to
+order of lenders, who, being unknown to the bank, are refused payment.
+The Maestro then, of course, is applied to, and for the first two or
+three cases I found it hard to make them understand that I did not do it
+for money. They would insist on my receiving something for my trouble in
+procuring payment by the drawees, and one, especially, on having paid a
+draft of one hundred and sixty dollars gold, followed me for a block,
+with a coin piece in his hand, insisting that I should take it. 'My dear
+man, keep your money,' I would say; 'I am very glad to have been able to
+render you this service.' 'No, Maestro, no. Well, take _at least_ these
+five dollars' (gold). That _at least_ struck me that he must have been
+laboring under the impression that my services were worth considerably
+more, and I addressed him in that sense. In answer, he explained that an
+Italian, who has gone away from New York, charged him and others ten per
+cent, for cashing drafts to order.
+
+"In conclusion, the Maestro is called upon for every emergency;
+Questions undecided between two or more dissentient parties are referred
+to my arbitration. Family quarrels are submitted to my adjustment. It is
+no exaggeration to say that the good which could be effected by thus
+visiting among this class is immense--in fact, far beyond the
+expectation of those who might take as a basis of comparison the result
+of visiting among the low classes of other nationalities.
+
+                             OUR FRIENDS.
+
+"As the work was done in a most quiet way, our patrons were at first
+few, and for six years all Americans. After that period, the few
+distinguished Italians in this city were applied to with favorable
+result. But it was not until the end of 1868 that their co-operation
+proved efficient, and relieved considerably the Children's Aid Society
+of the pecuniary burden. Previous to that time, five or six of them,
+headed by the Italian Consul-General, Signor Anfora, visited us, to look
+into the working of the School, and, becoming satisfied that a great
+good was being accomplished, later on, at the invitation of the Trustees
+of the Society, organized themselves into a _Co-operative
+Sub-Committee,_ consisting of Prof. V. Botta, President; E. P. Fabbri,
+Treasurer; G. Albinola and V. Fabbricotti, Esqs., and Dr. G. Cecarini.
+
+The Treasurer, Signor Fabbri, with that kind and unassuming liberality
+for which he is distinguished, to his annual subscription has added
+fifty tons of coal to the most deserving, thus relieving their
+sufferings to a great extent, and establishing a powerful inducement for
+indifferent parents. The Committee also reported to the Italian
+Government what was taking place for the advantage of its destitute and
+ignorant subjects in this city, and obtained some subsidy and other
+encouragement from that quarter. At the head of the Ministerial
+Department for Foreign Affairs was, at that period. Cav. M. Cerruti, a
+gentleman of learning and most enlightened views, who has done much in
+Italy to popularize public instruction as the speediest and surest means
+of promoting the prosperity of the nation. This gentleman having lately
+been appointed Minister Plenipotentiary from his to this country,
+visited, last October, our School, and met with the hearty reception he
+deserves as one of our patrons. His visit elicited the following letter
+from the distinguished Italian statesman to Rev. C. L. Brace, Secretary
+of the Children's Aid Society:--
+
+                                   "'CLARENDON HOTEL, October 29, 1867.
+
+"'DEAR SIR--I beg leave to be allowed to express, in behalf of the
+Italian Government and nation I have the honor to represent at
+Washington, the most heartfelt thanks for the Christian and noble
+undertaking unpretentiously assumed and most successfully prosecuted by
+the Children's Aid Society for the improvement of the poor class of the
+Italian population in your city. My visit to the Italian School under
+your charge, on the 23d instant, was to me a source of high
+gratification, and convinced me that, by your efficient and humane
+exertions, hundreds of poor Italian children have been redeemed from
+vagrancy and turned into industrious and useful members of the
+community. The cleanliness, mental training, and admirable behavior of
+the one hundred and fifty pupils assembled on that occasion, impressed
+me with a deep sense of gratitude toward the friends of the Children's
+Aid Society, and to you personally, for your unsparing efforts in
+devising and forwarding such a useful institution. I can only hope that
+your Society may ever prosper and continue its charitable work in the
+vast field of its operations with that truly Christian and benevolent
+spirit which distinguishes this glorious undertaking.
+                                          "'Believe me, dear sir,
+                                          "'Yours respectfully,
+                                              [Signed]"'MARCEL CERRUTI,
+                  "'Minister Plenipotentiary from Italy at Washington.'
+
+                           GENERAL REMARKS.
+
+"For brevity's sake I had to omit mentioning incidents which speak very
+highly of our pupils. Nor have I space to describe the many cases of
+articles and money found by them and handed to me for investigation as
+to the rightful owner; and their spontaneous liberality and hearty
+contributions to the Garibaldi Fund in 1859, to the New York Sanitary
+Fair in 1864, and to the relief of the orphans and wounded of the late
+war of Italy and Prussia against Austria. Suffice it to say that our aim
+is to render them useful, honest, industrious, and intelligent citizens.
+In that direction we have been laboring, and with what success has been
+seen."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                    THE "LAMBS" OF COTTAGE PLACE.
+
+Beyond a certain point, the history of these various schools becomes
+monotonous. It is simply a history of kindness, of patience, of
+struggles with ignorance, poverty, and intemperance; of lives poured out
+for the good of those who can never make a return, of steady improvement
+and the final elevation of great numbers of children and youth who are
+under these permanent and profound influences.
+
+In no one of the many branches whose labors and results I am describing,
+has probably so much vitality been expended, so much human earnestness
+been offered with such patience, humility, and faith, as in the humble
+Mission of "Cottage Place."
+
+It began with a "Boys' Meeting," under Mr. Macy, a practical
+philanthropist, of whom I shall speak again.
+
+The quarter is a very notorious one, and contains numbers of idle and
+vagrant boys and girls. The success of Mr. Macy with the meeting, and
+the experience he gained there of a wild class of girls induced him and
+his sisters to attempt in 1859 to found a School for girls; to this was
+gradually added a "Free Reading-room," a library, and various temperance
+and other associations. Ladies of position and wealth were attracted to
+it, as well as others, from seeing the quiet and earnest nature of the
+work done; there was no show or "blowing of trumpets," or any great
+expense, but there were two or three men and women connected with it who
+evidently thought night and day of the rough boys and miserable girls
+that attended it; who felt no toil too great, if it could truly benefit
+these unfortunate creatures.
+
+The lady-volunteers seemed to catch the same spirit of Christian
+sacrifice and earnestness. One who has since become a missionary in a
+distant heathen land, poured out here for these American heathen some of
+the best years of her youth in the most enthusiastic and constant
+labors.
+
+Others visited the homes of the poor, some taught in the classes, and
+all labored with their own hands to arrange the festivals and dinners
+which they provided so freely for the needy children. For twelve years
+now those young ladies or their friends have wrought, unceasingly at
+this labor of love.
+
+The great burden of the School, however, fell on Miss Macy, a woman of
+long experience with this class, and a profound and intense spirit of
+humanity. I never shall forget the scene (as reported to me) when, at
+the opening of the School, after the July riots in 1863 against the
+colored people, a deputation of hard-looking, heavy-drinking Irish
+women, the mothers of some twenty or thirty of the children, waited on
+her to demand the exclusion of some colored children. In the most
+amiable and Quaker-like manner, but with the firmness of the old Puritan
+stock from which she sprung, she assured them that, if every other
+scholar left, so long as that school remained it should never be closed
+to any child on account of color. They withdrew their children, but soon
+after returned them.
+
+Like the other Schools, the Cottage Place gives a great deal of
+assistance to the poor, but it does so in connection with education, and
+therefore creates no pauperism.
+
+The same experience is passed through here as under the other Schools.
+The children are nearly all the offspring of drunkards, but they do not
+themselves drink as they grow up. The slovenly learn cleanliness, the
+vagrant industry, the careless punctuality and order. Thieving was very
+prevalent in the School when it was founded; now it is never known. All
+have been beggars; but, as they improve under teaching, and when they
+leave their homes, they never follow begging as a pursuit. Hardly a
+graduate of the School, whether boy or girl, is known who has become a
+thief, or beggar, or criminal, or prostitute. Such is the power of daily
+kindness and training, of Christianity early applied.
+
+Outside of the School, great numbers of lads are brought under the
+influence of the "Bands of Hope," the "Reading-room," and the lectures
+and amusements offered them.
+
+The result of all this has been noticed by the neighboring manufacturers
+in the moral improvement of the Ward.
+
+                THE LITTLE BEGGARS OF THE FIRST WARD.
+
+One of the eye-sores which used to trouble me was the condition of the
+city behind Trinity Church. Often and often have I walked through
+Greenwich and Washington Streets, or the narrow lanes of the quarter,
+watching the ragged, wild children flitting about; or have visited the
+damp underground basements which every high tide flooded, crowded with
+men, women, and children; or climbed to the old rookeries, packed to the
+smallest attic with a wretched population, and have wished so that
+something might be done for this miserable quarter, which is in a Ward
+where more wealth is accumulated than in any other one place in
+America.
+
+First I induced our Board to send a careful agent through the district,
+to collect exact statistics. Then an application was made to the wealthy
+Corporation of Trinity Church, to assist or to found some charitable
+enterprise for this wretched population under the shadow of its spire.
+For two years we continued these applications, but without avail. Then
+it occurred to me that we should try the business-men who were daily
+passing these scenes of misery and crime.
+
+Fortunately, I struck upon a young merchant of singular
+conscientiousness of purpose, who had felt for a long time the sad evils
+of the Ward. With him I addressed another gentleman of a well-known
+elevation of character, and a certain manly persistency that led him
+never to turn back when he had "put his hand to the plow." A few
+personal friends joined them, and I soon saw that we were secure of the
+future. Our leader had a great social influence, and he at once turned
+it to aid his philanthropic scheme; he himself, gave freely, and called
+upon his friends for money. The School was founded in 1860, and at once
+gathered in a large number of the waifs of the First Ward, and has had a
+like happy influence with our other Schools.
+
+Our treasurer and leader, Mr. J. Couper Lord--alas! too early taken from
+us all--sustained it himself in good part during disastrous years.
+Through his aid, also, a Free Reading-room was founded in the same
+building, which has been more uniformly successful and useful than any
+similar enterprise in the city. His devotion to the interests of these
+poor people has left an enduring harvest of good through the whole
+quarter.
+
+The following extract from our Journal will give a good idea of the
+changes effected by this charity, now rightly called the "Lord
+School":--
+
+                 A STREET-SWEEPER IN THE LORD SCHOOL.
+
+"For a number of years, the writer of this remembers a little girl in
+the First Ward School who was a kind of _bete noir_ of the school--Ann
+Jane T----. Both of her parents were drunkards, and were half the time
+on the Island under arrest; she herself was twice found drunk in the
+School before she was thirteen years old; once she attacked the teacher
+violently. She swept crossings for a living, and 'lived about,' often
+sleeping in halls and stairways; for a year she occupied the same bed
+and living-room with eight large boys and girls from the school, and
+some thirteen grown people; the lower part of the house was a
+dance-saloon and place of bad character. Annie seemed a hopeless case;
+she swore and used the most vile language, and was evidently growing up
+to be a most abandoned woman. The teacher of the Lord Industrial School,
+Miss Blodgett, was a person of singular sweetness and dignity of
+character, as well as remarkable personal beauty. She soon acquired a
+great influence over the wild girl. Once little Annie was found waiting
+with her broom in a bitter storm of sleet and hail on a corner, and the
+teacher asked her why she was there? and why she did not go home? She
+said she only wanted just to see the teacher--and the fact was she
+hadn't any home--'for you know. Miss Blodgett, there is no one cares for
+me in all New York but you!' This touched the teacher's heart.
+
+"At length the father died on Blackwell's Island, and the mother was in
+prison, and Miss B. persuaded Annie to go away to a place she had found
+for her in an excellent family in the West. When the mother came out she
+was furious, and often made Miss B. tremble for fear she would insist on
+having the child back; but she gradually saw her absence was for the
+best. Now the mother is permanently in the Alms-house.
+
+"The following letter came recently about Annie, who has been in her
+place some three years. The liberal and kind friends of the School will
+feel that one such case will repay all their sacrifices. Yet there are
+hundreds like them, though not so striking.
+
+"It should be observed that nearly all the scholars live a good deal as
+Annie did, in crowded tenements, and more or less associated with
+dance-saloons and places of bad character. Yet only one has ever gone
+astray. Here is the letter:
+
+                                          "'F----, ILL., Feb. 15, 1870.
+
+"'MY DEAR MISS FLAGG--Your favor of the 25th ult. was duly received. I
+am very happy to be able to give you good accounts of Annie, about whom
+you inquire. She has been with us constantly since she left you, and is
+now our main dependence. We have sent her to school a considerable
+portion of the time, and she is now in constant attendance there. Her
+truthfulness and honesty are something quite remarkable. We do not think
+she has eaten a piece of cake or an apple, without special permission,
+since she has been with us. Nothing seems to give her more pleasure than
+to be able to do something, especially for Mrs. W. or myself. We have
+been inquired of about getting such girls, by other people--our friends.
+Have you others whom you wish to place in situations which we could
+assure you would be good? If so, please inform me as to the manner in
+which you are accustomed to do it. Do you pay their fare to their new
+home, and are there any other particulars about which parties would wish
+to be informed?
+                                            Respectfully yours,
+                                                         "'GEO. W. W.'"
+
+Since Mr. Lord's death, another treasurer, Mr. D. E. Hawley is bearing
+the burden of the School, and, in company with a committee of prominent
+businessmen of the First Ward, is making it a benefit not to be
+measured, to all the poor people of the quarter.
+
+                       A TRULY "RAGGED SCHOOL."
+
+It is remarkable that the School which is most of a "Ragged School," of
+all these, is in one of the former fashionable quarters of the city. The
+quaint, pleasing old square called St John's Park is now occupied as a
+freight depot, and the handsome residences bordering it have become
+tenement-houses. Between the grand freight station and the river,
+overlooked by the statue of the millionaire, are divers little lanes and
+alleys, filled with a wretched population.
+
+Their children are gathered into this School. An up-hill work the
+teachers have had of it thus far, owing to the extreme poverty and
+misery of the parents, and the little aid received from the fortunate
+classes.
+
+                        FOURTEENTH WARD SCHOOL.
+
+This is a large and useful charity, and is guided by two sisters of
+great elevation of purpose and earnestness of character, who are known
+as "Friends of the Poor" in all that quarter.
+
+                          THE COLORED SCHOOL.
+
+Here gather great numbers of destitute colored children of the city.
+Some are rough boys and young men, who are admirably controlled by a
+most gentle lady, who is Principal; her assistant was fittingly prepared
+for the work by teaching among the freedmen.
+
+The colored people of the city seldom fall into such helpless poverty as
+the foreign whites; still there is a good deal of destitution and
+exposure to temptation among them. The children seem to learn as readily
+as whites, though they are afflicted with a more sullen temper, and
+require to be managed more delicately--praise and ridicule being
+indispensable implements for the teacher. Their singing far surpasses
+that of our other scholars.
+
+Among our other schools is a most useful one for a peculiarly wild
+class, in the Rivington-street Lodging-house; one in West Fifty-third
+and in West Fifty-second Streets, and a very large and well-conducted
+one for the shanty population near the Park, called
+
+                           THE PARK SCHOOL.
+
+A very spirited teacher here manages numbers of wild boys and ungoverned
+girls. The most interesting feature is a Night-school, where pupils
+come, some from a mile distant, having labored in factories or
+street-trades all day long--sometimes even giving up their suppers for
+the sake of the lessons, with a hunger for knowledge which the children
+of the favored classes know little of. Two other Schools shall conclude
+our catalogue--one in the House of Industry (West Sixteenth Street), and
+the other in the Eighteenth-street Lodging-house. Both Schools are
+struggling with great obstacles and difficulties, as they are planted in
+the quarter which has produced the notorious "Nineteenth-street Gang."
+The teacher in the latter has already overcome most of them, and has
+tamed as wild a set of little street-barbarians as ever plagued a
+school-teacher.
+
+A rigid rule has been laid down and followed out in these Schools--that
+is, not to admit or retain pupils who might be in the Public Schools.
+Our object is to supplement these useful public institutions, and we are
+continually sending the children forth, when they seem fit, to take
+places in the Free Schools. Many, however, are always too poor, ragged
+and necessarily irregular in attendance, to be adapted to the more
+systematic and respectable places of instruction. As been already
+mentioned, the plan has been steadily pursued from the beginning by the
+writer, to make these as good Primary Schools as under the circumstances
+they were capable of becoming. The grade of the teachers has been
+constantly raised, and many of the graduates of our best training
+academy for teachers in New York State--the Oswego Normal School--have
+been secured at remunerative salaries.
+
+Within the last four years, also, a new officer has been appointed by
+the Board of Trustees, to constantly examine the schools and teachers,
+keep them at the highest grade possible, and visit the families of the
+children. This place has been ably filled by an intelligent and educated
+gentleman, Mr. John W. Skinner, with the best effects on our system of
+instruction.
+
+Our plan of visitation among the families of the poor, whereby the
+helping hand is held out to juvenile poverty and ignorance all the
+while, has been effectually carried out by a very earnest worker, Mr. M.
+Dupuy, in the lower wards, and by a young German-American of much
+judgment and zeal, Mr. Holste, in the German quarter, and by quite a
+number of female visitors.
+
+[Illustration: "PLEASE SIR, MAY I HAVE A BED?" (A sketch from life.) NO.
+1.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                THE BEST REMEDY FOR JUVENILE PAUPERISM.
+
+   "Ameliorer l'homme par le terre et la terre par l'homme." DEMETZ
+
+Among the lowest poor of New York, as we stated in a previous chapter,
+the influence of _overcrowding_ has been incredibly debasing. When we
+find half a dozen families--as we frequently do--occupying one room, the
+old and young, men and women, boys and girls of all ages sleeping near
+each other, the result is inevitable. The older persons commit unnatural
+crimes; the younger grow up with hardly a sense of personal dignity or
+purity; the girls are corrupted even in childhood; and the boys become
+naturally thieves, vagrants, and vicious characters. Such apartments are
+at once "fever-nests" and seminaries of vice. The inmates are weakened
+and diseased physically, and degraded spiritually. Where these houses
+abound, as formerly in the Five Points, or now in the First Ward, or
+near Corlear's Hook, or in the Seventeenth Ward near the Tenth Avenue,
+there is gradually formed a hideous society of vice and pauperism. The
+men are idle and drunken, the women lazy, quarrelsome, and given to
+begging; the children see nothing but examples of drunkenness, lust, and
+idleness, and they grow up inevitably as sharpers, beggars, thieves,
+burglars, and prostitutes. Amid such communities of outcasts the
+institutions of education and religion are comparatively powerless. What
+is done for the children on one sacred day is wiped out by the influence
+of the week, and even daily instruction has immense difficulty in
+counteracting the lessons of home and parents.
+
+For such children of the outcast poor, a more radical cure is needed
+than the usual influences of school and church.
+
+The same obstacle also appeared soon with the homeless lads and girls
+who were taken into the Lodging-houses. Though without a home, they were
+often not legally vagrant--that is, they had some ostensible occupation,
+some street-trade--and no judge would commit them, unless a very
+flagrant case of vagrancy was made out against them. They were unwilling
+to be sent to Asylums, and, indeed, were so numerous that all the
+Asylums of the State could not contain them. Moreover, their care and
+charge in public institutions would have entailed expenses on the city
+so heavy, that tax-payers would not have consented to the burden.
+
+The workers, also, in this movement felt from the beginning that
+"asylum-life" is not the best training to outcast children in preparing
+them for practical life. In large buildings, where a multitude of
+children are gathered together, the bad corrupt the good, and the good
+are not educated in the virtues of real life. The machinery, too, which
+is so necessary in such large institutions, unfits a poor boy or girl
+for practical handwork.
+
+The founders of the Children's Aid Society early saw that the best of
+all Asylums for the outcast child, is the _farmer's home._
+
+The United States have the enormous advantage over all other countries,
+in the treatment of difficult questions of pauperism and reform, that
+they possess a practically unlimited area of arable land. The demand for
+labor on this land is beyond any present supply. Moreover, the
+cultivators of the soil are in America our most solid and intelligent
+class. From the nature of their circumstances, their laborers, or
+"help," must be members of their families, and share in their social
+tone. It is, accordingly, of the utmost importance to them to train up
+children who shall aid in their work, and be associates of their own
+children. A servant who is nothing but a servant, would be, with them,
+disagreeable and inconvenient. They like to educate their own "help."
+With their overflowing supply of food also, each new mouth in the
+household brings no drain on their means. Children are a blessing, and
+the mere feeding of a young boy or girl is not considered at all.
+
+With this fortunate state of things, it was but a natural inference that
+the important movement now inaugurating for the benefit of the
+unfortunate children of New York should at once strike upon a plan of
+
+                              EMIGRATION.
+
+Simple and most effective as this ingenious scheme now seems--which has
+accomplished more in relieving New York of youthful crime and misery
+than all other charities together--at the outset it seemed as difficult
+and perplexing as does the similar cure proposed now in Great Britain
+for a more terrible condition of the children of the poor.
+
+Among other objections, it was feared that the farmers would not want
+the children for help; that, if they took them, the latter would be
+liable to ill-treatment, or, if well treated, would corrupt the virtuous
+children around them, and thus New York would be scattering seeds of
+vice and corruption all over the land. Accidents might occur to the
+unhappy little ones thus sent, bringing odium on the benevolent persons
+who were dispatching them to the country. How were places to be found?
+How were the demand and supply for children's labor to be connected? How
+were the right employers to be selected? And, when the children were
+placed, how were their interests to be watched over, and acts of
+oppression or hard dealing prevented or punished? Were they to be
+indentured, or not? If this was the right scheme, why had it not been
+tried long ago in our cities or in England?
+
+These and innumerable similar difficulties and objections were offered
+to this projected plan of relieving the city of its youthful pauperism
+and suffering. They all fell to the ground before the confident efforts
+to carry out a well-laid scheme; and practical experience has justified
+none of them.
+
+To awaken the demand for these children, circulars were sent out through
+the city weeklies and the rural papers to the country districts.
+Hundreds of applications poured in at once from the farmers and
+mechanics all through the Union. At first, we made the effort to meet
+individual applications by sending just the kind of children wanted; but
+this soon became impracticable.
+
+Each applicant or employer always called for "a perfect child," without
+any of the taints of earthly depravity. The girls must be pretty,
+good-tempered, not given to purloining sweetmeats, and fond of making
+fires at daylight, and with a constitutional love for Sunday Schools and
+Bible-lessons. The boys must be well made, of good stock, never disposed
+to steal apples or pelt cattle, using language of perfect propriety, and
+delighting in family-worship and prayer-meetings more than in fishing or
+skating parties. These demands, of course, were not always successfully
+complied with. Moreover, to those who desired the children of "blue
+eyes, fair hair, and blond complexion," we were sure to send the
+dark-eyed and brunette; and the particular virtues wished for were very
+often precisely those that the child was deficient in. It was evidently
+altogether too much of a lottery for bereaved parents or benevolent
+employers to receive children in that way.
+
+Yet, even under this incomplete plan, there were many cases like the
+following, which we extract from our Journal:--
+
+                                A WAIF.
+
+"In visiting, during May last, near the docks at the foot of
+Twenty-third Street, I found a boy, about twelve years of age, sitting
+on the wharf, very ragged and wretched-looking. I asked him where he
+lived, and he made the answer one hears so often from these children--'I
+don't live nowhere.' On further inquiry, it appeared that his parents
+had died a few years before--that his aunt took him for a while, but,
+being a drunken woman, had at length turned him away; and for some time
+he had slept in a box in Twenty-second Street, and the _boys fed him,_
+he occasionally making a sixpence with holding horses or doing an
+errand. He had eaten nothing that day, though it was afternoon. I gave
+him something to eat, and he promised to come up the next day to the
+office.
+
+"He came up, and we had a long talk together. He was naturally an
+intelligent boy, of good temperament and organization; but in our
+Christian city of New York he had never heard of Jesus Christ! His
+mother, long ago, had taught him a prayer, and occasionally he said this
+in the dark nights, lying on the boards. * * * Of schools or churches,
+of course, he knew nothing. We sent him to a gentleman in Delaware, who
+had wished to make the experiment of bringing up a vagrant boy of the
+city. He thus writes at his arrival:--
+
+"'The boy reached Wilmington in safety, where I found him a few hours
+after he arrived. Poor boy! He bears about him, or, rather, _is,_ the
+unmistakable evidence of the life he has led--covered with vermin,
+almost a leper, ignorant in the extreme, and seeming wonder-struck
+almost at the voice of kindness and sympathy, and bewildered with the
+idea of possessing a wardrobe gotten for him.
+
+"'So far as I can judge from so short an observation, I should think him
+an amiable boy, grateful for kindness shown him, rather timid than
+energetic, yet by no means deficient in intellectual capacity, and
+altogether such a one as, by God's help, can be made something of. Such
+as he is, or may turn out to be, I accept the trust conferred upon me,
+not insensible of the responsibility I incur in thus becoming the
+instructor and trainer of a being destined to an endless life, of which
+that which he passes under my care, while but the beginning, may
+determine all the rest.'
+
+"In a letter six months later, he writes:--
+
+"'It gives me much pleasure to be able to state that Johnny
+S---continues to grow in favor with us all. Having been reclaimed from
+his vagrant habits, which at first clung pretty close to him, he may now
+be said to be a steady and industrious boy.
+
+"'I have not had occasion, since he has been under my care, to reprove
+him so often as once even, having found gentle and kindly admonition
+quite sufficient to restrain him. He is affectionate in disposition,
+very truthful, and remarkably free from the use of profane or rough
+language. I find less occasion to look after him than is usual with
+children of his age, in order to ascertain that the animals intrusted to
+his care are well attended to, etc.
+
+"' * * * Johnny is now a very good speller out of books, reads quite
+fairly, and will make a superior penman--an apt scholar, and very fond
+of his books. I have been his teacher thus far. He attends regularly a
+Sabbath School, of which I have the superintendence, and the religious
+services which follow,'"
+
+The effort to place the city-children of the street in country families
+revealed a spirit of humanity and kindness, throughout the rural
+districts, which was truly delightful to see. People bore with these
+children of poverty, sometimes, as they did not with their own. There
+was--and not in one or two families alone--a sublime spirit of patience
+exhibited toward these unfortunate little creatures, a bearing with
+defects and inherited evils, a forgiving over and over again of sins and
+wrongs, which showed how deep a hold the spirit of Christ had taken of
+many of our countrywomen.
+
+To receive such a letter as this elevated one's respect for human
+nature:--
+
+                                       "S----, OHIO, February 14, 1859.
+
+"I wish to add a few words to Carrie's letter, to inform you of her
+welfare and progress. As she has said, it is now one year since she came
+to us; and, in looking back upon the time, I feel that, considering her
+mental deficiencies, she has made as much progress in learning as could
+be expected. Her health, which was at first and for several months the
+greatest source of anxiety to us, is so much improved that she is,
+indeed, _well._ Her eyes are better; though rather weak, they do not
+much interfere with her studies. She could neither sew nor knit when she
+came here, and she can now do plain kinds of both, if it is prepared for
+her. She could not tell all the alphabet, and could spell only three or
+four words. She now reads quite fluently, though sometimes stopping at a
+'hard word,' and is as good at spelling as many Yankee children of her
+age. I hope she has learned some wholesome moral truths, and she has
+received much religious instruction. Though really quite a conscientious
+child when she came, she had a habit of telling lies to screen herself
+from _blame,_ to which she is peculiarly sensitive; but I think she has
+been cured of this for a long time, and I place perfect confidence in
+her word and in her honesty. I succeeded in getting her fitted to enter
+one of our intermediate schools by teaching her at home until the
+beginning of the present winter. I am obliged, on account of her
+exceeding dullness, to spend much time in teaching her out of school, in
+order that she may be able to keep up with her classes. But I think this
+has been a work worth doing, and I especially feel it to be so now, as I
+am employed in this retrospect.
+
+"I am often asked by my friends, who think the child is little more than
+half-witted, why I do not 'send her back, and get a brighter one.' My
+answer is, that she is just the one who needs the care and kindness
+which Providence has put it into my power to bestow. We love her dearly;
+but, if I did not, I should not think of sending her back to such a
+place as your great city. She is just one of those who could be imposed
+upon and abused, and perhaps may never be able to take care of herself
+wholly."
+
+Having found the defects of our first plan of emigration, we soon
+inaugurated another, which has since been followed out successfully
+during nearly twenty years of constant action.
+
+We formed little companies of emigrants, and, after thoroughly cleaning
+and clothing them, put them under a competent agent, and, first
+selecting a village where there was a call or opening for such a party,
+we dispatched them to the place.
+
+The farming community having been duly notified, there was usually a
+dense crowd of people at the station, awaiting the arrival of the
+youthful travelers. The sight of the little company of the children of
+misfortune always touched the hearts of a population naturally generous.
+They were soon billeted around among the citizens, and the following day
+a public meeting was called in the church or town-hall, and a committee
+appointed of leading citizens. The agent then addressed the assembly,
+stating the benevolent objects of the Society, and something of the
+history of the children. The sight of their worn faces was a most
+pathetic enforcement of his arguments. People who were childless came
+forward to adopt children; others, who had not intended to take any into
+their families, were induced to apply for them; and many who really
+wanted the children's labor pressed forward to obtain it.
+
+In every American community, especially in a Western one, there are many
+spare places at the table of life. There is no harassing "struggle for
+existence." They have enough for themselves and the stranger too. Not,
+perhaps, thinking of it before, yet, the orphan being placed in their
+presence without friends or home, they gladly welcome and train him. The
+committee decide on the applications. Sometimes there is almost a case
+for Solomon before them. Two eager mothers without children claim some
+little waif thus cast on the strand before them. Sometimes the family
+which has taken in a fine lad for the night feels that it cannot do
+without him, and yet the committee prefer a better home for him. And so
+hours of discussion and selection pass. Those who are able, pay the
+fares of the children, or otherwise make some gift to the Society until
+at length the business of charity is finished, and a little band of
+young wayfarers and homeless rovers in the world find themselves in
+comfortable and kind homes, with all the boundless advantages and
+opportunities of the Western farmer's life about them.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+                       PROVIDING COUNTRY HOMES.
+
+              THE OPPOSITION TO THIS REMEDY--ITS EFFECTS.
+
+This most sound and practical of charities always met with an intense
+opposition here from a certain class, for bigoted reasons. The poor were
+early taught, even from the altar, that the whole scheme of emigration
+was one of "proselytizing" and that every child thus taken forth was
+made, a "Protestant." Stories were spread, too, that these unfortunate
+children were re-named in the West, and that thus even brothers and
+sisters might meet and perhaps marry! Others scattered the pleasant
+information that the little ones "were sold as slaves," and that the
+agents enriched themselves from the transaction.
+
+These were the obstacles and objections among the poor themselves. So
+powerful were these, that it would often happen that a poor woman,
+seeing her child becoming ruined on the streets, and soon plainly to
+come forth as a criminal, would prefer this to a good home in the West;
+and we would have the discouragement of beholding the lad a thief behind
+prison-bars, when a journey to the country would have saved him. Most
+distressing of all was, when a drunken mother or father followed a
+half-starved boy, already scarred and sore with their brutality, and
+snatched him from one of our parties of little emigrants, all joyful
+with their new prospects, only to beat him and leave him on the
+streets.
+
+With a small number of the better classes there was also a determined
+opposition to this humane remedy. What may be called the
+"Asylum-interest" set itself in stiff repugnance to our
+emigration-scheme. They claimed--and I presume the most obstinate among
+them still claim--that we were scattering poison over the country, and
+that we benefited neither the farmers nor the children. They urged that
+a restraint of a few years in an Asylum or House of Detention rendered
+these children of poverty much more fit for practical life, and purified
+them to be good members of society.
+
+We, on the other hand, took the ground that, as our children were not
+criminals, but simply destitute and homeless boys and girls, usually
+with some ostensible occupation, they could not easily, on any legal
+grounds, be inclosed within Asylums; that, if they were, the expense of
+their maintenance would be enormous, while the cost of a temporary care
+of them in our Schools and Lodging-houses, and their transferrence to
+the West, was only trifling--in the proportion of fifteen dollars to one
+hundred and fifty dollars, reckoning the latter as a year's cost for a
+child's support in an Asylum. Furthermore, we held and stoutly
+maintained that an asylum-life is a bad preparation for practical life.
+The child, most of all, needs individual care and sympathy. In an
+Asylum, he is "Letter B, of Class 3," or "No. 2, of Cell 426," and that
+is all that is known of him. As a poor boy, who most live in a small
+house, he ought to learn to draw his own water, to split his wood,
+kindle his fires, and light his candle; as an "institutional child," he
+is lighted, warmed, and watered by machinery. He has a child's
+imitation, a desire to please his superiors, and readiness to be
+influenced by his companions. In a great caravansary he soon learns the
+external virtues which secure him a good bed and meal--decorum and
+apparent piety and discipline--while he practices the vices and
+unnamable habits which masses of boys of any class nearly always teach
+one another. His virtue seems to have an alms-house flavor; even his
+vices do not present the frank character of a thorough street-boy; he is
+found to lie easily, and to be very weak under temptation; somewhat
+given to hypocrisy, and something of a sneak. And, what is very natural,
+_the longer he is in the Asylum, the less likely he is to do well in
+outside life._ I hope I do no injustice to the unfortunate graduates of
+our Asylums; but that was and continues to be my strong impression of
+the institutional effect on an ordinary street boy or girl. Of course
+there are numerous exceptional cases among children--of criminality and
+inherited habits, and perverse and low organization, and premature
+cunning, lust, and temper, where a half-prison life may be the very best
+thing for them; but the majority of criminals among children, I do not
+believe, are much worse than the children of the same class outside, and
+therefore need scarcely any different training.
+
+One test, which I used often to administer to myself, as to our
+different systems, was to ask--and I request any Asylum advocate to do
+the same--"If your son were suddenly, by the death of his parents and
+relatives, to be thrown out on the streets, poor and homeless--as these
+children are--where would you prefer him to be placed--in an Asylum, or
+in a good farmer's home in the West?"
+
+"The plainest farmer's home rather than the best Asylum--a thousand
+times!" was always my sincere answer.
+
+Our discussion waxed warm, and was useful to both sides. Our weak point
+was that, if a single boy or girl in a village, from a large company we
+had sent, turned out bad, there was a cry raised that "every New-York
+poor child," thus sent out, became "a thief or a vagabond," and for a
+time people believed it.
+
+Our antagonists seized hold of this, and we immediately dispatched
+careful agents to collect statistics in the Central West, and, if
+possible, disprove the charges. They, however, in the meantime,
+indiscreetly published their statistics, and from these it appeared that
+only too many of the Asylum graduates committed offenses, and that those
+of the shortest terms did the best. The latter fact somewhat confused
+their line of attack.
+
+The effort of tabulating, or making statistics, in regard to the
+children dispatched by our society, soon appeared exceedingly difficult,
+mainly because these youthful wanderers shared the national
+characteristic of love-of-change, and, like our own servants here, they
+often left one place for another, merely for fancy or variety. This was
+especially true of the lads or girls over sixteen or seventeen. The
+offer of better wages, or the attraction of a new employer, or the
+desire of "moving," continually stirred up these latter to migrate to
+another village, county, or State.
+
+In 1859 we made a comprehensive effort to collect some of these
+statistics in regard to our children who had begun their new life in the
+West. The following is an extract from our report at this time:--
+
+"During the last spring, the Secretary made an extended journey through
+the Western States, to see for himself the nature and results of this
+work, carried on for the last five years through those States, under Mr.
+Tracy's careful supervision. During that time we have scattered there
+several thousands of poor boys and girls. In this journey he visited
+personally, and heard directly of, many hundreds of these little
+creatures, and appreciated, for the first time, to the full extent, the
+spirit with which the West has opened its arms to them. The effort to
+reform and improve these young outcasts has become a mission-work there.
+Their labor, it is true, is needed. But many a time a bountiful and
+Christian home is opened to the miserable little stranger, his habits
+are patiently corrected, faults without number are borne with, time and
+money are expended on him, solely and entirely from the highest
+religious motive of a noble self-sacrifice for an unfortunate
+fellow-creature. The peculiar warm-heartedness of the Western people,
+and the equality of all classes, give them an especial adaptation to
+this work, and account for their success.
+
+"'Wherever we went' (we quote from his account) 'we found the children
+sitting at the same table with the families, going to the school with
+the children, and every way treated as well as any other children. Some
+whom we had seen once in the most extreme misery, we beheld sitting,
+clothed and clean, at hospitable tables, calling the employer, father,'
+loved by the happy circle, and apparently growing up with as good hopes
+and prospects as any children in the country. Others who had been in the
+city on the very line between virtue and vice, and who at any time might
+have fallen into crime, we saw pursuing industrial occupations, and
+gaining a good name for themselves in their village. The observations on
+this journey alone would have rewarded years of labor for this class.
+The results--so far as we could ascertain them--were remarkable, and,
+unless we reflect on the wonderful influences possible from a Christian
+home upon a child unused to kindness, they would almost seem
+incredible.
+
+"'The estimate we formed from a considerable field of observation was,
+that, out of those sent to the West under fifteen years, not more than
+_two per cent._ turned out bad; and, even of those from fifteen to
+eighteen, not more than _four per cent._'
+
+"The former estimate is nearly the same as one forwarded to us since by
+an intelligent clergyman of Michigan (Rev. Mr. Gelston, of Albion), of
+the result in his State. Of course, some of the older boys disappear
+entirely; some few return to the city; but it may generally be assumed
+that we hear of the worst cases--that is, of those who commit criminal
+offenses, or who come under the law--and it is these whom we reckon as
+the failures. One or two of such cases, out of hundreds in a given
+district who are doing well, sometimes make a great noise, and give a
+momentary impression that the work is not coming out well there; and
+there are always a few weak-minded people who accept such rumors without
+examination. Were the proportion of failures far greater than it is, the
+work would still be of advantage to the West, and a rich blessing to the
+city.
+
+"It is also remarkable, as years pass away, how few cases ever come to
+the knowledge of the Society, of ill-treatment of these children. The
+task of distributing them is carried on so publicly by Mr. Tracy, and in
+connection with such responsible persons, that any case of positive
+abuse would at once be known and corrected by the community itself.
+
+"'On this journey,' says the secretary, 'we heard of but one instance
+even of neglect. We visited the lad, and discovered that he had not been
+schooled as he should, and had sometimes been left alone at night in the
+lonely log-house. Yet this had roused the feelings of the whole
+country-side; we removed the boy, amid the tears and protestations of
+the "father" and "mother," and put him in another place. As soon as we
+had left the village, he ran right back to his old place!'
+
+              *      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"We give our evidence below, consisting of letters from prominent
+gentlemen, clergymen, bankers, farmers, judges, and lawyers, through the
+West, where the main body of these poor children have been placed. We
+think these letters, coming from some hundred different towns, and the
+evidence on our books from the boys themselves, establish the remarkable
+success of the work. Some of the writers speak of the children as
+thriving 'as well as any other children;' and, in some cases, those who
+have become disobedient and troublesome are said to have been so
+principally through the fault of their employers; few instances,
+comparatively, from this four or five thousand, are known to have
+committed criminal offenses--in some States not more than four per cent.
+This is true of Michigan; and in Ohio, we do not think, from all the
+returns we can gather, that the proportion is even so large as that. The
+agent of the American and Foreign Christian Union for Indiana, a
+gentleman of the highest respectability, constantly traveling through
+the State--a State where we have placed five hundred and fifty-seven
+children--testifies that 'very few have gone back to New York,' and that
+'he has heard of no one who has committed criminal offenses.'
+
+"The superintendent of the Chicago Reform School, one of the most
+successful and experienced men in this country in juvenile reform,
+states that his institution had never had but three of our children
+committed by the Illinois State Courts, though we have sent to the State
+two hundred and sixty-five, and such an institution is, of course, the
+place where criminal children of this class would at once be committed.
+
+"A prominent gentleman residing in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the
+neighborhood of which we have put out about one hundred and twenty,
+writes: 'I think it is susceptible of proof that no equal number of
+children raised here are superior to those you have placed out.' Two
+prominent gentlemen from Pennsylvania, one of them a leading judge in
+the State, write that they have not known an instance of one of our
+children being imprisoned for a criminal offense, though we have sent
+four hundred and sixty-nine to this State."
+
+These important results were obtained in 1859, with but four or five
+thousand children settled in the West. We have now in various portions
+of our country _between twenty and twenty-four thousand_ who have been
+placed in homes or provided with work.
+
+The general results are similar. The boys and girls who were sent out
+when under fourteen are often heard from, and succeed remarkably well.
+In hundreds of instances, they cannot be distinguished from the young
+men and women natives in the villages. Large numbers have farms of their
+own, and are prospering reasonably well in the world. Some are in the
+professions, some are mechanics or shopkeepers; the girls are generally
+well married. Quite a number have sent donations to the Society, and
+some have again in their turn brought up poor children. It was estimated
+that more than a thousand were in the national army in the civil war.
+With them the experiment of "Emigration" has been an unmingled blessing.
+With the larger boys, as we stated before, exact results are more
+difficult to attain, as they leave their places frequently. Some few
+seem to drift into the Western cities, and take up street-trades again.
+Very few, indeed, get back to New York. The great mass become honest
+producers on the Western soil instead of burdens or pests here, and are
+absorbed into that active, busy population; not probably becoming
+saints-on-earth, but not certainly preying on the community, or living
+idlers on the alms of the public. Many we know who have also led out
+their whole family from the house of poverty here, and have made the
+last years of an old father or mother easier and more comfortable.
+
+[Illustration: THE STREET BOY ON A FARM. (A year later.) NO. 2.]
+
+The immense, practically unlimited demand by Western communities for the
+services of these children shows that the first-comers have at least
+done moderately well, especially as every case of crime is bruited over
+a wide country-side, and stamps the whole company sent with disgrace.
+These cases we always hear of. The lives of poor children in these homes
+seem like the annals of great States in this, that, when they make no
+report and pass in silence, then we may be sure happiness and virtue are
+the rule. When they make a noise, crime and misery prevail. Twenty
+years' virtuous life in a street-boy makes no impression on the public.
+A single offense is heard for hundreds of miles. A theft of one lad is
+imputed to scores of others about him.
+
+The children are not indentured, but are free to leave, if ill-treated
+or dissatisfied; and the farmers can dismiss them, if they find them
+useless or otherwise unsuitable.
+
+This apparently loose arrangement has worked well, and put both sides on
+their good behavior. We have seldom had any cases brought to our
+attention of ill-treatment. The main complaint is, that the older lads
+change places often. This is an unavoidable result of a prosperous
+condition of the laboring classes. The employers, however, are
+ingenious, and succeed often, by little presents of a calf, or pony, or
+lamb, or a small piece of land, in giving the child a permanent interest
+in the family and the farm.
+
+On the whole, if the warm discussion between the "Asylum-interest" and
+the "Emigration-party" were ever renewed, probably both would agree (if
+they were candid) that their opponents' plan had virtues which they did
+not then see. There are some children so perverse, and inheriting such
+bad tendencies, and so stamped with the traits of a vagabond life, that
+a Reformatory is the best place for them. On the other hand, the
+majority of orphan, deserted, and neglected boys and girls are far
+better in a country home. The Asylum has its great dangers, and is very
+expensive. The Emigration-plan must be conducted with careful judgment,
+and applied, so far as is practicable, to children under, say, the age
+of fourteen years. Both plans have defects, but, of the two, the latter
+seems to us still to do the most good at the least cost.
+
+A great obstacle in our own particular experience was, as was stated
+before, the superstitious opposition of the poor. This is undoubtedly
+cultivated by the priests, who seem seldom gifted with the broad spirit
+of humanity of their brethren in Europe. They apparently desire to keep
+the miserable masses here under their personal influence.
+
+Our action, however, in regard to these waifs, has always been fair and
+open. We know no sect or race. Both Catholic and Protestant homes were
+offered freely to the children. No child's creed was interfered with. On
+the committees themselves in the Western villages have frequently been
+Roman Catholics. Notwithstanding this, the cry of "proselytizing" is
+still kept up among the guides of the poor against this most humane
+scheme, and continually checks our influence for good with the younger
+children, and ultimately will probably diminish to a great degree the
+useful results we might accomplish in this direction.
+
+The experience we have thus had for twenty years in transferring such
+masses of poor children to rural districts is very instructive on the
+general subject of "Emigration as a cure for Pauperism."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+             RESULTS AND FACTS OF EMIGRATION TO THE WEST.
+
+            OUR FIRST EMIGRANT PARTY. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
+
+                                -----
+                            BY A VISITOR.
+                                -----
+
+"On Wednesday evening, with emigrant [Since this first experience, we
+have always sent our children by regular trains, in decent style.]
+tickets to Detroit, we started on the _Isaac Newton_ for Albany. Nine of
+our company, who missed the boat, were sent up by the morning cars, and
+joined us in Albany, making forty-six boys and girls from New York,
+bound westward, and, to them, homeward. They were between the ages of
+seven and fifteen--most of them from ten to twelve. The majority of them
+orphans, dressed in uniform--as bright, sharp, bold, racy a crowd of
+little fellows as can be grown nowhere out of the streets of New York.
+The other ten were from New York at large--no number or street in
+particular. Two of these had slept in nearly all the station-houses in
+the city. One, a keen-eyed American boy, was born in Chicago--an orphan
+now, and abandoned in New York by an intemperate brother. Another, a
+little German Jew, who had been entirely friendless for four years, and
+had finally found his way into the Newsboys' Lodging-house. Dick and
+Jack were brothers of Sarah, whom we sent to Connecticut. Their father
+is intemperate; mother died at Bellevue Hospital three weeks since; and
+an older brother has just been sentenced to Sing Sing Prison. Their
+father, a very sensible man when sober, begged me to take the boys
+along, 'for I am sure, sir, if left in New York, they will come to the
+same bad end as their brother.' We took them to a shoe-shop. Little Jack
+made awkward work in trying on a pair. 'He don't know them, sir; there's
+not been a cover to his feet for three winters.'
+
+"Another of the ten, whom the boys call 'Liverpool,' defies description.
+Mr. Gerry found him in the Fourth Ward, a few hours before we left.
+Really only twelve years old, but in dress a seedy loafer of forty. His
+boots, and coat, and pants would have held two such boys easily--filthy
+and ragged to the last thread. Under Mr. Tracy's hands, at the
+Lodging-house, 'Liverpool' was soon remodeled into a boy again; and when
+he came on board the boat with his new suit, I did not know him. His
+story interested us all, and was told with a quiet, sad reserve, that
+made us believe him truthful. A friendless orphan in the streets of
+Liverpool, he heard of America, and determined to come, and after long
+search found a captain who shipped him as cabin-boy. Landed in New York,
+'Liverpool' found his street condition somewhat bettered. Here he got
+occasional odd jobs about the docks, found a pretty tight box to sleep
+in, and now and then the sailors gave him a cast-off garment, which he
+wrapped and tied about him, till he looked like a walking rag-bundle
+when Mr. G. found him.
+
+"As we steamed off from the wharf, the boys gave three cheers for New
+York, and three more for 'Michigan.' All seemed as careless at leaving
+home forever, as if they were on a target excursion to Hoboken.
+
+"We had a steerage passage, and after the cracker-box and ginger-bread
+had passed around, the boys sat down in the gang-way and began to sing.
+Their full chorus attracted the attention of the passengers, who
+gathered about, and soon the captain sent for us to come to the upper
+saloon. There the boys sang and talked, each one telling his own story
+separately, as he was taken aside, till ten o'clock, when Captain S.
+gave them all berths in the cabin; meanwhile, a lady from Rochester had
+selected a little boy for her sister, and Mr. B., a merchant from
+Illinois, had made arrangements to take 'Liverpool' for his store. I
+afterwards met Mr. B. in Buffalo, and he said he would not part with the
+boy for any consideration; and I thought then that to take such a boy
+from such a condition, and put him into such hands, was worth the whole
+trip.
+
+"At Albany we found the emigrant train did not go out till noon, and it
+became a question what to do with the children for the intervening six
+hours. There was danger that Albany street-boys might entice them off,
+or that some might be tired of the journey, and hide away, in order to
+return. When they were gathered on the wharf, we told them that _we_
+were going to Michigan, and if any of them would like to go along, they
+must be on hand for the cars. This was enough. They hardly ventured out
+of sight. The Albany boys tried hard to coax some of them away; but ours
+turned the tables upon them, told them of Michigan, and when we were
+about ready to start, several of them came up bringing a stranger with
+them. There was no mistaking the long, thick, matted hair, unwashed
+face, the badger coat, and double pants flowing in the wind--a regular
+'snoozer.'
+
+"'Here's a boy what wants to go to Michi_gan_, sir; can't you take him
+with us?'
+
+"'But, do you know him? Can you recommend him as a suitable boy to
+belong to our company!' No; they didn't know his name even. 'Only he's
+as hard-up as any of us. He's no father or mother, and nobody to live
+with, and he sleeps out o' nights.' The boy pleads for himself. He would
+like to go and be a farmer--and to live in the country--will go anywhere
+I send him--and do well if he can have the chance.
+
+"Our number is full--purse scant--it may be difficult to find him a
+home. But there is no resisting the appeal of the boys, and the
+importunate face of the young vagrant. Perhaps he will do well; at any
+rate, we must try him. If left to float here a few months longer, his
+end is certain. 'Do you think I can go, sir?' 'Yes, John, if you will
+have your face washed and hair combed within half an hour.' Under a
+brisk scrubbing, his face lights up several shades; but the twisted,
+tangled hair, matted for years, will not yield to any amount of washing
+and pulling--barbers' shears are the only remedy.
+
+"So a new volunteer is added to our regiment. Here is his enrollment:--
+
+_"'John ----, American--Protestant--13 years--Orphan--Parents died in
+R----, Maine--A "snoozer" for four years--Most of the time in New York,
+with an occasional visit to Albany and Troy, "when times go
+hard"--Intelligent--Black, sharp eye--Hopeful.'_
+
+"As we marched, two deep, round the State House to the depot, John
+received many a recognition from the 'outsiders,' among whom he seems to
+be a general favorite, and they call out after him, 'Good-by, Smack,'
+with a half-sad, half-sly nod, as if in doubt whether he was playing
+some new game, or were really going to leave them and try an honest
+life.
+
+"At the depot we worked our way through the Babel of at least one
+thousand Germans, Irish, Italians, and Norwegians, with whom nothing
+goes right; every one insists that he is in the wrong car--that his
+baggage has received the wrong mark--that Chicago is in this direction,
+and the cars are on the wrong track; in short, they are agreed upon
+nothing except in the opinion that this is a 'bad counthry, and it's
+good luck to the soul who sees the end on't.' The conductor, a
+red-faced, middle-aged man, promises to give us a separate car; but,
+while he whispers and negotiates with two Dutch girls, who are traveling
+without a protector, the motley mass rush into the cars, and we are
+finally pushed into one already full--some standing, a part sitting in
+laps, and some On the floor under the benches--crowded to suffocation,
+in a freight-car without windows--rough benches for seats, and no
+back--no ventilation except through the sliding-doors, where the little
+chaps are in constant danger of falling through. There were scenes that
+afternoon and night which it would not do to reveal. Irishmen passed
+around bad whisky and sang bawdy songs; Dutch men and women smoked and
+sang, and grunted and cursed; babies squalled and nursed, and left no
+baby duties undone.
+
+"Night came on, and we were told that 'passengers furnish; their own
+lights!' For this we were unprepared, and so we tried to endure
+darkness, which never before seemed half so thick as in that stifled
+car, though it was relieved here and there for a few minutes by a
+lighted pipe. One Dutchman in the corner kept up a constant fire; and
+when we told him we were choking with smoke, he only answered with a
+complacent grunt and a fresh supply of the weed. The fellow seemed to
+puff when he was fairly asleep, and the curls were lifting beautifully
+above the bowl, when smash against the car went the pipe in a dozen
+pieces! No one knew the cause, except, perhaps, the boy behind me, who
+had begged an apple a few minutes before.
+
+"At Utica we dropped our fellow-passengers from Germany, and, thus
+partially relieved, spent the rest of the night in tolerable comfort.
+
+"In the morning, we were in the vicinity of Rochester, and you can
+hardly imagine the delight of the children as they looked, many of them
+for the first time, upon country scenery. Each one must see everything
+we passed, find its name, and make his own comments. 'What's that,
+mister?' 'A cornfield.' 'Oh, yes; them's what makes buckwheaters.' 'Look
+at them cows (oxen plowing); my mother used to milk cows.' As we whirled
+through orchards loaded with large, red apples, their enthusiasm rose to
+the highest pitch. It was difficult to keep them within doors. Arms
+stretched out, hats swinging, eyes swimming, mouths watering, and all
+screaming--'Oh! oh! just look at 'em! Mister, be they any sich in
+Michi_gan?_ Then I'm in for _that_ place--three cheers for Michi_gan!'_
+We had been riding in comparative quiet for nearly an hour, when all at
+once the greatest excitement broke out. We were passing a cornfield
+spread over with ripe yellow pumpkins. 'Oh! yonder! look! Just look at
+'em!' and in an instant the same exclamation was echoed from forty-seven
+mouths. 'Jist look at 'em! What a heap of _mushmillons!'_ 'Mister, do
+they make mushmillons in Michi_gan?'_ 'Ah, fellers, _ain't_ that the
+country tho'--won't we have nice things to eat?' 'Yes, and won't we
+_sell_ some, too?' 'Hip! hip! boys; three cheers for Michi_gan!'_
+
+"At Buffalo we received great kindness from Mr. Harrison, the
+freight-agent and this was by no means his first service to the
+Children's Aid Society. Several boys and girls whom we have sent West
+have received the kindest attention at his hands. I am sure Mr. H.'s
+fireside must be a happy spot. Also Mr. Noble, agent for the Mich. C. R.
+R., gave me a letter of introduction, which was of great service on the
+way.
+
+"We were in Buffalo nine hours, and the boys had the liberty of the
+town, but were all on board the boat in season. We went down to our
+place, the steerage cabin, and no one but an emigrant on a lake-boat can
+understand the night we spent. The berths are covered with a coarse
+mattress, used by a thousand different passengers, and never changed
+till they are filled with stench and vermin. The emigrants spend the
+night in washing, smoking, drinking, singing, sleep, and licentiousness.
+It was the last night in the freight-car repeated, with the addition of
+a touch of sea-sickness, and of the stamping, neighing, and bleating of
+a hundred horses and sheep over our heads, and the effluvia of their
+filth pouring through the open gangway. But we survived the night; _how_
+had better not be detailed. In the morning we got outside upon the
+boxes, and enjoyed the beautiful day. The boys were in good spirits,
+sung songs, told New York yarns, and made friends generally among the
+passengers. Occasionally, some one more knowing than wise would attempt
+to poke fun at them, whereupon the boys would 'pitch in,' and open such
+a sluice of Bowery slang as made Mr. Would-be-funny beat a retreat in
+double-quick time. No one attempted that game twice. During the day the
+clerk discovered that three baskets of peaches were missing, all except
+the baskets. None of the boys had been detected with the fruit, but I
+afterwards found they had eaten it.
+
+"Landed in Detroit at ten o'clock, Saturday night, and took a
+first-class passenger-car on Mich. C. R. R., and reached D----c, a
+'smart little town,' in S. W. Michigan, three o'clock Sunday morning.
+The depot-master, who seldom receives more than three passengers from a
+train, was utterly confounded at the crowd of little ones poured out
+upon the platform, and at first refused to let us stay till morning;
+but, after a deal of explanation, he consented, with apparent misgiving,
+and the boys spread themselves on the floor to sleep. At day-break they
+began to inquire, 'Where be we?' and, finding that they were really in
+Michigan, scattered in all directions, each one for himself, and in less
+than five minutes there was not a boy in sight of the depot. When I had
+negotiated for our stay at the American House (!) and had breakfast
+nearly ready, they began to straggle back from every quarter, each boy
+loaded down--caps, shoes, coat-sleeves, and shirts full of every green
+thing they could lay hands upon--apples, ears of corn, peaches, pieces
+of pumpkins, etc. 'Look at the Michi_gan_ filberts!' cried a little
+fellow, running up, holding with both hands upon his shirt bosom, which
+was bursting out with _acorns._ Little Mag (and she is one of the
+prettiest, sweetest little things you ever set eyes upon), brought in a
+'nosegay,' which she insisted upon sticking in my coat--a mullen-stock
+and corn-leaf, twisted with grass!
+
+"Several of the boys had had a swim in the creek, though it was a pretty
+cold morning. At the breakfast-table the question was discussed, how we
+should spend the Sabbath. The boys evidently wanted to continue their
+explorations; but when asked if it would not be best to go to church,
+there were no hands down, and some proposed to go to Sunday School, and
+'boys' meeting, too.'
+
+"The children had clean and happy faces, but no change of clothes, and
+those they wore were badly soiled and torn by the emigrant passage. You
+can imagine the appearance of our 'ragged regiment,' as we filed into
+the Presbyterian church (which, by the way, was a school-house), and
+appropriated our full share of the seats. The 'natives' could not be
+satisfied with staring, as they came to the door and filled up the
+vacant part of the house. The pastor was late, and we 'occupied the
+time' in singing. Those sweet Sabbath School songs never sounded so
+sweetly before. Their favorite hymn was, 'Come, ye sinners, poor and
+needy,' and they rolled it out with a relish. It was a touching sight,
+and pocket-handkerchiefs were used quite freely among the audience.
+
+"At the close of the sermon the people were informed of the object of
+the Children's Aid Society. It met with the cordial approbation of all
+present, and several promised to take children. I was announced to
+preach in the afternoon; but, on returning to the tavern, I found that
+my smallest boy had been missing since day-break, and that he was last
+seen upon the high bridge over the creek, a little out of the village.
+So we spent the afternoon in hunting, instead of going to church. (Not
+an uncommon practice here, by the way.)
+
+"We dove in the creek and searched through the woods, but little George
+(six years old) was not to be found; and when the boys came home to
+supper there was a shade of sadness on their faces, and they spoke in
+softer tones of the lost playmate. But the saddest was George's brother,
+one year older. They were two orphans--all alone in the world. Peter
+stood up at the table, but when he saw his brother's place at his side
+vacant, he burst out in uncontrollable sobbing. After supper he seemed
+to forget his loss, till he lay down on the floor at night, and there
+was the vacant spot again, and his little heart flowed over with grief.
+Just so again when he awoke in the morning, and at breakfast and
+dinner.
+
+"Monday morning the boys held themselves in readiness to receive
+applications from the farmers. They would watch at all directions,
+scanning closely every wagon that came in sight, and deciding from the
+appearance of the driver and the horses, more often from the latter,
+whether they 'would go in for _that_ farmer.'
+
+"There seems to be a general dearth of boys, and still greater of girls,
+in all this section, and before night I had applications for fifteen of
+my children, the applicants bringing recommendations from their pastor
+and the justice of peace.
+
+"There was a rivalry among the boys to see which first could get a home
+in the country, and before Saturday they were all gone. Rev. Mr. O. took
+several home with him; and nine of the smallest I accompanied to
+Chicago, and sent to Mr. Townsend, Iowa City. Nearly all, the others
+found homes in Cass County, and I had a dozen applications for more. A
+few of the boys are bound to trades, but the most insisted upon being
+farmers, and learning to drive horses. They are to receive a good
+common-school education, and one hundred dollars when twenty-one. I have
+great hopes for the majority of them. 'Mag' is _adopted_ by a wealthy
+Christian farmer. 'Smack,' the privateer from Albany, has a good home in
+a Quaker settlement. The two brothers, Dick and Jack, were taken by an
+excellent man and his son, living on adjacent farms. The German boy from
+the 'Lodging-house' lives with a physician in D----.
+
+"Several of the boys came in to see me, and tell their experience in
+learning to farm. One of them was sure he knew how to milk, and being
+furnished with a pail, was told to take his choice of the cows in the
+yard. He sprang for a two-year-old steer, caught him by the horns, and
+called for a 'line to make him fast.' None seemed discontented but one,
+who ran away from a tinner, because he wanted to be a farmer.
+
+"But I must tell you of the lost boy. No tidings were heard of him up to
+Monday noon, when the citizens rallied and scoured the woods for miles
+around; but the search was fruitless, and Peter lay down that night
+sobbing, and with his arms stretched out, just as he used to throw them
+round his brother.
+
+"About ten o'clock a man knocked at the door, and cried out, 'Here is
+the lost boy!' Peter heard him, and the two brothers met on the stairs,
+and before we could ask where he had been, Peter had George in his place
+by his side on the floor. They have gone to live together in Iowa.
+
+"On the whole, the first experiment of sending children West is a very
+happy one, and I am sure there are places enough with good families in
+Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, to give every poor boy and girl
+in New York a permanent home. The only difficulty is to bring the
+children _to_ the homes.
+                                                         "E. P. Smith."
+
+                                 ----
+
+                      A LATER PARTY TO THE WEST.
+
+                                                       "'JANUARY, 1868.
+
+"'DEAR SIR--It will, perhaps, be interesting for you to know some facts
+connected with the disposal of my party at the West. We numbered
+thirty-two in all: two babies--one a fine little fellow one year old,
+and the other twenty-one years old, but, nevertheless, the greatest babe
+in the company. Just before I reached Chicago, I was surprised to find
+that my party numbered only about twenty, instead of thirty-two. I went
+into the forward car. You may imagine my surprise to find my large babe,
+W---- D----, playing upon a concertina, and M---- H----, alias M----
+B----, footing it down as only a clog-dancer, and one well acquainted
+with his business at that, could do, while eight or ten boys, and
+perhaps as many brakes-men and baggage-men, stood looking on, evidently
+greatly amused. It was plain to see that I was an unwelcome visitor.
+Order was at once restored, and the boys went back and took their seats.
+As we neared A----, a gentleman by the name of L---- came to me, and,
+after making some inquiries, said: "I wish you would let me take that
+boy," pointing to G---- A----, a little fellow about eight years old.
+I told him we never allowed a child to go to a home from the train, as
+we had a committee appointed in A----, to whom application must be made.
+I promised, however, that I would keep the boy for him until Monday and
+if he came, bringing satisfactory recommendations, he should have him.
+He said if money was any inducement, he would give me twenty-five
+dollars if I would let him have the boy. I said five thousand dollars
+would not be an inducement without the recommendation. The little fellow
+was really the most remarkable child I ever saw, so amiable and
+intelligent, and yet so good-looking. When I reached A----, I had not
+been out of the cars five minutes when a gentleman went to G----, and
+placing his hand on his shoulder, said, "This is the little man I want."
+I told him he had been engaged already. We passed through the crowd at
+the depot, and finally reached the hotel. We had been there but a short
+time when I had another application for G----. The first applicant came
+up also, and asserted his claim; said that, if L---- did not come and
+get the boy, he had the first right to him. L---- did not come, and I
+had some difficulty to settle the matter between the two applicants.
+Didn't know but I should have to resort to Solomon's plan, and divide
+the boy, but determined to let him go to the best home.
+
+"'Matters went off very pleasantly the first day. I found _good_ homes
+for some ten or twelve boys; but, in the evening, I missed the boys from
+the hotel, and, in looking for them, was attracted to a saloon by the
+dulcet tones of my babe's concertina, and entered. D---- was playing,
+and two of the boys were delighting the audience with a comic Irish
+song. All the rowdies and rum-drinkers in the town seemed to have turned
+out to meet them. I stepped inside of the door, and, with arms folded,
+stood looking very intently at them, without uttering a word. First the
+music ceased, then the singing, and one by one the boys slunk out of the
+room, until I was left alone with the rabble. It was rather amusing to
+hear their exclamations of surprise. "Halloo! what's up?" "What's broke
+loose now?" I went to the hotel, found the boys there, and a more humble
+set I never saw. I gave them a lecture about a yard long, and professed
+to feel very much hurt at the idea of finding a boy who came out with
+me, in a rum-shop. I gave them to understand what I should expect of
+them in future, and ended by having the door opened and extending an
+invitation to leave to those boys who thought they could do better for
+themselves than I should do for them. As no disposition to leave
+manifested itself, I then put the question to vote whether they would
+remain with me and do just as I wished, or go and look out for
+themselves. Every hand went up, and some of the boys expressed
+themselves very sorry for what they had done. W---- D---- left a day or
+two after, taking the concertina with him, which I afterward learned
+belonged to another boy. The most of my trouble seemed to take wing and
+fly away with him. He was the scapegoat of the party.
+
+"'Illinois is a beautiful farming country. All the farmers seem to be
+wealthy. The large boys, with two exceptions, were placed upon farms.
+Quite a number of boys came back to the hotel to say good-by, and thank
+me for bringing them out. I will note a few of the most interesting
+cases: John Mahoney, age 16, with Mr. J---- T---- (farmer); came in town
+Sunday to show me a fine mule his employer had given him. J---- C----,
+age 14, went with Mrs. D----, who has a farm; came in, to tell me how
+well pleased he is with his place; says he will work the farm as soon as
+he is able, and get half the profits. D---- M----, age 17, went with
+A---- H. B---- (farmer); came back to tell me his employer had given him
+a pig, and a small plot of ground to work for himself. J---- S----, age
+17, went with J---- B----; saw him after the boy had been with him three
+or four days; he likes him very much, and has given him a Canadian pony,
+with saddle and bridle. I might mention other cases, but I know the
+above to be facts.
+
+"'The boys met with a great deal of sympathy. One old gentleman came in
+just for the purpose of seeing a little boy who had lost an eye, and was
+a brother to a boy his son had taken. When I told the little fellow that
+the gentleman lived near the man who had taken his brother, he climbed
+up on his knee, and putting his arms around his neck, said: "I want to
+go home with you, and be your boy; I want to see my brother." The old
+gentleman wept, and wiping the tears from his eyes, said: "This is more
+than I can stand; I will take this boy home with me." He is a wealthy
+farmer and a good man, and I am sure will love the little fellow very
+much, for he is a very interesting child.
+                                                        YOURS,
+                                                          "'C. R. FRY'"
+
+"This letter is from a farmer--a deaf-mute--who has a destitute
+deaf-mute lad placed with him:--
+
+                                    "'C---- H----, IND., March 5, 1860.
+
+"'MY DEAR SIR--I received your kind letter some days ago. It has given
+me great pleasure to hear that you had arrived at your home. I got a
+report from you. The first of the time when you left D----, he cried and
+stamped on the floor by the door, but I took him to show him the horses;
+I told him when he will be a big man I would give him a horse. Then he
+quit crying, and he began to learn A, B, C, on that day when you left
+here. Now D---- is doing very well, and plays the most of anything; he
+likes to stay here very well; he can learn about dog and cat. I am
+willing to take care of him over twenty-one years old, if he stays here
+as long as he ever gets to be twenty-one years old; then I will give him
+a horse, money, clothes, school, etc. Last Saturday, D---- rode on my
+colt himself; the colt is very gentle; on advice, he got off the colt;
+he petted the colt the most of time; he likes to play with the young
+colt. He likes to stay with me, and he said he don't like to go back
+where you are. He gathers chips and fetches wood in the stove, and is
+willing to do all his work directly. I wonder that he bold boy and mock
+some neighbors.
+                                           "'Yours truly, friend,
+                                                             "'L. F. W.
+
+"'Write a letter to me immediately and let me know. He likes to go about
+with me, but not when it is very cold; I send him to stay in the house,
+out of the cold. When it is warm day, he likes to go about with me.
+Sometimes he goes to town. He pets the colt every day; sometimes he
+waters the colt and feed some corn himself.'"
+
+                                 ----
+
+                      THE HUNGRY BOY IN A HOME.
+
+"In our first Report there was an account of a little boy, whom our
+visitor, Rev. Mr. Smith, found under a cart in the street, gnawing a
+bone which he had picked up for his breakfast. He had a good-natured
+little face, and a fine, dark eye. Mr. S. felt for him, and said, 'Where
+do you live, my boy?'
+
+_'Don't live nowhere.'_ 'But, where do you stay?' He said a woman had
+taken him in, in Thirteenth Street, and that he slept in one corner of
+her room. His mother had left him, and 'lived all about, doin' washin'.'
+Mr. Smith went around with him to the place, and found a poor, kind
+woman, who had only a bare room and just enough to live, and yet had
+sheltered and fed the wretched little creature. 'She was the poorest
+creature in New York,' she said, 'but somehow everything that was poor
+always came to her, and while God gave her anything, she meant to share
+it with those who were poorer than she.' The boy was sent to
+Pennsylvania, and the following is the letter from his mistress, or
+rather friend, to the poor mother here. It speaks for itself. May God
+bless the kind mother's heart, which has taken in thus the outcast
+child!
+
+                                           "'H----, PENN., Dec 8, 1855.
+
+"'Mr. Q----: I have but a moment to write this morning. You wish to know
+how Johnny, as you call him, gets along. We do not know him by that
+name. Having a William and a John before he came here, we have given him
+the name of Frederick; he is generally called Freddy. He is well, and
+has been, since I last wrote to you. He is a very healthy boy, not
+having been sick a day since he came here. His feet trouble him at times
+very much; they are so tender that he is obliged to wear stockings and
+shoes all the year. We do not expect his feet will ever bear the cold,
+as they were so badly frozen while on the way from the city here. But do
+not imagine that he suffers much, for he does not. When his boots or
+shoes are new, he complains a good deal; but after a little he gets
+along without scarcely noticing it. To-day our winter's school
+commences. Samuel, Freddy, and Emily will attend; and I hope Freddy will
+be able to write to you when the school closes. He learns to write very
+easy, and will, with little pains, make a good penman. He is an
+excellent speller--scarcely ever spells a word wrong--but he is not a
+good reader; but we think he will be, as we call him ambitious and
+persevering, and he is unwilling to be behind boys of his age. Do you
+ask if he is a good boy? I can assure you he has the name of a good boy
+throughout the neighborhood; and wherever he is known, his kind,
+obliging manners make him many friends. Again, do you inquire if he is
+beloved At home? I will unhesitatingly say that we surely love him as
+our own; and we have had visitors here for a number of days without once
+thinking that he was not our own child.
+
+"'I wish you could see the children as they start for school this
+morning. Fred, with his black plush cap, green tunic, black vest, gray
+pants, striped mittens, and his new comforter, which he bought with his
+own money. Samuel carries the dinner-pail this morning; it is filled
+with bread and butter, apple pie, and gingerbread; and Fred has his
+slate, reader, spelling-book, and Testament--and he has not forgotten to
+go down to the cellar and fill his pockets with apples.
+
+"'I am not very well, and I make bad work of writing. I am afraid you
+will not find out what I have written.
+
+"'Fred often speaks of you, and of his dear sister Jane. He wants you to
+tell Mr. Brace how you get along, and get him to write to us all about
+it.
+                              "'With desire for your welfare,
+                              "'I subscribe myself your friend,
+                                                       "'Sally L----.'"
+
+                            THE PRISON-BOY.
+
+"The boy of whom this is written was taken from one of the City
+Prisons:--
+
+                                                "'H----, Oct. 12, 1865.
+
+"'DEAR SIR--Yours, making inquiries about F. C, was duly received. His
+health has been generally good and so far as his behavior is concerned,
+it has been as good as could have been expected from the history he has
+given us of himself, previous to his coming to live with us. We soon
+learned that very little dependence could be placed on his truthfulness
+or honesty; in fact, he was a fair specimen of New York juvenile
+vagrancy. He has wanted a close supervision, and we have endeavored to
+correct what was wrong, and to inculcate better things, and, we think,
+with some success. He has learned to read and spell very well; besides
+these, he has attended to writing and arithmetic, and has made some
+improvement in them. The first winter that he came to live with us, we
+did not think it best to send him to our Public School, but kept him
+under our own personal instruction. The last winter he attended our
+Public School five and a half months. He has been in our Sabbath School
+from the time he first came, and has usually had his lessons well. He
+has, from the first, been glad to attend all religious meetings, and we
+think that his moral perception of things has much improved, and we can
+but hope that, with proper attention, he may grow up to be a useful and
+respectable man. He seemed quite satisfied with his home.
+                                    "'Yours, most respectfully,
+                                                           "'C. S. B.'"
+
+ "This, again, is about a poor friendless little girl, sent to a good
+family in old Connecticut:--
+
+                                           "'N----, CT., Oct. 11, 1855.
+ "'MR. MACY:
+
+_"'Dear Sir_--With regard to Sarah, I would say that she is a very good
+girl, and is also useful to us, and, I think, fitting herself to be
+useful to herself at a future day.
+
+"'She has now been with us about two and a half years, and has become a
+part of our family; and we should feel very sorry to part with her. She
+attended school last winter at the N. Union High School, which affords
+advantages equal to any school in the country. She made much improvement
+in her studies, and at the end of the winter term a public examination
+was held at the school, and Mr. B., the Principal, stated, in presence
+of more than three hundred persons, that Sarah G. lived in my family,
+and was taken by me from the "Children's Aid Society," of New York; and
+stated, also, that when she commenced to go to school, she was unable to
+read a word, and wished them to notice the improvement that had been
+made in her case. The audience seemed to be surprised that she had been
+able to accomplish so much in so short a time.
+
+"'She also attends Sabbath School very regularly, and gets her lessons
+very perfectly, and appears to take great delight in doing so. I think
+she has improved in many respects. She speaks, occasionally of the way
+in which she used to live in New York, and of the manner in which she
+was treated by her parents, when they were alive, and says she can never
+be thankful enough to the kind friends, who, being connected with the
+Children's Aid Society, sought her out, and provided her with a
+comfortable home in the country, far removed from the temptations, and
+vices, and miseries of a city like New York. I would say that she has
+not been to school the past summer, and that she had made little
+progress in penmanship during her attendance last winter, and that she
+is not now able to write you herself, but I think will be able to do so
+when you wish to hear from her again.
+                                          "'Respectfully yours,
+                                                          "'WM. K. L.'"
+
+                                 ----
+
+                    FROM THE GUTTER TO THE COLLEGE.
+
+                               "YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN, OCT. 11, 1871.
+"Rev. C. L. Brace, Secretary Children's Aid Society:
+
+_"Dear Sir_--I shall endeavor in this letter to give you a brief sketch
+of my life, as it is your request that I should.
+
+"I cannot speak of my parents with any certainty at all. I recollect
+having an aunt by the name of Julia B----. She had me in charge for some
+time, and made known some things to me of which I have a faint
+remembrance. She married a gentleman in Boston, and left me to shift for
+myself in the streets of your city. I could not have been more than
+seven or eight years of age at this time. She is greatly to be excused
+for this act, since I was a very bad boy, having an abundance of
+self-will.
+
+"At this period I became a vagrant, roaming over all parts of the city.
+I would often pick up a meal at the markets or at the docks, where they
+were unloading fruit. At a late hour in the night I would find a
+resting-place in some box or hogshead, or in some dark hole under a
+staircase.
+
+"The boys that I fell in company with would steal and swear, and of
+course I contracted those habits too. I have a distinct recollection of
+stealing up upon houses to tear the lead from around the chimneys, and
+then take it privily away to some junk-shop, as they call it; with the
+proceeds I would buy a ticket for the pit in the Chatham-street Theatre,
+and something to eat with the remainder. This is the manner in which I
+was drifting out in the stream of life, when some kind person from your
+Society persuaded me to go to Randall's Island. I remained at this place
+two years. Sometime in July, 1859, one of your agents came there and
+asked how many boys who had no parents would love to have nice homes in
+the West, where they could drive horses and oxen, and have as many
+apples and melons as they should wish. I happened to be one of the many
+who responded in the affirmative.
+
+"On the 4th of August twenty-one of us had homes procured for us at
+N----, Ind. A lawyer from T----, who chanced to be engaged in court
+matters, was at N---- at the time. He desired to take a boy home with
+him, and I was the one assigned him. He owns a farm of two hundred acres
+lying close to town. Care was taken that I should be occupied there and
+not in town. I was always treated as one of the family. In sickness I
+was ever cared for by prompt attention. In winter I was sent to the
+Public School. The family room was a good school to me, for there I
+found the daily papers and a fair library.
+
+"After a period of several years I taught a Public School in a little
+log cabin about nine miles from T----. There I felt that every man ought
+to be a good man, especially if he is to instruct little children.
+
+"Though I had my pupils read the Bible, yet I could not openly ask God's
+blessing on the efforts of the day. Shortly after I united myself with
+the Church. I always had attended Sabbath School at T----. Mr. G----
+placed me in one the first Sabbath. I never doubted the teachings of the
+Scriptures. Soon my pastor presented the claims of the ministry. I
+thought about it for some time, for my ambition was tending strongly
+toward the legal profession. The more I reflected the more I felt how
+good God had been to me all my life, and that if I had any ability for
+laboring in His harvest, He was surely entitled to it.
+
+"I had accumulated some property on the farm in the shape of a horse, a
+yoke of oxen, etc., amounting in all to some $800. These I turned into
+cash, and left for a preparatory school. This course that I had entered
+upon did not meet with Mr. G----'s hearty approbation. At the academy I
+found kind instructors and sympathizing friends. I remained there three
+years, relying greatly on my own efforts for support. After entering the
+class of '74' last year, I was enabled to go through with it by the
+kindness of a few citizens here.
+
+"I have now resumed my duties as a Sophomore, in faith in Him who has
+ever been my best friend. If I can prepare myself for acting well my
+part in life by going through the college curriculum, I shall be
+satisfied.
+
+"I shall ever acknowledge with gratitude that the Children's Aid Society
+has been the instrument of my elevation.
+
+"To be taken from the gutters of New York city and placed in a college
+is almost a miracle.
+
+"I am not an exception either. Wm. F----, who was taken West during the
+war, in a letter received from W---- College, dated Oct. 7, writes thus:
+'I have heard that you were studying for the ministry, so am I. I have a
+long time yet before I enter the field, but I am young and at the right
+age to begin.' My prayer is that the Society may be amplified to greater
+usefulness.
+                                                Yours very truly,
+                                                           "JOHN G. B."
+
+             ONCE A NEW YORK PAUPER, NOW A WESTERN FARMER
+
+                                           C----, Mich., Oct. 26, 1871.
+
+"MR. J. MACY:
+
+_"Dear Sir_--I received your very kind and welcome letter a few days
+since, and I assure you that I felt very much rejoiced to know that you
+felt that same interest in hearing and knowing how your Western boys and
+girls get along, as you have expressed in former times.
+
+"In your letter you spoke of the time you accompanied our company of
+boys to the West as not seeming so long to you as it really was. For my
+own part, if I could not look to the very many pleasant scenes that it
+has been my privilege to enjoy while I have been in the West, I do not
+think it would seem so long to me since we all marched two and two for
+the boat up the Hudson River on our route for Michigan. There were some
+among us who shed a few tears as we were leaving the city, as we all
+expected, for the last time. But as we sped on and saw new sights, we
+very willingly forgot the city with all its dusty atmosphere and
+temptations and wickedness, for the country all around us was clothed in
+its richest foliage; the birds were singing their sweetest songs, and
+all nature seemed praising our Heavenly Father in high notes of joy.
+
+"In the midst of this enchantment we were introduced to the farmers in
+the vicinity of A----, and then and there we many of us separated to go
+home with those kind friends, and mould the character of our future
+life.
+
+"For my own part, I was more than fortunate, for I secured a home with
+_good_ man and every comfort of life I enjoyed. I had the benefit of
+good schools until I was nearly of age, and when I became of age a
+substantial present of eighty acres of good farming land, worth fifty
+dollars per acre, was given me, and thus I commenced life. Once a New
+York pauper, now a Western farmer. If these lines should chance to meet
+the eyes of any boy or girl in your Society, I would say to them, don't
+delay, but go to the West and there seek your home and fortune. You may
+have some trials and temptations to overcome, but our lives seem happier
+when we know that we have done our duties and have done the will of our
+Heavenly Father, who has kindly cared for us all through our lives.
+
+"Last winter it was my privilege to be with you all through the
+Christmas festivities, and it did my soul good to return and enjoy
+Christmas with you after an absence of nearly fifteen years. I met you
+there as I also did at the Newsboys' Lodging-house. Those were times of
+rejoicing to me to see the wickedness we escaped by not staying at large
+in your city. When I returned home I brought with me a girl of eleven
+years of age, and intend to do as well by her as my circumstances will
+allow. I have been married nearly three years, and by God's grace
+assisting us we intend to meet you all on the other shore. I have
+written you a very long letter, but I will now close. I shall be pleased
+to hear from you again at any time when you feel at liberty to write.
+Hoping to hear from you soon again, I remain truly your friend,
+                                                          C. H. J----."
+
+                              EMIGRATION.
+
+With reference to the cost of this method of charity, we have usually
+estimated the net expenses of the agent, his salary, the railroad fares,
+food and clothing for the child, as averaging fifteen dollars per head
+for each child sent. Whenever practicable, the agent collects from the
+employers the railroad expenses, and otherwise obtains gifts from
+benevolent persons; so that, frequently, our collections and "returned
+fares" in this way have amounted to $6,000 or $8,000 per annum. These
+gifts, however, are becoming less and less, and will probably eventually
+cease altogether; the former feeling that he has done his fair share in
+receiving and training the child.
+
+We are continually forced, also, towards the newer and more distant
+States, where labor is more in demand, and the temper of the population
+is more generous, so that the average expense of the aid thus given will
+in the future be greater for each boy or girl relieved.
+
+The opposition, too, of the bigoted poor increases, undoubtedly under
+the influence of some of the more prejudiced priests, who suppose that
+the poor are thus removed from ecclesiastical influences. A class of
+children, whom we used thus to benefit, are now sent to the Catholic
+Protectory, or are retained in the City Alms-house on Randall's Island.
+
+Were our movement allowed its full scope, we could take the place of
+every Orphan Asylum and Alms-house for pauper children in and around New
+York, and thus save the public hundreds of thousands of dollars, and
+immensely benefit the children. We could easily "locate" 5,000 children
+per annum, from the ages of two years to fifteen, in good homes in the
+West, at an average net cost of fifteen dollars per head.
+
+If Professor Fawcett's objection [See Fawcett on "Pauperism."] be urged,
+that we are thus doing for the children of the Alms-house poor, what the
+industrious and self-supporting poor cannot get done for their own
+children, we answer that we are perfectly ready to do the same for the
+outside hard-working poor; but their attachment to the city, their
+ignorance or bigotry, and their affection for their children, will
+always prevent them from making use of such a benefaction to any large
+degree. The poor, living in their own homes, seldom wish to send out
+their children in this way. We do "place out" a certain number of such
+children; but the great majority of our little emigrants are the "waifs
+and strays" of the streets in a large city.
+
+                              OUR AGENTS.
+
+The Charity I am describing has been singularly fortunate in its agents;
+but in none more so than in those who performed its responsible work in
+the West.
+
+Mr. E. P. Smith, who writes the interesting description above, of the
+first expedition we sent to the West, has since become honorably
+distinguished by labors among the freedmen as agent of the Christian
+Commission.
+
+Our most successful agent, however, was Mr. C. C. Tracy, who had a
+certain quaintness of conversation and anecdote, and a solid kindness
+and benevolence, which won his way with the Western farmers, as well as
+the little flocks he conducted to their new fold.
+
+One of his favorite apothegms became almost a proverb.
+
+"Won't the boy ran away?" was the frequent anxious inquiry from the
+farmers.
+
+"Did ye ever see a cow run _away_ from a haystack?" was Mr. Tracy's,
+rejoinder. "Treat him well, and he'll be sure to stay."
+
+And the bland and benevolent manner in which he would reply to an
+irritated employer, who came back to report that the "New-York boy" had
+knocked over the milk-pail, and pelted the best cow, and let the cattle
+in the corn, and left the young turkeys in the rain, etc, etc, was
+delightful to behold.
+
+"My dear friend, can you expect boys to be perfect at once? Didn't you
+ever pelt the cattle when you were a boy?"
+
+Mr. T. testified before the Senate Committee in 1871, that he had
+transplanted to the West some four or five thousand children, and, to
+the best of his knowledge and belief, very few ever turned out bad.
+
+Whenever any of these children chanced to be defective in mind or body,
+or, from any other cause, became chargeable on the rural authorities, we
+made ourselves responsible for their support, during any reasonable time
+after their settlement in the West.
+
+Our present agents, Mr. E. Trott and Mr. J. P. Brace, are exceedingly
+able and judicious agents, so that we transported, in 1871, to the
+country, some three thousand children, at an expense, including all
+salaries and costs, of $31,638.
+
+We have also a resident Western agent, Mr. C. R. Fry, who looks after
+the interests of those previously sent and prepares for future parties,
+traveling from village to village. The duties of all these agents are
+very severe and onerous.
+
+It is a matter of devout thankfulness that no accident has ever happened
+to any one of the many parties of children we have sent out, or to the
+agents.
+
+The following testimony was given by Mr. J. Macy, Assistant Secretary of
+the Children's Aid Society, before the Senate Committee, in 1871:--
+
+"Mr. J. Macy testified that he corresponds annually with from eight
+thousand to ten thousand persons, and, on an average, receives about two
+thousand letters from children and their employers. He has personal
+knowledge of a great many boys growing up to be respectable citizens,
+others having married well, others graduating in Western colleges. Out
+of twenty-one thousand, not over twelve children have turned out
+criminals, The percentage of boys returning to the city from the West is
+too small to be computed, not more than six annually. From
+correspondence and personal knowledge, he is thoroughly satisfied that
+but very few turned out bad, and that the only way of saving large boys
+from falling into criminal practices is to send them into good
+country-homes. He regarded the system of sending families to the West as
+one of the best features of the work of the Society. Not a family has
+been sent West which has not improved by the removal. The Society had
+never changed the name of a child, and Catholic children had often been
+intrusted to Catholic families." * * * * *
+
+"Letter from a newsboy to the Superintendent of the Lodging-house:--
+
+                                           "M----, IND., Nov. 24, 1859.
+
+"'TO MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.--So I take my pen in my hand to let you
+know how I am, and how I am getting along; As far as I see, I am well
+satisfied with my place; but I took a general look around, and, as far
+as I see, all the boys left in M---- are doing well, especially myself,
+and I think there is as much fun as in New York, for nuts and apples are
+all free. I am much obliged to you, Mr. O'Connor, for the paper you sent
+me. I received it last night; I read it last night--something about the
+Newsboys' Lodging-house.
+
+"'All the newsboys of New York have a bad name; but we should show
+ourselves, and show them, that we are no fools; that we can become as
+respectable as any of their countrymen, for some of you poor boys can do
+something for your country-for Franklin, Webster, Clay, were poor boys
+once, and even Commodore V. C. Perry or Math. C. Perry. But even George
+Law, and Vanderbilt, and Astor--some of the richest men of New York--and
+Math. and V. C. Perry were nothing but printers, and in the navy on Lake
+Erie. And look at Winfield Scott. So now, boys, stand up and let them
+see you have got the real stuff in you. Come out here and make
+respectable and honorable men, so they can say, there, that boy was once
+a newsboy.
+
+"'Now, boys, you all know I have tried everything. I have been a newsboy
+and when that got slack, you know I have smashed baggage. I have sold
+nuts; I have peddled, I have worked on the rolling billows up the canal.
+I was a boot-black; and you know when I sold papers I was at the top of
+our profession. I had a good stand of my own, but I found that all would
+not do. I could not get along, but I am now going ahead. I have a
+first-rate home, ten dollars a month, and my board; and I tell you,
+fellows, that is a great deal more than I could scrape up my best times
+in New York. We are all on an equality, my boys, out here, so long as we
+keep yourselves respectable.
+
+"'Mr. O'Connor, tell Fatty or F. John Pettibone, to send me a Christmas
+number of _Frank Leslie's_ and _Harper's Weekly,_ a _Weekly News_ or
+some other pictorials to read, especially the _Newsboys' Pictorial,_ if
+it comes out. No old papers, or else none. If they would get some other
+boys to get me some books. I want something to read.
+
+"I hope this letter will find you in good health, as it leaves me. Mr.
+O'Connor, I expect an answer before two weeks--a letter and a paper.
+Write to me all about the Lodging-house. With this I close my letter,
+with much respect to all.
+                            "'I remain your truly obedient friend,
+                                                              "'J. K.'"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+         A PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST AMONG THE YOUNG "ROUGHS."
+
+A sketch of the long and successful efforts for the improvement of the
+dangerous classes we have been describing would be imperfect without an
+account of
+
+              THE OFFICE OF THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY.
+
+This has become a kind of eddying-point, where the two streams of the
+fortunate and the unfortunate classes seem to meet. Such a varying
+procession of humanity as passes through these plain rooms, from one
+year's end to the other, can nowhere else be seen. If photographs could
+be taken of the human life revealed there, they would form a volume of
+pictures of the various fortunes of large classes in a great city. On
+one day, there will be several mothers with babes. They wish them
+adopted, or taken by any one. They relate sad stories of desertion and
+poverty; they are strangers or immigrants. When the request is declined,
+they beseech, and say that the child must die, for they cannot support
+both. It is but too plain that, they are illegitimate children; As they
+depart, the horrible feeling presses on one, that the child will soon
+follow the fate of so many thousands born out of wedlock. Again, a
+pretty young woman comes to beg a home for the child of some friend, who
+cannot support it. Her story need not be told; the child is hers, and is
+the offspring of shame. Or some person from the higher classes enters,
+to inquire for the traces of some boy, long disappeared--the child of
+passion and sin.
+
+But the ordinary frequenters are the children of the street--the Arabs
+and gypsies of our city.
+
+Here enters a little flower-seller, her shawl drawn over her head,
+barefooted and ragged--she begs for a home and bread; here a newsboy,
+wide-awake and impudent, but softened by his desire to "get West;" here
+"a bummer," ragged, frouzy, with tangled hair and dirty face, who has
+slept for years in boxes and privies; here a "canawl-boy," who cannot
+steer his little craft in the city as well as he could his boat; or a
+petty thief who wishes to reform his ways, or a bootblack who has
+conceived the ambition of owning land, or a little "revolver" who hopes
+to get quarters for nothing in a Lodging-house and "pitch pennies" in
+the interval. Sometimes some yellow-haired German boy, stranded by
+fortune in the city, will apply, with such honest blue eyes, that the
+first employer that enters will carry him off; or a sharp, intelligent
+Yankee lad, left adrift by sudden misfortune, comes in to do what he has
+never done before--ask for assistance. Then an orphan-girl will appear,
+floating on the waves of the city, having come here no one knows why,
+and going no one can tell whither.
+
+Employers call to obtain "perfect children;" drunken mothers rush in to
+bring back their children they have already consented should be sent far
+from poverty and temptation; ladies enter to find the best object of
+their charities, and the proper field for their benevolent labors;
+liberal donors; "intelligent foreigners," inquiring into our
+institutions, applicants for teachers' places, agents, and all the
+miscellaneous crowd who support and visit agencies of charity.
+
+                      A PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST.
+
+The central figure in this office, disentangling all the complicated
+threads in these various applications, and holding himself perfectly
+cool and bland in this turmoil, is "a character"--Mr. J. Macy.
+
+He was employed first as a visitor for the Society; but, soon betraying
+a kind of bottled-up "enthusiasm of humanity" under a very modest
+exterior, he was put in his present position, where he has become a sort
+of embodied Children's Aid Society in his own person. Most men take
+their charities as adjuncts to life, or as duties enjoined by religion
+or humanity. Mr. Macy lives in his. He is never so truly happy as when
+he is sitting calmly amid a band of his "lambs," as he sardonically
+calls the heavy-fisted, murderous-looking young vagabonds who frequent
+the Cottage place Reading-room, and seeing them all happily engaged in
+reading or quiet, amusements. Then the look of beatific satisfaction
+that settles over his face, as, in the midst of a loving passage of his
+religious address to them, he takes one of the obstreperous lambs by the
+collar, and sets him down very hard on another bench--never for a moment
+breaking the thread or sweet tone of his bland remarks--is a sight to
+behold; you know that he is happier there than he would be in a palace.
+
+His labors with these youthful scapegraces around Cottage Place, during
+the last fifteen years, would form one of the most instructive chapters
+in the history of philanthropy. I have beheld him discoursing sweetly on
+the truths of Christianity while a storm of missiles was coming through
+the windows; in fact, during the early days of the meeting, the windows
+were always barricaded with boards. The more violent the intruders were,
+the more amiable, and at the same time, the more firm he became.
+
+In fact, he never seemed so well satisfied as when the roughest little
+"bummers" of the ward entered his Boys' Meeting. The virtuous and
+well-behaved children did not interest him half so much. By a patience
+which is almost incredible, and a steady kindness of years, he finally
+succeeded in subduing these wild young vagrants, frequently being among
+them every night of the week, holding magic-lantern exhibitions,
+temperance meetings, social gatherings, and the like, till he really
+knew them and attracted their sympathies. His cheerfulness was high when
+the meeting grew into an Industrial School, where the little girls, who
+perplexed him so, could be trained by female hands, and his happiness
+was at its acme when the liberality of one or two gentlemen enabled him
+to open a Reading-room for "the lambs." The enterprise was always an
+humble one in appearance; but such were the genuineness and spirit of
+humanity in it--the product of his sisters as well as himself--that it
+soon met with kind support from various ladies and gentlemen, and now is
+one of those lights in dark places which must gladden any observer of
+the misery and crime of this city.
+
+Mr. Macy's salvation in these exhausting and nerve-wearing efforts, and
+divers others which I have not detailed, is his humor. I have seen him
+take two lazy-looking young men, who had applied most piteously for
+help, conduct them very politely to the door, and, pointing amiably to
+the Third Avenue, say, "Now, my boys, just be kind enough to walk right
+north up that avenue for one hundred miles into the, country, and you
+will find plenty of work and food. Good-by! good-by!" The boys depart,
+mystified.
+
+Or a dirty little fellow presents himself in the office. "Please, sir, I
+am an orphant, and I want a home!" Mr. Macy eyes him carefully; his
+knowledge of _"paidology"_ has had many years to ripen in; he sees,
+perhaps, amid his rags, a neatly-sewed patch, or notes that his naked
+feet are too white for a "bummer." He takes him to the inner office. "My
+boy! Where do you live? Where's your father?"
+
+"Please, sir, I don't live nowhere, and I hain't got no father, and me
+mither is dead!" Then follows a long and touching story of his
+orphanage, the tears flowing down his cheeks. The bystanders are almost
+melted themselves. Not so Mr. Macy. Grasping the boy by the shoulder,
+"Where's your mother, I say?" "Oh, dear, I'm a poor orphant, and I
+hain't got no mither!" "Where is your _mother_, I say? Where do you
+live? I give you just three minutes to tell, and then, if you do not, I
+shall hand you over to that officer!" The lad yields; his true story is
+told, and a runaway restored to his family.
+
+In the midst of his highest discouragements at Cottage Place, Mr. Macy
+frequently had some characteristic story of his "lambs" to refresh him
+in his intervals of rest And some peculiar exhibition of mischief or
+wickedness always seemed to act as a kind of tonic on him and restore
+his spirits.
+
+I shall not forget the cheerfulness with which he related one day that,
+after having preached with great unction the Sunday previous on
+"stealing," he came back the next and discovered that a private room in
+the building, which he only occasionally used, had been employed by the
+boys for some time as a receptacle for stolen goods!
+
+On another occasion, he had held forth with peculiar "liberty" on the
+sin of thieving, and, when he sat down almost exhausted, discovered, to
+his dismay, that his hat had been stolen! But, knowing that mischief was
+at the bottom, and that a crowd of young "roughs" were outside waiting
+to see him go home bareheaded, he said nothing of his loss, but procured
+a cap and quietly walked away.
+
+I think the contest of wits among them--they for mischief and
+disturbance, and he to establish order and get control over them--gave a
+peculiar zest to his religious labors, which he would not have had in
+calmer scenes and more regular services. If they put pepper on the
+stove, he endured it much longer than they could, and kept them until
+they were half suffocated; and when they barricaded the door outside, he
+protracted the devotional exercises or varied them with a "magic
+lantern," to give time for forcing the door, and an orderly exit. [Mr.
+Macy, on one occasion, on a bitter winter day, found the lock of the
+room picked and the boys within. He accused some of the larger boys.
+They denied, "No sir--no: it couldn't be us; because we was in the
+liquor-shop on the corner; _we ain't got nowhere else to go to!"_]
+
+The girls, however, were his great torment, especially when they stoned
+their spiritual guides; these, however, he eventually forwarded into the
+Cottage place Industrial School, which sprang from the Meeting, and
+there they were gradually civilized.
+
+For real suffering and honest effort at self-help, he had a boundless
+sympathy; but the paupers and professional beggars were the terror of
+his life. He dreaded nothing so much as a boy or girl falling into
+habits of dependence. Where he was compelled to give assistance in
+money, he has been known to set one boy to throw wood down and the other
+to pile it up, before he would aid.
+
+His more stormy philanthropic labors have been succeeded by calmer
+efforts among a delightful congregation of poor German children in
+Second Street, who love and revere him. When he needs, however, a little
+refreshment and intoning, he goes over to his Cottage-place
+Reading-room, and sits with or instructs his "lambs!"
+
+His main work, however, is in the "office" of the Children's Aid
+Society, which I have described above. Though a plain half-Quaker
+himself, he has all the tact of a _diplomat,_ and manages the
+complicated affairs of poverty and crime that come before him with a
+wonderful skin, getting on as well with the lady as the street-vagrant,
+and seldom ever making a blunder in the thousand delicate matters which
+pass through his hands. When it is remembered that some seventeen
+thousand street-children have passed through that office to homes in the
+country, and that but one lawsuit has ever occurred about them (and that
+through no mistake of the Society), while numbers of bitter enemies
+watch every movement of this charity, it will be seen with what
+consummate judgment these delicate matters have been managed. Besides
+all this, he is the guide, philosopher, and friend of hundreds of these
+young wayfarers in every part of the country, sustaining with them an
+enormous correspondence; but, as sympathy, and advice, and religious
+instruction on such a gigantic scale would soon weary out even his
+vitality, he stereotypes his letters, and, by a sort of pious fraud,
+says to each what is written for all. It is very interesting to come
+across the quaint, affectionate words and characteristic expressions of
+this devoted philanthropist addressed to "his boys," but put up in
+packages of a thousand copies, and to think to how many little rovers
+over the land they bring sympathy and encouragement.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                     RAISING MONEY FOR A CHARITY.
+
+One of the trials of a young Charity is raising money. I was determined
+to put this on as sound and rational a basis as possible. It seemed to
+me, that, if the facts were well known in regard to the great suffering
+and poverty among the children in New York, and the principles of our
+operations were well understood, we could more safely depend on this
+enlightened public opinion and sympathy than on any sudden "sensation"
+or gush of feeling.
+
+Our Board fully concurred in these views, and we resolutely eschewed all
+"raffles" and pathetic exhibitions of abandoned children, and
+"pedestrian" or other exhibitions offered as for the benefit of
+humanity, and never even enjoyed the perfectly legitimate benefit of a
+"fair." Once, in a moment of enthusiasm I was led into arranging a
+concert, for the benefit of a School; but that experience was enough.
+Our effort at musical benevolence became a series of most inharmonious
+squabbles. The leading soprano singer had a quarrel with the bass; the
+instrumental split with the vocal performers; our best solo went off in
+a huff, and, at last, by superhuman exertions, we reconciled the
+discordant elements and got our concert fairly before the public, and
+retired with a few hundred dollars.
+
+Whatever gave the public a sensation, always had a reaction. The solid
+ground for us was evidently the most rational one. I accordingly made
+the most incessant exertions to enlighten and stir up the public. In
+this labor the most disagreeable part was presenting our "cause" to
+individuals. I seldom solicited money directly, but sought rather to lay
+the wants and methods before them. Yet, even here, some received it as
+if it were some new move of charlatanry, or some new device for
+extracting money from full purses. Evidently, to many minds, the fact of
+a man of education devoting himself to such pursuits was in itself an
+enigma or an eccentricity. Fortunately, I was able early to make use of
+the pulpits of the city and country, and sometimes was accustomed to
+spend every night in the week and the Sunday in delivering sermons and
+addresses throughout the Eastern States. As a general thing, I did not
+urge a collection, though occasionally having one, but chose rather to
+convince the understanding, and leave the matter before the people for
+consideration. No public duties of mine were ever more agreeable than
+these; and the results proved afterwards most happy, in securing a large
+rural "constituency," who steadily supported our movements in good times
+and bad; so quietly devoted, and in earnest, that death did not diminish
+their interest--some of our best bequests having come from the country.
+
+The next great implement was that profession which has done more for
+this Charity than any other instrumentality. Having, fortunately, an
+early connection with the press, I made it a point, from the beginning,
+to keep our movements, and the evils we sought to cure, continually
+before the public in the columns of the daily journals. Articles
+describing the habits and trials of the poor; editorials urging the
+community to work in these directions; essays discussing the science of
+charity and reform; continual paragraphs about special charities, were
+poured forth incessantly for years through the daily and weekly press of
+New York, until the public became thoroughly, imbued with our ideas and
+a sense of the evils which we sought to reform. To accomplish this, I
+had to keep up a constant connection with the press, and was, in fact,
+often daily editor, in addition to my other avocations.
+
+As a result of this incessant publicity, and of the work already done, a
+very superior class of young men consented to serve in our Board of
+Trustees; men who, in their high principles of duty, and in the
+obligations which they feel are imposed by wealth and position, bid fair
+hereafter to make the name of New York merchants respected as it never
+was before throughout the country. With these as backers and
+supervisors, we were enabled to approach the Legislature for aid, on the
+ground that we were doing a humane work which lightened the taxes and
+burdens of the whole community and was in the interest of all. Year
+after year our application was rejected, but finally we succeeded, and
+laid a solid and permanent basis thus for our future work.
+
+                          SOURCES OF INCOME.
+
+Our first important acquisition of property was a bequest from a
+much-esteemed pupil of mine, J. B. Barnard, of New Haven, Conn., of
+$15,000, in 1856. We determined to use this at once in the work. For
+many years, finding the needs of the city so enormous, and believing
+that our best capital was in the results of our efforts, and not in
+funds, we spent every dollar we could obtain at once upon our labors of
+charity.
+
+At length, in 1863, a very fortunate event occurred for us: a gentleman
+had died in New York, named John Rose, who left a large property which
+he willed should be appropriated to forming some charitable institution
+for neglected children, and, under certain conditions, to the
+Colonization Society. The will was so vaguely worded, that the brother,
+Mr. Chauncey Rose, felt it necessary to attempt to break it. This, after
+long litigation, he succeeded in doing, and the property--now swollen to
+the amount of nearly a million dollars--reverted mainly to him. With a
+rare conscience and generosity, he felt it his duty not to use any of
+this large estate for himself, but to distribute it among various
+charities in New York, relating to poor children, according to what
+appeared to be the intention of his brother. To our Society he gave, at
+different times, something like $200,000. Of this, we made $150,000 an
+invested fund; and henceforth we sought gradually to increase our
+permanent and assured income, so that the Association might continue its
+benevolent work after the present managers had departed.
+
+And yet we were glad that a good proportion of our necessary expenses
+should be met by current contributions, so that the Society might have
+the vitality arising from constant contact with the public, as well as
+the permanency from invested property.
+
+If we take a single year, 1870, as showing the sources of our income, we
+shall find that out of nearly $200,000 received that year, including
+$32,000 for the purchase of two Lodging-houses, and $7,000 raised by the
+local committees of the Schools, $60,000 came by tax from the county,
+$20,000 from the "Excise Fund" (now abolished), nearly $20,000 from the
+Board of Education, being a _pro rata_ allotment on the average number
+of pupils, and about $9,000 from the Comptroller of the State; making
+about $109,000, or a little over one-half of our income, received from
+the public authorities. Of the ninety-odd thousand received from private
+sources, about eleven thousand came from our investments, leaving some
+$80,000 as individual contributions during one year--a remarkable fact,
+both as showing the generosity of the public and their confidence in the
+work.
+
+This liberal outlay, both by the city and private individuals, has been
+and is being constantly repaid, in the lessening of the expenses and
+loss from crime and pauperism, and the increasing of the number of
+honest and industrious producers.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+            REFORM AMONG THE ROWDIES--FREE READING ROOMS.
+
+At first sight, it would seem very obvious that a place of mental
+improvement and social resort, with agreeable surroundings, offered
+gratuitously to the laboring-people, would be eagerly frequented. On its
+face, the "FREE READING-ROOM" appears a most natural, feasible method of
+applying the great lever of sociality (without temptations) to lifting
+up the poorer classes. The working-man and the street-boy get here what
+they so much desire, a pleasant place, warmed and lighted, for meeting
+their companions, for talking, playing innocent games, or reading the
+papers; they get it, too, for nothing. When we remember how these people
+live, in what crowded and slatternly rooms, or damp cellars, or close
+attics, some even having no home at all, and that their only social
+resort is the grog-shop, we might suppose that they would jump at the
+chance of a pleasant and Free Saloon and Reading-room. But this is by no
+means the case. This instrument of improvement requires peculiar
+management to be successful. Our own experience is instructive.
+
+The writer of this had had the Reading-room "on the brain" for many
+years, when, at length, on talking over the subject with a gentleman in
+the eastern part of the city--one whose name has since been a tower of
+strength to this whole movement--he consented to further the enterprise,
+and be the treasurer--an office in young charities, be it remembered, no
+sinecure.
+
+We opened, accordingly, near the Novelty Iron Works, under the best
+auspices,
+
+                 THE ELEVENTH WARD FREE READING-ROOM.
+
+The rooms were spacious and pleasant, furnished with a plenty of papers
+and pamphlets, and, to add to the attractions and help pay expenses, the
+superintendent was to sell coffee and simple refreshments. Our theory
+was, that coffee would compete with liquor as a stimulus, and that the
+profits of the sale would pay most of the running cost. We were right
+among a crowded working population, and everything promised success.
+
+At first there were considerable numbers of laboring-men present every
+day and evening; but, to our dismay, they began to fall off. We tried
+another superintendent; still the working-man preferred his "dreary
+rooms," or the ruinous liquor-shops, to our pleasant Reading-room. The
+coffee did not suit him; the refreshments were not to his taste; he
+would not read, because he thought he ought to call for something to eat
+or drink if he did; and so at length he dropped off. Finally, the
+attendance became so thin and the expenses were accumulating to such a
+degree, that we closed the room, and our magnanimous treasurer footed
+the bills. This failure discouraged us for some years, but the idea
+seemed to me sound, and I was resolved to try it once more under better
+circumstances.
+
+In looking about for some specially-adapted instrument for influencing
+"the dangerous classes," I chanced, just after the remarkable religious
+"Revival of 1858" on a singular character,
+
+                         A REFORMED PUGILIST.
+
+This was a reformed or converted prize-fighter, named Orville (and
+nicknamed "Awful") Gardner. He was a broad-shouldered, burly individual,
+with a tremendous neck, and an arm as thick as a moderate-sized man's
+leg. His career had been notorious and infamous in the extreme, he
+having been one of the roughs employed by politicians, and engaged in
+rows and fights without number, figuring several times in the
+prize-ring, and once having bitten off a man's nose!
+
+Yet the man must have been less brutal than his life would show. He was
+a person evidently of volcanic emotions and great capacity of affection.
+I was curious about his case, and watched it closely for some years, as
+showing what is so often disputed in modern times--the reforming power
+of Christianity on the most abandoned characters.
+
+The point through which his brutalized nature had been touched, had been
+evidently his affection for an only child--a little boy. He described to
+me once, in very simple, touching language, his affection and love for
+this child; how he dressed him in the best, and did all he could for
+him, but always keeping him away from all knowledge of his own
+dissipation. One day he was off on some devilish errand among the
+immigrants on Staten Island, when he saw a boat approaching quickly with
+one of his "pals." The man rowed up near him, and stopped and looked at
+him "very queer," and didn't say anything.
+
+"What the devil are you looking at me in that way for?" said Gardner.
+
+"Your boy is drownded!" replied the other.
+
+Gardner says he fell back in the boat, as if you'd hit him right
+straight from the shoulder behind the ear, and did not know anything for
+a long time. When he recovered, he kept himself drunk for three weeks,
+and smashed a number of policemen, and was "put up," just so as to
+forget the bright little fellow who had been the pride of his heart.
+
+This great loss, however, must have opened his nature to other
+influences. When the deep religious sympathy pervaded the community,
+there came over him suddenly one of those Revelations which, in some
+form or other, visit most human beings at least once in their lives.
+They are almost too deep and intricate to be described in these pages.
+The human soul sees itself, for the first time, as reflected in the
+mirror of divine purity. It has for the moment a conception of what
+Christ is, and what Love means. Singularly enough, the thought and
+sentiment which took possession of this ruffian and debauchee and
+prize-fighter, and made him as one just cured of leprosy, was the
+Platonic conception of Love, and that embodied in the ideal form of
+Christianity. Under it he became as a little child; he abandoned his
+vices, gave up his associates, and resolved to consecrate his life to
+humanity and the service of Him to whom he owed so much. The spirit,
+when I first met him, with which he used to encounter his old companions
+must have been something like that of the early Christian converts.
+
+Thus, an old boon companion meets him in the street: "Why, Orful, what
+the h--ll's this about your bein' converted?"
+
+And the other turns to him with such pent-up feeling bursting forth,
+telling him of the new things that have come to him, that the "rough" is
+quite melted, and begins a better course of life.
+
+Again, he is going down a narrow street, when he suddenly sees coming up
+a bitter enemy. His old fire flames up, but he quenches it, walks to the
+other, and, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, he takes him by
+the hand and tells him "the old story" which is always new, and the two
+ruffians forget their feuds and are friends.
+
+Could the old Greek philosopher have seen this imbruted athlete, so
+mysteriously and suddenly fired with the ideal of Love till his past
+crimes seemed melted in the heat of this great sentiment, and his rough
+nature appeared transformed, he would have rejoiced in beholding at
+length the living embodiment of an ideal theory for so many ages held
+but as the dream of a poetic philosopher.
+
+Gardner was only a modern and striking instance of the natural and
+eternal power of Christianity.
+
+We resolved to put him where he could reach the classes from which he
+had come. With considerable exertion the necessary sums were raised to
+open a "Coffee and Reading Boom" in the worst district of the city--the
+Fourth Ward. Great numbers of papers and publications were furnished
+gratuitously by that body who have always been so generous to this
+enterprise--the conductors of the press of the city. A bar for coffee
+and cheap refreshments was established, and Gardner was put at the head
+of the whole as superintendent.
+
+                          THE DRUNKARDS' CLUB
+
+The opening is thus described in our Journal:--
+
+We must confess, as one of the managers of that institution, we felt
+particularly nervous about that opening meeting.
+
+"Messrs. Beecher and Cochrane and other eminent speakers had been
+invited to speak, and the Mayor was to preside. It was certainly an act
+of some self-denial to leave their countryseats or cool rooms, and spend
+a hot summer evening in talking to Fourth-ward rowdies. To requite this
+with any sort of 'accident' would have been very awkward. Where would we
+of the committee have hid our heads if our friends the 'roughs' had
+thought best to have a little bit of a shindy, and had knocked Brother
+Beecher's hat in, and had tossed the Hon. John Cochrane out of the
+window, or rolled the Mayor down-stairs? We confess all such possible
+eventualities did present themselves, and we imagined the sturdy form of
+our eminent clerical friend breasting the opposing waves of rowdies, and
+showing himself as skillful in demolishing corporeal enemies as he is in
+overthrowing spiritual. We were comforted in spirit, however, by
+remembering that the saint at the head of our establishment-the renowned
+Gardner--would now easily take a place in the church militant, and
+perhaps not object to a new exercise of muscle in a good cause.
+
+          *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"After other addresses, Gardner--'Awful Gardner'--was called for. He
+came forward--and a great trial it must have been to have faced that
+crowd, where there were hundreds who had once been with him in all kinds
+of debaucheries and deviltries--men who had drunk and fought and gambled
+and acted the rowdy with him--men very quick to detect any trace of
+vanity or cant in him. He spoke very simply and humbly; said that he had
+more solid peace and comfort in one month now than he had in years once;
+spoke of his 'black life' his sins and disgrace, and then of his most
+cordial desire to welcome all his old companions there. In the midst of
+these remarks there seemed to come up before him suddenly a memory of
+Him who had saved him, his eyes filled with tears, and, with a manly and
+deep feeling that swept right through the wild audience, he made his
+acknowledgment to 'Him who sticketh closer than a brother--even the Lord
+Jesus Christ.'
+
+"No sermon could have been half so effective as these stammering
+ungrammatical, but manly remarks."
+
+Our Reading-room under this guidance became soon a very popular resort;
+in fact, it deserved the nickname one gentleman gave it, "The Drunkards'
+Club." The marked, simple, and genuine reform in a man of such habits as
+this pugilist, attracted numbers of that large class of young men who
+are always trying to break from the tyranny of evil habits and vices.
+The rooms used to be thronged with reformed or reforming young men. The
+great difficulty with a man under vices is to make him believe that
+change for him is possible. The sight of Gardner always demonstrated
+this possibility. Those men who are sunk in such courses cannot get rid
+of them gradually, and nothing can arouse them and break the iron rule
+of habits but the most tremendous truths.
+
+"Awful Gardner" had but one theory of reform--absolute and immediate
+change, in view of the love of Christ, and of a deserved and certain
+damnation.
+
+The men to whom he spoke needed no soft words; they knew they were "in
+hell" now; some of them could sometimes for a moment realize what such a
+character as Christ was, and bow before it in unspeakable humility. No
+one whom I have ever seen could so influence the "roughs" of this city.
+He ought to have been kept as a missionary to the rowdies. I extract
+from our Journal:--
+
+"The moral success of the room has been all that we could have desired.
+Hundreds of young men have come there continually to read or chat with
+their friends--many of them even who had habitually frequented the
+liquor-saloons, and many persons with literally no homes. The place,
+too, has become a kind of central point for all those who have become
+more or less addicted to excessive drinking, and who are desirous of
+escaping from the habit.
+
+"There are days when the spectacle presented there is a most affecting
+one; the room filled with young men, each of whom has a history of
+sorrow or degradation--broken-down gentlemen, ruined merchants,
+penniless clerks, homeless laboring-men and printers (for somehow this
+most intelligent profession seems to contain a large number of cases who
+have been ruined by drunkenness), and outcast men of no assignable
+occupation. These have been attracted in part by the cheerfulness of the
+room and the chances for reading, and in part by Gardner's influence,
+who has labored indefatigably in behalf of these poor wretches. Under
+the influences of the Room, incredible as it may seem, over _seven
+hundred_ of these men have been started in sober courses and provided
+with honest employments, and many of them have become hopefully
+religious. It is believed that the whole quarter has been improved by
+the opening of this agreeable and temperate place of resort."
+
+But, alas! even with a man so truly repentant and reformed, Nature does
+not let him off so easily. He had to bear in his body the fruits of his
+vices. His nervous system began to give way under the fearful strain
+both of his sins and his reform. He found it necessary to leave this
+post of work and retire to a quiet place in New Jersey, where he has
+since passed a calm and virtuous life, working, I suppose, at his trade,
+and, so far as I know, he has never been false to the great truths which
+once inspired him. With his departure, however, we thought it best to
+close the Reading-room, especially as we could not realize our hope of
+making it self-supporting. So ended the second of our experiments at
+"virtuous amusements."
+
+I now resolved to try the experiment, without any expectation of
+sustaining the room with sales of refreshments. The working classes seem
+to be utterly indifferent to such attractions. They probably cannot
+compete a moment with those of the liquor-shops. With the aid of
+friends, who are always ready in this city to liberally support rational
+experiments of philanthropy, we have since then opened various Free
+Reading-rooms in different quarters of the city.
+
+One of the most successful was carried on by Mr. Macy at Cottage Place,
+for his "lambs."
+
+Here sufficient books and papers were supplied by friends, little
+temperance and other societies were formed, the room was pleasant and
+cozy, and, above all, Mr. Macy presided or infused into it his spirit.
+The "lambs" were occasionally obstreperous and given to smashing
+windows, but to this Mr. M. was sufficiently accustomed, and in time the
+wild young barbarians began to feel the influences thrown around the
+place, until now one may see of a winter evening eighty or a hundred
+lads and young men quietly reading, or playing backgammon or checkers.
+The room answers exactly its object as a place of innocent amusement and
+improvement, competing with the liquor-saloons. The citizens of the
+neighborhood have testified to its excellent moral influences on the
+young men.
+
+A similar room was opened in the First Ward by the kind aid of the late
+Mr. J. Couper Lord, and the good influences of the place have been much
+increased by the exertions of Mr. D. E. Hawley and a committee of
+gentlemen.
+
+There are other Reading-rooms connected with the Boys' Lodging-houses.
+Most of them are doing an invaluable work; the First ward room
+especially being a centre for cricket-clubs and various social reunions
+of the laboring classes, and undoubtedly saving great numbers of young
+men from the most dangerous temptations. Mr. Hawley has inaugurated here
+also a very useful course of popular lectures to the laboring people.
+
+This Reading-room is crowded with young men every night, of the class
+who should be reached, and who would otherwise spend their leisure hours
+at the liquor-saloons. Many of them have spoken with much gratitude of
+the benefit the place has been to them.
+
+The Reading-rooms connected with Boys' Lodging-houses, though sometimes
+doing well, are not uniformly successful, perhaps from the fact that
+workingmen do not like to be associated with homeless boys.
+
+Besides those connected with the Children's Aid Society, the City
+Mission and various churches have founded others, so that now the Free
+Reading-room is recognized as one of the means for improving the
+"dangerous classes," as much as the Sunday School, Chapel, or Mission.
+
+The true theory of the formation of the Reading-room is undoubtedly the
+inducing the laboring class to engage in the matter themselves, and then
+to assist them in meeting the expenses. But the lowest poor and the
+young men who frequent the grog-shops are so indifferent to mental
+improvement, and so seldom associate themselves for any virtuous object,
+that it is extremely difficult to induce them to combine for this.
+
+Moreover, as they rise in the social scale, they find organizations
+ready to hand, like the "Cooper Union," where Reading-rooms and
+Libraries are provided gratuitously. For the present, the Reading-room
+may be looked upon, like the Public School, as a means of improvement
+offered by society, in its own Interest, to all.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                            HOMELESS GIRLS.
+
+It was a fortunate event for our charity which led, in 1861, a certain
+New York merchant to accept the position of President of our Society.
+
+Mr. William A. Booth had the rare combination of qualities which form a
+thorough presiding officer, and at the same time he was inspired by a
+spirit of consecration to what he believed his Master's service, rarely
+seen among men. His faculty of "rolling off" business, of keeping his
+assembly or board on the points before them--for even business men have
+sometimes the female tendency of rather wide-reaching discussions and
+conversations--his wonderful clearness of comprehension, and a judicial
+faculty which nearly always enabled him to balance with remarkable
+fairness both sides of a question, made him beyond comparison the best
+presiding officer for a business-board I have ever seen. With him, we
+always had short and very full sessions, and reached our points rapidly
+and efficiently. He had, too, the capacity, rare among men of organizing
+brains, of accepting a rejection or rebuff to any proposition he may
+have made (though this happened seldom) with perfect good humor. Perhaps
+more than with his public services in our Board, I was struck with his
+private career. Hour after hour in his little office, I have seen
+different committees and officials of numerous societies, charities, and
+financial associations come to him with their knotty points, and watched
+with admiration as he disentangled each question, seeming always to
+strike upon the course at once wise and just. A very small portion of
+his busy time was then given to his own interests, though he had been
+singularly successful in his private affairs. He seemed to me to carry
+out wonderfully the Christian ideal in practical life in a busy city;
+living day after day "for others," and to do the will of Him whom he
+followed.
+
+In our first labors together, I feared that, owing to his stricter
+school of Presbyterian theology, we might not agree in some of our aims
+and plans; but the practical test of true benefit to these unfortunate
+children soon brought our theoretic views to a harmony in religious
+practice; and as we both held that the first and best of all truths to
+an outcast boy is the belief and love of Christ as a friend and Saviour,
+we agreed on the substantial matter. I came, year by year, greatly to
+value his judgment and his clear insight as to the _via media._
+
+Both with him and our Treasurer, Mr. Williams, the services of love
+rendered so many years to this cause of humanity, could not, as mere
+labor, have been purchased with very lucrative salaries.
+
+Mr. Booth's wise policy with the Society was to encourage whatever would
+give it a more permanent foot-hold in the city, and, in this view, to
+stimulate especially the founding of our Lodging-houses by means of
+"funds," or by purchasing buildings.
+
+How this plan succeeded, I shall detail hereafter.
+
+At this present stage in our history, his attention was especially fixed
+on the miserable condition of the young street-girls, and he suggested
+to me what I had long been hoping for, the formation of a Lodging-house
+for them, corresponding to that which had been so successful with the
+newsboys.
+
+As a preparatory step, I consulted carefully the police. They were
+sufficiently definite as to the evil, but not very hopeful as to the
+cure.
+
+                          THE STREET-GIRLS.
+
+I can truly say that no class we have ever labored for seemed to combine
+so many elements of human misfortune and to present so many discouraging
+features as this. They form, indeed, a class by themselves.
+
+[Illustration: THE HOMELESS.]
+
+Their histories are as various as are the different lots of the
+inhabitants of a populous town. Some have come from the country, from
+kind and respectable homes, to seek work in the city; here they
+gradually consume their scanty means, and are driven from one refuge to
+another, till they stand on the street, with the gayly-lighted house of
+vice and the gloomy police-station to choose between. Others have sought
+amusement in the town, and have been finally induced to enter some house
+of bad character as a boarding-house, and have been thus entrapped; and
+finally, in despair, and cursed with disease, they break loose, and take
+shelter even in the prison-cell, if necessary. Others still have
+abandoned an ill-tempered step-mother or father, and rushed out on the
+streets to find a refuge, or get employment anywhere.
+
+Drunkenness has darkened the childhood of some, and made home a hideous
+place, till they have been glad to sleep in the crowded cellar or the
+bare attic of some thronged "tenement," and then go forth to pick up a
+living as they could in the great metropolis. Some are orphans, some
+have parents whom they detest, some are children of misfortune, and
+others of vice; some are foreigners, some native. They come from the
+north and the south, the east and the west; all races and countries are
+represented among them. They are not habitually vicious, or they would
+not be on the streets. They are unlucky, unfortunate, getting a
+situation only to lose it, and finding a home, to be soon driven from
+it. Their habits are irregular, they do not like steady labor, they have
+learned nothing well, they have no discipline, their clothes are
+neglected, they have no appreciation of what neatness is, yet if they
+earn a few shillings extra, they are sore to spend them on some foolish
+gewgaw. Many of them are pretty and bright, with apparently fine
+capacities, but inheriting an unusual quantity of the human tendencies
+to evil. They are incessantly deceived and betrayed, and they as
+constantly deceive others. Their cunning in concealing their indulgences
+or vices surpasses all conception. Untruth seems often more familiar to
+them than truth. Their worst quality is their superficiality. There is
+no depth either to their virtues or vices. They sin, and immediately
+repent with alacrity; they live virtuously for years, and a straw seems
+suddenly to turn them. They weep at the presentation of the divine
+character in Christ, and pray with fervency; and, the very next day, may
+ruin their virtue or steal their neighbor's garment, or take to
+drinking, or set a whole block in ferment with some biting scandal. They
+seem to be children, but with woman's passion, and woman's jealousy and
+scathing tongue. They trust a superior as a child; they neglect
+themselves, and injure body and mind as a child might; they have a
+child's generosity, and occasional freshness of impulse and desire of
+purity; but their passions sweep over them with the force of maturity,
+and their temper, and power of setting persons by the ears, and
+backbiting, and occasional intensity of hate, belong to a later period
+of life. Not unfrequently, when real danger or severe sickness arouses
+them, they show the wonderful qualities of womanhood in a power of
+sacrifice which utterly forgets self, and a love which shines brightly,
+eyen through the shadow of death.
+
+But their combination of childishness and undisciplined maturity is an
+extremely difficult one to manage practically, and exposes them to
+endless sufferings and dangers. Their condition fifteen years ago seemed
+a thoroughly hopeless one.
+
+There was then, if we mistake not, but a single refuge in the whole
+city, where these unfortunate creatures could take shelter, and that was
+Mr. Pease's Five Points Mission, which contained so many women who had
+been long in vicious courses, as to make it unsuitable for those who
+were just on the dividing line.
+
+Our plan for their relief took the shape of
+
+                      THE GIRLS' LODGING-HOUSE.
+
+It is no exaggeration to say that this instrument of charity and reform
+has cost us more trouble than all our enterprises together.
+
+The simple purpose and plan of it was, like that of our other efforts,
+to reform habits and character through material and moral appliances,
+and subsequently through an entire change of circumstances, and at the
+same time to relieve suffering and misfortune.
+
+We opened first a shelter, where any drifting, friendless girl could go
+for a night's lodging. If she had means, she was to pay a trifling
+sum--five or six cents; if not, she aided in the labor of the house, and
+thus in part defrayed the expense of her board. Agents were sent out on
+the docks and among the slums of the city to pick up the wayfarers;
+notices were posted in the station-houses, and near the ferries and
+railroads depots, and even advertisements put into the cheap papers. We
+made a business of scattering the news of this charity wherever there
+were forlorn girls seeking for home or protection, or street-wandering
+young women who had no place to lay their heads.
+
+We hoped to reach down the hand of welcome to the darkest dens of the
+city, and call back to virtue some poor, unbefriended creature, who was
+trembling on the very line between purity and vice. Our charity seemed
+to stand by the ferries, the docks, the police-stations, and prisons,
+and open a door of kindness and virtue to these hard-driven, tired
+wanderers on the ways of life. Our design was that no young girl,
+suddenly cast out on the streets of a great city, should be without a
+shelter and a place where good influences could surround her. We opened
+a House for the houseless; an abode of Christian sympathy for the
+utterly unbefriended and misguided; a place of work for the idle and
+unthrifty.
+
+The plan seemed at once to reach its object: the doors opened on a
+forlorn procession of unfortunates. Girls broke out of houses of vice,
+where they had been entrapped, leaving every article of dress, except
+what they wore, behind them; the police brought wretched young
+wanderers, who had slept on the station-floors; the daughters of decent
+country-people, who had come to the town for amusement or employment,
+and, losing or wasting their means, had walked the streets all the night
+long, applied for shelter; orphans selling flowers, or peddling about
+the theatres; the children of drunkards; the unhappy daughters of
+families where quarreling and abuse were the rule; girls who had run
+away; girls who had been driven away; girls who sought a respite in
+intervals of vice,--all this most unfortunate throng began to beset the
+doors of the "Girls' Lodging-house."
+
+We had indeed reached the class intended, but now our difficulties only
+began.
+
+It would not do to turn our Lodging-house into a Reformatory for
+Magdalens, nor to make it into a convenient resting-place for those who
+lived on the wages of lust. To keep a house for reforming young women of
+bad character would only pervert those of good, and shut out the decent
+and honest poor. We must draw a line; but where? We attempted to receive
+only those of apparent honesty and virtue, and to exclude those who were
+too mature; keeping, if possible, below the age of eighteen years. We
+sought to shut out the professional "street-walkers." This at once
+involved us in endless difficulties. Sweet young maidens, whom we
+guilelessly admitted, and who gave most touching stories of early
+bereavement and present loneliness, and whose voices arose in moving
+hymns of penitence, and whose bright eyes filled with tears under the
+Sunday exhortation, turned out perhaps the most skillful and
+thorough-going deceivers, plying their bad trade in the day, and filling
+the minds of their comrades with all sorts of wickedness in the evening.
+We came to the conviction that these girls would deceive the very elect.
+Then some "erring child of poverty," as the reporters called her, would
+apply at a late hour at the door, after an unsuccessful evening, her
+breath showing her habit, and be refused, and go to the station-house,
+and in the morning a fearful narrative would appear in some paper, of
+the shameful hypocrisy and cruel machinery of charitable institutions.
+
+Or, perhaps, she would be admitted, and cover the house with disgrace by
+her conduct in the night. One wayfarer, thus received, scattered a
+contagious disease, which emptied the whole house, and carried off the
+housekeeper and several lodgers. Another, in the night dropped her
+newly-born dead babe into the vault.
+
+The rule, too, of excluding all over eighteen years of age caused great
+discontent with the poor, and with certain portions of the public. And
+yet, as rigidly as humanity would allow, we must follow our plan of
+benefiting children and youth.
+
+It soon turned out, however, that the young street-children who were
+engaged in street-trades, had some relative to whom their labor was of
+profit, so that they gradually drifted back to their cellars and attics,
+and only occasionally took a night's lodging when out late near the
+theatre. Those who were the greatest frequenters of the House proved to
+be the young girls between fourteen and eighteen.
+
+And a more difficult class than these to manage, no philanthropic mortal
+ever came in contact with. The most had a constitutional objection to
+work; they had learned to do nothing well, and therefore got but little
+wages anywhere; they were shockingly careless, both of their persons and
+their clothing; and, worse than all, they showed a cunning and skill of
+deceit and a capacity of scandal, and of setting the family by the ears
+in petty quarrels and jealousies, which might have discouraged the most
+sanguine reformer.
+
+The matron, Mrs. Trott, who had especially to struggle with these evils,
+had received a fitting preparatory training: she had taught in the "Five
+Points." She was a thorough disciplinarian; believed in work, and was
+animated by the highest Christian earnestness.
+
+As years passed by, the only defect that appeared in her was, perhaps,
+what was perfectly natural in such circumstances. The sins of the world,
+and the calamities of the poor, began to weigh on her mind, until its
+spring was fairly bent. Society seemed to her diseased with the sin
+against purity. The outcast daughters of the poor had no chance in this
+hard world. All the circumstances of life were against the friendless
+girl. Often, after most self-denying, and, to other minds, successful
+efforts to benefit these poor creatures, some enthusiastic spectator
+would say, "How much good you are doing!" "Well," she would say, with a
+sigh, "I sometimes hope so!"
+
+Once, I asked her if she could not write a cheerful report for our
+trustees, giving some of the many encouraging facts she knew.
+
+To my dismay, when the document appeared, the first two pages were
+devoted to a melancholy recollection of the horrible typhus which had
+once desolated the household! I think, finally, her mind took almost a
+sad pleasure in dwelling on the woes and miseries of humanity. Still,
+even with this constitutional weight on her, she did her work for those
+unfortunate girls faithfully and devotedly.
+
+The great danger and temptation of such establishments, as I have always
+found, are in the desire of keeping the inmates, and showing to the
+public your "reforms." My instruction always was, that the "Girls'
+Lodging-house" was not to be a "Home." We did not want to make an asylum
+of it. We hoped to begin the work of improvement with these young girls,
+and then leave them to the natural agencies of society. To teach them to
+work, to be clean, and to understand the virtues of order and
+punctuality; to lay the foundations of a housekeeper or servant; to
+bring the influences of discipline, of kindness, and religion to bear on
+these wild and ungoverned creatures--these were to be the great objects
+of the "Lodging-house;" then some good home or respectable family were
+to do the rest. We were to keep lodgers a little while only, and then to
+pass them along to situations or places of work.
+
+The struggles of Mr. and Mrs. Trott, the superintendent and matron,
+against these discouraging evils in the condition and character of this
+class, would make a history in itself! They set themselves to work upon
+details, with an abounding patience, and with a humanity which was not
+to be wearied.
+
+The first effort was to teach the girls something like a habit of
+personal cleanliness; then, to enforce order and punctuality, of which
+they knew nothing; next, to require early rising, and going to bed at a
+reasonable hour. The lessons of housekeeping were begun at the
+foundation, being tasks in scrubbing and cleaning; then, bed-making, and
+finally plain cooking, sewing, and machine-work. Some of the inmates
+went out for their daily labor in shops or factories; but the most had
+to be employed in house-work, and thus paid for their support. They soon
+carried on the work of a large establishment, and at the same time made
+thousands of articles of clothing for the poor children elsewhere under
+the charge of the Society.
+
+A great deal of stress, of course, was laid on religious and moral
+instruction. The girls always "listened gladly," and were easily moved
+by earnest and sympathetic teaching and oratory.
+
+Fortunately for the success of this Charity, one of our trustees, a man
+filled with "the milk of human kindness," Mr. B. J. Howland, took part
+in it, as if it were his main occupation in life. Twice in the week, he
+was present with these poor girls for many years, teaching them the
+principles of morality and religion, training them in singing,
+contriving amusements and festivals for them, sympathizing in their
+sorrows and troubles, until he became like a father and counselor to
+these wild, heedless young creatures.
+
+When, at length, the good old man departs--_et serus in coelum
+redeat!_--the tears of the friendless and forgotten will fall on his
+grave,
+
+                 "And the blessings of the poor
+                  Shall waft him to the other shore."
+
+Of the effects of the patient labors of years, we will quote a few
+instances from Mrs. Trott's journal. She is writing, in the first
+extract, of a journey at the West:--
+
+"Several stations were pointed out, where our Lodging house girls are
+located; and we envied them their quiet, rural homes, wishing that
+others might follow their example. Maggie M., a bright American girl,
+who left us last spring, was fresh in our memory, as we almost passed
+her door. The friendless child bids fair to make an educated,
+respectable woman. She writes of her advantages and privileges, and says
+she intends to improve them, and make the very best use of her time.
+
+"Our old friend, Mary F., is still contented and happy; she shows no
+inclination to return, and remains in the place procured for her two
+years ago. She often expresses a great anxiety for several of the girls
+whom she left here, and have turned out very bad. We were rather
+doubtful of Mary's intentions when she left us, but have reason for
+thankfulness that thus far she tries to do right, and leads a Christian
+life. She was a girl well informed, of good common-sense, rather
+attractive, and, we doubt not, is 'a brand plucked from the burning.'
+
+"Emma H., a very interesting, amiable young girl, who spent several
+months at the Lodge, while waiting for a good opening, has just been to
+visit as. She is living with Mrs. H., Judge B----'s daughter, on the
+Hudson. They are mutually, pleased with each other; and Mrs. B. says
+that 'Emma takes an adopted daughter's place, and nothing would tempt me
+to part with her.' Emma was well dressed, and as comfortably situated as
+one could wish. There is no reason why she should not educate herself,
+and fill a higher position in the future.
+
+"S. A. was a cigar-girl when she came to the Lodging-house six years
+ago. An orphan, friendless and homeless--we all knew her desire to
+obtain an education, her willingness to make any sacrifice, and put up
+with the humblest fare, that she might accomplish this end; and then her
+earnest desire to do good, and her consistent Christian character, since
+she united with the Church, and the real missionary she proved among the
+girls, when death was in the house, leaving her school, and assisting
+night and day among the sick. She is now completing her education, and
+will soon graduate with honors. Her teacher speaks of her in the highest
+terms.
+
+"There was another, J. L., a very pretty little girl, who was with us at
+the same time, who was guilty of the most aggravating petty thefts. She
+was so modest and pleasing in her demeanor, so sincere in her
+attachments, that it was difficult to believe, until she acknowledged
+her guilt, that she had picked the pockets of the very persons to whom
+she had made showy presents. Vanity was her ruling motive--a desire to
+appear smart and generous, and to show that she had rich friends, who
+supplied her with money. She was expostulated with long and tenderly,
+promised to reform, and has lately united with a church where she is an
+active and zealous member. We have never heard a word respecting her
+dishonesty since she left us, and she now occupies a responsible
+position as forewoman in a Broadway store.
+
+"P. E. was also a Lodging-house girl, a year or more, at the same time.
+She came to us in a very friendless, destitute condition. She was one of
+the unfortunates with the usual story of shame and desertion--she had
+just buried her child, and needed an asylum. We have every reason to
+believe her repentance sincere, and that she made no false pretensions
+to piety when her name was added to the list of professing Christians.
+The church took an unusual interest in her, and have paid her school
+expenses several years. She is now teaching.
+
+"Our next is Mary M. Here is a bit of romance. When she first entered
+our home, she was reduced to the very lowest extremity of poverty and
+wretchedness. She remained with us some time, and then went to a
+situation in Connecticut, where she married a young Southern gentleman,
+who fell desperately in love with her (because she cared for him when
+ill), returned to New York, and, when she called upon us, was boarding
+at the Fifth-avenue Hotel. This was noticed at the time in several
+Eastern and New York papers. She showed her gratitude to us by calling
+and making presents to members of the House--looking up an associate,
+whom she found in a miserable garret clothing her, and returning her to
+her friends. She greatly surprised us in the exhibition of the true
+womanly traits which she always manifested. This is a true instance of
+the saying that a resident of the Five Points today may be found in her
+home in Fifth Avenue to-morrow.
+
+"Without going into details, we could also mention S. H., who has often
+been in our reports as unmanageable; the two D---- girls, who came from
+Miss Trail's school; the two M---- sisters, who had a fierce drunken
+mother, that pawned their shoes for rum one cold winter's morn, before
+they had arisen from their wretched bed; two R---- sisters, turned into
+the streets by drunken parents, brought to our house by a kind-hearted
+expressman, dripping with rain; and little May, received, cold and
+hungry, one winter's day--all comfortably settled in country homes; most
+of them married, and living out West--not forgetting Maggie, the Irish
+girl who wrote us, soon after she went West, that her husband had his
+little farm, pigs, cow, etc; requesting us to send them a little girl
+for adoption. Her prospect here never would have been above a garret or
+cellar.
+
+"We have L. M. in New York, married to a mechanic. Every few months she
+brings a bundle of clothing for those who were once her companions. She
+is very energetic and industrious, and highly respected.
+
+"M. E., another excellent Christian girl. She has been greatly tried in
+trying to save a reckless sister from destruction; once she took her
+West; then she returned with her when she found her sister's condition
+made it necessary. Such sisterly affection is seldom manifested as this
+girl has shown. She bought her clothing out of her own earnings, when
+she had scarcely a change for herself; and, after the erring sister's
+death, paid her child's board, working night and day to do so.
+
+"These cases are true in every particular, and none of recent date.
+There are many more hopeful ones among our young girls, who have not
+been away from us long, and of whom we hear excellent reports."
+
+One of the best features of this most practical "Institution" for poor
+girls is a Sewing-machine School, where lessons are given gratuitously.
+In three weeks, a girl who had previously depended wholly on her needle,
+and could hardly earn her three dollars a week, will learn the use of
+the machine, and earn from one dollar to two dollars per day.
+
+During one year this Sewing-machine School sent forth some one thousand
+two hundred poor girls, who earned a good living through their
+instruction there. The expense was trifling, as the machines were all
+given or loaned by the manufacturers, and for the room, we employed the
+parlor of the Lodging-house.
+
+During the winter of 1870-71, the trustees determined to try to secure a
+permanent and convenient house for these girls.
+
+Two well-known gentlemen of our city headed the subscription with $1,000
+each; the trustees came forward liberally, and the two or three who have
+done so much for this charity took on themselves the disagreeable task
+of soliciting funds, so that in two months we had some $27,000
+subscribed, with which we both secured an excellent building in St.
+Mark's Place, and adapted it for our purposes. Our effort is in this to
+make the house more attractive and tasteful than such places usually
+are; and various ladies have co-operated with us, to exert a more
+profound and renovating influence on these girls.
+
+                    TRAINING-SCHOOL FOR SERVANTS.
+
+We have already engrafted on this Lodging-house a School to train
+ordinary house-servants; to teach plain cooking, waiting, the care of
+bedrooms, and good laundry-work. Nothing is more needed among this
+class, or by the public generally, than such a "Training-school."
+
+Of the statistics of the Lodging-house, Mrs. Trott writes as follows:--
+
+"Ten thousand two hundred and twenty-five lodgers. What an army would
+the registered names make, since a forlorn, wretched child of thirteen
+years, from the old Trinity station-house, headed the lists in 1861!
+
+"Among this number there are many cozily sitting by their own
+hearth-stones; others are filling positions of usefulness and trust in
+families and stores; some have been adopted in distant towns, where they
+fill a daughter's place; and some have gone to return no more. A large
+number we cannot trace.
+
+"During this period, three thousand one hundred and one have found
+employment, and gone to situations, or returned to friends.
+
+"Fifteen thousand four hundred and twenty-nine garments have been cut
+and made, and distributed among the poor, or used as outfits in sending
+companies West."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+                THE NINETEENTH STREET GANG OF RUFFIANS.
+
+                        A MORAL "DISINFECTANT."
+
+During the summer of 1865, I was present in London as a delegate to the
+International Reformatory Convention, and had the opportunity, for the
+second or third time, to investigate thoroughly the preventive and
+reformatory institutions of Great Britain.
+
+On my return I found that the President of our Board, of whom I have
+already spoken, had taken a lease of a building in a notorious quarter.
+
+His idea was that some of my observations in England might be utilized
+here and tested in a preventive institution. The quarter was well known
+to me. It had been the home and school of the murderous gang of boys and
+young men known as
+
+                    "THE NINETEENTH STREET GANG."
+
+It happens that the beginnings and the process of growth of this society
+of young criminals were thoroughly known by me at the time, and, as one
+case of this kind illustrates hundreds going on now, I will describe it
+in detail:--
+
+Seventeen years ago, my attention had been called to the extraordinarily
+degraded condition of the children in a district lying on the west side
+of the city, between Seventeenth and Nineteenth Streets, and the Seventh
+and Tenth Avenues. A certain block, called "Misery Row," in Tenth
+Avenue, was the main seedbed of crime and poverty in the quarter, and
+was also invariably a "fever-nest." Here the poor obtained wretched
+rooms at a comparatively low rent; these they sub-let, and thus, in
+little, crowded, close tenements, were herded men, women, and children
+of all ages. The parents were invariably given to hard drinking, and the
+children were sent out to beg or to steal. Besides them, other children,
+who were orphans, or who had run away from drunkards' homes, or had been
+working on the canal-boats that discharged on the docks near by, drifted
+into the quarter, as if attracted by the atmosphere of crime and
+laziness that prevailed in the neighborhood. These slept around the
+breweries of the ward, or on the hay-barges, or in the old sheds of
+Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets. They were mere children, and kept
+life together by all sorts of street-jobs--helping the brewery laborers,
+blackening boots, sweeping sidewalks, "smashing baggages" (as they
+called it), and the like. Herding together, they soon began to form an
+unconscious society for vagrancy and idleness. Finding that work brought
+but poor pay, they tried shorter roads to getting money by petty thefts,
+in which they were very adroit. Even if they earned a considerable sum
+by a lucky day's job, they quickly spent it in gambling, or for some
+folly.
+
+The police soon knew them as "street-rats;" but, like the rats, they
+were too quick and cunning to be often caught in their petty
+plunderings, so they gnawed away at the foundations of society
+undisturbed. As to the "popular education" of which we boast, and the
+elevating and inspiring faith of Christianity which had reared its
+temples all around them, they might almost as well have been the
+children of the Makololos in Central Africa. They had never been in
+school or church, and knew of God and Christ only in street-oaths, or as
+something of which people far above them spoke sometimes.
+
+I determined to inaugurate here a regular series of the "moral
+disinfectants," if I may so call them, for this "crime-nest," which act
+almost as surely, though not as rapidly, as do the physical
+disinfectants--the sulphate of iron, the chloride of lime, and the
+various deodorizers of the Board of Health--in breaking up the
+"fever-nests" of the city.
+
+These measures, though imitated in some respects from England, were
+novel in their combination.
+
+The first step in the treatment is to appoint a kind-hearted agent or
+"Visitor," who shall go around the infected quarter, and win the
+confidence of, and otherwise befriend the homeless and needy children of
+the neighborhood. Then we open an informal, simple, religious
+meeting--the Boys' Meeting which I have described; next we add to it a
+free Reading-room, then an Industrial School, afterwards a
+Lodging-house; and, after months or years of the patient application of
+these remedies, our final and most successful treatment is, as I have
+often said, the forwarding of the more hopeful cases to farms in the
+West.
+
+While seeking to apply these long-tried remedies to the wretched young
+population in the Sixteenth Ward, I chanced on a most earnest Christian
+man, a resident of the quarter, whose name I take the liberty of
+mentioning--Mr. D. Slater, a manufacturer.
+
+He went around himself through the rookeries of the district, and
+gathered the poor lads even in his own parlor; he fed and clothed them;
+he advised and prayed with them. We opened together a religious meeting
+for them. Nothing could exceed their wild and rowdy conduct in the first
+gatherings. On one or two occasions some of the little ruffians
+absolutely drew knives on our assistants, and had to be handed over to
+the police. But our usual experience was repeated even there. Week by
+week patient kindness and the truths of Christianity began to have their
+effect on these wild little heathen of the street. We find, in our
+Journal of 1856, the following entries (p. 11):--
+
+"The other meeting has been opened in the hall, at the corner of
+Sixteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, by Mr. D. Slater. It had, in the
+beginning, a rather stormy time, being frequented by the rowdy and
+thieving boys of the quarter. Mr. S. has once or twice been obliged to
+call in the help of the police, and to arrest the ringleaders. Now,
+however, by his patient kindness and anxiety for the welfare of the
+lads, he has gained a permanent influence. The police have remarked how
+much less the streets, on a Sunday, have been infested, since he opened
+the meeting, with vagabond boys. Several notorious street-boys have
+abandoned their bad habits, and now go regularly to the Public Schools,
+or are in steady business. The average attendance the first month was
+88; it is now 162. The average evening attendance is 104.
+
+There is a family of four boys, all orphans, whom their friends could do
+nothing with, and turned into the streets. They lived by petty stealing,
+and slept in hay-lofts in winter, and on stoops or in coal-boxes in
+summer. Since they came to the meeting they have all gone to work; they
+attend Public School, and come regularly to evening meeting. They used
+to be in rags and filth, but now are clean and well dressed. Their uncle
+came to me and said the meeting had done them more good than all their
+friends together."--(_Mr. Slater's Report._)
+
+"Yesterday, Mr. Slater brought a thin, sad boy to us--had found him in
+the streets and heard his story, and then gave him a breakfast, and led
+him up to our office. The lad seemed like one weary almost of living.
+'Where are your father and mother, my boy?' 'Both dead, sir.' 'Where are
+your other relatives or friends?' 'Hain't got no friends, sir; I've
+lived by myself on the street.' 'Where did you stay?' 'I slept _in the
+privy_ sometime, sir; and then in the stables in Sixteenth Street.'
+'Poor fellow,' said some one, 'how did you get your living?' 'Begged
+it--and then, them stable-men, they give me bread sometimes.' 'Have you
+ever been to school, or Sunday School?' 'No, sir.' So the sad story went
+on. Within two blocks of our richest houses, a desolate boy grows up,
+not merely out of Christianity and out of education, but out of a common
+human shelter, and of means of livelihood.
+
+"The vermin were creeping over him as he spoke. A few days before this,
+Mr. S. had brought up three thorough-going street-boys--active, bold,
+impudent, smart fellows--a great deal more wicked and much less
+miserable than this poor fellow. Those three were sent to Ohio together,
+and this last boy, after a thorough washing and cleansing, was to be
+dispatched to Illinois. A later note adds: 'The lad was taken by an old
+gentleman of property, who, being childless, has since adopted the boy
+as his own, and will make him heir to a property.'"
+
+Several other lads were helped to an honest livelihood. A Visitor was
+then appointed, who lived and worked in the quarter. But our moral
+treatment for this nest of crime had only commenced.
+
+We appealed to the public for aid to establish the reforming agencies
+which alone can cure these evils, and whose foundation depends mainly on
+the liberality, in money, of our citizens. We warned them that these
+children, if not instructed, would inevitably grow up as ruffians. We
+said often that they would not be like the stupid foreign criminal
+class, but that their crimes, when they came to maturity, would show the
+recklessness, daring, and intensity of the American character. In our
+very first report (for 1854) we said:--
+
+"It should be remembered that there are no dangers to the value of
+property, or to the permanency of our institutions, so great as those
+from the existence of such a class of vagabond, ignorant, ungoverned
+children. This 'dangerous class' has not begun to show itself, as it
+will in eight or ten years, when these boys and girls are matured. Those
+who were too negligent, or too selfish to notice them as children, will
+be fully aware of them as men. They will vote--they will have the same
+rights as we ourselves, though they have grown up ignorant of moral
+principle, as any savage or Indian. They will poison society. They will
+perhaps be embittered at the wealth and the luxuries they never share.
+Then let society beware, when the outcast, vicious, reckless multitude
+of New York boys, swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come
+to know their power and _use it!_
+
+Again, in 1857, we said:--
+
+"Why should the 'street-rat,' as the police call him--the boy whose home
+in sweet childhood was a box or a deserted cellar; whose food was crumbs
+begged or bread stolen; whose influences of education were kicks and
+cuffs, curses, neglect, destitution and cold; who never had a friend,
+who never heard of duty either to society or God--why should he feel
+himself under any of the restraints of civilization or of Christianity?
+Why should he be anything but a garroter and thief?"
+
+          *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"Is not this crop of thieves and burglars, of shoulder-hitters and
+short-boys, of prostitutes and vagrants, of garroters and murderers, the
+very fruit to be expected from this seed, so long being sown? What else
+was to be looked for? Society hurried on selfishly for its wealth, and
+left this vast class in its misery and temptation. Now these children
+arise and wrest back, with bloody and criminal hands, what the world
+were too careless or too selfish to give. The worldliness of the rich,
+the indifference of all classes to the poor, will always be avenged.
+Society must act on the highest principles, or its punishment
+incessantly comes within itself. The neglect of the poor, and tempted,
+and criminal, is fearfully repaid." (Pp. 5, 6.)
+
+But the words fell on inattentive ears.
+
+We found ourselves unable to continue our reforming agencies in the
+Sixteenth Ward; no means were supplied; our Visitor was dismissed, the
+meeting closed; Mr. Slater moved away, heavily out of pocket with his
+humane efforts, and much discouraged with the indifference of the
+Christian community to these tremendous evils; and the
+"Nineteenth-street Gang" grew up undisturbed in its evil courses, taking
+new lessons in villainy and crime, and graduating in the manner the
+community has felt the past few years. Both the police and the public
+have noted the extraordinary recklessness and ferocity of their crimes.
+One, a mere lad, named Rogers, committed a murder, a few years ago, on a
+respectable gentleman, Mr. Swanton, accompanied by his wife, in the open
+street, on the west side of the city. He was subsequently executed. Some
+have been notorious thieves and burglars.
+
+Another murdered an unoffending old man, Mr. Rogers, in open day, before
+his own door, and near the main thoroughfare of the city. The whole
+community was deeply thrilled by this horrible murder, and, though three
+of the "Gang" were arrested, the offender was never discovered.
+Subsequently, one of the suspected young men was murdered by one of his
+own "pals."
+
+The amount of property they have destroyed would have paid the expense
+of an Industrial School, Reading-room, Lodging-house and our other
+agencies for them, ten times over.
+
+Now and then we have rescued two or three brothers of them, and have
+seen them become honest and industrious farmers in the West, while one
+of the same family, remaining here, would soon be heard of in Sing Sing
+or the city prisons.
+
+The history of the growth of the "Nineteenth-street Gang" is only one
+example of the histories of scores of similar bands of ruffians now in
+process of formation in the low quarters of the city.
+
+Our preventive agency was now placed, through the especial assistance of
+one of our trustees, in a better building, in Eighteenth Street. Here we
+had all our moral "disinfectants" under one roof, in the best possible
+efficiency.
+
+The person to be appointed Superintendent, whom I had accidentally
+encountered, was a "canny Scotchman," and proved singularly adapted to
+the work. I feared at first that he was "too pious" for his place; as
+experience shows that a little leaven of carnal habits, and the jolly
+good nature which Religion ought only to increase, but which, when
+misapplied, it does sometimes somewhat contract, is useful in
+influencing these young heathen of the street. Perhaps they are so far
+down in the moral scale, that too strict a standard, when first applied
+to them, tends to repel or discourage them.
+
+I particularly dreaded our friend's devotional exercises. But time and
+experience soon wore off the Scotch Presbyterian starch, and showed that
+the "root of the matter" was in him. The first quality needed in such a
+position is patience--a spirit which is never discouraged by ingratitude
+or wearied out by ill conduct. This our apparently somewhat
+sternly-righteous superintendent could attempt to show.
+
+Then, next, the guide of such lads must be just--inflexibly just--and
+exact in the smallest particulars; for, of all things which a street-boy
+feels, is first any neglect of obligations.
+
+This virtue was easy to the superintendent. He had, too, in him a deep
+well of kindness for the forlorn and unfortunate, which the lads soon
+appreciated. To my great satisfaction, at this time a gentleman threw
+himself into the movement, who possessed those qualities which always
+command success, and especially the peculiarities with which boys
+instinctively sympathize.
+
+He was gifted with a certain vitality of temperament and rich power of
+enjoyment of everything human, which the rough lads felt immediately. He
+evidently liked horses and dogs; a drive four-in-hand, and a gallop "to
+hounds," were plainly things not opposed to his taste. He appreciated a
+good dinner (as the boys happily discovered), and had no moral scruples
+at a cigar, or an occasional glass of wine.
+
+All this physical energy and richness of temperament seemed to accompany
+him in his religions and philanthropical life. He was indefatigable in
+his efforts for the good of the lads; he conducted their religious
+meeting every Sunday evening; he advised and guided, he offered prizes,
+gave festivals and dinners, supplied reasonable wants, and corresponded
+with them. And, at length, to crown his efforts, he proposed to a few
+friends to purchase the house, and make it a home for the homeless boys
+forever.
+
+This benevolent measure was carried through with the same energy with
+which he manages his business, and the street-boys of the west side of
+New York will long feel the fruits of it.
+
+For our own and the public benefit, our worthy superintendent had, among
+his other qualities, what was of immense importance for his work--the
+true Scotch economy.
+
+No manufacturer ever managed his factory, no hotel-keeper ever carried
+on his establishment with such an eye for every penny of useless
+expenditure, as faithful manager of trust-funds looked after every item
+of cost in this School, and Lodging-house. Thus, for instance, during
+the month of May last, he lodged eighty boys every night, and fed them
+with two meals, at a cost to each lodger of five cents for a meal and
+five cents for lodging, at the same time feeding and lodging some
+gratuitously. The boys were kept clean, had enough to eat, and were
+brought under all the good moral and mental influences of the House;
+and, at the end of the month, the institution had not only cost nothing
+to the public, but Mr. Gourley absolutely turned over eleven dollars and
+sixty-five cents to the Society. That is, his rent being paid, he had
+managed to keep his boys, pay the wages and food of three servants, a
+night-watchman, and errand-boy, and the salaries and table expenses of
+the superintendent, matron, and their family of four children. If this
+is not "economical charity," it would be difficult to find it.
+
+On one occasion the patience of our worthy superintendent was put to a
+severe test.
+
+For two years he fed and lodged two youthful "vessels of wrath." They
+were taught in the Night-school, they were preached to, and prayed with
+in the Sunday meeting, they were generously feasted in the Thanksgiving
+and Christmas festivals. At last, as the crowning work of benevolence,
+he clothed and cleaned them, and took them with him to find them a home
+in the Far West.
+
+Here, when they had reached the land of independence, they began to
+develop "the natural man" in a most unpleasant form.
+
+They would not go to the places selected; their language was so bad
+that the farmers would not take them; finally, after their refusing to
+take places where they were wanted, and making themselves generally
+disagreeable, Mr. Gourley had to inform the lads that they must shift
+for themselves! Hereupon they turned upon their benefactor with the
+vilest language. Subsequently they met him in the streets of the Western
+town, and were about to show themselves--what a Western paper
+calls--"muscular orphans," by a vigorous assault on their benevolent
+protector; but finding, from the bearing of our excellent brother, that
+he had something of the old Covenanter's muscle in him, and could show
+himself, if necessary, a worthy member of the old Scotch "Church
+militant," they wisely avoided the combat.
+
+Mr. Gourley returned home down-hearted, his high Calvinistic views of
+the original condition of the human heart not being weakened by his
+experience. We all felt somewhat discouraged; but, as if to show us that
+human nature is never to be despaired of, Mr. Gourley afterwards
+received the following _amende_ from the two ingrates:--
+
+                    HOPEFUL NEWS FROM HARD CASES.
+
+                          "P----, Mich., June 6, 1870. "Mr. J. GOURLEY:
+
+"_Dear Sir_--Knowing that you are one of those who can forget and
+forgive, I take the liberty of writing these few lines to you, hoping
+that I will not offend you by so doing. W---- and I both wish to return
+our thanks to the Society for giving us the aid they have. We are now
+both in a fair way of making men of ourselves. We are happy to think
+that we are free from the evil temptations that the poor boys of New
+York are exposed to. We are respected by all who know us here. Boys of
+New York little know of the pleasure there is to be found in a home in
+the 'Far West.' We expect to stay here for two years yet, and then make
+a short visit to New York. We would like to visit the 'Old Hotel,' if
+you have no objection. We would like to have you write and let us know
+how the boys are getting along, and if little Skid and Dutchy are still
+in the hotel. I would advise all boys who have no home to go West, and
+they will be sure to find one. W---- is foreman on the largest farm in
+the town, and has hired for three years at one hundred dollars per year,
+and found in everything. I am working in a saw-mill this summer. I
+worked on a farm the first winter and summer. Last winter I worked in
+the lumber-wood, and this summer I will try the mill. I get twenty
+dollars a month, and have since I left you at the depot. We both went to
+work the next day. I wish you would be so kind as to answer this, and
+oblige your obedient servants,
+                                                                "B. T.
+                                                                "M. W."
+
+                TABULAR STATEMENT SINCE ORGANIZATION.
+
+                     No. of No. of   No. of  No. Pro-
+    YEAR.            Boys. Lodgings. Meals. vided for. Expenses. Receipts.
+
+1866 to 1867.......   847   15,389   48,511    272    $6,205.48  $3,053.40
+1867 to 1868.......   952   23,933   39,401    159     5,141.08   4,065.25
+1868 to 1868.......   890   22,921   25,345    127     7,983.58   3,068.53
+1869, 9 months.....   563   15,506   15,429     37     3,832.04   1,995.21
+1869 to 1870.......   919   25,516   27,932     86     4,766.55   3,510.84
+1870 to 1871.......   750   28,302   30,693     69     4,224.51   3,586.67
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+      Totals....... 4,921  131,467  187,311    751   $32,093.24 $19,279.90
+
+The Eighteenth-street Lodging-house has been gradually and surely
+preventing the growth of a fresh "gang" of youthful ruffians; and has
+already saved great numbers of neglected boys.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                       THE MINISTRY OF FLOWERS.
+
+                THE LITTLE VAGABONDS OF CORLEAR'S HOOK.
+
+If any of my readers should ever be inclined to investigate a very
+miserable quarter of the city, let them go down to our "Corlear's Hook,"
+so infamous twenty years ago for murders and terrible crimes, and then
+wind about among the lanes and narrow streets of the district. Here they
+will find every available inch of the ground made use of for residences,
+so that each lot has that poisonous arrangement, a "double house,"
+whereby the air is more effectually vitiated, and a greater number of
+human beings are crowded together. From this massing-together of
+families, and the drunken habits prevailing, it results very naturally
+that the children prefer outdoor life to their wretched tenements, and,
+in the milder months, boys and girls live a _dolce far niente_ life on
+the docks and wood-piles, enjoying the sun and the swimming, and picking
+up a livelihood by petty thieving and peddling.
+
+Sometimes they all huddle together in some cellar, boys and girls, and
+there sleep. In winter they creep back to the tenement-houses, or hire a
+bed in the vile lodgings which are found in the Ward. They grow up,
+naturally, the wildest little "Topseys" and "Gavroches" that can be
+found. Ragged, impudent, sharp, able "to paddle their canoe" through all
+the rapids of the great city--the most volatile and uncertain of
+children; today in school, to-morrow miles away; many of them the most
+skillful of petty thieves, and all growing up to prey on the city.
+
+In the midst of this quarter we found an old Public School building--a
+dilapidated old shell--which we hired and refitted. It had the especial
+advantage of being open to air and light on four sides. We soon
+transformed it into one of the most complete and attractive little
+agencies of instruction and charity which ever arose in the dark places
+of a crowded metropolis. We struck upon a superintendent--Mr. G.
+Calder--who, with other good qualities, had the artistic gift--who, by a
+few flowers, or leaves, or old engravings, could make any room look
+pleasing. He exerted his talent in embellishing this building, and in
+making a cheerful spot in the midst of a ward filled with rookeries and
+broken-down tenements. In the bit of a back yard he created a beautiful
+garden, with shrubbery and flowers, with vases and a cool shaded
+seat--and these in a place of the size of a respectable closet. There a
+poor child could stand and fancy herself, for a moment, far away in the
+country, Thence, on a spring morning, drowning the prevalent smells of
+bilge-water and sewers, ascended the sweet odors of hyacinth and
+heliotrope, sweet-william and violet. Above, in the school-rooms and the
+lodging-rooms, these sweet flowers were scattered about, taming and
+refining, for the time, the rough little subjects who frequented them.
+Soon a novel reward was proposed, and the best children in the School
+were allowed to take a plant home with them, and, if they brought it
+back improved in a few months, to receive others as a premium; so that
+the School not merely distributed its light of morality and intelligence
+in the dreary dens of the Ward, but was represented by cheerful and
+fragrant flowers in the windows of poor men's homes.
+
+In the School-room, too, was placed a little aquarium, which became an
+increasing source of delight to the young vagabonds. Our diligent
+superintendent was not content. He now built a green-house, and, though
+no gardener, soon learned to care for and raise quantities of exquisite
+flowers, which should brighten the building in the gloomy winter.
+
+[Illustration: POOR CHILDREN AMONG FLOWERS (The Rivington Street
+Lodging-House.)]
+
+For the Industrial School we procured a teacher who taught as if life
+and death depended on the issues of each lesson. She seemed to pour out
+her life on "Enumeration," and gave an Object-lesson on an orange as if
+all the future prospects of the children depended on it. Such a teacher
+could not fail to interest the lively little vagrants of Rivington
+Street.
+
+Her sweet assistant was as effective in her own way; so it came that a
+hundred and fifty of the young flibbertigibbets of the ward were soon
+gathered and attempted to be brought under the discipline of an
+Industrial School. But it was like schooling little Indians. A bright
+day scattered them as a splash scatters a school of fish, and they
+disappeared among the docks and boats of the neighborhood. No
+intellectual attraction could compete with a "target company," and the
+sound of the fire-bell drove all lessons out of their heads. Still,
+patience and ingenuity and devotion accomplished here, as in all our
+schools, their work--which, if not "perfect," has been satisfactory and
+encouraging.
+
+But this was only a part of our efforts. Besides the school of a hundred
+and fifty children in the day from the neighborhood, might be found a
+hundred boys gathered from boxes, and barges, and all conceivable
+haunts, who came in for school and supper and bed.
+
+Here, for some inscrutable reason, the considerable class of
+"canawl-boys," or lads who work on the canal-boats of the interior, came
+for harbor. Besides our Day and Night Schools, we opened here also a
+Free Reading-room for boys and young men in the neighborhood, and we
+held our usual Sunday-evening Meeting. In this meeting, fortunately for
+its good effects, various gentlemen took part, with much experience in
+practical life and of earnest characters. One, a young officer in the
+army, whose service for his country fitted him for the service of
+humanity; another, an enthusiastic and active young business man; and
+still another--one of those men of calm judgment, profound earnestness
+of character, and an almost princely generosity, who, in a foreign
+country, would be at the head of affairs, but here throw their moral and
+mental weight into enterprises of religion and philanthropy.
+
+The effects of these Meetings were exemplified by many striking changes
+of character, and instances of resistance to temptation among the lads,
+which greatly encouraged us.
+
+The building seemed so admirably adapted to our work, that, emboldened
+by our success with the Eighteenth-street House, we determined to try to
+purchase it. Two of our Trustees took the matter in hand. One had
+already, in the most generous manner, given one-third of the amount
+required for the purchase of that building; but now he offered what was
+still more--his personal efforts towards raising the amount needed here,
+$18,000.
+
+No such disagreeable and self-denying work is ever done, as begging
+money. The feeling that you are boring others, and getting from their
+personal regard, what ought to be given solely for public motives, and
+the certainty that others will apply to you as you apply to them, and
+expect a subscription as a personal return, are all great "crosses." The
+cold rebuff, too; the suspicious negative, as if you were engaged in
+rather doubtful business, are other unpleasant accompaniments of this
+business. And yet it ought to be regarded simply and solely as an
+unpleasant public duty. Money must be given, or refused, merely from
+public considerations. The giving to one charity should never leave an
+obligation that your petitioner must give to another. These few
+gentlemen in the city, of means and position, who do this unpleasant
+work, deserve the gratitude of the community.
+
+No other city in the world, we believe, makes such liberal gifts from
+its means, as does New York towards all kinds of charitable and
+religious objects. There is a certain band of wealthy men who give in a
+proportion almost never known in the history of benefactions. We know
+one gentleman of large income who habitually, as we understand from good
+authority, bestows, in every kind of charitable and religious donations,
+$300,000 a year! As a general rule, however, the very rich in New York
+give very little. Our own charity has been mainly supported by the gifts
+of the middle and poorer classes.
+
+In this particular case, the trustee of whom we have spoken threw that
+enormous energy which has already made him, though a young man, one of
+the foremost business men of the city, into this labor. With him was
+associated a refined gentleman, who could reach many with invested
+wealth. Under this combination we soon raised the required sum, and all
+had the profound satisfaction of seeing a temporary "Home for Homeless
+Boys" placed in one of the worst quarters of the city, to scatter its
+benefactions for future years, when we are all gone.
+
+During the past year, a still more beautiful feature has been added to
+this Lodging-house. We had occasion to put up in the rear a little
+building for bathrooms. It occurred to some gentlemen who are always
+devising pleasant things for these poor children, that a green-house
+upon this, opening into the school-room, would be a very agreeable
+feature, and that our superintendent's love for flowers could thus be
+used in the most practical way for giving pleasure to great numbers of
+poor children. A pretty conservatory, accordingly, was erected on the
+top of the bath-room, opening into the audience-room, so that the little
+street-waifs, as they looked up from their desks, had a vista of flowers
+before them. Hither, also, were invited the mothers of the children in
+the Day-school to occasional parties or exhibitions; and here the plants
+were shown which had been intrusted to them.
+
+The room is one of the most attractive schoolrooms in the city, and I
+have no doubt its beautiful flowers are one cause of the great numbers
+of poor children which flock to it, while the influence of its earnest
+teachers, and of the whole instrumentality, has been to improve the
+character of the neighboring quarter.
+
+        FOUR YEARS' WORK AT THE RIVINGTON-STREET LODGING-HOUSE.
+                       (1868, 1869, 1870, 1871)
+
+Number of different boys provided for.......     2,659
+Number of lodgings furnished................    80,344
+Number of meals furnished...................    78,756
+Number of boys sent West....................       161
+Number of boys provided with employment.....       105
+Number of boys restored to friends..........       126
+Number of boys patronizing the savings-bank.       310
+Amount saved by the boys....................$ 2,873.00
+Total expenses.............................. 26,018.10
+Amount paid by the boys.....................  8,614.63
+
+                      THE LITTLE COPPER-STEALERS.
+
+                   THE ELEVENTH-WARD LODGING-HOUSE.
+
+The history of this useful charity would be only a repetition of that of
+the others. It is placed among the haunts which are a favorite of the
+little dock-thieves, and iron and copper-stealers, and of all the ragged
+crowd who live by peddling wood near the East River wharves. It has had
+a checkered career. One superintendent was "cleaned out" twice on
+successive nights, and had his till robbed almost under his nose.
+Another was almost hustled out of the dormitory by the youthful
+vagabonds; but order has at length been gained; considerable numbers of
+the _gamins_ have been tamed into honest farmers, and others are
+pursuing regular occupations.
+
+The Night-school is busily attended; the Day-school is a model of
+industry; the "Bank" is used, and the Sunday-evening Meeting is one of
+the most interesting and impressive which we have.
+
+Its recent success and improvement are due to the personal interest and
+exertions of one of our trustees, who has thrown into this labor of
+charity a characteristic energy, as well as the earnestness of a
+profound religious nature.
+
+We have in this building, also, a great variety of charitable work
+crowded; but we hope, through the liberality which has founded our other
+Lodging-houses, to secure a more suitable building, which shall be a
+permanent blessing to that quarter.
+
+                    STATISTICS FROM ORIGIN TO 1872.
+
+Number of lodgings..........................   67,198
+Number of meals.............................   65,757
+Sent West...................................      278
+Restored to friends.........................      138
+Number of different boys....................    3,036
+Amount paid by boys.........................$6,522.22
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                          THE CHILD-VAGRANT.
+
+There is without doubt in the blood of most children--as an inheritance,
+perhaps, from some remote barbarian ancestor--a passion for roving.
+There are few of us who cannot recall the delicious pleasure of
+wandering at free will in childhood, far from schools, houses, and the
+tasks laid upon us, and leading in the fields or woods a semi-savage
+existence. In fact, to some of us, now in manhood, there is scarcely a
+greater pleasure of the senses than to gratify "the savage in one's
+blood," and lead a wild life in the woods. The boys among the poor feel
+this passion often almost irresistibly. Nothing will keep them in school
+or at home. Having perhaps kind parents, and not a peculiarly
+disagreeable home, they will yet rove off night and day, enjoying the
+idle, lazzaroni life on the docks, living in the summer almost in the
+water, and curling down at night, as the animals do, in any corner they
+can find--hungry and ragged, but light-hearted, and enjoying immensely
+their vagabond life. Probably as a sensation, not one that the street
+lad will ever have in after-life will equal the delicious feeling of
+carelessness and independence with which he lies on his back in the
+spring sunlight on a pile of dock lumber, and watches the moving life on
+the river, and munches his crust of bread. It frequently happens that no
+restraint or punishment can check this Indian-like propensity.
+
+                          A ROVER REFORMED.
+
+We recall one fine little fellow who was honest, and truthful, and
+kind-hearted, but who, when the roving passion in the blood came up,
+left everything and spent his days and nights on the wharves, and
+rambling about the streets. His mother, a widow, knew only too well what
+this habit was bringing him to, for, unfortunately, the life of a young
+barbarian in New York has little poetry in it The youthful vagrant soon
+becomes idle and unfit to work; he is hungry, and cannot win his food
+from the waters and the woods, like his savage prototype; therefore, he
+must steal. He makes the acquaintance of the petty thieves, pickpockets,
+and young sharpers of the city. He learns to lie and swear; to pick
+pockets, rifle street-stands, and break open shop-windows or doors; so
+that this barbarian habit is the universal stepping-stone to children's
+crimes. In this case, the worthy woman locked the boy up in her room,
+and sent down word to us that her son would like a place in the country,
+if the employer would come up and take him. We dispatched an excellent
+gentleman to her from the interior, who desired a "model boy;" but, when
+he arrived, he found, to his dismay, the lad kicking through the panels
+of the door, and declaring he would die sooner than go. The boy then
+disappeared for a few days, when his mother discovered him ragged and
+half-starved about the docks, and brought him home and whipped him
+severely. The next morning he was off again, and was gone a week, until
+the police brought him back in a wretched condition. The mother now
+tried the "Christian Brothers," who had a fence ten feet high about
+their premises, and kept the lad, it was said, part of the time chained.
+But the fence was mere sport to the little vagrant, and he was soon off.
+She then tried the "Half-Orphan Asylum," but this succeeded no better.
+Then the "Juvenile Asylum" was applied to, and the lad was admitted; but
+here he spent but a short probation, and was soon beyond their reach.
+The mother, now in desperation, resolved to send him to the Far West,
+under the charge of the Children's Aid Society. Knowing his habits, she
+led him down by the collar to the office, sat by him there, and
+accompanied him to the railroad depot with the party of children. He was
+placed on a farm in Northern Michigan, where, fortunately, there was
+considerable game in the neighborhood. To the surprise of us all, he did
+not at once run away, being perhaps attracted by the shooting he could
+indulge in, when not at work.
+
+At length a chance was offered him of being a trapper, and he began his
+rovings in good earnest. From the Northern Peninsula of Michigan to the
+Rocky Mountains, he wandered over the woods and wilds for years, making
+a very good living by his sales of skins, and saving considerable money.
+All accounts showed him to be a very honest, decent, industrious lad--a
+city vagrant about to be a thief transformed into a country vagrant
+making an honest living.
+
+Our books give hundreds of similar stories, where a free country-life
+and the amusements and sports of the farmers, when work is slack, have
+gratified healthfully the vagrant appetite. The mere riding a horse, or
+owning a calf or a lamb, or trapping an animal in winter, seems to have
+an astonishing effect in cooling the fire in the blood in the city
+rover, and making him contented.
+
+The social habits of the army of little street-vagrants who rove through
+our city have something unaccountable and mysterious in them. We have,
+as I have described, in various parts of the city little "Stations," as
+it were, in their weary journey of life, where we ostensibly try to
+refresh them, but where we really hope to break up their service in the
+army of vagrancy, and make honest lads of them. These "Lodging-houses"
+are contrived, after much experience, so ingeniously that they
+inevitably attract in the young vagabonds, and drain the quarter where
+they are placed of this class. We give the boys, in point of fact, more
+for their money than they can get anywhere else, and the whole house is
+made attractive and comfortable for them. But the reasons of their
+coming to a given place seem unaccountable.
+
+Thus there will be a "Lodge" in some out-of-the-way quarter, with no
+special attractions, which for years will drag along with a
+comparatively small number of lodgers, when suddenly, without any change
+being made, there will come a rush of street-rovers to it, and scores
+will have to be sent away, and the house be crowded for months after.
+Perhaps these denizens of boxes and hay-barges have their own fashions,
+like their elders, and a "Boys' Hotel" becomes popular, and has a run of
+custom like the larger houses of entertainment. The numbers too, at
+different seasons, vary singularly. Thus, in the coldest nights of
+winter, when few boys could venture to sleep out, and one would suppose
+there would be a rush to these warmed and comfortable "Lodges," the
+attendance in some houses falls off. And in all, the best months are the
+spring and autumn rather than the winter or summer. Sometimes a single
+night of the week will show a remarkable increase of lodgers, though for
+what reason no one can divine.
+
+The lodgers in the different houses are singularly different. Those in
+the parent Lodging-house--the Newsboys'--seem more of the true _gamin_
+order: sharp, ready, light-hearted, quick to understand and quick to
+act, generous and impulsive, and with an air of being well used "to
+steer their own canoe" through whatever rapids and whirlpools. These
+lads seem to include more, also, of that chance medley of little
+wanderers who drift into the city from the country, and other large
+towns--boys floating on the current, no one knows whence or whither.
+They are, as a rule, younger than in the other "Lodges," and many of
+them are induced to take places on farms, or with mechanics in the
+country.
+
+One of the mysterious things about this Boys' Hotel is, what becomes of
+the large numbers that enter it? In the course of the twelve months
+there passes through its hospitable doors a procession of more than
+_eight thousand_ different youthful rovers of the streets--boys without
+homes or friends; yet, on any one night, there is not an average of more
+than two hundred. Each separate boy accordingly averages but nine days
+in his stay. We can trace during the year the course of, perhaps, a
+thousand of these young vagrants, for most of whom we provide ourselves.
+What becomes of the other seven thousand? Many, no doubt, find
+occupation in the city or country; some in the pleasant seasons take
+their pleasure and business at the watering-places and other large
+towns; some return to relatives or friends; many are arrested and
+imprisoned, and the rest of the ragged throng drift away, no one knows
+whither.
+
+The up-town Lodging-houses seem often to gather in a more permanent
+class of lodgers; they become frequently genuine boarding-houses for
+children. The lads seem to be, too, a more destitute and perhaps lower
+class than "the down-town boys." Possibly by a process of "Natural
+Selection," only the sharpest and brightest lads get through the intense
+"struggle for existence" which belongs to the most crowded portions of
+the city, while the duller are driven to the up-town wards. We throw out
+the hypothesis for some future investigator.
+
+The great amusement of this multitude of street vagabonds is the cheap
+theatre. Like most boys, they have a passion for the drama. But to them
+the pictures of kings and queens, the processions of courtiers and
+soldiers on the stage, and the wealthy gentlemen aiding and rescuing
+distressed peasant-girls, are the only glimpses they ever get of the
+great world of history and society above them, and they are naturally
+entranced by them. Many a lad will pass a night in a box, and spend his
+last sixpence, rather than lose this show. Unfortunately, these low
+theatres seem the rendezvous for all disreputable characters; and here
+the "bummers" make the acquaintance of the higher class whom they so
+much admire, of "flashmen," thieves, pickpockets, and rogues.
+
+We have taken the pains at different times to see some of the pieces
+represented in these places, and have never witnessed anything improper
+or immoral. On the contrary, the popular plays were always of a heroic
+and moral cast. "Uncle Tom," when it was played in the Bowery,
+undoubtedly had a good moral and political effect, in the years before
+the war, on these ragamuffins.
+
+The salvation of New York, as regards this army of young vagabonds, is,
+without doubt, its climate. There can be no permanent class of lazzaroni
+under our winters. The cold compels work. The snow drives "the
+street-rats," as the police call them, from their holes. Then the
+homeless boys seek employment and a shelter. And when they are once
+brought under the series of moral and physical instrumentalities
+contrived for their benefit, they cease soon to be vagrants, and join
+the great class of workers and honest producers.
+
+                            A CORRECTIVE.
+
+One of the best practical methods of correcting vagrancy among city boys
+would be the adoption, by every large town, of an "ordinance" similar to
+that passed by the Common Council of Boston.
+
+By this Act, every child who pursues any kind of street-trade for an
+occupation--such as news-vending, peddling, blackening of boots, and the
+like--is obliged to procure a license, which must be renewed every three
+months. If he is found at any time without this license, he is liable to
+summary arrest as a vagrant. To procure the license, each child must
+show a certificate that he has been, or is, attending some school,
+whether public, or industrial, or parish, during three hours each day.
+
+The great advantage of a law of this nature, is, that it can be
+executed. Any ordinary legislation against youthful vagrants--such as
+arresting any child found in the streets during school-hours, or without
+occupation--is sure to become ineffectual through the humanity and
+good-nature of officials and judges. Moreover, every young rover of the
+streets can easily trump up some occupation, which he professes to
+follow.
+
+Thus, now, as is well known, most of the begging children in New York
+are apparently engaged in selling "black-headed pins," or some other
+cheap trifle.
+
+They can almost always pretend some occupation--if it be only sweeping
+sidewalks--which enables them to elude the law. Nor can we reasonably
+expect a judge to sentence a child for vagrancy, when it claims to be
+supporting a destitute parent by earnings in a street-trade, though the
+occupation may be a semi-vagrant one, and may lead inevitably to
+idleness and crime. Nor does the action of a truant-officer prevent the
+necessity of such a law, because this official only acts on the truant
+class of children, not on those who attend no school whatever. By an
+ordinance like this of Boston, every child can be forced to at least
+three hours' schooling each day; and, as any school is permitted, no
+sectarian or bigoted feeling is aroused by this injunction.
+
+The police would be more ready to arrest, and the Judges to sentence,
+the violators of so simple and rational a law. The wanderers of the
+street would then be brought under legal supervision, which would not be
+too harsh or severe. Education may not, in all cases, prevent crime; yet
+we well know that, on a broad scale, it has a wonderful effect in
+checking it.
+
+The steady labor, punctuality, and order of a good school, the high tone
+in many of our Free Schools, the self-respect cultivated, the emulation
+aroused, the love of industry thus planted, are just the influences to
+break up a vagabond, roving, and dependent habit of mind and life. The
+School, with the Lodging-house, is the best preventive institution for
+vagrancy.
+
+The Massachusetts system of "Truant-schools"--that is, Schools to which
+truant officers could send children habitually truant--does not seem so
+applicable to New York. The number of "truants" in the city is not very
+large; they are in exceedingly remote quarters, and it would be very
+difficult to collect them in any single School.
+
+Our "Industrial Schools" seem to take their place very efficiently. The
+present truant-officers of the city are active and judicious, and return
+many children to the Schools.
+
+                        COMPULSORY EDUCATION.
+
+The best general law on this subject, both for country and city, would
+undoubtedly be, a law for compulsory education, allowing "Half-time
+Schools" to children requiring to be employed a part of the day.
+
+There is no doubt that the time has arrived for the introduction of such
+laws throughout the country. During the first years of the national
+existence, and especially in New England and the States peopled from
+that region, there was so strong an impression among the common people,
+of the immense importance of a system of free instruction for all, that
+no laws or regulations were necessary to enforce it. Our ancestors were
+only too eager to secure mental training for themselves, and
+opportunities of education for their children. The public property in
+lands was, in many States, early set aside for purposes of school and
+college education; and the poorest farmers and laboring people often
+succeeded in obtaining for their families and descendants the best
+intellectual training which the country could then bestow.
+
+But all this, in New England and other portions of the country, has
+greatly changed. Owing to foreign immigration and to unequal
+distribution of wealth, large numbers of people have grown up without
+the rudiments even of common-school education. Thus, according to the
+report of 1871, of the National Commissioners of Education, there are in
+the New England States 195,963 persons over ten years of age who cannot
+write, and, therefore, are classed as "illiterates." In New York State
+the number reaches the astounding height of 241,152, of whom 10,639 are
+of the colored race. In Pennsylvania the number is 222,356; in Ohio,
+173,172, and throughout the Union the population of the illiterates sums
+up the fearful amount of 5,660,074 In New York State the number of
+illiterate minors between ten and twenty-one years amounts to 42,405. In
+this city there are 62,238 persons over ten who cannot write, of whom
+53,791 are of foreign birth. Of minors between ten and twenty-one, there
+are here 8,017 illiterates.
+
+Now, it must be manifest to the dullest mind, that a republic like ours,
+resting on universal suffrage, is in the utmost danger from such a mass
+of ignorance at its foundation. That nearly six persons (5.7) in every
+one hundred in the Northern States should be uneducated, and thirty out
+of the hundred in the Southern, is certainly an alarming fact. From this
+dense ignorant multitude of human beings proceed most of the crimes of
+the community; these are the tools of unprincipled politicians; these
+form "the dangerous classes" of the city. So strongly has this danger
+been felt, especially from the ignorant masses of the Southern States,
+both black and white, that Congress has organized a National Bureau of
+Education, and, for the first time in our history, is taking upon itself
+to a limited degree, the care of education in the States. The law making
+appropriations of public lands for purposes of education, in proportion
+to the illiteracy of each State, will undoubtedly at some period be
+passed, and then encouragement will be given by the Federal Government
+to universal popular education. As long as five millions of our people
+cannot write, there is no wisdom in arguing against interference of the
+General Government in so vital a matter.
+
+During the past two years all intelligent Americans have been struck by
+the excellent discipline and immense well-directed energy shown by the
+Prussian nation--plainly the results of the universal and enforced
+education of the people. The leading Power of Europe evidently bases its
+strength on the law of Compulsory Education. Very earnest attention has
+been given in this country to the subject. Several States are
+approaching the adoption of such a law. California is reported to favor
+it, as well as Illinois. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut
+have began compulsory education by their legislation on factory
+children, compelling parents to educate their children a certain number
+of hours each day. Even Great Britain is drawing near it by her late
+School acts, and must eventually pass such laws. In our own State,
+where, of all the free States, the greatest illiteracy exists, there has
+been much backwardness in this matter. But, under the new movements for
+reform, our citizens must see where the root of all their troubles lies.
+The demagogues of this city would never have won their amazing power but
+for those sixty thousand persons who never read or write. It is this
+class and their associates who made these politicians what they were.
+
+We need, in the interests of public order, of liberty, of property, for
+the sake of our own safety and the endurance of free institutions here,
+a strict and careful law, which shall compel every minor to learn to
+read and write, under severe penalties in case of disobedience.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                          FACTORY CHILDREN.
+
+In our educational movements, we early opened Night-schools for the poor
+children. During the winter of 1870-71, we had some eleven in operation,
+reaching a most interesting class of children--those working hard from
+eight to ten hours a day, and then coming with passionate eagerness for
+schooling in the evening.
+
+The experience gained in these schools still further developed the fact,
+already known to us, of the great numbers of children of tender years in
+New York employed in factories, shops, trades, and other regular
+occupations. A child put at hard work in this way, is, as is well known,
+stunted in growth or enfeebled in health. He fails also to get what is
+considered as indispensable in this country for the safety of the State,
+a common-school education. He grows up weak in body and ignorant or
+untrained in mind. The parent or relative wants his wages, and insists
+on his laboring in a factory when he ought to be in an infant-school.
+The employer is in the habit of getting labor where he can find it, and
+does not much consider whether he is allowing his little _employes_ the
+time and leisure sufficient for preparing themselves for life. He
+excuses himself, too, by the plea that the child would be half-starved
+or thrown on the Poor-house but for this employment.
+
+The universal experience is, that neither the benevolence of the
+manufacturer nor the conscience of the parent will prevent the steady
+employment of children of tender years in factory work, provided
+sufficient wages be offered. Probably, if the employer were approached
+by a reasonable person, and it was represented what a wrong he was doing
+to so young a laborer, or the parent were warned of his responsibility
+to educate a child he had brought into the world, they would both agree
+to the reasonableness of the position, and attempt to reform their ways.
+But the necessities of capital on the one side, and the wants of poverty
+on the other, soon put the children again at the loom, the machine, and
+the bench, and the result is--masses of little ones, bent and wan with
+early trial, and growing up mere machines of labor. England has found
+the evil terrible, and, during the past ten or fifteen years, has been
+legislating incessantly against it; protecting helpless infancy from the
+tyranny of capital and the greed of poverty, and securing a fair growth
+of body and mind for the children of the laboring poor.
+
+There is something extremely touching in these Night-schools, in the
+eagerness of the needy boys and girls who have been toiling all day, to
+pick up a morsel of knowledge or gain a practical mental accomplishment.
+Their occupations are legion. The following are extracts from a recent
+report of one of our visitors on this subject. At the Crosby-street
+School, he says:--
+
+"There were some hundred children; their occupations were as follows:
+They put up insect-powder, drive wagons, tend oyster-saloons; are
+tinsmiths, engravers, office-boys, in type-founderies, at screws, in
+blacksmith-shops; make cigars, polish, work at packing tobacco, in
+barber-shops, at paper-stands; are cashboys, light porters, make
+artificial flowers, work at hair; are errand-boys, make ink, are in
+Singer's sewing-machine factory, and printing-offices; some post bills,
+some are paint-scrapers, some peddlers; they pack snuff, attend
+poultry-stands at market, in shoe-stores and hat-stores, tend stands,
+and help painters and carpenters.
+
+"At the Fifth-ward School (No. 141 Hudson Street), were fifty boys and
+girls. One of them, speaking of her occupation, said: 'I work at
+feathers, cutting the feathers from cock's tails. It is a very busy time
+now. They took in forty new hands today. I get three dollars and fifty
+cents a week; next week I'll get more. I go to work at eight o'clock and
+leave off at six. The feathers are cut from the stem, then steamed, and
+curled, and packed. They are sent then to Paris, but more South and
+West.' One boy said he worked at twisting twine; another drove a
+'hoisting-horse,' another blacked boots, etc.
+
+"At the Eleventh-ward School, foot of East Eleventh Street, there was an
+interesting class of boys and girls under thirteen years of age. One boy
+said he was employed during the day in making chains of beads, and says
+that a number of the boys and girls present are in the same business.
+Another said he worked at coloring maps. Another blows an organ for a
+music-teacher.
+
+"At the Lord School, No. 207 Greenwich Street, the occupations of the
+girls were working in hair, striping tobacco, crochet, folding paper
+collars, house-work, tending baby, putting up papers in drug-store, etc,
+etc."
+
+In making but a brief survey of the employment of children outside of
+our schools, we discover that there are from one thousand five hundred
+to two thousand children, under fifteen years of age, employed in a
+single branch--the manufacture of paper collars--while of those between
+fifteen and twenty years, the number reaches some eight thousand. In
+tobacco-factories in New York, Brooklyn, and the neighborhood, our
+agents found children _only four years of age_--sometimes half a dozen
+in a single room. Others were eight years of age, and ranged from that
+age up to fifteen years. Girls and boys of twelve to fourteen years earn
+from four dollars to five dollars a week. One little girl they saw,
+tending a machine, so small that she had to stand upon a box eighteen
+inches high to enable her to reach her work. In one room they found
+fifty children; some little girls, only eight years of age, earning
+three dollars per week. In another, there were children of eight and old
+women of sixty, working together. In the "unbinding cellar" they found
+fifteen boys under fifteen years. Twine-factories, ink-factories,
+feather, pocket-book, and artificial-flower manufacture, and hundreds of
+other occupations, reveal the same state of things.
+
+It will be remembered that when Mr. Mundella, the English member of
+Parliament, who has accomplished so much in educational and other
+reforms in Great Britain, was here, he stated in a public address that
+the evils of children's overwork seemed as great here as in England. Our
+investigations confirm this opinion. The evil is already vast in New
+York, and must be checked. It can only be restrained by legislation.
+What have other States done in the matter?
+
+                      MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATION.
+
+The great manufacturing State of New England has long felt the evil from
+children's overwork, but has only in recent years attempted to check it
+by strict legislation. In 1866, the Legislature of Massachusetts passed
+an act restraining "the employment of children of tender years in
+manufacturing establishments," which was subsequently repealed and
+replaced by a more complete and stringent law in 1867 (chapter 285). By
+this act, no child under ten years of age is permitted to be employed in
+any manufacturing or mechanical establishment in the State. And no child
+between ten and fifteen years can be so employed, unless he has attended
+some Day-school for at least three months of the year preceding, or a
+"halftime school" during the six months. Nor shall the employment
+continue, if this amount of education is not secured. The school also
+must be approved by the School Committee of the town where the child
+resides.
+
+It is further provided, that no child under fifteen shall be so employed
+more than sixty hours per week. The penalty for the violation of the act
+is fifty dollars, both to employer and parent. The execution of the law
+is made the duty of the State Constable.
+
+The report of the Deputy State Comptroller, Gen. Oliver, shows certain
+defects in the phraseology of the act, and various difficulties in its
+execution, but no more than might naturally be expected in such
+legislation. Thus, there is not sufficient power conferred on the
+executive officer to enter manufacturing establishments, or to secure
+satisfactory evidence of the law having been violated; and no sufficient
+certificates or forms of registration of the age and school attendance
+of factory children are provided for. The act, too, it is claimed, is
+not sufficiently yielding, and therefore may bear severely in certain
+cases on the poor.
+
+The reports, however, from this officer, and from the Boston "Bureau of
+Labor," show how much is already being accomplished in Massachusetts to
+bring public attention to bear on the subject. Laws often act as
+favorably by indirect means as by direct. They arouse conscience and
+awaken consideration, even if they cannot be fully executed. As a class,
+New England manufacturers are exceedingly intelligent and
+public-spirited, and when their attention was called to this growing
+evil by the law, they at once set about efforts to remedy it. Many of
+them have established "half-time schools," which they require their
+young _employes_ to attend; and they find their own interests advanced
+by this, as they get a better class of laborers. Others arrange "double
+gangs" of young workers, so that one-half may take the place of the
+other in the mill, while the former are in school. Others have founded
+"Night-schools." There is no question that the law, with all its
+defects, has already served to lessen the evil.
+
+                      RHODE ISLAND LEGISLATION.
+
+The Rhode Island act (chapter 139) does not differ materially from that
+of Massachusetts, except that twelve years is made the minimum age at
+which a child can be employed in factories; and children, even during
+the nine months of factory work every year, are not allowed to be
+employed more than eleven hours per day. The penalty is made but twenty
+dollars, which can be recovered before any Justice of the Peace, and
+one-half is to go to the complainant and the other to the District or
+Public School.
+
+                       CONNECTICUT LEGISLATION.
+
+In matters of educational reform Connecticut is always the leading State
+of the Union. On this subject of children's overwork, and consequent
+want of education, she has legislated since 1842.
+
+The original act, however, was strengthened and, in part, repealed by
+another law passed in July, 1869 (chapter 115), which is the most
+stringent act on this subject in the American code. In all the other
+legislation the law is made to apply solely to manufacturers and
+mechanics; in this it includes all employment of children, the State
+rightly concluding that it is as much against the public weal to have a
+child grow up ignorant and overworked with a farmer as with a
+manufacturer. The Connecticut act, too, leaves out the word "knowingly,"
+with regard to the employer's action in working the child at too tender
+years, or beyond the legal time. It throws on the employer the
+responsibility of ascertaining whether the children employed have
+attended school the required time, or whether they are too young for his
+labor. Nor is it enough that the child should have been a member of a
+school for three months; his name must appear on the register for sixty
+days of actual attendance.
+
+The age under which three months' school-time is required is fourteen.
+The penalty for each offense is made one hundred dollars to the
+Treasurer of the State. Four different classes of officers are
+instructed and authorized to co-operate with the State in securing every
+child under fourteen three months of education, and in protecting him
+from overwork, namely, School-Visitors, the Board of Education, State
+Attorneys, and Grand Jurors. The State Board of Education is "authorized
+to take such action as may be deemed necessary to secure the enforcement
+of this act, and may appoint an agent for that purpose."
+
+The defects of the law seem to be that it provides for no minimum of age
+in which a child may be employed in a factory, and does not limit the
+number of hours of labor per week for children in manufacturing
+establishments. Neither of these limitations is necessary in regard to
+farm-labor.
+
+The agent for executing the law in Connecticut, Mr. H. M. Cleaveland,
+seems to have acted with great wisdom, and to have secured the hearty
+co-operation of the manufacturers. "Three-fourths of the manufacturers
+of the State," he says, "of almost everything, from a needle up to a
+locomotive, were visited, and pledged themselves to a written
+agreement," that they would employ no children under fourteen years of
+age, except those with certificates from the local school-officers of
+actual school attendance for at least three months.
+
+This fact alone reflects the greatest credit on this intelligent class.
+And we are not surprised that they are quoted as saying, "We do not dare
+to permit the children within and around our mills to grow up without
+some education. Better for us to pay the school expenses ourselves than
+have the children in ignorance."
+
+Many of the Connecticut manufacturers have already, at their own
+expense, provided means of education for the children they are
+employing; and large numbers have agreed to a division of the children
+in their employ into alternate gangs--of whom one is in school while the
+other is in the factory.
+
+The following act was drawn up by Mr. C. E. Whitehead, counsel and
+trustee of the Children's Aid Society, and presented to the New York
+Legislature of 1872. It has not yet passed:--
+
+            AN ACT FOR THE PROTECTION OF FACTORY CHILDREN.
+
+SECTION 1.--No child under the age of ten years shall be employed for
+hire in any manufactory or mechanical shop, or at any manufacturing work
+within this State; and no child under the age of twelve years shall be
+so employed unless such child can intelligibly read, under a penalty of
+five dollars for every day during any part of which any such child shall
+be so employed, to be paid by the employer. Any parent, guardian, or
+other person authorizing such employment, or making a false return of
+the age of a child, with a view to such employment, shall be liable to a
+penalty of twenty dollars.
+
+SEC. 2.--No child under the age of sixteen years shall be employed in
+any manufactory, or in any mechanical or manufacturing shop, or at any
+manufacturing work within the State, for more than sixty hours in one
+week, or after four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, or on New-year's-day,
+or on Christmas-day, or on the Fourth of July, or on the Twenty-second
+of February, or on Thanksgiving-day, under a penalty of ten dollars for
+each offense.
+
+SEC. 3.--No child between the ages of ten and sixteen years shall be
+employed in any manufactory or workshop, or at any manufacturing work
+within this State, during more than nine months in any one year, unless
+during such year he shall have attended school as in this section
+hereinafter provided, nor shall such child be employed at all unless
+such child shall have attended a public day-school during three full
+months of the twelve months next preceding such employment, and shall
+deliver to its employer a written certificate of such attendance, signed
+by the teacher; the certificate to be kept by the employer as
+hereinafter provided, under a penalty of fifty dollars. _Provided_ that
+regular tuition of three hours per day in a private day-school or public
+night-school, during a term of six months, shall be deemed equivalent to
+three months' attendance at a public day-school, kept in accordance with
+the customary hours of tuition. And provided that the child shall have
+lived within the State during the preceding six months. And provided
+that where there are more than one child between the ages of twelve and
+sixteen years in one family, and the commissioners or overseers of the
+poor shall certify in writing that the labor of such children is
+essential to the maintenance of the family, such schooling may be
+substituted during the first year of their employment by having the
+children attend the public schools during alternate months of such
+current year, until the full three months' schooling for each child
+shall have been had, or by having the children attend continuously a
+private day-school or public night-school three hours a day until the
+full six months' schooling for each child shall have been had.
+
+SEC. 4--Every manufacturer, owner of mills, agent, overseer, contractor,
+or other person, who shall employ operatives under sixteen years of age,
+or on whose promises such operatives shall be employed, shall cause to
+be kept on the premises a register, which shall contain, in consecutive
+columns: (1st), the date when each operative commenced his or her
+engagement; (2d), the name and surname of the operative; (3d), his or
+her place of nativity; (4th), his or her residence by street and number;
+(5th), his or her age; (6th), the name of his or her father, if living;
+if not, that of the mother, if living; (7th), the number of his or her
+school certificate, or the reason of its absence; and (8th), the date of
+his or her leaving the factory. Such register shall be kept open to the
+inspection of all public authorities, and extracts therefrom shall be
+furnished on the requisition of the Inspector, the School Commissioners,
+or other public authority. Any violation of this section shall subject
+the offender to a penalty of one hundred dollars.
+
+SEC. 5.--Every such employer mentioned in the last section shall keep a
+register, in which shall be entered the certificates of schooling
+produced by children in his employ; such certificate shall be signed by
+the teacher, and shall be dated, and shall certify the dates between
+which such scholar has attended school, and shall mention any absences
+made therefrom during such term, and such certificates shall be numbered
+in consecutive order, and such register shall also be kept open to
+inspection of all public authorities, as provided in the last section;
+and all violations of this section shall subject the offender to a
+penalty of one hundred dollars.
+
+SEC. 6.--Any teacher or other person giving a false certificate, for the
+purpose of being used under the provisions of this act, shall be liable
+to a penalty of one hundred dollars, and be deemed guilty of
+misdemeanor.
+
+SEC. 7.--The parent or guardian of every child released from work under
+the provisions of this act shall cause the said child to attend school
+when so released, for three months, in accordance with the provisions of
+section three of this act, under a penalty of five dollars for each week
+of non-attendance.
+
+SEC. 8.--All public officers and persons charged with the enforcement of
+this law can, at all working-hours, enter upon any factory premises, and
+any person refusing them admittance or hindering them shall be liable to
+a penalty of one hundred dollars.
+
+SEC. 9.--Every room in any factory in which operatives are employed
+shall be thoroughly painted or whitewashed or cleaned at least once a
+year, and shall be kept as well ventilated, lighted, and cleaned as the
+character of the business will permit, under a penalty of ten dollars
+for each week of neglect.
+
+SEC. 10.--All trap-doors or elevators, and all shafting, belting,
+wheels, and machinery running by steam, water, or other motive power, in
+rooms or places in a factory in which operatives are employed, or
+through which they have to pass, shall be protected by iron screens, or
+by suitable partitions during all the time when such doors are open, and
+while such machinery is in motion, under a penalty of fifty dollars, to
+be paid by the owner of such machinery, or the employer of such
+operatives, for each day during which the same shall be so unprotected.
+
+SEC. 11.--This act shall be printed and kept hung in a conspicuous place
+in every factory, by the owner, agent, overseer, or person occupying
+such factory, under a penalty of ten dollars for each day's neglect.
+
+SEC 12.--All suits for penalties under this act shall be brought within
+ninety days after commission of the offense, and may be brought by the
+Inspector of Factory Children, by the District-Attorney of the county,
+by the School Commissioners, by the Trustees of Public Schools, or the
+Commissioners of Charities, before any Justice of the Peace, or in any
+Justice's Court, or any Court of Record; and one-half of all penalties
+recovered shall be paid to the school fund of the county, and one-half
+to the informer.
+
+SEC. 13.--The Governor of this State shall hereafter appoint a State
+officer, to be known as the Inspector of Factory Children, to hold
+office for four years, unless sooner removed for neglect of duty, who
+shall receive a salary of two thousand dollars a year and traveling
+expenses, not exceeding one thousand dollars, whose duty it shall be to
+examine the different factories in this State, and to aid in the
+enforcement of this law, and to report annually to the Legislature the
+number, the ages, character of occupation, and educational privileges of
+children engaged in manufacturing labor in the different counties of the
+State, with suggestions as to the Improvement of their condition.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                    THE ORGANIZATION OF CHARITIES.
+
+The power of every charity and effort at moral reform is in the spirit
+of the man directing or founding it. If he enter it mechanically, as he
+would take a trade or profession, simply because it falls in his way, or
+because of its salary or position, he cannot possibly succeed in it.
+There are some things which the laws of trade do not touch. There are
+services of love which seek no pecuniary reward, and whose virtue, when
+first entered upon, is that the soul is poured out in them without
+reference to money-return.
+
+In the initiation of all great and good causes there is a time of pure
+enthusiasm, when life and thought and labor are given freely, and hardly
+a care enters the mind as to the prizes of honor or wealth which are
+struggled for so keenly in the world. No reformer or friend of humanity,
+worthy of the name, has not some time in his life felt this high
+enthusiasm. If it has been his duty to struggle with such an evil as
+Slavery, the wrongs of the slave have been burned into his soul until he
+has felt them more even than if they were his own, and no reward of
+riches or fame that life could offer him would be half so sweet as the
+consciousness that he had broken these fetters of injustice.
+
+If he has been inspired by Christ with a love of humanity, there have
+been times when the evils that afflict it clouded his daily happiness;
+when the thought of the tears shed that no one could wipe away; of the
+nameless wrongs suffered; of the ignorance which imbruted the young, and
+the sins that stained the conscience; of the loneliness, privation, and
+pain of vast masses of human beings; of the necessary degradation of
+great multitudes;--when the picture of all these, and other wounds and
+woes of mankind, rose like a dark cloud between him and the light, and
+even the face of God was obscured.
+
+At such times it has seemed sweeter to bring smiles back to sad faces,
+and to raise up the neglected and forgotten, than to win the highest
+prize of earth; and the thought of HIM who hath ennobled man, and whose
+life was especially given for the poor and outcast, made all labors and
+sacrifices seem as nothing compared with the Joy of following in His
+footsteps.
+
+At such rare moments the ordinary prizes of life are forgotten or not
+valued. The man is inspired with "the enthusiasm of humanity." He maps
+out a city with his plans and aspirations for the removal of the various
+evils which he sees. His life flows out for those who can never reward
+him, and who hardly know of his labors.
+
+But, in process of time, the first fervor of this ardent enthusiasm must
+cool away. The worker himself is forced to think of his own interests
+and those of his family. His plan, whatever it may be,--for removing the
+evils which have pained him, demands practical means,--men, money, and
+"machinery." Hence arises the great subject of _"Organization."_ The
+strong under-running current which carries his enterprise along is still
+the old faith or enthusiasm; but the question of means demands new
+thought and the exercise of different faculties.
+
+There are many radical difficulties, in organizing practical charities,
+which are exceedingly hard to overcome.
+
+Charities, to be permanent and efficient, must be organized with as much
+exactness and order as business associations, and carry with them
+something of the same energy and motives of action. But the tendency, as
+is well known from European experience, of all old charities, is to
+sluggishness, want of enterprise, and careless business arrangement, as
+well as to mechanical routine in the treatment of their subjects. The
+reason of this is to be found in the somewhat exceptional abnormal
+position--economically considered--of the worker in fields of
+benevolence. All laborers in the intellectual and moral field are
+exposed to the dangers of routine. But in education, for instance, and
+the offices of the Church, there is a constant and healthy competition
+going on, and certain prizes are held out to the successful worker,
+which tend continually to arouse his faculties, and lead him to invent
+new methods of attaining his ends. The relative want of this among the
+Catholic clergy may be the cause of their lack of intellectual activity,
+as compared with the Protestant.
+
+In the management of charities there is a prevailing impression that
+what may be called "interested motives" should be entirely excluded. The
+worker, having entered the work under the enthusiasm of humanity, should
+continue buoyed up by that enthusiasm. His salary may be seldom changed.
+It will be ordinarily beneath that which is earned by corresponding
+ability outside. No rewards of rank or fame are held out to him. He is
+expected to find his pay in his labor.
+
+Now there are certain individuals so filled with compassion for human
+sufferings, or so inspired by Religion, or who so much value the
+offering of respect returned by mankind for their sacrifices, that they
+do not need the impulse of ordinary motives to make their work as
+energetic and inventive and faithful as any labor under the motives of
+competition and gain.
+
+But the great majority of the instruments and agents of a charity are
+not of this kind. They must have something of the common inducements of
+mankind held out before them. If these be withdrawn, they become
+gradually sluggish, uninventive, inexact, and lacking in the necessary
+enterprise and ardor.
+
+The agents of the old endowed charities of England are said often to
+become as lazy and mechanical as monks in monasteries.
+
+To remedy such evils, the trustees of all charities should hold out a
+regular scale of salaries, which different agents could attain to if
+they were successful. The principle, too, which should govern the
+amounts paid to each agent, should be well considered. Of course, the
+governing law for all salaries are the demand and supply for such
+services. But an agent for a charity, even as a missionary, sometimes
+puts himself voluntarily outside of such a law. He throws himself into a
+great moral and religious cause, and consumes his best powers in it, and
+unfits himself (it may be) for other employments. His own field may be
+too narrow to occasion much demand for his peculiar experience and
+talent from other sources. There comes then a certain moral obligation
+on the managers of the charity, not to take him at the cheapest rate for
+which they can secure his services, but to proportion his payment
+somewhat to what he would have been worth in other fields, and thus to
+hold out to him some of the inducements of ordinary life. The salary
+should be large enough to allow the agent and his family to live
+somewhat as those of corresponding ability and education do, and still
+to save something for old age or a time of need. Some benevolent
+associations have obtained this by a very wise arrangement--that of an
+"annuity insurance" of the life of their agents, which secured them a
+certain income at a given age.
+
+With the consciousness thus of an appreciation of their labors, and a
+payment somewhat in proportion to their value, and a permanent
+connection with their humane enterprise, the ordinary _employes_ and
+officials come to have somewhat of the interest in it which men take in
+selfish pursuits, and will exercise the inventiveness, economy, and
+energy that are shown in business enterprises.
+
+Every one knows how almost impossible it is for a charity to conduct,
+for instance, a branch of manufacture with profit. The explanation is
+that the lower motives are not applied to it. Selfishness is more alert
+and economical than benevolence.
+
+On the other side, however, it will not be best to let a charity become
+too much of a business. There must always be a certain generosity and
+compassion, a degree of freedom in management, which are not allowed in
+business undertakings. The agents must have heart as well as head. The
+moisture of compassion must not be dried up by too much discipline.
+
+Organization must not swallow up the soul. Routine may be carried so far
+as to make the aiding of misery the mere dry working of a machine.
+
+The thought must ever be kept in mind that each human being, however
+low, who is assisted, is a "power of endless life," with capacities and
+possibilities which cannot be measured or limited. And that one whose
+nature CHRIST has shared and for whom He lived and died, cannot be
+despised or treated as an animal or a machine.
+
+If the directors of a benevolent institution or enterprise can arouse
+these great motives in their agents,--spiritual enthusiasm with a
+reasonable gratification of the love of honor and a hope of fair
+compensation,--they will undoubtedly create a body of workers capable of
+producing a profound impression on the evils they seek to remove.
+
+It is always a misfortune for an agent of a charity if he be too
+constantly with the objects of his benevolent labors. He either becomes
+too much accustomed to their misfortunes, and falls into a spirit of
+routine with them; or, if of tender sympathies, the spring of his mind
+is bent by such a constant burden of misery, and he loses the best
+qualities for his work--elasticity and hope. Every efficient worker in
+the field of benevolence should have time and place for solitude, and
+for other pursuits or amusements.
+
+                          DUTIES OF TRUSTEES.
+
+A board of trustees for an important charity should represent, so far as
+is practicable, the different classes and professions of society. There
+is danger in a board being too wealthy or distinguished, as well as too
+humble. First of all, men are needed who have a deep moral interest in
+the work, and who will take a practical part in it. Then they must be
+men of such high character and integrity that the community will feel no
+anxiety at committing to them--"trust funds." As few "figure-heads"
+should be taken in as possible--that is, persons of eminent names, for
+the mere purpose of making an impression on the public. Men of wealth
+are needed for a thousand emergencies; men of moderate means, also, who
+can appreciate practical difficulties peculiar to this class; men of
+brains, to guide and suggest, and of action, to impel. There should be
+lawyers in such a board, for many cases of legal difficulty which arise;
+and, if possible, physicians, as charities have so much to do with
+sanitary questions. Two classes only had better not be admitted: men of
+very large wealth, as they seldom contribute more than persons of
+moderate property, and discourage others by their presence in the board;
+and clergymen with parishes, the objection to the latter being that they
+have no time for such labors, and give a sectarian air to the charity.
+
+It is exceedingly desirable that the trustees or managers of our
+benevolent institutions should take a more active and personal part in
+their management. The peculiar experience which a successful business
+career gives--the power both of handling details and managing large
+interests; the capacity of organization; the energy and the careful
+judgment and knowledge of men which such a life develops,--are the
+qualities most needed in managing moral and benevolent "causes."
+
+A trustee of a charity will often see considerations which the workers
+in it do not behold, and will be able frequently to judge of its
+operations from a more comprehensive point of view. The great duty of
+trustees, of course, should be to rigidly inspect all accounts and to be
+responsible for the pecuniary integrity of the enterprise. The
+carrying-out of the especial plan of the association and all the details
+should be left with one executive officer. If there is too great
+interference in details by the board of management, much confusion
+ensues, and often personal jealousies and bickerings. Many of our boards
+of charities have almost been broken up by internal petty cabals and
+quarrels. The agents of benevolent institutions, especially if not
+mingling much with the world, are liable to small jealousies and
+rivalries.
+
+The executive officer must throw the energy of a business into his labor
+of benevolence. He must be allowed a large control over subordinates,
+and all the machinery of the organization should pass through his hands.
+He must especially represent the work, both to the board and to the
+world. If his hands be tied too much, he will soon become a mere
+routine-agent, and any one of original power would leave the position.
+Again, in his dealings with the heads of the various departments or
+branches of the work, he must seek to make each agent feel responsible,
+and to a degree independent, so that his labor may become a life-work,
+and his reputation and hope of means may depend on his energy and
+success. If on all proper occasions he seeks to do full justice to his
+subordinates, giving them their due credit and promoting their
+interests, and strives to impart to them his own enthusiasm, he will
+avoid all jealousies and will find that the charity is as faithfully
+served as any business house.
+
+The success in "organization" is mainly due to success in selecting your
+men. Some persons have a faculty for this office; others always fail in
+it.
+
+Then, having the proper agents, great consideration is due towards them.
+Some employers treat their subordinates as if they had hardly a human
+feeling. Respect and courtesy always make those who serve you more
+efficient. Too much stress, too, can hardly be laid on frank and
+unsuspicious dealing with _employes._ Suspicion renders its objects more
+ignoble. A man who manages many agents must show much confidence; yet,
+of course, be strict and rigid in calling them to account. It will be
+better for him also not to be too familiar with them.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                       STATE AID FOR CHARITIES.
+
+An important question often comes up in regard to our charitable
+associations: "How shall they best be supported?"--by endowment from the
+State or by private and annual assistance? There is clearly a right that
+all charities of a general nature should expect some help from the
+public Legislature. The State is the source of the charters of all
+corporations. One of the main duties of a Legislature is to care for the
+interests of the poor and criminal. The English system, dating as far
+back as Henry VIII, has been to leave the charge of the poor and all
+educational institutions, as much as possible, to counties or local
+bodies or individuals. It has been, so far as the charge of the poor is
+concerned, imitated here. But in neither country has it worked, well;
+and the last relic of it will probably soon be removed in this State, by
+placing the defective persons--the blind and dumb, and insane and idiot,
+and the orphans--in the several counties in State institutions. The
+charge of criminals and reformatory institutions are also largely placed
+under State control and supervision.
+
+The object of a State Legislature in all these matters is _bonum
+publicum_--the public weal. If they think that a private charity is
+accomplishing a public work of great value, which is not and perhaps
+cannot be accomplished by purely public institutions, they apparently
+have the same right to tax the whole community, or a local community,
+for its benefit, that they have now to tax it for the support of
+schools, or Almshouses, or Prisons, or Houses of Refuge. In such a case
+it need not be a matter of question with the Legislature whether the
+charity is "sectarian" or not; whether it teaches Roman Catholicism, or
+Protestantism, or the Jewish faith, or no faith. The only question with
+the governing power is, "Does it do a work of public value not done by
+public institutions?" If it does; if for instance, it is a
+Roman-Catholic Reformatory, or a Protestant House of Refuge, or
+Children's Aid Society, the Legislature, knowing that all public and
+private organizations together cannot fully remedy the tremendous evils
+arising from a class of neglected and homeless children, is perfectly
+right in granting aid to such institutions without reference to their
+"sectarian" character. It reserves to itself the right of inspection,
+secured in this State by our admirable Board of Inspectors of State
+Charities; and it can at any time repeal the charters of, or refuse the
+appropriations to, these private associations. But thus far, its uniform
+practice has been to aid, to a limited degree, private charities of this
+nature.
+
+This should by no means be considered a ground for demanding similar
+assistance for "sectarian schools." Education is secured now by public
+taxation for all; and all can take advantage of it. There is no popular
+necessity for Church Schools, and the public good is not promoted by
+them as it is by secular schools. Where there are children too poor to
+attend the Public Schools, these can be aided by private charitable
+associations; and of these, only those should be assisted by the State
+which have no sectarian character.
+
+Charities which are entirely supported by State and permanent endowment
+are liable, as the experience of England shows, to run into a condition
+of routine and lifelessness. The old endowments of Great Britain are
+nests of abuses, and many of them are now being swept away. A State
+charity has the advantage of greater solidity and more thorough and
+expensive machinery, and often more careful organization. But, as
+compared with our private charities, the public institutions of
+beneficence are dull and lifeless. They have not the individual
+enthusiasm working through them, with its ardor and power. They are more
+like machines.
+
+On the other hand, charities supported entirely by individuals will
+always have but a small scope. The amount of what may be called the
+"charity fund" of the community is comparatively limited. In years of
+disaster or war, or where other interests absorb the public, it will
+dwindle down to a very small sum. It is distributed, too, somewhat
+capriciously. Sometimes a "sensation" calls it forth bountifully, while
+more real demands are neglected. An important benevolent association,
+depending solely on its voluntary contributions from individuals, will
+always be weak and incomplete in its machinery. The best course for the
+permanency and efficiency of a charity seems to be, to make it depend in
+part on the State, that it may have a solid foundation of support, and
+be under official supervision, and in part on private aid, so that it
+may feel the enthusiasm and activity and responsibility of individual
+effort. The "Houses of Refuge" combine public and private assistance in
+a manner which has proved very beneficial. Their means come from the
+State, while their governing bodies are private, and independent of
+politics. The New York "Juvenile Asylum" enjoys both public and private
+contributions, but has a private board. On the other hand, the
+"Commissioners of Charities and Correction" are supported entirely by
+taxation, and, until they had the services of a Board carefully
+selected, were peculiarly inefficient. Many private benevolent
+associations in the city could be mentioned which have no solid
+foundation of public support and are under no public supervision, and,
+in consequence, are weak and slipshod in all their enterprises. The true
+policy of the Legislature is to encourage and supplement private
+activity in charities by moderate public aid, and to organize a strict
+supervision. The great danger for all charities is in machinery or
+"plant" taking more importance in the eyes of its organizers than the
+work itself.
+
+The condition of the buildings, the neat and orderly appearance of the
+objects of the charity, and the perfection of the means of
+housekeeping, become the great objects of the officials or managers,
+and are what most strike the eyes of the public. But all these are in
+reality nothing compared with the improvement in character and mind of
+the persons aided, and this is generally best effected by simple rooms,
+simple machinery, and constantly getting rid of the subjects of the
+charity. If they are children, the natural family is a thousand times
+better charity than all our machinery.
+
+The more an Institution or Asylum can show of those drilled and
+machine-like children, the less real work is it doing.
+
+Following "natural laws" makes sad work of a charity-show in an Asylum;
+but it leaves fruit over the land, in renovated characters and useful
+lives.
+
+                   THE MULTIPLICATION OF CHARITIES.
+
+One of the greatest evils connected with charities in a large city is
+the unreasonable tendency to multiply them. A benevolent individual
+meets with a peculiar case of distress or poverty, his feelings are
+touched, and he at once conceives the idea of an "Institution" for this
+class of human evils. He soon finds others whom he can interest in his
+philanthropic object, and they go blindly on collecting their funds, and
+perhaps erecting or purchasing their buildings. When the house is
+finally prepared, the organization perfected, and the cases of distress
+relieved, the founders discover, perhaps to their dismay, that there are
+similar or corresponding Institutions for just this class of
+unfortunates, which have been carrying on their quiet labors of
+benevolence for years, and doing much good. The new Institution, if
+wise, would now prefer to turn over its assets and machinery to the old;
+but, ten to one, the new workers have an especial pride in their
+bantling, and cannot bear to abandon it, or they see what they consider
+defects in the management of the old, and, not knowing all the
+difficulties of the work, they hope to do better; or their _employes_
+have a personal interest in keeping up the new organization, and
+persuade them that it is needed by the people.
+
+The result, in nineteen cases out of twenty, is that the two agencies of
+charity are continued where but one is needed. Double the amount of
+money is used for agents and machinery which is wanted, and, to a
+certain degree, the charity funds of the community are wasted.
+
+But this is not the worst effect The poor objects of this organization
+soon discover that they have a double source from which to draw their
+supplies. They become pauperized, and their faculties are employed in
+deriving a support from both societies.
+
+By and by, one organization falls behind in its charity labors, and now,
+in place of waiting to carefully assist the poor, it tempts the poor to
+come to it. If it be a peculiar kind of school, not much needed in the
+quarter, it bribes the poor children by presents to abandon the rival
+school and fill its own seats; if an Asylum, it seeks far and near for
+those even not legitimately its subjects. There arises a sort of
+competition of charity. This kind of rivalry is exceedingly bad both for
+the poor and the public. There are evils enough in the community which
+all our machinery and wealth cannot cure, and thus to increase or
+stimulate misfortunes in order to relieve, is the height of absurdity.
+One effect often is, that the public become disgusted with all organized
+charity, and at last fancy that societies of benefaction do as much evil
+as good.
+
+This city is full of multiplied charities, which are constantly
+encroaching on each other's field; and yet there are masses of evil and
+calamity here which they scarcely touch. The number of poor people who
+enjoy a comfortable living, derived from a long study and experience of
+these various agencies of benevolence, would be incredible to any one
+not familiar with the facts. They pass from one to the other; knowing
+exactly their conditions of assistance and meeting their requirements,
+and live thus by a sort of science of alms. The industry and ingenuity
+they employ in this pauper trade are truly remarkable. Probably not one
+citizen in a thousand could so well recite the long list of charitable
+societies and agencies in New York, as one of these busy dependents on
+charity. Nor do these industrious paupers confine themselves to secular
+and general societies. They have their churches and missions, on whose
+skirts they hang; and beyond them a large and influential circle of lady
+patronesses who support and protect them. We venture to say there are
+very few ladies of position in New York who do not have a numerous
+_clientele_ of needy women or unfortunate men that depend on them year
+after year, and always follow them up and discover their residence,
+however much they may change it. These people have almost lost their
+energy of character, and all power of industry (except in pursuing the
+different charities and patronesses), through this long and
+indiscriminate assistance. They are paupers, not in Poor-houses, and
+dependents on alms, living at home. They are often worse off than if
+they had never been helped.
+
+This trade of alms and dependence on charities ought to be checked. It
+demoralizes the poor, and weakens public confidence in wise and good
+charities. It tends to keep the rich from all benefactions, and makes
+many doubt whether charity ever really benefits.
+
+There are various modes in which this evil might be remedied. In the
+first place, no individual should subscribe to a new charity until he
+has satisfied his mind in some way that it is needed, and that he is not
+helping to do twice the same good thing.
+
+There ought to be also in such a city as ours a sort of "Board" or
+"Bureau of Charities," where a person could get information about all
+now existing, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or secular, and
+where the agents of these could ascertain if they were helping the same
+objects twice.
+
+Lists of names and addresses of those assisted could be kept here for
+examination, and frequent comparisons could be made by the agents of
+these societies or by individuals interested. One society, formed for a
+distinct object, and finding a case needing quite a distinct mode of
+relief or assistance, could here at once ascertain where to transfer the
+case, or what the conditions of help were in another association. Here,
+individuals having difficult, perplexing, or doubtful cases of charity
+on hand would ascertain what they should do with them, and whether they
+were merely supporting a person now dependent on an association from
+such an office. Cases of poverty and misfortune might be visited and
+examined by experts, in charity, and the truth ascertained, where
+ordinary individuals, inquiring, would be certain to be deceived. Here,
+too, the honest and deserving poor could learn where they should apply
+for relief.
+
+Such a "Bureau" would be of immense benefit to the city. It would aid in
+keeping the poor from pauperism; it would put honest poverty in the way
+of proper assistance; simplify and direct charities, and enable the
+"charity fund" of the city to be used directly for the evils needing
+treatment.
+
+Both the public and benevolent associations would be benefited by it,
+and much useless expenditure and labor saved. Under it, each charitable
+association could labor in its own field, and encroach on no other, and
+the public confidence in the wise use of charity funds be strengthened.
+
+In such a city as ours it would probably be hardly possible to follow
+the Boston plan, and put all the offices of the great charities in one
+building, yet there could easily be one office of information, or a
+"Bureau of Charities," which might be sustained by general
+contributions. Perhaps the State "Board of Charities" would father and
+direct it, if private means supported it.
+
+In one respect, it would be of immense advantage to have this task
+undertaken by the State Board, as they have the right to inspect
+charitable institutions, and their duty is to expose "bogus charities."
+Of the latter there are only too many in this city. Numerous lazy
+individuals make lucrative livelihoods by gathering funds for charities
+which only exist on paper. These swindlers could be best exposed and
+prosecuted by a "State Board."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                        HOW BEST TO GIVE ALMS?
+
+                          "TAKE, NOT GIVE."
+
+We were much struck by a reply, recently, of a City Missionary in East
+London, who was asked what he gave to the poor.
+
+"Give!" he said, "we never give now; we take!" He explained that the
+remedy of alms, for the terrible evils of that portion of London, had
+been tried _ad nauseam_, and that they were all convinced of its little
+permanent good, and their great object was, at present, to induce the
+poor to save; and for this, they were constantly urgent to get money
+from these people, when they had a little. They "took, not gave!"
+
+So convinced is the writer, by twenty years' experience among the poor,
+that alms are mainly a bane, that the mere distribution of gifts by the
+great charity in which he is engaged seldom affords him much
+gratification. The long list of benefactions which the Reports record,
+would be exceedingly unsatisfactory, if they were not parts and branches
+of a great preventive and educational movement.
+
+The majority of people are most moved by hearing that so many thousand
+pairs of shoes, so many articles of clothing, or so many loaves of bread
+are given to the needy and suffering by some benevolent agency.
+
+The experienced friend of the poor will only grieve at such alms, unless
+they are accompanied with some influences to lead the recipients to take
+care of themselves. The worst evil in the world is not poverty or
+hunger, but the want of manhood or character which alms-giving directly
+occasions.
+
+The English have tried alms until the kingdom seems a vast Poor-house,
+and the problem of Pauperism has assumed a gigantic and almost insoluble
+form. The nation have given everything but Education, and the result is
+a vast multitude of wretched persons in whom pauperism is planted like a
+disease of the blood--who cannot be anything but dependents and idlers.
+
+In London alone, twenty-five million dollars per annum are expended in
+organized charities; yet, till the year 1871, no general system of
+popular education had been formed.
+
+This country has been more fortunate and wiser. We had room and work
+enough, we provided education before alms, and, especially among our
+native-born population, have checked pauperism, as it never was checked
+before in any civilized community.
+
+No one can imagine, who has not been familiar with the lowest classes,
+how entirely degraded a character may become, where there is an
+uncertain dependence on public and organized alms. The faculties of the
+individual are mainly bent on securing support by other means than
+industry. Cunning, deception, flattery, and waiting for chances, become
+the means of livelihood. Self-respect is lost, and with it go the best
+qualities of the soul. True manhood and true womanhood are eaten away.
+The habit of labor, and the hope and courage of a self-supporting human
+being, and the prudence which guards against future evils, are almost
+destroyed. The man becomes a dawdler and waiter on chances, and is
+addicted to the lowest vices; his children grow up worse than he, and
+make sharpness or crime a substitute for beggary. The woman is sometimes
+stripped of the best feelings of her sex by this dependence. Not once or
+twice only have we known such a woman steal the clothes from her
+half-starved babe, as she was delivering it over to strangers to care
+for. There are able-bodied men of this kind in New York who, every
+winter, as regularly as the snow falls, commit some petty offense, that
+they may be supported at public expense.
+
+When this disease of pauperism is fairly mingled in the blood of
+children, their condition is almost hopeless. They will not work, or go
+to school, or try to learn anything useful; their faculties are all bent
+to the tricks of a roving, begging life; the self-respect of their sex,
+if girls, is lost in childhood; they are slatternly, lazy, and
+dissolute. If they grow up and marry, they marry men of their own kind,
+and breed paupers and prostitutes.
+
+We know of an instance like this in an Alms-house in Western New York. A
+mother, in decent circumstances, with an infant, was driven into it by
+stress of poverty. Her child grew up a pauper, and both became
+accustomed to a life of dependence. The child--a girl--went forth when
+she was old enough to work, and soon returned with an illegitimate babe.
+She then remained with her child. This child--also a girl--grew up in
+like manner, and, occasionally, when old enough, also went forth to
+labor, but returned finally, with _her_ illegitimate child, and at
+length became a common pauper and prostitute, so that, when the State
+Commissioner of Charity, Dr. Hoyt, visited, in his official tour, this
+Poor-house, he found _four generations_ of paupers and prostitutes in
+one family, in this place!
+
+The regular _habitues_ of Alms-houses are bad enough; but it has
+sometimes seemed to me that the outside dependents on an irregular
+public charity are worse. They are usually better off than the inmates
+of Poor-houses, and, therefore, must deceive more to secure aid; the
+process of obtaining it continually degrades them, and they are tempted
+to leave regular industry for this unworthy means of support.
+
+"Outdoor relief" is responsible for much of the abuses of the English
+pauper administration.
+
+We are convinced that it ought to be, if not abandoned, at least much
+circumscribed by our own Commissioners of Charities.
+
+Still, private alms, though more indiscriminately bestowed, and often on
+entirely unworthy objects, do not, in our judgment, leave the same evil
+effect as public. There is less degradation with the former, and more of
+human sympathy, on both sides. The influence of the giver's character
+may sometimes elevate the debased nature of an unworthy dependent on
+charity. The personal connection of a poor creature and a fine lady, is
+not so bad as that of a pauper to the State.
+
+Still, private alms in our large cities are abused to an almost
+unlimited extent. Persons who have but little that they can afford to
+give, discover, after long experience, that the majority of their
+benefactions have been indiscreetly bestowed.
+
+When one thinks of the thousands of cases in a city like New York, of
+unmitigated misfortune; of widows with large families, suddenly left
+sick and helpless on the world; of lonely and despairing women
+struggling against a sea of evils; of strong men disabled by accident or
+sickness; of young children abandoned or drifting uncared-for on the
+streets, and how many of these are never wisely assisted, it seems a
+real calamity that any person should bestow charity carelessly or on
+unworthy objects.
+
+The individual himself ought to seek out the subjects whom he desires to
+relieve, and ascertain their character and habits, and help in such a
+way as not to impair their self-respect or weaken their independence.
+
+The managers of the Charity I have been describing have especially
+sought to avoid the evils of alms-giving. While many thousands of
+dollars' worth is given each year in various forms of benefaction, not a
+penny is bestowed which does not bear in its influence on character. We
+do not desire so much to give alms as to prevent the demand for alms. In
+every branch of our work we seek to destroy the growth of pauperism.
+
+Nothing in appearance is so touching to the feelings of the humane as a
+ragged and homeless boy. The first impulse is to clothe and shelter him
+free of cost. But experience soon shows that if you put a comfortable
+coat on the first idle and ragged lad who applies, you will have fifty
+half-clad lads, many of whom possess hidden away a comfortable outfit,
+leaving their business next day, "to get jackets for nothing."
+
+You soon discover, too, that the houseless boy is not so utterly
+helpless as he looks. He has a thousand means of supporting himself
+honestly in the streets, if he will. Perhaps all that he needs is a
+small loan to start his street-trade with, or a shelter for a few
+nights, for which he can give his "promise to pay," or some counsel and
+instruction, or a few weeks' schooling.
+
+Our Lodging-house-keepers soon learn that the best humanity towards the
+boys is "to take, not give." Each lad pays for his lodging, and then
+feels independent; if he is too poor to do this, he is taken in "on
+trust," and pays his bill when business is successful. He is not clothed
+at once, unless under some peculiar and unfortunate circumstances, but
+is induced to save some pennies every day until he have enough to buy
+his own clothing. If he has not enough to start a street-trade with, the
+superintendent loans him a small sum to begin business.
+
+The following is the experience in this matter of Mr. O'Connor, the
+superintendent of the Newsboys' Lodging-house:--
+
+"The Howland Fund, noticed in previous reports as having been
+established by B. J. Howland, Esq., one of our Trustees, continues to be
+the means of doing good. We have loaned from it during the nine months
+one hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty cents, on which the
+borrowers have realized three hundred and seven dollars and thirty-nine
+cents. They have thus made the handsome profit of two hundred and fifty
+per cent. on the amount borrowed. It has in many cases been returned in
+a few hours. We have loaned it in sums of five cents and upward; we have
+had but few defaulters. Of the seventeen dollars and fifty-five cents
+due last year, six dollars and fifty cents has been returned, leaving at
+this time standing out eleven dollars and five cents."
+
+When large supplies of shoes and clothing are given, it is usually at
+Christmas, as an expression of the good-will of the season, or from some
+particular friend of the boys as an indication of his regard, and thus
+carries less of the ill effects of alms with the gift.
+
+The very air of these Lodging-houses is that of independence, and no
+paupers ever graduate from them. We even discourage the street-trades as
+a permanent business, and have, therefore, never formed a "Boot-black
+Brigade," as has been done in London, on the ground that such
+occupations are uncertain and vagrant in habit, and lead to no settled
+business.
+
+Our end and aim with every street-rover, is to get him to a farm, and
+put him on the land. For this reason we lavish our gifts on the lads who
+choose the country for their work. We feed and shelter them
+gratuitously, if necessary. We clothe them from top to toe; and the
+gifts bring no harm with them. These poor lads have sometimes repaid
+these gifts tenfold in later life, in money to the Society. And the
+community have been repaid a hundredfold, by the change of a city
+vagabond to an honest and industrious farmer.
+
+Our Industrial Schools might almost be called "Reformatories of
+Pauperism." Nine-tenths of the children are beggars when they enter, but
+they go forth self-respecting and self-supporting young girls.
+
+Food, indeed, is given every day to those most in need; but, being
+connected thus with a School, it produces none of the ill effects of
+alms. The subject of clothes-giving to these children is, however, a
+very difficult one. The best plan is found to be to give the garments as
+rewards for good conduct, punctuality, and industry, the amount being
+graded by careful "marks"; yet the humane teacher will frequently
+discover an unfortunate child without shoes in the winter snow, or
+scantily clad, who has not yet attained the proper number of marks, and
+she will very privately perhaps relieve the want: knowing, as the
+teacher does, every poor family whose children attend the School, she is
+not often deceived, and her gifts are worthily bestowed.
+
+The daily influence of the School-training in industry and intelligence
+discourages the habit of begging. The child soon becomes ashamed of it,
+and when she finally leaves school, she has a pride in supporting
+herself.
+
+Gifts of garments, shoes, and the like, to induce children to attend,
+are not found wise; though now and then a family will be discovered so
+absolutely naked and destitute, that some proper clothing is a necessary
+condition to their even entering the School.
+
+Some of the teachers very wisely induce the parents to deposit their
+little savings with them, and perhaps pay them interest to encourage
+saving. Others, by the aid of friends, have bought coal at wholesale
+prices, and retailed it without profit, to the parents of the children.
+
+The principle throughout all the operations of the Children's Aid
+Society, is only to give assistance where it bears directly on
+character, to discourage pauperism, to cherish independence, to place
+the poorest of the city, the homeless children, as we have so often
+said, not in Alms-houses or Asylums, but on farms, where they support
+themselves and add to the wealth of the nation; to "take, rather than
+give;" or to give education and work rather than alms; to place all
+their thousands of little subjects under such influences and such
+training that they will never need either private or public charity.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                HOW SHALL CRIMINAL CHILDREN BE TREATED?
+
+                            REFORMATORIES.
+
+A child, whether good or bad, is, above all things, an individual
+requiring individual treatment and care. Let any of our readers, having
+a little fellow given to mischief, who had at length broken his
+neighbor's windows, or with a propensity to stealing, or with a quick
+temper which continually brings him into unpleasant scrapes, imagine him
+suddenly put into an "Institution" for reform, henceforth designated as
+"D" of "Class 43," or as "No. 193," roused up to prayers in the morning
+with eight hundred others, put to bed at the stroke of the bell, knowing
+nothing of his teacher or pastor, except as one of a class of a hundred,
+his own little wants, weaknesses, foibles and temptations utterly
+unfamiliar to any one, his only friends certain lads who had been in the
+place longer, and, perhaps, had known much more of criminal life than he
+himself, treated thus altogether as a little machine, or as one of a
+regiment.
+
+What could he expect in the way of reform in such a case? He might,
+indeed, hope that the lad would feel the penalty and disgrace of being
+thus imprisoned, and that the strict discipline would control careless
+habits, but he would soon see that the chance of a reform of character
+was extremely slight.
+
+There was evidently no personal influence on the child. Whatever bad
+habits or traits he had, were likely to be uneradicated. The strongest
+agencies upon him were those of his companions; and what boys, even of
+the moral classes, teach one another when they are together in masses,
+need not be told. Were he to be there a length of time, the most
+powerful forces that mould and form boys in the world outside, would be
+absent.
+
+The affection of family, the confidence of respected friends, the hope
+of making a name, and the desire of money and position--these impulses
+must be banished from the Asylum or Reformatory. The lad's only hope is
+to escape certain penalties, or win certain marks, and get out of the
+place. Now and then, indeed, a chaplain of rare spiritual gifts may
+succeed in wielding a personal influence, in such an Institution, over
+individual children; but this must, of necessity, be unfrequent, on
+account of the great numbers under his charge.
+
+If the subject of a Reformatory be a poor boy or girl, the kind of work
+usually chosen is not the one best suited to a child of this class, or
+which he will be apt to take up afterwards. It is generally some plain
+and easy trade-work, like shoe-pegging, or chair-bottoming, or
+pocket-book manufacture. The lad is kept for years at this drudgery, and
+when he leaves the place, has no capital laid up of a skilled trade. He
+finds such employments crowded, and he seldom enters them again.
+Moreover, if he has been a vagrant (as in nine cases out of ten is
+probable), or a little sharper and thief of the city, or a boy unwilling
+to labor, and unfitted for steady industry, these years at a table in a
+factory do not necessarily give him a taste for work; they often only
+disgust him.
+
+Were such lads, on the other hand, put in gardens, or at farm-work, they
+would find much more pleasure in it. The watching the growth of plants,
+the occasional chance for fruit-gathering, the "spurts" of work peculiar
+to farming, the open air and sunshine, and dealing with flowers and
+grains, with cattle, horses, and fowls, are all attractive to children,
+and especially to children of this class. Moreover, when they have
+learned the business, they are sure in this country, of the best
+occupation which a laboring man can have; and when they graduate, they
+can easily find places on farms, where they will get good wages, and be
+less exposed to temptations than if engaged in city trades. There seems
+to me something, too, in labor in the soil, which is more medicinal to
+"minds diseased" than work in shops. The nameless physical and mental
+maladies which take possession of these children of vice and poverty are
+more easily cured and driven off in outdoor than indoor labor.
+
+I am disposed to think this is peculiarly true of young girls who have
+begun criminal courses. They have been accustomed to such excitement and
+stir, that the steady toil of a kitchen and household seldom reforms
+them.
+
+The remarkable success of Mr. Pease for a few years in his labors for
+abandoned women in the Five Points, was due mainly to the incessant stir
+and activity he infused into his "House of Industry," which called off
+the minds of these poor creatures from their sins and temptations. But,
+better than this, would be the idea, so often broached, of a "School in
+gardening" for young girls, in which they could be taught in the open
+air, and learn the florist's and gardener's art. This busy and pleasant
+labor, increasingly profitable every year, would often drive out the
+evil spirit, and fit the workers, for paying professions after they left
+the School.
+
+The true plan for a Reformatory School, as has so often been said, is
+the Family System; that is, breaking the Asylum up into small houses,
+with little "groups" of children in each, under their own immediate
+"director" or teacher, who knows every individual, and adapts his
+government to the wants of each.
+
+The children cook meals, and do house-labor, and eat in these small
+family groups. Each child, whether boy or girl, learns in this way
+something of housekeeping, and the mode of caring for the wants of a
+small family. He has to draw his water, split his wood, kindle his
+fires, light his lamps, and take care of the Cottage, as he will, by and
+by, have to do in his own little "shanty" or "cottage." Around the
+Cottage should be a small garden, which each "family" would take a pride
+in cultivating; and beyond, the larger farm, which they all might work
+together.
+
+In a Reformatory, after such a plan as this, the children are as near
+the natural condition as they ever can be in a public institution. The
+results, if men of humanity and wisdom be in charge, will justify the
+increased trouble and labor. The expense can hardly be greater, as
+buildings and outfit will cost so much less than with the large
+establishments. The only defect would, perhaps, be that the labor of the
+inmates would not bring in so much pecuniary return, as in the present
+Houses of Refuge; but the improved effects on the children would more
+than counterbalance to the community the smaller income of the Asylum.
+Nor is it certain that farm and garden labor would be less profitable to
+the Institution.
+
+If we are correctly informed, the only Alms-house which supports itself
+in the country is one near New Haven, that relies entirely on the growth
+and sale of garden products. Under the Farm and Family School for
+children, legally committed, we should have, undoubtedly, a far larger
+proportion of thorough reforms and successes, than under the congregated
+and industrial Asylums.
+
+The most successful Reformatories of Europe are of this kind. The "Rauhe
+Haus," at Hamburg, and Mr. Sydney Turner's Farm School at Tower Hill,
+England, show a greater proportion of reformed cases than any
+congregated Reformatories that we are familiar with. The Mettrai colony
+records ninety per cent, as reformed, which is an astonishingly large
+proportion. This success is probably much due to the _esprit du corps_
+which has become a tradition in the school, and the extent to which the
+love of distinction and honorable emulation--most powerful motives on
+the French mind--have been cultivated in the pupils.
+
+We do not deny great services and successes to the existing congregated
+Reformatories of this country. But their success has been in spite of
+their system. From the new Family Reformatories, opened in different
+States, we hope for even better results.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                  WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH FOUNDLINGS?
+
+Some of our citizens are now seeking to open in New York a Foundling
+Asylum to be conducted under Protestant influences. A Roman Catholic
+Hospital for Foundlings was recently established, and is now receiving
+aid from the city treasury. In view of these humane efforts, attended,
+as they must be, by vast expense, it becomes necessary to inquire what
+is the best system of management attained by experience in other
+countries. Of the need of some peculiar shelter or shelters for
+illegitimate children in this city there can be no question. Those who
+have to do with the poorer classes are shocked and pained by the
+constant instances presented to them, of infants neglected or abandoned
+by their mothers, or of unmarried mothers with infants in such need and
+desperation, that infanticide is often the easiest escape. Something
+evidently should be done for both mothers and children.
+
+                             THE NUMBERS.
+
+Of the numbers of illegitimate children in New York, it is difficult to
+speak with any precision. In European countries, we know almost exactly
+the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births. In Sardinia, it is
+2.09 per cent.; in Sweden, 6.56; in England, 6.72; in France, 7.01; in
+Denmark, 9.35; in Austria, 11.38; in Bavaria, 20.59. Among cities, it is
+between 3 and 4 per cent, in English cities; in Genoa, 8; in Berlin,
+14.9; in St. Petersburg, 18.8; in Vienna, 46. The general average of
+illegitimate to legitimate children in Europe is 12.8 per cent.
+
+Supposing that the average in New York is the same as in Amsterdam or
+London, say four per cent, there were in the five years, from 1860 to
+1865, out of the 144,724 children born (living or dead) in the city of
+New York, 5,788 illegitimate, or an average each year of 1,157 children
+born out of wedlock. More than a thousand illegitimate children are
+thus, in all probability, thrown upon this community every year.
+
+Though this is a mere estimate, there is a strong presumptive evidence
+of its not being exaggerated, from the enormous proportion, in New York,
+of stillbirths, which reached in one year (1868) the sum of 2,195, or
+more than seven per cent of the whole number of births. Now, it is
+well-known that the women who are mothers of illegitimate children are
+much more likely to be badly attended or neglected in their confinement
+than mothers in wedlock, and thus to suffer under this misfortune.
+
+As to the relation of illegitimacy to crime, there are some striking
+statistics from France. Out of 5,758 persons confined in the bagnios in
+France, there were, according to Dr. Parry, in 1853, 391 illegitimate.
+Of the 18,205 inmates of the State Prisons in France during the same
+time, 880 were illegitimate, and 361 foundlings. "One out of every 1,300
+Frenchmen," says the same authority, "becomes the subject of legal
+punishment, while one out of 158 foundlings finds his way to the State
+Prisons." In the celebrated Farm-school of Mettrai, according to recent
+reports, out of 3,580 young convicts since its foundation, 534 were
+illegitimate and 221 foundlings, or more than twenty per cent.
+
+There can be no reasonable doubt, then, that a large number of children
+born out of wedlock, and therefore exposed to great hardship,
+temptation, and misery, are cast out every year on this community. A
+very large proportion of these unfortunate little ones die, or, with
+their mothers, are dragged down to great depths of wretchedness and
+crime.
+
+What can be done for them? The first impulse is, naturally, to gather
+them into an Asylum. But what is the experience of Asylums?
+
+                               ASYLUMS.
+
+The London Foundling Hospital, one of the most famous of these
+institutions, was founded in 1740. During the first twenty years of its
+existence, out of the 14,034 children received in it, only 4,400 lived
+be apprenticed, a mortality of more than seventy per cent The celebrated
+St. Petersburg Hospital for Foundlings contained, between the years 1772
+and 1789, 7,709 children, of whom 6,606 died. Between the years 1783 and
+1797, seventy-six per cent died. We have not, unfortunately, its later
+statistics. The Foundling Hospital of Paris, another well-known
+institution of this class, was founded by Vincent de Paul in 1638. In
+the twenty years ending in 1859, out of 48,525 infants admitted, 27,119
+died during the first year, or fifty-six per cent. In 1841, a change was
+made in the administration of this Hospital, of which we shall speak
+later.
+
+In this city there is, under the enlightened management of the
+Commissioners' of Charities and Correction, an Infant Hospital on
+Randall's Island, where large numbers of illegitimate and abandoned
+children are cared for. In former years, under careless management of
+this institution, the mortality of these helpless infants has reached
+ninety to ninety-five per cent.; but in recent years, under the new
+management, this has been greatly reduced. In 1867, out of the 928
+"nurse's children" or children without their mothers, who were received,
+642 died, or about seventy per cent In 1868, 76.77 per cent of these
+unfortunates died, and in 1869, 70.32 per cent; while in the same
+hospital, of the children admitted with their mothers, only 20.44 per
+cent died during that year--a death-rate less than that of the city at
+large, which is about twenty-six per cent; while in Massachusetts, for
+children under one year, it is about thirteen per cent.
+
+It will be observed that the mortality of foundlings and orphans in this
+institution was reduced in 1869 from 76.79 per cent. to 70.32. Again, in
+1870, a still greater reduction was made to 58.99. This most encouraging
+result was brought about by the erection of an Infants' Hospital by the
+Commissioners, the employment of a skillful physician, and, above all,
+by engaging paid nurses instead of pauper women, to take care of the
+children. In Massachusetts the experience is equally instructive. "In
+the State Almshouse," says the able Secretary of the Board of Charities,
+Mr. F. B. Sanborn, "the mortality of these infants previous to 1857,
+reached the large proportion of 80 out of every 100."
+
+In the Tewksbury Alms-house the mortality in 1860 among the foundlings
+was forty-seven out of fifty-four, or eighty-seven per cent.
+
+In 1867, the most enlightened experts in charities in Massachusetts took
+up the subject of founding an Infant-Asylum, and resolved to institute
+one which should be free from the abuses of the old system. In this new
+Asylum only those children should be received whose cases had been
+carefully investigated, and no more than thirty foundlings were ever to
+be collected under one roof, so that as much individual care might be
+exercised as is practicable. Yet even under this wise plan the mortality
+during the first six months at the Dorchester Asylum reached nearly
+fifty per cent, out of only thirty-six children; though this mortality
+was a great gain over that of the State Alms-houses.
+
+The truth seems to be that each infant needs one nurse or care-taker,
+and that if you place these delicate young creatures in large companies
+together in any public building, an immense proportion are sure to die.
+When one remembers the difficulty of carrying any child in this climate
+through the first and second summers, and how a slight change in the
+milk, or neglect of covering, will bring on that scourge of our city,
+cholera infantum, and how incessant the watchfulness of our mothers is
+to bring up a healthy child, we can understand why from one-half to
+two-thirds of the foundlings, many of them fatally weakened when brought
+to the Asylums, die in our public institutions. Where the mothers are
+allowed to take care of their own children in the Asylums, as many
+survive as in the outside world. But to support one mother for each
+infant is an immense expense; so that two children are commonly put
+under the care of the mother. The neglect, however, of the strange child
+soon becomes apparent even to the casual visitor; and these poor
+foundlings are often fairly starved or abused to death by the mother
+forced to nurse them. The treatment of these poor helpless infants by
+brutal women in our public institutions is one of the saddest chapters
+in the history of human wickedness.
+
+What, then, is to be done for these unfortunate foundlings? No Asylum
+can afford to board and employ one wet-nurse for each infant. How can
+the children be saved at a moderate expense? The feasible and
+practicable course for this object is the
+
+                         "PLACING-OUT SYSTEM."
+
+This plan has been in operation in France for centuries, and is now
+carried out under a public department called _"Les services des Enfants
+Assistes"_ recently under the direction of M. Husson, and known
+generally as the Bureau Ste. Apolline. This bureau deals with the whole
+class of abandoned and outcast and destitute infants. Instead of keeping
+these children in an Asylum, this office at once dispatches them to
+nurses already selected in the country.
+
+The whole matter is thoroughly organized; there are agents to forward
+the nurses and children, inspectors to select nurses and look after the
+infants and take charge of the disbursements, and medical officers to
+investigate the condition of both children and nurses, and to visit them
+monthly, and give medical attendance. The nurse is obliged to bring a
+certificate of good character from the Commune, and of her being in
+proper condition to take care of a foster-child. She is not permitted to
+take charge of an infant unless her own is nine months old, and has been
+weaned. The nurse is bound to send her foster-child, as she grows up, to
+school, and to some place of religious instruction. The bureau has thus
+relieved a great number of children during ten years, from 1855 to 1864,
+the total number amounting to 21,944.
+
+That it has been wonderfully successful is shown by the mortality, which
+is now only about thirty per cent., or nearly the same with the general
+death-rate among young children in New York. Under this new poor-law
+administration for destitute and abandoned children, the famous Hospital
+for Foundlings has been changed into a mere depot for children sent to
+places and nurses in the country, with the most happy results in point
+of mortality. Thus, in 1838, the hospital admitted 5,322 children, and
+lost 1,211; in 1868, of 5,603 admitted, only 442 died, or about eight
+per cent. Of 21,147 sent to the country, the deaths were only 1,783, or
+less than ten per cent Of 6,009 admitted in 1869, 4,260 were abandoned
+children, and the deaths from the above number were 495.
+
+The French administration does not cease with paying the board of these
+foundlings in their country homes; it looks carefully after their
+clothing, their education, their religious instruction, and even their
+habits of economy. The outlay by the Government for these various
+objects is considerable. In 1869, the traveling expenses of these little
+waifs reached the sum of 170,107 francs. The payments to the peasants to
+induce them to educate the foundlings amounted to 85,458 francs for the
+same year; the savings of the children, put in official savings-boxes,
+amounted to 394,076 francs, while 15,936 francs were given out as
+prizes.
+
+The moral effects have been encouraging. In 1869, out of the 9,000
+_eleves_ from thirteen to twenty-eight years, only thirty-two had
+appeared before Courts of Justice for trifling offenses; thirty-two had
+shown symptoms of insubordination, and nearly the same number had been
+imprisoned.
+
+It should be remembered that this bureau has charge of the whole class
+of juvenile paupers, or Almshouse children, in Paris, as well as
+foundlings, whom it treats by placing out in country homes. In 1869, it
+thus provided for and protected 25,486 children, of whom 16,845 were
+from one day to twelve years, and 9,001 from twelve to twenty-one years.
+For this purpose, it employed two principal inspectors, twenty-five
+sub-inspectors, and two hundred and seventy-eight physicians.
+
+The expense of this bureau has been wonderfully slight, only averaging
+two dollars and sixty cents per annum for each child. In an Asylum the
+average annual expenditure for each child could not have been less than
+one hundred and fifty dollars. This Bureau Ste. Apolline must be
+carefully distinguished from the private bureaus in Paris for assisting
+foundlings, under which the most shocking abuses have occurred, the
+death-rate reaching among their subjects 70.87, and even ninety per
+cent.
+
+The "boarding-out" system has been a part of the Alms-house system of
+Hamburg for years, and has proved eminently successful and economical.
+In Berlin, more than half the pauper children, and all the foundlings,
+are thus dealt with. In Dublin, both Protestant and Catholic
+associations have pursued this plan with destitute orphans and
+foundlings, with marked success. The Protestant Society had, in 1866,
+453 orphans under its charge, and had placed out, or returned to
+friends, 1,256; its provincial branches had 2,208 under their care, and
+had placed out 5,374. All the orphans placed out by the Society are
+apprenticed. Great care is used in inspecting the homes in which
+children are put, and in selecting employers. The whole Association is
+well organized. The annual cost of the children, dividing the whole
+expense by the number of children placed and cared for, is only from
+fifty dollars to fifty-five dollars per head. The Roman Catholic
+Association, St. Brigid's, is even more economical in its work, as the
+labor is mainly performed by the members of the sisterhoods. Within
+seven years five hundred children were taken in charge, of whom two
+hundred had been adopted or placed out. The children thus provided for
+in country families are constantly visited by the conductors of the
+orphanage and by the parish priest. The expense of the whole enterprise
+is very slight.
+
+Similar experiments are being made in England with pauper children, and,
+despite Prof. Fawcett's somewhat impractical objections, they have been
+found to be successful and far more economical than the old system.
+
+                           THE FAMILY PLAN.
+
+The Massachusetts Board of State Charities, one of the ablest Boards
+that have ever treated these questions, well observes in its report for
+1868: "The tendency in all civilized countries is toward the family
+system, through (1st) the Foundling Hospital and (2d) the Asylum or Home
+System; and the mortality among infants of this class is reduced from
+ninety or ninety-five per cent, under the old no-system, from forty to
+sixty per cent. in well-managed Foundling Hospitals, from thirty to
+fifty per cent. in good Asylums, and from twenty to thirty-five per
+cent. in good single families, the last being scarcely above the normal
+death-rate of all infants."
+
+The "placing-out" system, is of coarse, liable to shocking abuse, as the
+experience of private offices for the care of foundlings in Paris, and
+recently in London, painfully shows. It mast be carried on with the
+utmost publicity, and under careful responsibility. But under a
+respectable and faithful board of trustees, with careful organization
+and inspection, there is no reason why the one thousand illegitimate
+children born every year in New York city should not be placed in good
+country families, under the best of care and with the prospect of
+saving, at least, seven hundred out of the thousand, instead of losing
+that proportion; and all this under an expense of about one-tenth that
+of an Asylum. Why will our benevolent ladies and gentlemen keep up the
+old monastic ideas of the necessity of herding these unfortunate
+children in one building? Here there are thousands of homes awaiting the
+foundlings, without money and without price, where the child would have
+the best advantages the country could afford; or if it be too weak or
+sick to be moved, or the managers fear the experiment of placing-out,
+let some responsible nurse be selected in the country near by, and the
+foundling boarded at their expense. The experience of the Children's Aid
+Society is, that no children are so eagerly and kindly received in
+country families as infants who are orphans. Let us not found in New
+York that most doubtful institution--a Foundling Asylum--but use the
+advantages we have in the ten thousand natural asylums of the country.
+
+In regard to the question, how far the affording facilities for the care
+of illegitimate children increases the temptation to vicious indulgence,
+we believe, as in most similar matters, the true course for the
+legislator lies between extremes. His first duty is, of course, one of
+humanity, to preserve life. Whenever helpless or abandoned children are
+found, the duty of the State is to take care of them, though this care
+may, in certain cases, offer an inducement to crime. The danger to the
+child, if neglected, is certain; that to the community, of inducing
+other mothers to abandon their offering, is remote and uncertain. On the
+other hand, the State is under no obligation to offer inducements to
+parents to neglect their illegitimate children; it is rather bound to
+throw all possible responsibility on those who have brought them into
+the world.
+
+The extreme French plan of presenting "turning-tables" to those who
+wished to abandon their children, was found to increase the crime, and
+the number of such unfortunates. It has been given up even in Paris
+itself. The Russian Foundling Asylum in St. Petersburg found it
+necessary to make its conditions more strict than they were in the
+beginning as laxness tended to encourage sexual vice. The universal
+experience is, that if a mother can be compelled to care for her infant,
+during a month or two, she will then never murder or abandon it. But, if
+she is relieved of the charge very early, she feels little affection or
+remorse, and often plunges into indulgence again without restraint. By
+requiring conditions and letting some little time pass before the mother
+gives the child up, she is kept in a better moral condition, and made to
+feel more the responsibility of her position, and is thus withheld from
+future vice.
+
+On the other hand, the extreme position taken substantially by the New
+York legislators, whereby no mother could get rid of an illegitimate
+child, except by publicly entering the Alms-house, or by infanticide,
+undoubtedly stimulated the crimes of foeticide and child-murder. No
+doubt the new Catholic and Protestant Foundling Asylums contemplated in
+New York will steer between these two extremes, will connect the mother
+with the child as long as possible, and require all reasonable
+conditions before admitting the infant, and, at the same time, not drive
+a seduced or unfortunate woman with her babe out to take her chances in
+the streets.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+              RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION FOR STREET-CHILDREN.
+
+The subject of applying Religion as a lever to raise up the class of
+neglected children whom we have been describing, is a difficult one, but
+vital to the Science of Reform. The objects of those engaged in laboring
+for this class are to raise them above temptation, to make them of more
+value to themselves, and to Society, and, if possible, to elevate them
+to the highest range of life, where the whole character is governed by
+Religion.
+
+The children themselves are in a peculiar position. They have many of
+the traits of children, and yet are struggling in an independent and
+hard life, like men. They are not to be influenced as a Sunday-school
+audience would be, nor as an audience of adults. Their minds are acute,
+sharp, and practical; mere sentiment and the amiable platitudes of
+Sunday-school oratory are not for them. Rhetoric sets them asleep.
+Bombast goes by the name of "gas" among them. Sentimental and
+affectionate appeals only excite their contempt. The "hard fact" pleases
+them. They know when the speaker stands on good bottom. If he has
+reached "hard pan," his audience is always with him.
+
+No audience is so quick to respond to a sudden turn or a joke. Their
+faculties are far more awake than those of a company of children of the
+fortunate classes. And yet they are like children in many respects.
+Nothing interests them so much as the dramatic: the truth given by
+parable and illustration. Their education in the low theatres has
+probably cultivated this taste. The genuine and strong feeling of the
+heart always touches them. I have seen the quick tears drop over the
+dirty cheeks at the simple tone only of some warm-hearted man who had
+addressed them with a deep feeling of their loneliness and desolation.
+And yet they would have "chaffed" him in five minutes after, if they had
+had the opportunity. They seem to have children's receptivity; they are
+not by nature skeptical. They unconsciously believe in supernatural
+powers, or in one eternal Power. Their conscience can be reached; the
+imagination is, to a certain degree, lively; they are peculiarly open to
+Religion. And yet their "moral" position is a most perplexing one. The
+speaker in one of our Boys' Lodging-houses, who addresses them, knows
+that this may be the last and only time, for years, that many of the
+wild audience will listen to religious truth. To-morrow a considerable
+portion will be scattered, no one knows where. To-morrow, perhaps
+to-night, temptation will come in like a flood. In a few hours, it may
+be, the street-boy will stand where he must decide whether he will be a
+thief or an honest lad; a rogue or an industrious worker; the companion
+of burglars and murderers, or the friend of the virtuous. Temptations to
+lying, to deceit, to theft, robbery, lust, and murder will soon hunt him
+like a pack of wolves. His child's nature is each day under the strain
+of a man's temptations. Poverty, hunger, and friendlessness add to his
+exposed condition, while, in all probability, he inherits a tendency to
+indulgence or crime.
+
+The problem is to guard such a human being, so exposed, against powerful
+temptations; to raise him above them; to melt his bad habits and
+inherited faults in some new and grand emotion; to create within him a
+force which is stronger than, and utterly opposed to, the selfish greed
+for money, or the attractions of criminal indulgence, or the rush of
+passion, or the fire of anger. The object is to implant in his breast
+such a power as Plato dreamed of--the Love of some perfect Friend, whose
+character by sympathy shall purify his, whose feeling is believed to go
+with the fortunes of the one forgotten by all others, and who has the
+power of cleansing from wrong and saving from sin.
+
+The experience of twenty years' labor shows us that what are called
+"moral influences" are not sufficient to solve this problem, or meet
+this want among the children of the street. It is, of course, well at
+times to present the beauty of virtue and the ugliness of vice; to show
+that honesty brings rewards, and falsehood pains, and to sketch the
+course of the moral poor whom fortune has rewarded. But these
+considerations are not sufficiently strong to hold back the most
+pressing temptations. Moreover, we have often had grave doubts whether
+"the bread-and-butter piety" was not too much recommended in all
+religious meetings to children. The child is too continually reminded
+that righteousness brings reward in this world, though the Master calls
+us to "take a yoke," and "bear a cross." The essence of the religious
+impulse is that it is unselfish, an inspiration from above, not below, a
+quickening of the nobler emotions and higher aspirations. Wherever gain
+or worldly motive comes in, there spirituality flees away. We have,
+accordingly, always opposed, in our religious meetings, the employment
+of prizes or rewards, as is so common in Sunday Schools, to strengthen
+the religious influence. Experience, as well as reason, has shown us
+that all such motives mingled with religion simply weaken its power.
+
+Considering the peculiar position of these children, we have never set
+the value on what is usually described as "Religious Instruction" which
+many do. Of course, there are certain foundation truths which should be
+taught to these audiences. But such subjects as the Jewish History and
+God's Providence therein, and many matters contained in the Old
+Testament, are not so immediately important for them as the facts and
+principles of Christianity. And yet there are passages in the Old
+Testament which seem peculiarly designed for the young. There are
+stories--such as those of Joseph and Moses and Samuel--which, if all
+others should forget, children alone would not let die. It does not seem
+instruction that these children need, so much as inspiration. A
+street-boy might be perfectly familiar with the history of the Fall of
+Man and the flood; he might repeat the Commandments, and know by heart
+the Apostles' Creed, and yet not have one spark in his breast of the
+divine fire which is to save him from vice and ruin.
+
+What the child of the streets, above all, needs to uphold him in his sea
+of troubles and temptations, is the knowledge and faith in Christ as his
+Friend and Saviour.
+
+CHRIST can be presented and made real to these children as a perfect
+Being, the Son of God, who feels with all their misfortunes, who has
+known their temptations, who is their Friend, and only demands noble
+hearts and love from them, who lived and died for them when on earth,
+that they might love God and be saved from sin.
+
+It is the old Faith, which has thrown the glory of Heaven over millions
+of death-beds, and sustained uncounted numbers of weak and hard-pressed
+men, true to honor, virtue, and goodness, amid all temptations and
+misfortunes. It has comforted and ennobled the slave under his master's
+tyranny. If simply presented, and with faith in God, it can redeem the
+outcast youth of the streets from all his vices and evil habits, keep
+him pure amid filth, honest among thieves, generous among those greedy
+for money, kind among the hard and selfish, and enable him to overcome
+anger, lust, the habit of lying or profanity, and to live a simple,
+humble, God-fearing, and loving life, merely because he believes that
+this Unseen Friend demands all this in his children and followers. When
+this Faith and this Love are implanted in the child's mind, and he is
+inspired by them, then his course is clear, and sure to be happy and
+good.
+
+One mistake of Sunday-school oratory is frequently made in addressing
+these lads, and that is, a too great use of sensational illustrations,
+which do not aid to impress the truth desired. Attention will be
+secured, but no good end is gained. Where the wants of the audience are
+so real and terrible as they are here, and so little time is given for
+influencing them, it is of the utmost importance that every word should
+tell. There should be no rhetorical pyrotechnics at these meetings.
+Above all modes, however, the dramatic is the best means of conveying
+truth to their minds. The parable, the illustration, the allegory or
+story, real or fictitious, most quickly strike their mind, and leave the
+most permanent impression.
+
+One of the best religious speakers that ever address our boys is a
+lawyer, who has been a famous sportsman, and has in his constitution a
+fellow-feeling for their vagrant tastes. I often fancy, when he is
+speaking to them, that he would not object at all to being a boy again
+himself, roving the streets, "turning in" on a hay-barge, and drifting
+over the country at "his own sweet will." But this very sympathy gives
+him a peculiar power over them; he understands their habits and
+temptations, and, while other gentlemen often shoot over their heads,
+his words always take a powerful hold of them. Then, though a man
+particularly averse to sentiment in ordinary life, his speeches to the
+boys seem to reveal a deep and poetic feelings for nature, and a solemn
+consciousness of God, which impresses children deeply. His sportsmanly
+habits have led him to closely observe the habits of birds and animals,
+and the appearances of the sky and sea, and these come in as natural
+illustrations, possessing a remarkable interest for these wild little
+vagrants, who by nature belong to the "sporting" class.
+
+A man must have a boy's tastes to reach boys.
+
+                          BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.
+
+In treating of this subject of religious education for the youth of the
+dangerous classes, the question naturally arises, how far there should
+be religious expression or education in our Public Schools. If it were a
+_tabula rasa_ here, and we were opening a system of National Schools,
+and all were of one general faith, there could be no question that every
+one interested in the general welfare, would desire religious
+instruction in our Public Schools, as a means of strengthening morality,
+if for no other purpose. As it is, however, we have at the basis of
+society an immense mass of very ignorant, and, therefore, bigoted
+people, who suspect and hate every expression even of our form of
+Christianity, and regard it as a teaching of heresy and a shibboleth of
+oppression. Their shrewd and cunning leaders, knowing the danger to
+priestcraft from Free Schools, use this hostility and the pretense of
+our religious services to separate these classes from the Public
+Schools. The priests and demagogues do not, of course, care anything
+about the simple prayer and the reading of a few verses of Scripture,
+which are now our sole religious school exercises. But these furnish
+them with a good pretext for acting on the masses, and give them ground,
+among certain liberal or indifferent Protestants, for seeking a separate
+State support for the Catholic Schools.
+
+Were Bible-reading and the Lord's Prayer discontinued in the Schools, we
+do not doubt that the priests and the popular leaders would still oppose
+the Free Schools just as bitterly; but they would not have as good an
+apparent ground, and any pretext of opposition would be taken away. The
+system of Free Schools is the life-blood of the nation. If it be
+corrupted with priestcraft, or destroyed by our dissensions, our
+vitality as a republican people is gone. The whole country would realize
+then the worst fruits of a popular government without intelligence.
+Demagogism and corruption, founded on ignorance, would wield an absolute
+tyranny, with none of the graces of monarchy, and none of the advantages
+of democracy. Jarring sects would each have their own schools, and the
+priests would enjoy an unlimited control over all the ignorant Catholics
+of the country.
+
+Under no circumstance should the Protestants of the nation allow the
+Free Schools to be broken up. They are the foundation of the Republic,
+and the bulwark of Protestantism and civilization. They undermine the
+power of the priests, which rests on ignorance, while they leave
+untouched whatever spiritual force the Roman Catholic Church may truly
+have and deserve to have. The Protestants should sacrifice everything
+reasonable and not vital, to retain these blessed agencies of
+enlightenment.
+
+We respect the sort of pluck of the Protestants, which looks upon the
+giving-up of Bible-reading in the Schools as being "false to the flag."
+But, in looking at the matter soberly, and without pugnacity, does
+spiritual religion lose anything by giving up these exercises? We think
+not. They are now of the coldest and most formal kind, and but little
+listened to. We doubt if they ever affect strongly a single mind. The
+religious education of each child is imparted in Sabbath Schools, in
+Churches, or Mission Schools, and its own home.
+
+The Free School under our system does not need any influence from the
+Church. The American trusts to the separate sects to take care of the
+religious interests of the children. We separate utterly Church and
+State. There may be evils from this; but they are less than the danger
+of destroying our system of popular education by the contests of rival
+sects. We know how long every effort to secure popular education for
+England has been wrecked on this rock of Sectarianism.
+
+We behold the fearful harvest of evils which she is reaping from the
+ignorance of the masses, especially induced by the oppositions of sects,
+who preferred no education for the people to education without their own
+dogmas.
+
+We desire to avoid these calamities, and we can best do this by making
+every reasonable concession to ignorance and prejudice.
+
+Give us the Free Schools without Religion, rather than no Free Schools
+at all!
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+                DECREASE OF JUVENILE CRIME IN NEW YORK.
+
+                THE COST OF PUNISHMENT AND PREVENTION.
+
+Very few people have any just appreciation of the comparative cost of
+punishment and prevention in the treatment of crime. The writer recalls
+one out of many thousand instances in his experience, which strikingly
+illustrates the contrast
+
+                             THE BROTHERS.
+
+A number of years ago, three boys (brothers), the oldest perhaps
+seventeen, applied at the Newsboys' Lodging-house of this city for
+shelter. It was soon suspected that the eldest was a thief, employing
+the younger as assistants in his nefarious business. The younger lads
+finally confessed the fact, and the older brother left them to be taken
+care of in the Lodging-house. After a sufficient period of training, the
+two brothers were sent to a farmer in Illinois. They were faithful and
+hard-working, and soon began to earn money. When the war broke out they
+enlisted, and served with credit. At the close they passed through New
+York, and visited the superintendent while returning to their village,
+having already purchased a farm with their wages and bounty-money. They
+are now well-to-do, respectable farmers.
+
+This "prevention" for the two lads cost just thirty dollars, for their
+expenses in the Lodging-house were mainly paid by themselves.
+
+The older brother went through a career of thieving and burglary. We
+have not an accurate catalogue of his various offenses, but he
+undoubtedly made away with property--wasted or destroyed it--to the
+amount of two thousand dollars. [We recall three lads who, in one night,
+broke into a house in Bond Street, and destroyed or made away with
+property to the value of one thousand three hundred dollars.] He was
+finally arrested and tried for burglary. It would be safe to estimate
+the expenses of the trial and arrest at one hundred dollars. He was
+sentenced to five years in Sing Sing. Allowing the expenses of
+maintenance there to be what they are on Blackwell's Island, that is,
+about twelve dollars and fifty cents per month, he cost the State while
+there some seven hundred and fifty dollars, not reckoning the interest
+on capital and buildings; so that we have here, in one instance, the
+very low estimate of two thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars as the
+expense to the community of one street-boy unreclaimed. Had the
+Lodging-house taken hold of him five years earlier, he could have been
+saved at a cost of fifteen dollars.
+
+His brothers have added to the wealth of the community and defended the
+life of the nation, and are still honest producers. He has already cost
+the State at least two thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars, besides
+much immorality and bad example, and he has only begun a career of
+damage and loss to the city.
+
+                  PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT COMPARED.
+
+Our criminals last year cost this city, in the City Prisons and
+Penitentiaries, about one hundred and one thousand dollars for
+maintenance alone. Our police cost apparently over six hundred thousand
+dollars.
+
+The amount of property lost or taken by thieves, burglars, and others
+last year, in New York city, and which came under the knowledge of the
+police, was one million five hundred and twenty-one thousand nine
+hundred and forty dollars; but how many sums are never brought to their
+notice!
+
+The expenses of the arrest and trial of two criminals, Real and Van
+Echten, are stated, on good authority, to have been sixteen thousand
+dollars for the first, and twenty thousand dollars for the second.
+
+If the expenses of a great "preventive" institution--such as the
+Children's Aid Society--be examined, it will be found that the two
+thousand and odd homeless children, boys and girls, placed in country
+homes, cost the public only some fifteen dollars a head; the three
+thousand and odd destitute little girls educated and partly fed and
+clothed in the "Industrial Schools," only cost some fifteen dollars for
+each child each year; and the street lads and girls sheltered and
+instructed in the "Lodging-houses," to the number of some twelve
+thousand different subjects, or an average of, say, four hundred each
+night, have been an expense of only some fifty dollars per head through
+the year to the public. It may, perhaps, be urged in reply to this by
+the doubting, that all this may be true. "We admit the cheapness of
+prevention, but we do not see the diminution of crime. If you can show
+us that fewer young thieves, or vagabonds, or prostitutes, are breeding,
+we shall admit that your children's charities are doing something, and
+that the cost of prevention is the most paying outlay in the
+administration of New York city."
+
+To this we might answer that New York is an exceptional city--a sink
+into which pour the crime and poverty of all countries, and that all we
+could expect to accomplish would be what is attempted in European
+cities--to keep the increase of juvenile crime down equal with the
+increase of population; that the laws of crime are shown in European
+cities to be constant, and that we must expect just about so many petty
+thieves each year, so many pickpockets, so many burglars, so many female
+vagrants or prostitutes, to so many thousand inhabitants.
+
+We might urge that it is the duty of every friend of humanity to do his
+little part to alleviate the evils of the world, whether he sees a
+general diminution of human ills or not.
+
+But, fortunately, we are not obliged to render these excuses.
+
+New York is the only large city in the world where there has been a
+comprehensive organization to deal with the sources of crime among
+children; an organization which, though not reaching the whole of the
+destitute and homeless youth, and those most exposed to temptation,
+still includes a vast multitude every year of the _enfants perdus_ of
+this metropolis.
+
+This Association, during nearly twenty years, has removed to country
+homes and employment about twenty-five thousand persons, the greater
+part of whom have been poor and homeless children; it has founded, and
+still supports, five Lodging-houses for homeless and street-wandering
+boys and girls, five free Reading-rooms for boys and young men, and
+twenty Industrial Schools for children too poor, ragged, and
+undisciplined for the Public Schools. We have always been confident that
+time would show, even in the statistics of crime in our 19 prisons and
+police courts, the fruits of these very extended and earnest labors. It
+required several years to properly found and organize the Children's Aid
+Society, and then it must be some ten years-when the children acted upon
+in all its various branches have come to young manhood and
+womanhood--before the true effects are to be seen. We would not,
+however, exclude, as causes of whatever results may be traced, all
+similar movements in behalf of the youthful criminal classes. We may
+then fairly look, in the present and the past few years, for the effects
+on crime and pauperism of these widely-extended charities in behalf of
+children.
+
+                            CRIME CHECKED.
+
+The most important field of the Children's Aid Society has been among
+the destitute and street-wandering and tempted little girls, its labors
+embracing many thousands annually of this unfortunate class. Has crime
+increased with them? The great offense of this class, either as children
+or as young women, comes under the heading of "Vagrancy"-this including
+their arrest and punishment, either as street-walkers, or prostitutes,
+or homeless persons. In this there is, during the past thirteen years, a
+most remarkable decrease--a diminution of crime probably unexampled in
+any criminal records through the world. The rate in the commitments to
+the city prisons, as appears in the reports of the Board of Charities
+and Correction, runs thus:--
+
+Of female vagrants, there were in
+
+1857..........3,449
+1859..........5,778
+1860..........5,880
+1861..........3,172
+1862..........2,243
+1863..........1,756
+1864..........1,342
+1869............785
+1870............671
+1871............548.
+
+We have omitted some of the years on account of want of space; they do
+not, however, change the steady rate of decrease in this offense.
+
+Thus, in eleven years, the imprisonments of female vagrants have fallen
+off from 5,880 to 548. This, surely, is a good show; and yet in that
+period our population increased about thirteen and a half per cent, so
+that, according to the usual law, the commitments should have been this
+year over 4,700. [The population of New York increased from 814,224, in
+1860, to 915,520, in 1870, or only about twelve and a half per cent. The
+increase in the previous decade was about fifty per cent. There can be
+no doubt that the falling-off is entirely in the middle classes, who
+have removed to the neighboring rural districts. The classes from which
+most of the criminals come have undoubtedly increased, as before, at
+least fifty per cent.
+
+I have retained for ten years, however, the ratio of the census, twelve
+and a half per cent.]
+
+If we turn now to the reports of the Commissioners of Police, the
+returns are almost equally encouraging, though the classification of
+arrests does not exactly correspond with that of imprisonments; that is,
+a person may be arrested for vagrancy, and sentenced for some other
+offense, and _vice versa._
+
+The reports of arrests of female vagrants ran thus:--
+
+1861....................2,161
+1862....................2,008
+1863....................1,728
+1867....................1,591
+1869....................1,078
+1870......................701
+1871......................914
+
+We have not, unfortunately, statistics of arrests farther back than
+1861.
+
+Another crime of young girls is thieving or petty larceny. The rate of
+commitments runs thus for females:--
+
+1859......................944
+1860......................890
+1861......................880
+1863....................1,133
+1864....................1,131
+1865......................877
+1869......................989
+1870......................746
+1871......................572
+
+The increase of this crime daring the war, in the years 1863 and 1864,
+is very marked; but in twelve years it has fallen from 944 to 572,
+though, according to the increase of the population, it would have been
+naturally 1,076.
+
+Another heading on the prison records is "Juvenile delinquency," which
+may include any form of youthful offense not embraced in the other
+terms. Under this, in 1860, were two hundred and forty (240) females; in
+1870, fifty-nine (59).
+
+The classification of commitments of those under fifteen years only runs
+back a few years. The number of little girls imprisoned the past few
+years is as follows:--
+
+1863......................408
+1864......................295
+1865......................275
+1868......................239
+1870......................218
+1871......................212
+
+                    CRIMES CHECKED AMONG THE BOYS
+
+The imprisonment, of males, for offenses which boys are likely to
+commit, though not so encouraging as with the girls, shows that juvenile
+crime is fairly under control in this city. Thus, "Vagrancy" must
+include many of the crimes of boys; under this head we find the
+following commitments of males:--
+
+1859..........2,829
+1860..........2,708
+1862..........1,203
+1864..........1,147
+1865..........1,350
+1870..........1,140
+1871............984
+
+In twelve years a reduction from 2,829 to 994, when the natural increase
+should have been up to 3,225.
+
+Petty larceny is a boy's crime; the record stands thus for males:--
+
+1857..........2,450
+1859..........2,626
+1860..........2,575
+1865..........2,347
+1869..........2,338
+1870..........2,168
+1871..........1,978
+
+A decrease in fourteen years of 502, when the natural increase should
+have brought the number to 2,861.
+
+Of boys under fifteen imprisoned, the record stands thus since the new
+classification:--
+
+1864..........1,965
+1865..........1,934
+1869..........1,873
+1870..........1,625
+1871..........1,017
+
+Of males between fifteen and twenty, in our city prisons, the following
+is the record:--
+
+1857..........2,592
+1859..........2,636
+1860..........2,207
+1861..........2,408
+1868..........2,927
+1870..........2,876
+1871..........2,936
+
+It often happens that youthful criminals are arrested who are not
+imprisoned. The reports of the Board of Police will give us other
+indications that, even here, juvenile crime has at length been
+diminished in its sources.
+
+                               ARRESTS.
+
+The arrests of pickpockets run thus since 1861, the limit of returns
+accessible:--
+
+1861............466
+1862............300
+1865............275
+1867............345
+1868............348
+1869............303
+1870............274
+1871............313
+
+In ten years a reduction of 153 in the arrests of pickpockets.
+
+In petty larceny the returns stand thus in brief:--
+
+1862..........4,107
+1865..........5,240
+1867..........5,269
+1870..........4,909
+1871..........3,912
+
+A decrease in nine years of 195.
+
+Arrests of girls alone, under twenty:--
+
+1863..........3,132
+1867..........2,588
+1870..........1,993
+1871..........1,820
+
+It must be plain from this, that crime among young girls is decidedly
+checked, and among boys is prevented from increasing with population.
+
+If our readers will refer back to these dry but cheering tables of
+statistics, they will see what a vast sum of human misery saved is a
+reduction, in the imprisonment of female vagrants, of more than five
+thousand in 1871, as compared with 1869. How much homelessness and
+desperation spared! how much crime and wretchedness diminished are
+expressed in those simple figures! And, if we may reckon an average of
+punishment of two months' detention to each of those girls and women, we
+have one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars saved in one year to
+the public by preventive agencies in this class of offenders alone.
+
+The same considerations, both of economy and humanity, apply to each of
+the results that appear in these tables of crime and punishment.
+
+No outlay of money for public purposes which any city or its inhabitants
+can make, repays itself half so well as its expenses for charities which
+prevent crime among children.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+                THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS OF THE WORK.
+
+In reviewing these long-continued efforts for the prevention of crime
+and the elevation of the neglected youth of this metropolis, it may aid
+others engaged in similar enterprises to note in summary the principles
+on which they have been carried out, and which account for their marked
+success.
+
+In the first place, as has been so often said, though pre-eminently a
+Charity, this Association has always sought to encourage the principle
+of Self-help in its beneficiaries, and has aimed much more at promoting
+this than merely relieving suffering. All its branches, its Industrial
+Schools, Lodging-houses, and Emigration, aim to make the children of the
+poor better able to take care of themselves; to give them such a
+training that they shall be ashamed of begging, and of idle, dependent
+habits, and to place them where their associates are self-respecting and
+industrious. No institution of this Society can be considered as a
+shelter for the dependent and idle. All its objects of charity work, or
+are trained to work. The consequence is that this effort brings after it
+none of the bad fruits of mere alms-giving. The poor do not become
+poorer or less self-reliant under it; on the contrary, they are
+continually rising out of their condition and making their own way in
+the world. The laborer in this field does not feel, as in so many other
+philanthropic causes, doubtful, after many years of labor, whether he
+has not done as much injury as good. He sees constantly the wonderful
+effect of these efforts, and he knows that, at the worst, they can only
+fail of the best fruit, but certainly cannot have a bad result.
+
+From the commencement our aim has been to put these charitable
+enterprises in harmony with natural and economic laws, assured that any
+other plan of philanthropy must eventually fail. In this view we have
+taken advantage of the immense demand for labor through our rural
+districts, which alone gives a new aspect to all economical problems in
+this country. Through this demand we have been enabled to accomplish our
+best results, with remarkable economy. We have been saved the vast
+expense of Asylums, and have put our destitute children in the child's
+natural place--with a family. Our Lodging-houses also have avoided the
+danger attending such places of shelter, of becoming homes for vagrant
+boys and girls. They have continually passed their little subjects along
+to the country, or to places of work, often forcing them to leave the
+house. In requiring the small payments for lodging and meals, they put
+the beneficiaries in an independent position, and check the habits and
+spirit of pauperism. The Evening School, the Savings-bank, and the
+Religious Meeting are continually acting on these children to raise them
+from the vagrant class. The Industrial Schools, in like manner, are
+seminaries of industry and teachers of order and self-help.
+
+All the agencies of the Society act in harmony with natural laws, and
+touch the deepest springs of life and character. The forces underlying
+them are the strongest forces of society--Religion, Education,
+Self-respect, and love of Industry; these are constantly working upon
+the thousands of poor children under our charge. Thus founded on simple
+and natural principles, the Society has succeeded, because very earnest
+men and women have labored in it, and because its organization has been
+remarkably complete.
+
+The _employes_ have entered into its labors principally from love of its
+objects, and then have been retained by a just and liberal treatment on
+the part of the Trustees, and by each being made responsible for his
+department, and gaining in the community something of the honor which
+attends successful work.
+
+A strict system of accountability has been maintained, step by step,
+from the lowest to the highest executive officer. Of many engaged in the
+labors of this Association, it can be truly said, that no business or
+commercial house was ever more faithfully and earnestly served, than
+this charity has been by them. Indeed, some of them have poured forth
+for it more vitality and energy than they would ever have done for their
+personal interests. They have toiled day and night, week-days and
+Sundays, and have been best rewarded by the fruit they have beheld. The
+aim of the writer, as executive officer, has been to select just the
+right man for his place, and to make him feel that that is his
+profession and life-calling. Amid many hundreds thus selected, during
+twenty years, he can recall but two or three mistaken choices, while
+many have become almost identified with their labors and position, and
+have accomplished good not to be measured. His principle has been to
+show the utmost respect and confidence, but to hold to the strictest
+accountability. Not a single _employe_, so far as he is aware, in all
+this time, during his service, has ever wronged the Society or betrayed
+his trust. One million of dollars has passed through the hands of the
+officers of this Association during this period, and it has been
+publicly testified [See testimony before the Committee on Charities of
+the Senate of New York, 1871.] by the Treasurer, Mr. J. E. Williams,
+President of the Metropolitan Bank, that not a dollar, to his knowledge,
+has ever been misappropriated or squandered.
+
+A most important element of the success of this Charity have been, of
+course, the character and influence of its Board of Trustees.
+
+It is difficult to speak of these gentlemen without seeming to use the
+language of compliment; but, in making known to other cities the
+peculiar organization which has been so successful in this, it must
+always be remembered what the character of trustees should be, who bear
+upon their shoulders so important a trust. These men are known through
+the city and indeed in distant parts of the country, as showing in their
+lives a profound and conscientious conviction of the responsibility
+which wealth and ability are under to the community. They are the best
+representatives of a class who are destined to give a new character to
+our city--men of broad and liberal views on matters of practical
+religion, full of humanity, sensible and judicious, educated to
+appreciate culture and art, as well as business, with the true
+gentleman's sense of self-respect and respect for others, a profound and
+earnest spirit of piety, and that old Puritan perseverance which causes
+them not "to turn their hand from the plow," however disagreeable the
+task before them may be. Such men, when once morally imbued with the
+needs of a cause, could make it succeed against any odds.
+
+Two or three men of their position, wealth, and ability, who should take
+the moral interests of any class of our population on their hands, and
+be in earnest in the thing, could not fail to accomplish great results.
+When they began to appear in our Board, I felt that, under any sort of
+judicious management, it was morally certain we should perfect a wide
+and permanent organization, and secure most encouraging results.
+
+A great service, which has been accomplished by these gentlemen, has
+been in tabulating our accounts, and putting them under a most thorough
+system of examination and checking, and in allotting our various
+branches to each trustee for inspection. Many of the trustees, also,
+have their religious meetings at the Lodging-houses, which they
+individually lead and take charge of during the winter. They are thus
+brought in direct contact with the necessities of the poor children.
+
+To no one, however, is the public so much indebted as to our treasurer,
+Mr. J. E. Williams.
+
+For nearly twenty years this charity has been the dearest object of his
+public efforts, the field of his humanity and religion. During all this
+time he has managed gratuitously the financial affairs of the Society;
+begged money when we were straitened, and borrowed it when temporarily
+embarrassed; never for a moment doubting that, if the work were
+faithfully done, the public would support it. At the end of this period
+(1872), having spent over a million of dollars, and requiring now some
+one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars per annum for our various
+branches, we find ourselves without a dollar of debt.
+
+                        THE SECTARIAN DANGER.
+
+One rock, which the manager of such a movement must always steer clear
+of, is the sectarian difficulty. He must ignore sects, and rest his
+enterprise on the broadest and simplest principles of morality and
+religion. The animating force must be the religious, especially the
+"enthusiasm of humanity" shown in the love for Christ, and for all who
+bear His image. But dogmatic teachings, and disputations, and sectarian
+ambitions, are to be carefully eschewed and avoided in such efforts of
+humanity. The public must learn gradually to associate the movement, not
+with any particular sect or church, but with the feeling of humanity and
+religion--the very spirit of Christ Himself.
+
+An essential thing, and often very disagreeable, to the earnest worker
+in it, is to give the utmost publicity to all its operations. The reason
+of this is, that such a charity depends for support and friends, not on
+an organized private association, but on the whole public. They need to
+know all its doings; this is often the only way of reminding them of
+their duty in this field. Moreover, the moneys spent are public trusts,
+and all that relates to their uses should be publicly known.
+
+Gradually, by publicity, the general community come to have something of
+the same moral interest in the enterprise, that the special attendants
+of a church have in its welfare; and it becomes a truly public interest.
+To attain this, the press should be the great agency, as well as the
+pulpit, wherever practicable. Annual reports, designed for all classes,
+wherein there are figures for the statistical, facts for the doubting,
+incidents for the young, and principles stated for the thoughtful,
+should be scattered far and wide.
+
+As the organization grows, State-aid should be secured for a portion of
+its expenses, that a more permanent character may be given it, and it
+may not be suddenly too much crippled by a business depression or
+disaster.
+
+Of the modes in which money should be raised, I have already spoken. In
+all these matters, the general rule of wisdom is to avoid "sensation,"
+and to trust to the settled and reasonable conviction of the public,
+rather than to temporary feeling or excitement.
+
+Founded on such principles, and guided by men of this character and
+ability, and by those of similar purposes who shall come after them,
+there seems no good reason why this extended Charity should not scatter
+its blessings for generations to come throughout this ever-increasing
+metropolis.
+
+To those now serving in it, no thought can be sweeter, when their
+"change of guard" comes, than that the humble organization of humanity
+and Christian kindness, which, amid many labors and sacrifices, they
+aided to found, will spread good-will and intelligence and relief and
+religious light to the children of the unfortunate and the needy, long
+years after even their names are forgotten; and for monument or record
+of their work, they cannot ask for more enduring than young lives
+redeemed from crime and misery, and young hearts purified and ennobled
+by CHRIST, and many orphans' tears wiped away, and wounds of the lonely
+and despairing "little ones" of the world healed through
+instrumentalities which they assisted to plant, and which shall continue
+when they are long gone.
+
+                                 END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dangerous Classes of New York, by 
+Charles Loring Brace
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