Thus it is to be seen that Hugo has made a hero of this lad. But what of the little gamins that throng Chicago's streets? Will they find any such glorious end? It is not likely.
Jacob Leib is but 17 years old, and Alfred Lafferty, accused of twenty-three burglaries, is only 16. The John Worthy School is full of boys who have been gathered in by the police; the Junior Business Club, another reform organization, has a big membership, and the Juvenile Protective League is hard at work trying to do something to arrest the boy in his mad race to the reform school, prison and the penitentiary.
In looking about for the causes of crime among boys I found that poverty, liquor, divorce, yellow newspapers, cigarettes and bad company played important parts. Certain streets of Chicago are schools of crime, where boys are taught the rudiments of larceny and soon become adepts.
Hardened criminals use the more agile youths they find idle to do work they are unable to do. Certain sections of the city swarm with boys who are steeped in vice and crime and are in embryo the murderers, the burglars and the forgers of tomorrow.
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.