[14] Report of New York Catholic Protectory, 1892.
[15] If this were not the sober statement of public officials of high repute it would seem fairly incredible.
[16] Between 1880 and 1890 the increase in assessed value of the real and personal property in this city was 48.36 per cent., while the population increased 41.06 per cent.
[17] Philosophy of Crime and Punishment, by Dr. William T. Harris, Federal Commissioner of Education.
[18] Seventeenth Annual Report of Society, 1892.
[19] English Social Movements, by Robert Archey Woods, page 196.
[20] The Superintendent of the House of Refuge for thirty years wrote recently: “It is essential to have the plays of the children more carefully watched than their work.”
[21] Report for 1891 of Children’s Aid Society.
[22] In this reckoning is included employment found for many big boys and girls, who were taken as help, and were thus given the chance which the city denied them.
[23] It is inevitable, of course, that such a programme should steer clear of the sectarian snags that lie plentifully scattered about. I have a Roman Catholic paper before me in which the Society’s “villainous work, which consists chiefly in robbing the Catholic child of his faith,” is hotly denounced in an address to the Archbishop of New York. Mr. Brace’s policy was to meet such attacks with silence, and persevere in his work. The Society still follows his plan. Catholic or Protestant—the question is never raised. “No Catholic child,” said one of its managers once to me, “is ever brought to us. A poor child is brought and we care for it.”