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

by Charles Loring Brace

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.