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

by Charles Loring Brace

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.