Chicago Has Her Children.
Turning again to the pages of "Les Miserables," the story of Gavroche, the gamin of Paris, may easily be found, and the tale of this youth is not far different from that of the "kid" of Chicago. Here is what Victor Hugo says of Gavroche in that section of his great novel called "Marius": "This child was muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother.
"Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him and his mother did not love him.
"He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all; one of those who have father and mother and who are orphans nevertheless.
"This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart.
"His parents had dispatched him into life with a kick. He simply took flight.
"He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wideawake, jeering lad, with a vicious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played, scraped the gutters, stole a little, but like cats and sparrows. He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love. When these poor creatures grow to be men the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children they escape because of their smallness."
This is a true picture of the urchin of Chicago. These tiny atoms of humanity are sponges that absorb all the filth, the vice, the sin and the crime of the streets. They pick up all that is evil and nothing that is good. They are nurtured at the breast of poverty and viciousness, and are reared on a diet of depravity and degradation. There is nothing they do not know of crime and of wickedness. They are thoroughly saturated with everything that is evil, unprincipled and debased.
Is it any wonder, then, that the city brings forth an appalling annual crop of criminals? There may be heroes among the gamins in Chicago, but most of them are only heroes so long as they remain uncaught.
When they fall into the hands of the police and are taken to jail they are sorry-looking heroes.
And in the meantime the problem of the boy is still unsolved.