The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them

by Charles Loring Brace

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.