Thus spoke a son to his mother. I felt the blood rushing to my head and I struck the blaspheming mouth. He tried to fight back and even took the pose, but I was too much for him. I pinned his arms.
The mother had not moved. If anything she was rather satisfied that the boy got his due. Again the boy twisted around, and looking daggers at his mother he said:
"You'll tell tales? Ha? and let this big stiff hit me? And you'll stay there like a lamp post? Ha! that's what you'll do? I'll croak you, I'll put you right—wait!"
"Do you know," he turned to me, "that—"
"George, George," the mother yelled and covered the boy's mouth with her open palm.
"I know it all," I interrupted. "I know that your mother's name is Mrs. Carson."
The poor mother looked as though she had been struck with an iron bar over the head.
"And now, my boy, give back the money you forced from your mother a while ago." From his pocket the mother took out a dollar and some cents. I compelled the boy to go to school, menacing him with everything I thought would scare him, and obtained from him the promise that he would go the next morning. But when I turned to go, I saw the mother shivering as though in the clutches of fever. She motioned me not to go, then sat down and wept. Of course I knew the reason for her tears. She was afraid her pension would be cut off. She had lied to the institution. She had not told them of her unfortunate remarriage. She was afraid of her son. Why? Because, fearing that the investigator might question her son she had been compelled to lie to the boy and teach him to lie, and he grew up with the knowledge that he could obtain anything he wanted from his mother with the threat of telling the truth. The child grew up a blackmailer. The system of organised charity made him one.
And how many, how many similar occurrences have led to similar results? How many men in stripes could trace their downfall to the "question room" of the Investigator!
As to this particular boy—he went to school for a few weeks but his street habits corrupted the other children, and he was expelled. For a time he sold newspapers on the streets, then he gradually sank lower and lower and was later on sent to a reformatory to expiate a minor offence and from there he will be discharged a graduated criminal.