What is CRIME? Who are the criminals? Who makes the criminals?
Do criminals viciously and voluntarily arise among us, eager to lead hunted lives, eager to be jailed at intervals, eager to crawl in the dark, dodge policemen, work in stripes and die in shame? Hardly.
Will you kindly and patiently follow the lives, quickly sketched, of a boy and a girl?
THE GIRL
Born poor, born in hard luck, her father, or mother, or both, victims of long hours, poor fare, bad air and little leisure.
As a baby she struggles against fate and manages to live while three or four little brothers and sisters die and go back to kind earth.
She crawls around the halls of a tenement, a good deal in the way. She is hunted here and chased there.
She is cold in Winter, ill-fed in Summer, never well cared for.
She gets a little so-called education. Ill-dressed and ashamed beside the other children, she is glad to escape the education. No one at home can help her on. No one away from home cares about her.
She grows up white, sickly, like a potato sprouting in a cellar. At the corner of a fine street she sees the carriages passing with other girls in warm furs, or in fine, cool Summer dresses.