“Hello Johnny, how are you to-day?”
He replies, “I ain’t doing well.”
“What brought you here?” He hangs his head and gives no answer.
“How old are you?” “I ain’t only sixteen.”
“Are your parents living?” “Mother has been dead since I was six years old. But pa, he is living. He gets drunk so often that me runs away from home.” “But how did you get here?” “Oh, when I was hungry I stole money to buy food.”
This will account in some measure for the boy’s fall. Think of it—a boy without a mother in a large city like New York! After I had made an investigation I found out that his father was an idler and dissipated and took no interest in his family, and the boy has been under no religious influence since his mother died. Poor boy! His only playground was the street with the denizens of the tenements as his associates, and most of them evil. He hated his home and was glad to get away from it, because there he learned to drink, carouse and curse like his father. That home to him was pandemonium! No wonder he was a thief and in prison.
A great many children of the tenements learn to drink beer when very young. They are sent by their parents to the saloon with the “growler” and are sure to drink the beer out of the pail before they return home. Although it is illegal to sell to children of this age, saloon keepers take chances for the money. Thus the child forms an appetite for strong drink and is preparing to be a drunkard or a prostitute.
One day I found a chubby, honest-faced German boy behind the bars. He came alone from the Fatherland when he was twelve years of age. An uncle, a farmer in a Western state, awaited his arrival and took him to his new home. Here he made him work like a slave, giving him no opportunity for either secular or religious education. Herman stood it a few years, then ran away. He worked his way East by stealing rides on freight trains. He would have died of starvation on the way had not the train hands to whom he told his tale of adventure taken pity on him and generously shared their food with him and smuggled him over the different roads till he got to New York. Here he wandered around the city looking for work, but found none. Unfortunately he was found one night in company with two young thieves and was arrested on suspicion. He lay in prison several weeks. After a thorough investigation we were able to show that he was an honest boy. Before going out, I gave him a note to a Y. M. C. A. worker, who gave him some clothing and food and lodging for two weeks, and then secured for him a position. Some months afterwards I found Herman in a mission settlement as one of the workers. He was clean and neatly dressed. What a transformation from the dirty, ragged condition he was in when in prison!
The large foreign population of New York and the dense ignorance of those who come from some of the countries of Europe is constantly in evidence in the criminal courts. As near as we can estimate, for we have no accurate information on the subject, about one-half the number of persons arrested in this city every year are either foreign by birth or parentage.