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THE
DANGEROUS CLASSES OF NEW YORK,
AND
TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM.
BY
CHARLES LORING BRACE,
AUTHOR OF
"HUNGARY IN 1851," "HOME LIFE IN GERMANY,"
"THE RACES OF THE OLD WORLD," ETC., ETC.
"Ameliorer l'homme par le terre et le terre par l'homme."—Demetz.
NEW YORK.
WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK, PUBLISHERS,
113 FULTON STREET.
——-
1872.
[Illustration: LODGING-HOUSES FOR HOMELESS BOYS—AS THEY WERE. NO. 1.]
————————————————————————
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
CHARLES LORING BRACE,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
————————————————————————
WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK,
FINE BOOK PRINTERS.
DEDICATION.
——-
To the many co-laborers, men and women, who have not held their comfort or even their lives dear unto themselves, but have striven, through many years, to teach the ignorant, to raise up the depressed, to cheer the despairing, to impart a higher life and a Christian hope to the outcast and neglected youth of this city, and thus save society from their excesses, this simple record of common labors, and this sketch of the terrible evils sought to be cured, is respectfully dedicated.
INTRODUCTION.
——-
The great pioneer in the United States, in the labors of penal Reform and the prevention of crime,—EDWARD LIVINGSTON,—said as long ago as 1833, in his famous "Introductory Report to the Code of Reform and Prison Discipline": "As prevention in the diseases of the body is less painful, less expensive, and more efficacious than the most skillful cure, so in the moral maladies of society, to arrest the vicious before the profligacy assumes the shape of crime; to take away from the poor the cause or pretence of relieving themselves by fraud or theft; to reform them by education and make their own industry contribute to their support, although difficult and expensive, will be found more effectual in the suppression of offences and more economical than the best organized system of punishment."—(p. 322.)
My great object in the present work is to prove to society the practical truth of Mr. Livingston's theoretical statement: that the cheapest and most efficacious way of dealing with the "Dangerous Classes" of large cities, is not to punish them, but to prevent their growth; to so throw the influences of education and discipline and religion about the abandoned and destitute youth of our large towns, to change their material circumstances, and draw them under the influence of the moral and fortunate classes, that they shall grow up as useful producers and members of society, able and inclined to aid it in its progress.
In the view of this book, the class of a large city most dangerous to its property, its morals and its political life, are the ignorant, destitute, untrained, and abandoned youth: the outcast street-children grown up to be voters, to be the implements of demagogues, the "feeders" of the criminals, and the sources of domestic outbreaks and violations of law.
The various chapters of this work contain a detailed account of the constituents of this class in New York, and of the twenty years' labors of the writer, and many men and women, to purify and elevate it; what the principles were of the work, what its fruits, what its success.
So much interest at home and abroad has been manifested in these extended charities, and so many inquiries are received continually about them, that it seemed at length time to give a simple record of them, and of the evils they have sought to cure.
If the narrative shall lead the citizens of other large towns to inaugurate comprehensive and organized movements for the improvement of their "Dangerous Classes," my object will be fully attained.
I have the hope, too, that these little stories of the lot of the poor in cities, and the incidents related of their trials and temptations, may bring the two ends of society nearer together in human sympathy.
The discussion of the Causes of Juvenile Crime contained in this work must aid others who would found similar reformatory and preventive movements, to base them on principles and motives which should reach similar profound and threatening evils.
CHARLES LORING BRACE.
19 EAST 4TH STREET, NEW YORK.
June 1, 1872.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS.
——-
CHAPTER I.
CHRIST IN CHARITY AND REFORM, AND CONDITION OF NEGLECTED CHILDREN BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.
Exposure of Children in Rome—Comments by Latin Authors upon the
Practice—Terence—Seneca—Suetonius—Rebukes by Early Christian
Preachers—Quintilian—Tertullian—Lactantius—First "Children's Asylum"
under Trajan—Charity of the Antonines—Legislation of the Christian
Emperors—Influence of the Germanic Races—Legislation on the Exposure
of Children—First Children's Asylums in the Christian Era—Brother
Guy—Neglected Children the only Remains of Ancient "Dangerous
Classes"—Change Wrought by Christianity—Influence of Christianity in
Reform………………………………………………..pp. 13-24
CHAPTER II.
THE PROLETAIRES OF NEW YORK.
Not so Numerous as in London, but more Dangerous—Dens of Crime and Fever-nests—Advantage of Breaking them up—The Unrestrained Vices of this Class—Their Ignorance and Brutality—Dependence on Politicians—Gangs of Youthful Criminals—Similar Dangers here as in Paris—The Riots of 1863—Numbers of the Vagrant Class—Composition of this Dangerous Element………………………………….pp. 25-31
CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF CRIME.
Preventible and Non-preventible—Ignorance—Numbers of Illiterates in
City Prisons and Reformatories—Orphanage—Statistics—Orphans in
Mettrai—Emigration—Effect in Producing Crime—Numbers of Prisoners of
Foreign Births—Figures—Hopeful Features—Fewer Paupers Immigrate—Want
of Trade—Selfishness of Unions—Aversion to Steady Industry..pp. 32-38
CHAPTER IV.
CAUSES OF CRIME—WEAKNESS OF MARRIAGE-TIE.
Reasons why Second Marriage is Productive of Crime among the Poor—Force
of Public Opinion in Preserving Marriage-bond—Weakening of it by
Emigration—Fruits of Free Love among the Poor—INHERITANCE—Power of
Transmitted Tendencies in Producing Crime—Hopeful Feature in New
York—Few Continued Families of Paupers and Criminals—Action of Natural
Selection in Favor of Virtue—Vicious Organizations Die Out—Explanation
of Extraordinary Improvement in Children under Reformatory
Influences—The Immediate Influences of Bad Parents Overcome by the
Transmitted Tendencies of Virtuous Ancestors, and by New
Circumstances—The Incessant Change of our People Favorable to
Virtue—Villages more Exposed to Criminal Families than
Cities—Causes…………………………………………pp. 39-50
CHAPTER V.
CAUSES OF CRIME—OVERCROWDING.
Form of New York—Its Effect on Population—Bad Government Increases Rents—Rate of Population to the Square Mile in the Eleventh Ward—In the Tenth, Seventeenth, and other Wards—In London—Greater Overcrowding in New York—Instance of Overcrowding in the First Ward—Effect on the Criminal Habits of Girls—The Dens of Criminal Boys—Cellar Population—Effect of Overcrowding on the Death-rate—Upon the Crime of the City-Remedies—Better Means of Distributing Population—Improved Communications with the Country—Cheap and Honest Government—Organized Movement for Transferring Labor to the Country—Remedy in Sanitary Legislation—Effect of British Lodging-house Acts—Cellar Population of Liverpool—The Model Lodging-houses—Great Need of them in New York………………………………………………….pp. 51-63
CHAPTER VI.
CAUSES OF CRIME—INTEMPERANCE.
The Power of Alcoholic Stimulus on the Laboring-man—Attraction of the
Liquor-shop—Terrible Effects of Drunkenness—Number of Criminals in
City Prisons Intemperate—Little Drunkenness among Children—Great
Effects of the Total Abstinence Reform—Good Influence of the Irish
Catholic Clergy—Necessity for other Remedies—Cultivation of Higher
Tastes—Influence of the Sydenham Palace Gardens in England—Effects of
Parks and Pictures—Open-Air Drinking not so Dangerous—Museums, Parks,
Gardens, and Reading-rooms, the beat Temperance Societies—Few Children
of the Industrial Schools become Drunkards—Comparative Good Effects of
Light Wines—Liquor Laws—Former Sunday Law a Happy
Medium—The Habits of the Germans should have been considered—Mistake
of the Reformers—Intemperance, next to War, the Greatest Evil of
Humanity—Other Remedies than Total Abstinence must be
employed………………………………………………pp. 64-73
CHAPTER VII.
ORGANIZATION OF A REMEDY.
Necessity of One Organization to Deal with Youthful Criminal
Classes—Error made of using too Technical Religious Methods—Error
of Following too much European Precedents—Asylums not so much Needed
in America—Pioneer Work among the Dangerous Classes Twenty Years
Ago—Captain Matsell's Report—Labors of the Writer in the Five
Points—Numbers of Homeless Children in the Streets—Sad Sight of
Child-Prisoners—"The Social Evil"—Mr. Pease's Labors—The Necessity
Felt of a General Organization—Novel Method of Reforming Young
"Roughs"—BOYS' MEETINGS—The Chaffing of Street-boys—Quick
Repartees—Kind of Oratory Necessary—The Lads Open for Earnest
Words—The Meetings only Pioneer Work—Succeeded by more Thorough
Influences—The Founders of the Different Meetings…………pp. 74-83
CHAPTER VIII.
A NEW ORGANIZATION.
Foundation of the CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY—Touching Procession of
Homeless Children to the Office—The Feeling at its Foundation—Its
Objects—To Found Reading-rooms, Industrial Schools, Lodging-houses, and
Provide Homes for the Homeless—Dens of Misery and Crime—Thieves'
Lodging-houses—"Rotten Row"—"Poverty Lane"—Haunts of the Young
Wood-stealers—Hopes of the New Work—Workshops—Want of
Success—Causes—Necessity of General Education, rather than Industrial,
for Street-children…………………………………….pp. 84-96
CHAPTER IX.
HOMELESS BOYS—THE NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.
Their Relation to the World, like that of the Indians to
Civilization—Life of the Street-boy—His Lightheartedness—His Moral
Code—His Religion—Few Addicted to Drinking—Their
Generosity—Policy-tickets—Choice of Night Resting-places—Necessity to
treat them as Independent Dealers—First Lodging-house for Newsboys In
the World—Mr. Tracy—Plans of the Boys for a Scrimmage—Their
Defeat—Remarks about their Beds—Origin of the Night-school—And the
Sunday Meeting—Surprise at the Golden Rule—Belief in Miracles—Pathos
of their songs—The Savings'-bank—Breaking up of Gambling and Money
Wasting—Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor—Their Fitness for the Work—Immense
Number of Lodgers—The Influence of the House—Payments by the
Lads—Description of Rooms—The New Building—Extracts from Journal
Statistics……………………………………………pp. 97-113
CHAPTER X.
STREET-GIRLS—THEIR SUFFERING AND CRIME.
Hard Lot of A Girl-vagrant—Sexual Vice—Dark Questions—Girls' Vices More Degrading than the Boys'—Effect on her Habits and Character—Great Difficulty of Reform—History of Prostitutes not Romantic—Their lives the Fruit of Neglect in Early Childhood, and of Lazy Habits—Their Good Qualities—Remedies for the Social Evil—Sad Incident of a Young Girl in the Tombs……………………………………………pp. 114-122
CHAPTER XI.
LEGAL TREATMENT OF PROSTITUTES.
Should License be Allowed?—The Views of Physicians—Foolish Arguments
on the Other Side—Duties of a Physician Purely Medical—Objections to
License under the Moral Aspect—Bitter Misery of this Class of
Women—Effect of License to Encourage the Crime—The Recognition by
Law—Prostitution can be Checked—Condition of this Class in New York
Terrible—Necessity of Hospitals or Dispensaries for this Class in the
City—The Absurdity of the Berlin License Laws—Non-licensing a Terror
to Evil-doers—This Not a Proper Object for Legislators—Effect of
License in Paris—Superiority of New York to other Great Cities in this
Matter Partly Due to Non-licensing……………………..pp. 123-131
CHAPTER XII.
THE BEST PREVENTIVE OF VICE AMONG CHILDREN—INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.
Public Schools not Reaching the Poorer Children—Numbers of Vagrant Children Twenty Years Ago—Foundation of the Wilson School—The Rookeries of the Fourth Ward—Dance-saloons—Crime of the Ward—Numbers of Wild Children—Efforts to Form an Association among the Rich to connect the Two Ends of Society—All Sects, and those of no Sect, Invited—Foundation of Fourth-ward Industrial School—Description of the Children—Influence of Volunteer Teachers—Their Self-sacrifice—Description of some of the Ladies Engaged—Effects of the Work on Crime in the Fourth Ward—Marked Improvement—Dr. Robert Ray's Services—Remarkable Diminution of Vagrancy in the Ward—Instance from our Journal—Average Expense of the School………….pp. 139-146
CHAPTER XIII.
GERMAN RAG-PICKERS.
Their Quarters on the Eastern Side—Number in the Eleventh
Ward—Formation of an Association for their Benefit—Its Moving
Spirit—Social Influences in the School—Its Effect on the
Rag-pickers—Aid from the German Merchants—A Devoted Teacher—Dutch
Hill and the Swill-gatherers—Description of the Squatters'
Village—Character of the People—Drunkenness—Faith of the
Children—Personal Efforts—Discouraging Features of the Work—Influence
of Roman Catholicism—Difficulties of a Protestant—Influence of the
Priests—Formation of an Association of Ladies on Murray
Hill—Foundation of East River Industrial School—Mrs. Hurley—Her
Devoted Labors for Seventeen Years—Attachment of Children to
Her—Reform among the Children—Influence of Volunteer
Teachers—Incidents among the Poor—A Heroic Girl—Happy Changes of
Fortune—Remarkable Success among Two Thousand Children—"Our
Failures"—The Beggar's Family…………………………pp. 147-164
CHAPTER XIV.
SCENES AMONG THE POOR.
The Street-child—Effects of Drunkenness—A Mother Fleeing her
Daughter-The Dying Sewing-woman—Severe Labor—Christian Faith—Changes
of Fortune—Discouragement—The Iron-worker's Wife—A Little
Beggar—Religious Trouble—The Swill-gatherer's Child—Danger of Ruin—A
Reform—Present Condition of East River School…………..pp. 165-173
CHAPTER XV.
THE PROTESTANT POOR AND STREET-ROVERS.
Formation of an Association of Ladies on the West Side—Hudson River Industrial School—Perseverance of Volunteer Teachers—Protestant Poor no Better than Catholic—"Muscular Orphans"—Wild Boys near East Thirty fourth Street—Skillful Thieves—Efforts of the School—Transference to Eleventh Street—Dock Pilferers—Success of our Efforts—Need of Lodging-house in Thirty-fourth Street…………………..pp. 174-180
CHAPTER XVI.
NEW METHODS OF TEACHING.
Generous Proposal of a Benevolent Lady—Her Labors among the Poor—Miss
Andrew's Teaching—Pestalozzi's System—Old Systems too Mechanical and
too much Memorizing—Effects in Loose Habits of Thinking—Inaccurate
Observation—Children Found Incompetent for Practical Life—Object
System begins with the Senses—First Learning of Colors and of
Numbers—Sounds Taught before Names of Letters—Dr. Leigh's System—Mr.
Caulkins's Views—Words to be Learned First, Letters Afterward—Spelling
to be Learned After Reading—Quotation from Mr. Caulkins's Work—New
Method of learning Geography—Geography Becomes a Natural
Science—Natural History Taught by Objects—Lessons in Morality and
Religion given in a Similar Manner—Weights, Measures, and Geometry thus
Taught—Definition Learned through Objects—Spelling and Grammar in like
Manner—Great Effort on part of the Teacher……………..pp. 181-193
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LITTLE ITALIAN ORGAN-GRINDERS.
Italian Quarter in Five Points—Cruelty of the Padroni—Rev. Dr.
Hawks—Signor Cerqua—Description of the Five Points' Italian
Settlement—Characteristics of Poor Italians—Foundation of Italian
School in 1855—Opposition of Bigoted Italians—Anathemas of the
Priest—Increase of the School—Mental Improvement—Moral
Progress—Gratitude of Poor Italians—Visits among the Rookeries of the
Five Points—Dens in Baxter Street—Feeling of Italian Children towards
their Teacher—Assistants by American-Italians—Co-operation of the
Italian Government—Generosity of Italian Children to other
Charities……………………………………………pp. 194-211
CHAPTER XVII.
THE "LAMBS" or COTTAGE PLACE.
Mr. Macy's Efforts—A Free Reading-room—Earnest Nature of the
Work—Self-sacrifice of Lady Volunteers—Miss Macy's Treatment of
Colored Children during the Riots—Good Effects of the School in
Preventing Thieving and Begging—Cottage-place School—The Little
Beggars of the First Ward—Application to Trinity Church—Mr. Lord's
Valuable Assistance—Interesting Incident—Reform of a Street-sweeper in
the "Lord School"—A Ragged School on St John's Park—Fourteenth-ward
Industrial School—The Colored Poor—Other Industrial Schools—The
Shanty People near the Park—Interesting Night-school—Efforts to
prevent a New "Nineteenth street Gang"—No Children Admitted who can
attend Public Schools—Improvement In the Teaching—Superintendent of
Schools and Visitors………………………………….pp. 212-222
CHAPTER XIX.
THE BEST REMEDY FOR JUVENILE PAUPERISM.
Effects of Overcrowding—No Local Charities a Complete Remedy—Asylums
not Sufficient—Best Asylum, the "Farmer's Home"—Advantage in the
United States—Unlimited Demand for Labor—Best Remedy Emigration to the
West—Objections to the Plan—How they were Met—Incident of a
Waif—Humanity of our Countrywomen—Method of Placing Out the
Children—Difficulties of the Local Committees…………..pp. 223-233
CHAPTER XX.
PROVIDING COUNTRY HOMES—THE OPPOSITION TO THIS REMEDY—ITS EFFECTS.
Hostility of Ignorant Roman Catholics—Objections of the
Poor—Opposition of the Asylum Interest—Arguments of the Asylum Plan
and for the Emigration Method—A Practical Test to Apply—Advantages of
the Discussion—Effort to Obtain Statistics—Figures of the Results in
the West—Testimony from Great Numbers of People—Wonderful
Improvement—Changes of Fortune—The Great Majority become Honest
Producers—Unlimited Demand from the West—No Indentures
Required—Virtues in both Plans—Opposition of Priests—Our Action
Unsectarian—Net Expenses for Each Emigrants—Amount of Returned Fares
Collected—All the Pauper Children of the City could be thus
Placed—Answer to Prof. Fawcett's Objection—Our Western Agents—Mr.
Tracy's Quaint Humor—Defective Children—No Accident has ever
Happened…………………………………………….pp. 234-245
CHAPTER XXI.
RESULTS AND FACTS OF EMIGRATION TO THE WEST.
Our First Party of Little Emigrants—A Description of the Waifs—Hard
Journey in Emigrant Cars—Excitement of the Boys in the
Country—Reception in the Western Village—Their Sweet Songs—The
Runaway—The Placing-out of the Boys—The Lost Boy Returned—A Later
Party to the West—Eagerness to Obtain the Children—Sympathy for the
Boys—The Fortune of the Deaf-mute—A Hungry Child Placed in a Good
Home—From the Gutter to the College—Once a New-York Pauper, now a
Western Farmer……………………………………….pp. 246-270
CHAPTER XXII.
A PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST AMONG THE YOUNG ROUGHS.
A Description of the Office of the Children's Aid Society—Central Figure—Mr. Macy—Labors with his "Lambs" in Cottage Place—Stormy Meetings—His Influence over the Young Vagrants—The Growth of the Mission—His Humor—The Effect of His Sermon on Stealing—Contest of Wits—His Torments from the Girls—His Dread of Paupers—Efforts among the German Children—His Diplomatic Tact in Office-work—His Letters to the Children Stereotyped by the Thousand………………..pp. 271-279
CHAPTER XXIII.
RAISING MONEY FOR A CHARITY.
Sensation to be Avoided—All Raffles and Pathetic Exhibitions
Declined—Our Experience with a Concert—Labors through the Pulpit and
the Press—Character of the Trustees who entered in the Work—Sources of
Income—Mr. Barnard's Bequest—Mr. Chauncy Rose's Great Benefaction—The
Income of a Single Year—Different Sources from which it is
Derived……………………………………………..pp. 280-285
CHAPTER XXIV.
REFORM AMONG THE ROWDIES—FREE READING-ROOMS.
They Require Peculiar Management to be Successful—The Eleventh-ward
Reading-room—Its Failure—A Reformed Pugilist—"Awful Gardner"-His
Career—The Death of His Son—His Reform—His Words to His Old
Associates—The Effect of Christianity—The Drunkard's Club in the
Fourth Ward—Mr. Beecher's Address—Gardner's Speech—His Influence over
the Rowdies—His Theory of Reform—Great Numbers Rescued from
Drunkenness—Failure of his Health—Genuineness of his Reform—Mr.
Macy's Reading-room—The First-ward Room—Mr. J. Couper Lord—Mr.
Hawley's Exertions—The Free Reading-room a Recognized Means of Moral
Improvement………………………………………….pp. 286-297
CHAPTER XXV.
HOMELESS GIRLS.
The President of the Society—Mr. William A. Booth—His Character and
Capacity—His Policy in Regard to the Lodging-houses—His Suggestion
about the Street-girls—The Histories of these Girls—Causes of their
Condition—Their Unstable Character—Their Condition Fifteen Years Ago
Hopeless—THE GIRLS' LODGING-HOUSE—Its Plan—Means of Filling
it—Miserable Girls who Applied for Admission—Great Difficulties
Encountered—Necessity of Confining it to the Young, and Those not
Vicious—Principal Frequenters, Young Girls between Fourteen and
Eighteen—The Matron—Her Characteristics—The House was not to be an
Asylum—Our Effort to put the Girls in Places—Struggles of Mr. and Mrs.
Trott—Incidents from the Journal—Cases of Reform—THE SEWING-MACHINE
SCHOOL—Its Great Success—TRAINING SCHOOL FOR SERVANTS—Results from
the Work of the Lodging-house………………………….pp. 298-315
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NINETEENTH-STREET GANG OF RUFFIANS—"A MORAL DISINFECTANT."
History of the Formation of the Nineteenth-street Gang—Our Efforts to
Reform it—Mr. Slater's Labors—Improvement of Vagabond Boys—Reform of
Petty Thieves—Good Fortune of a Homeless Lad—Warning, in 1854, from
the Danger of these Lads—Their Extraordinary Crimes—Murder of Mr.
Swanton—Murder of Mr. Rogers—Failure at that time of our Reformatory
Efforts—Renewed In 1865—Lodging-house Founded in Eighteenth
Street—The Superintendent—His Characteristics—The Assistance of a
Benevolent Gentleman—His Influence over the Boys—Mr. Gourley's
Economy—A Test of his Patience—The Ingratitude of Two Boys—Their
Improvement—The Reformatory Effects of the Lodging-house—Its Tabular
Statement……………………………………………pp. 316-329
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MINISTRY OF FLOWERS—THE LITTLE VAGABONDS OF CORLEAR'S HOOK.
The Rookeries of the "Hook"—The "Gavroches" and "Topsies" of the
Quarter—Great Number of Homeless Children—A School-building turned
into a Lodging-house—The Superintendent—His Artistic
Faculty—Flowers—A Novel Reward for the Children—Distribution of
Flowers among the Poor—An Aquarium and Green-house—The Industrial
School—An Earnest Teacher—The Children Like Little Indians—The
Night-school and Free Reading-room—Sunday-evening Meetings—Assistance
by various Gentlemen—A Young Army Officer and others—The Effect of
these Meetings—The Purchase of the House—Begging Money for
Charities—A Disagreeable Duty—Liberality of New York Merchants—Labors
of Two of the Trustees—Gift of a Beautiful Conservatory to the
Lodging-house—The Attractions of the School-room—Mothers'
Meetings—Statistics of the Lodging-house—ELEVENTH-WARD
LODGING-HOUSE—The Little Copper-stealers—Difficulties of the
Superintendent in this House—Final Success—The Night-school,
Day-school, and Bank—Sunday-evening Meetings—Labors of One
Trustee—Our Hopes to Secure Better
Lodging-house—Statistics……………………………..pp. 330-338
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CHILD VAGRANT.
Passion for Roving Among Children—A Rover Reformed—Sent to the West,
and Wanders over the Woods and Mountains—The Habits of Little
Street-Vagrants—Unaccountable Preference for Particular
Lodging-houses—Greatest Number in the Spring—Different Class of Boys
in each House—Mystery of what Becomes of a Great Number of
Them—Down-town Boys Sharper than the Up-town—Influence of Theatres
upon them—The Salvation of New York its Climate—A Corrective—A
License should be Required of each Street-trader—A License to be
Accompanied by a School Certificate—Such a Law could be
Executed—Success of similar Boston Laws—School-training Preventing
Vagrancy and Pauperism—Truant-schools not Needed—Compulsory
Education—Half-time Schools—Such a Law not Needed Formerly, Now
Required Everywhere—Statistics of Illiteracy—The Ignorant Form the
Dangerous Classes in this City—The Power of Prussia in the Compulsory
Law—An Approach to in the Legislation in the Different States on
Factory children……………………………………..pp. 339-352
CHAPTER XXIX.
FACTORY-CHILDREN AND THE NEW LAW PROPOSED.
Experience in the Night-schools—Great Numbers of Young Children
Employed in Factories—Their Eagerness to Learn—Experience of
England—Statistics of Children Employed in Factories in New York—Facts
and Incidents—Mr. Mundella's Views of the Evils in this
Country—Massachusetts Legislation—Effects of the Law—Half-time
Schools—"Double Gangs"—Rhode Island Legislation—Connecticut
Legislation—Description of the Act—Defects of the Law—Hearty
Co-operation of the Manufacturers—The New York Law Proposed, Drawn up
by Mr. C. E. Whitehead, Secures Education for all Children Employed, and
Protects them from Dangers…………………………….pp. 353-365
CHAPTER XXX.
ORGANIZATION OF CHARITIES.
Enthusiasm of Humanity—Necessity of Machinery—Danger of
Routine—Importance of Interested Motives—Duties of
Trustees—Compensation—Charity should not be Too Much of a
Business—Importance of other Pursuits for an Agent of a Charity—Best
Constitution of a Board of Trustees—Importance of their Personal Share
in the Work—Rigid Inspection Necessary—Duties of the Executive
Officers…………………………………………….pp. 366-376
CHAPTER XXXI.
STATE AID TO CHARITIES.
Discussion How Far the State should Aid in Charities—Dangers of State
Endowments—Weakness of Individual Charities—Danger of Machinery Taking
Place of Work—The Natural Family Better than the Asylum Machinery—The
Needless Multiplication of Charities—Bad Effects on the Poor and on the
Public—A Trade in Alms—Necessity of a Bureau—Should be Directed by
the State Board of Charities…………………………..pp. 377-387
CHAPTER XXXII.
HOW BEST TO GIVE ALMS—"TAKE, NOT GIVE."
Reply of the missionary in East London—The Evil of
Alms-giving—Experience of the English—Everything given but
Education—Charity Expenses of London—Good Fortune of this
Country—Degrading Influence of Alms—Able-bodied Paupers in New
York—Transmitted Pauperism—Terrible Instance in an Alms-house in
Western New York—Outdoor Relief very Dangerous—Ought to be Limited in
this City—Private Alms Better—Abuse of Private Benefactions—Great
Number of Deserving Poor in the City—Policy of the Children's Aid
Society—They Desire to Prevent the Demand for Alms—Our Lodging-houses
Cultivate Independence—Boys Obliged to Pay—The "Howland
Fund"—Distribution of Gifts on Christmas—Objection to the "Bootblack
Brigade"—Our Industrial Schools Reformatories of Pauperism—Garments
given as Rewards for Good Conduct—Begging Discouraged—Parents Induced
to Save—Principle of this Society to give Education rather than
Alms………………………………………………..pp. 388-397
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HOW SHALL CRIMINAL CHILDREN BE TREATED?
The Child, above all, an Individual—Unsuited to be put in a large
Institution—Influence of a Number of Criminal Children on One
Another—Absence of the Most Powerful Forces of the Outside World—The
Work of a Reformatory not suited for After-life—Working the Ground the
Best—Garden-work very Useful for Criminal Young Girls—Mr. Pease's
Success—The True Plan—The "Family System"—Each Child does the Small
Work of the Cottage—Children near the Natural Condition—Only Defect
the Unprofitableness of the Labor—The Most Successful Reformatories of
Europe on the Family System……………………………pp. 398-403
CHAPTER XXXIV.
WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH FOUNDLINGS?
The Need of Shelter for Illegitimate Children—Their Numbers in European
Cities—Estimated Number in New York—Number of Still-births—Relation
of Illegitimacy to Crime—Statistics in France—Foundling
Asylums—Terrible Mortality of London Foundling Hospital, also of St
Petersburg and Paris Hospitals—Former Great Mortality of
Infant-Hospital in New York—Recent Improvement—Mortality of the
Massachusetts Alms-house, and in Dorchester Infant-Asylum—Great
Difficulty in Raising a Child without a Nurse or its Mother—Best Course
is, "PLACING-OUT SYSTEM"—Great Success of "Bureau of Ste.
Apolline"—Mortality Greatly Reduced—Children Scattered over
France—The Outlay by the Government—The Moral Effects—This Bureau to
be Distinguished from Private Bureaus—The Boarding out in Hamburg, in
Berlin, in Dublin—The FAMILY PLAN—Tendency of all Civilized Countries
towards this Plan—All the Illegitimate Children in this City might be
Placed out in Country Homes—Duties of the Legislature in regard to
Illegitimacy—Objections to the French Turning-tables—Too Great Laxness
Injurious—The New York Law too Severe………………….pp. 404-417
CHAPTER XXXV.
RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION FOR STREET-CHILDREN.
The Difficulties of Religious Teaching—Street-children not to be
Influenced like Sunday Schools—Rhetoric and Sentiment do not Touch
Them—True Oratory and the Dramatic Method always Reach them—They are
Peculiarly Open to Religion, but Exposed to Overwhelming
Temptations—Solemn Aspect of their Position to the Speaker—The
Problem—The Object to Implant Religious Love and Faith—Moral
Influences not Sufficient—"Bread-and-Butter Piety" Doubtful—Objection
to Prizes or Rewards—Religious Instruction not so desirable as
Religious Inspiration—The New Testament to be Preferred to the Old—The
Knowledge and Faith in Christ, Most of all Needed—What this Faith Has
Done, and What it Can Do—Mistakes of Sunday-school Oratory—Rhetorical
Pyrotechnics not Wanted—Allegory the Best Method—Our Best Speaker a
Sportsman—His Sympathies with Boys and with Nature—"BIBLE IN
SCHOOLS"—Religious Instruction in Public Schools Desirable, if all were
of the same Faith—Bible-reading used by the Priests Against the
Schools—Free Schools the Life-blood of the Nation—Protestants should
Never Allow Them to be Broken Up—Protestant Pluck—Are School Religious
Exercises of Much Use—Separation of Church and State—Experience of
England—Free Schools without Religion, rather than no Free
Schools……………………………………………..pp. 418-428
CHAPTER XXXVI.
DECREASE OF JUVENILE CRIME—COST OF PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT.
Instance of the Three Brothers in the Newsboys' Lodging-house—The
Damage Inflicted by One on the Community—The Gain brought by the Labor
of the Others—Cost of Our Criminals last Year—Amount of Property
Taken—Expenses of Prevention—Average Cost of each Child in our
Industrial Schools—In our Lodging-houses—And when sent to the
West—Number Provided for in the Country—Crime Checked—Commitments of
Female Vagrants—Arrests of Female Vagrants—Commitments for
Thieving—For "Juvenile Delinquency"—Number of Girls under Fifteen
Years Old Imprisoned—Great Decrease of Crime among Girls—Crime Checked
among Boys—Commitment of Boys for Vagrancy—For Petit Larceny—Number
of Boys under Fifteen Years Old Imprisoned—Number between Fifteen and
Twenty—Arrests of Pickpockets—Of Petty Thieves—Of Girls under
Twenty—Estimate of Money Saved in One Year by Reduction of
Commitments………………………………………….pp. 429-439
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS OF THE WORK.
This Charity has always Encouraged Self-help—No Pauperism Stimulated under it—The Laborer in this Field sees the Fruit—Harmony with Natural Laws sought for constantly—Advantage Taken of Demand for Labor—The Family Home sought for, rather than the Asylum—Lodging-houses not Permitted to become Homes—Evening-schools—Savings'-bank, Religious Meeting, and Day-school—All Stimulates Self-help—The Forces under the Society the Strongest Forces of life—The Work Founded on Natural Principles—Just Treatment of the Employes by the Trustees—This Charity as well served as any Business-house—The Aim of the Executive Officer with the Employes—Great Success of many of them—One Million of Dollars passed through the Treasury, and not One Squandered—High Character of the Board of Trustees—The Success much Dependent on them—Tabulation of the Accounts—Long Services of the Treasurer, Mr. J. E. Williams—The Sectarian Danger—Great Care to Avoid this—The Utmost Publicity a Necessity—Need for State Aid—Sensation to be Avoided—Hopes that this Charity will Scatter its Blessings for Generations to come..pp. 440-448
THE DANGEROUS CLASSES
OF NEW YORK;
AND TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM.
——
CHAPTER I.
CHRIST IN CHARITY AND REFORM.
THE CONDITION OF NEGLECTED CHILDREN BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.
The central figure in the world's charity is CHRIST. An eloquent rationalistic writer—Mr. Lecky—speaking of the Christian efforts in early ages in behalf of exposed children and against infanticide, says:
"Whatever mistakes may have been made, the entire movement I have traced displays an anxiety not only for the life, but for the moral well-being, of the castaways of society, such as the most humane nations of antiquity had never reached. This minute and scrupulous care for human life and human virtue in the humblest forms, in the slave, the gladiator, the savage, or the infant, was indeed wholly foreign to the genius of Paganism. It was produced by the Christian doctrine of the inestimable value of each immortal soul.
"It is the distinguishing and transcendent characteristic of every society into which the spirit of Christianity has passed."
Christ has indeed given a new value to the poorest and most despised human being.
When one thinks what was the fate before He lived, throughout the civilized world, of for instance one large and pitiable class of human beings—unfortunate children, destitute orphans, foundlings, the deformed and sickly, and female children of the poor; how almost universal, even under the highest pagan civilization—the Greek and Roman—infanticide was; how Plato and Aristotle both approved of it; how even more common was the dreadful exposure of children who were physically imperfect or for any cause disagreeable to their parents, so that crowds of these little unfortunates were to be seen exposed around a column near the Velabrum at Rome—some being taken to be raised as slaves, others as prostitutes, others carried off by beggars and maimed for exhibition, or captured by witches to be murdered, and their bodies used in their magical preparations; when one remembers for how many centuries, even after the nominal introduction of Christianity, the sale of free children was permitted by law, and then recalls how utterly the spirit of the Founder of Christianity has exterminated these barbarous practices from the civilized world; what vast and ingenious charities exist in every Christian country for this unfortunate class; what time and wealth and thought are bestowed to heal the diseases, purify the morals, raise the character, and make happy the life of foundlings, outcast girls and boys and orphans, we can easily understand that the source of the charities of civilized nations has been especially in Christ; and knowing how vital the moral care of unfortunate children is to civilization itself the most skeptical among us may still put Him at the head of even modern social reform.
EXPOSURE OF CHILDREN.
The "exposure of children" is spoken of casually and with indifference by numerous Latin authors. The comedians include the custom in their pictures of the daily Roman life, usually without even a passing condemnation. Thus, in Terence's play (Heauton: Act iii., sc. v.), the very character who uttered the apothegm which has become a proverb of humanity for all ages—"I am a man, and nothing belonging to man is alien to me"—is represented, on the eve of his departure on a long journey, as urging his wife to destroy the infant soon to be born, if it should prove to be a girl, rather than expose it. She, however, exposes it, and it was taken, as was usual, and brought up as a prostitute. This play turns in its plot, as is true of many popular comedies, on this exposition of the abandoned child.
It is frequently commented on by Roman dramatists, and subsequently by the early Christian preachers, that, owing to this terrible custom, brothers might marry sisters, or fathers share in the ruin of their unknown daughters in houses of crime.
Seneca, who certainly always writes with propriety and aims to be governed by reason, in his treatise on Anger (De Ira: i., 15), comments thus calmly on the practice: "Portentos foetus extingnimus; liberos quoque si debiles, monstrosique editi sunt, mergimus. Non ira, sed ratio est, a sanis, inutilia secernere." (Monstrous offspring we destroy; children too, if weak and unnaturally formed from birth, we drown. It is not anger, but reason, thus to separate the useless from the sound.)
In another work (Controversi, lib. v., 33), he denounces the horrible practice, common in Rome, of maiming these unfortunate children and then offering them to the gaze of the compassionate. He describes the miserable little creatures with shortened limbs, broken Joints, and carved backs, exhibited by the villainous beggars who had gathered them at the Lactaria, and then deformed them: "Volo nosse," "I should like to know" says the moralist, with a burst of human indignation, "illam calamitatum humanarum officinam—illud infantum spoliarium!"—"that workshop of human misfortunes—those shambles of infants!"
On the day that Germanicus died, says Suetonius (in Calig., n. 5), "Subversae Deam arae, partus conjugum expositi," parents exposed their new-born babes.
The early Christian preachers and writers were unceasing in their denunciations of the practice.
Quintilian (Decl. 306, vol vi., p. 236) draws a most moving picture of the fate of these unhappy children left in the Forum: "Rarum est ut expositi vivant! Yos ponite ante oculos puerum statim neglectum * * * inter feras et volucres."
"It is rare that the exposed survive!" he says.
Tertullian, in an eloquent passage (Apol., c. 9), asks: "Quot vultis ex his circumstantibus et in christianum sanguinem hiantibus * * * apud conscientias pulsem, qui natos sibi liberos enecent?"
"How many, do you suppose, of those standing about and panting for the blood of Christians, if I should put it to them before their very conscience, would deny that they killed their own children?"
Lactantius, who was the tutor of the son of Constantine, in a book dedicated to Constantine, protests: "It is impossible to grant that one has the right to strangle one's new-born children"; and speaks of exposition as exposing one's own blood—"ad servitutem vel ad lupanar"—"for slavery or the brothel." "It is a crime as execrable to expose a child as to kill him."
So fearfully did the numbers increase, under the Roman Empire, of these unfortunate children, that the spark of charity, which is never utterly extinguished in the human breast, began to kindle. Pliny the Younger is said to have appropriated a sum equivalent to $52,000 (see Epist., v., 7), to found an asylum for fathers unable to support their children.
THE FIRST CHILDREN'S ASYLUM.
Probably the first society or asylum in history for poor children was the foundation established by the Emperor Trajan (about A. D. 110) for destitute and abandoned children. The property thus established in perpetuity, with real estate and money at interest (at five per cent.), was equivalent in value to $920,000, and supported some five thousand children of both sexes. Singularly enough, there seems to have been only one illegitimate child to one hundred and fifty legitimate in these institutions.
The Antonines, as might be expected, did not neglect this charity; but both Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius founded associations for destitute girls. Alexander Severus established one also for poor children. These form the only organized efforts made for this object, during many centuries, by the most civilized and refined state of antiquity.
The number, however, of these wretched creatures, increased beyond all cure from scattered exceptional efforts like these. Everywhere the poor got rid of their children by exposure, or sold them as slaves. The rich, if indifferent to their offspring, or unwilling to take the trouble of rearing them, sent them out to the public square, where pimps, beggars, witches, and slave-dealers gleaned their horrible harvest. At length, under the influence of Christianity, legislation began to take cognizance of the practice.
The Emperor Constantine, the Emperor Valentian, Valens, and Gratian, sixty years later, continued this humane legislation.
They ordered, under strict penalties, that every one should nourish his own children, and forbade exposition; declaring also that no one had the right to reclaim the children he had abandoned; the motive to this law being the desire to make it for the interest of those "taking up" exposed children to keep them, even if necessary, as slaves, against any outside claims.
Unfortunately, at that period, slavery was held a less evil than the ordinary fate to which the poor left their children.
The punishment of death was also decreed against Infanticide.
It is an interesting fact that a portion, and probably the whole, of our ancestral tribes looked with the greatest horror on abortion and infanticide. The laws of the Visigoths punished these offenses with death or blindness. Their influence, of course, should always be considered, as well as that of Christianity, in estimating the modern position of woman and the outcast child, as compared with their status under Greek and Roman civilization.
At a later period (412 A. D.) the imperial legislation again endeavored to prevent the reclaiming of exposed children from compassionate persons who had taken them. "Were they right to say that those children belonged to them when they had despised them even to the point of abandoning them to death?"
It was provided also, that in future no one should "take from the ground" exposed children except in the presence of witnesses, and that the archbishop should put his signature on the document of guardianship which was prepared. (Cod. Theod., lib. 5, tit. 7, De Expositis.)
Hitherto, exposed children had generally been taken and reared as slaves; but in A. D. 529, Justinian decreed that not only the father lost all legitimate authority over the child if he exposed it, but also that the child itself preserved its liberty.
This law applied only to the Eastern Empire; in the Western the slavery of exposed children continued for centuries. (Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, vol. ii, p. 32.) The Christian churches throughout the early centuries took especial care of orphans, in parish orphan nurseries, or orphanotrophioe.
The first asylums for deserted and foundling children which are recorded in the Christian era are one in Treves in the sixth century, one at Angiers in the seventh, and a more famous one in Milan, A. D. 787.
Societies for the protection of children were also formed in Milan in the middle of the twelfth century.
At the end of that century a monk of Montpelier, Brother GUY, formed what may be called the first "Children's Aid Society," for the protection, shelter, and education of destitute children, a fraternity which subsequently spread over Europe.
One great cause of the final extreme corruption and extinction of ancient pagan society was the existence of large classes of unfortunate beings, whom no social moral movement of renovation ever reached—the slaves, the gladiators, the barbarian strangers, and the outcast children.
To all these deep strata of misery and crime Christianity gradually penetrated, and brought life and light, and finally an almost entire metamorphosis. As criminal and unfortunate classes, they have—with the exception only of the children—ceased to exist under modern civilization. We have no longer at the basis of modern society the dangers of a multitude of ignorant slaves, or of disaffected barbarous foreigners, or of a profession of gladiators—brutal, brutalizing; but we do still have masses of unfortunate youth, whose condition, though immensely improved, and lightened by the influences of Christianity, is still one of the most threatening and painful phenomena of modern society in nearly all civilized countries.
Still, unlike the experience of Paganism under the Roman Empire and before it, rays of light, of intelligence, and of moral and spiritual influence penetrate to the depths of these masses. The spirit of Christ is slowly and irresistibly permeating even this lowest class of miserable, unfortunate, or criminal beings; inspiring those who perseveringly labor for them, drawing from wealth its dole and from intelligence its service of love, educating the fortunate in the habit of duty to the unfortunate, giving a dignity to the most degraded, and offering hope to the despairing.
CHRIST leads the Reform of the world, as well as its Charity.
Those who have much to do with alms-giving and plans of human improvement soon see how superficial and comparatively useless all assistance or organization is, which does not touch habits of life and the inner forces which form character. The poor helped each year become poorer in force and independence. Education is a better preventive of pauperism than charity. The best police and the most complete form of government are nothing if the individual morality be not there. But Christianity is the highest education of character. Give the poor that, and only seldom will either alms or punishment be necessary.
When one comes to know the peculiar overpowering temptations which beset the class of unfortunate children and similar, classes; the inducements to sharpness, deception, roguery, lying, fraud, coarseness, vice in many forms, besides toward open offenses against the law; the few restraining influences in social opinion, good example, or inherited self-control; the forces without and the organization within impelling to crime, and then sees how immensely powerful the belief in and love for a supernatural and noble character and Friend is upon such wild natures; how it inspires to nobleness, restrains low passions, changes bad habits, and transforms base hearts; how the thoughts of this supernatural Friend can accompany a child of the street, and make his daily hard life an offering of loving service; how the unseen sympathy can dry the orphan's tears, and throw a light of cheerfulness around the wan, pale face of the little vagrant, and bring down something of the splendor of heaven to the dark cellars and dreary dens of a great city: whoever has had this experience—not once, but many times—will begin to understand that Christ must lead Reform as well as Charity, and that without Him the worst diseases of modern society can never be cured.
[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (First Stage.)]
CHAPTER II.
THE PROLETAIRES OF NEW YORK.
New York is a much younger city than its European rivals; and with perhaps one-third the population of London, yet it presents varieties of life among the "masses" quite as picturesque, and elements of population even more dangerous. The throng of different nationalities in the American city gives a peculiarly variegated air to the life beneath the surface, and the enormous over-crowding in portions of the poor quarters intensifies the evils, peculiar to large towns, to a degree seen only in a few districts in such cities as London and Liverpool.
The mass of poverty and wretchedness is, of course, far greater in the English capital. There are classes with inherited pauperism and crime more deeply stamped in them, in London or Glasgow, than we ever behold in New York; but certain small districts can be found in our metropolis with the unhappy fame of containing more human beings packed to the square yard, and stained with more acts of blood and riot, within a given period, than is true of any other equal space of earth in the civilized world.
There are houses, well known to sanitary boards and the police, where Fever has taken a perennial lease, and will obey no legal summons to quit; where Cholera—if a single germ-seed of it float anywhere in American atmosphere—at once ripens a black harvest; where Murder has stained every floor of its gloomy stories, and Vice skulks or riots from one year's end to the other. Such houses are never reformed. The only hope for them is in the march of street improvements, which will utterly sweep them away.
It is often urged that the breaking-up of these "dens" and "fever-nests" only scatters the pestilence and moral disease, but does not put an end to them.
The objection is more apparent than real. The abolishing of one of these centres of crime and poverty is somewhat like withdrawing the virus from one diseased limb and diffusing it through an otherwise healthy body. It seems to lose its intensity. The diffusion weakens. Above all, it is less likely to become hereditary.
One of the remarkable and hopeful things about New York, to a close observer of its "dangerous classes," is, as I shall show in a future chapter, that they do not tend to become fixed and inherited, as in European cities.
But, though the crime and pauperism of New York are not so deeply stamped in the blood of the population, they are even more dangerous. The intensity of the American temperament is felt in every fibre of these children of poverty and vice. Their crimes have the unrestrained and sanguinary character of a race accustomed to overcome all obstacles. They rifle a bank, where English thieves pick a pocket; they murder, where European proletaires cudgel or fight with fists; in a riot, they begin what seems about to be the sacking of a city, where English rioters would merely batter policemen, or smash lamps. The "dangerous classes" of New York are mainly American-born, but the children of Irish and German immigrants. They are as ignorant as London flash-men or costermongers. They are far more brutal than the peasantry from whom they descend, and they are much banded together, in associations, such as "Dead Rabbit," "Plug-ugly," and various target companies. They are our enfants perdus, grown up to young manhood. The murder of an unoffending old man, like Mr. Rogers, is nothing to them. They are ready for any offense or crime, however degraded or bloody. New York has never experienced the full effect of the nurture of these youthful ruffians as she will one day. They showed their hand only slightly in the riots during the war. At present, they are like the athletes and gladiators of the Roman demagogues. They are the "roughs" who sustain the ward politicians, and frighten honest voters. They can "repeat" to an unlimited extent, and serve their employers. They live on "panem et circenses," or City-Hall places and pot-houses, where they have full credit.
We shall speak more particularly of the causes of crime in future chapters, but we may say in brief, that the young ruffians of New York are the products of accident, ignorance, and vice. Among a million people, such as compose the population of this city and its suburbs, there will always be a great number of misfortunes; fathers die, and leave their children unprovided for; parents drink, and abuse their little ones, and they float away on the currents of the street; step-mothers or step-fathers drive out, by neglect and ill-treatment, their sons from home. Thousands are the children of poor foreigners, who have permitted them to grow up without school, education, or religion. All the neglect and bad education and evil example of a poor class tend to form others, who, as they mature, swell the ranks of ruffians and criminals. So, at length, a great multitude of ignorant, untrained, passionate, irreligious boys and young men are formed, who become the "dangerous class" of our city. They form the "Nineteenth-street Gangs," the young burglars and murderers, the garroters and rioters, the thieves and flash-men, the "repeaters" and ruffians, so well known to all who know this metropolis.
THE DANGERS.
It has been common, since the recent terrible Communistic outbreak in Paris, to assume that France alone is exposed to such horrors; but, in the judgment of one who has been familiar with our "dangerous classes" for twenty years, there are just the same explosive social elements beneath the surface of New York as of Paris.
There are thousands on thousands in New York who have no assignable home, and "flit" from attic to attic, and cellar to cellar; there are other thousands more or less connected with criminal enterprises; and still other tens of thousands, poor, hard-pressed, and depending for daily bread on the day's earnings, swarming in tenement-houses, who behold the gilded rewards of toil all about them, but are never permitted to touch them.
All these great masses of destitute, miserable, and criminal persons believe that for ages the rich have had all the good things of life, while to them have been left the evil things. Capital to them is the tyrant.
Let but Law lift its hand from them for a season, or let the civilizing influences of American life fail to reach them, and, if the opportunity offered, we should see an explosion from this class which might leave this city in ashes and blood.
To those incredulous of this, we would recall the scenes in our streets during the riots in 1863, when, for a short period, the guardians of good order—the local militia—had been withdrawn for national purposes, and when the ignorant masses were excited by dread of the draft.
Who will ever forget the marvelous rapidity with which the better streets were filled with a ruffianly and desperate multitude, such as in ordinary times we seldom see—creatures who seemed to have crept from their burrows and dens to join in the plunder of the city—how quickly certain houses were marked out for sacking and ruin, and what wild and brutal crimes were committed on the unoffending negroes? It will be recalled, too, how much women figured in these horrible scenes, as they did in the Communistic outbreak in Paris. It was evident to all careful observers then, that had another day of license been given the crowd, the attack would have been directed at the apparent wealth of the city—the banks, jewelers' shops, and rich private houses.
No one doubted then, or during the Orange riot of 1871, the existence of "dangerous classes" in New York. And yet the separate members of these riotous and ruffianly masses are simply neglected and street-wandering children who have come to early manhood.
The true preventive of social catastrophes like these, are just such Christian reformatory and educational movements as we are about to describe.
Of the number of the distinctly homeless and vagrant youth in New York, it is difficult to speak with precision. We should be inclined to estimate it, after long observation, as fluctuating each year between 20,000 and 30,000. [The homeless children who come each year under the charitable efforts afterwards to be described amount to some 12,000.] But to these, as they mature, must be added, in the composition of the dangerous classes, all those who are professionally criminal, and who have homes and lodging-places. And again to these, portions of that vast and ignorant [It should be remembered that there are in this city over 60,000 persons above ten years of age who cannot write their names.] multitude, who, in prosperous times, just keep their heads above water, who are pressed down by poverty or misfortune, and who look with envy and greed at the signs of wealth and luxury all around them, while they themselves have nothing but hardship, penury, and unceasing drudgery.
CHAPTER III.
THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
The great practical division of causes of crime may be made into preventible and non-preventible. Among the preventible, or those which can be in good part removed, may be placed ignorance, intemperance, over-crowding of population, want of work, idleness, vagrancy, the weakness of the marriage-tie, and bad legislation.
Among those which cannot be entirely removed are inheritance, the effects of emigration, orphanage, accident or misfortune, the strength of the sexual and other passions, and a natural weakness of moral or mental powers.
IGNORANCE.
There needs hardly a word to be said in this country on the intimate connection between ignorance and crime.
The precise statistical relation between them in the State of New York would seem to be this: about thirty-one per cent. of the adult criminals cannot read or write, while of the adult population at large about six (6.08) per cent. are illiterate; or nearly one-third of the crime is committed by six-hundredths of the population. In the city prisons for 1870, out of 49,423 criminals, 18,442 could not write and could barely read, or more than thirty-three per cent.
[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Second Stage.)]
In the Reformatories of the country, according to the statement of Dr.
Bittinger before the National Congress on prison-discipline at
Cincinnati, out of the average number of the inmates for 1868, of 7,963
twenty-seven per cent. were wholly illiterate.
Very great criminality is, of course, possible with high education; but in the immense majority of cases a very small degree of mental training or intellectual tastes is a preventive of idleness and consequent crime and of extreme poverty. The difference between knowing how to read and not knowing will often be the line between utter poverty and a capacity for various occupations.
Among the inmates of the city prisons a large percentage are without a trade, and no doubt this idle condition is largely due to their ignorance and is one of the great stimulants to their criminal course. Who can say how much the knowledge of Geography alone may stimulate a child or a youth to emigrate, and thus leave his immediate temptations and escape pressing poverty?
ORPHANAGE.
Out of 452 criminal children received into the House of Refuge in New York during 1870, only 187 had both parents living, so that nearly sixty per cent. had lost one or both of their parents, or were otherwise separated from them.
According to Dr. Bittinger, [Transactions of the National Congress, p. 279.] of the 7,963 inmates of the reformatories in the United States in 1870, fifty-five per cent. were orphans or half orphans.
The following figures strikingly show the extent to which orphanage and inheritance influence the moral condition of children.
Mettrai, the celebrated French reformatory, has received since its foundation 3,580 youthful inmates. Of these, there are 707 whose parents are convicts; 308 whose parents live in concubinage; 534 "natural" children; 221 foundlings; 504 children of a second marriage; and 1,542 without either father or mother. [Une visite a Mettrai. Paris, 1868.]
An intelligent French writer, M. de Marsangy, [Moralisation de l'enfance coupable, p. 18.] in writing of the causes of juvenile crime in France, says that "a fifth of those who have been the objects of judicial pursuit are composed of orphans; the half have no father, a quarter no mother, and as for those who have a family, nearly all are dragged by it into evil."
EMIGRATION.
There is no question that the breaking of the ties with one's country has a bad moral effect, especially on a laboring class. The Emigrant is released from the social inspection and judgment to which he has been subjected at home, and the tie of church and priesthood is weakened. If a Roman Catholic, he is often a worse Catholic, without being a better Protestant. If a Protestant, he often becomes indifferent. Moral ties are loosened with the religious. The intervening process which occurs here, between his abandoning the old state of things and fitting himself to the new, is not favorable to morals or character.
The consequence is, that an immense proportion of our ignorant and criminal class are foreign-born; and of the dangerous classes here, a very large part, though native-born, are of foreign parentage. Thus, out of the whole number of foreigners in New York State, in 1860, 16.69 per cent. could not read or write; while of the native-born only 1.83 per cent. were illiterate.
Of the 49,423 prisoners in our city prisons, in prison for one year before January, 1870, 32,225 were of foreign birth, and, no doubt, a large proportion of the remainder of foreign parentage. Of the foreign-born, 21,887 were from Ireland; and yet at home the Irish are one of the most law-abiding and virtuous of populations—the proportion of criminals being smaller than in England or Scotland.
In the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, according to Dr. Bittinger, from one-fourth to one-third of the inmates are foreigners; in Auburn, from a third to a half; in Clinton, one-half; in Sing Sing, between one-half and six-sevenths. In the Albany Penitentiary, the aggregate number of prisoners during the last twenty years was 18,390, of whom 10,770 were foreign-born. [Transact. of Nat. Cong., p. 282.]
It is another marked instance of the demoralizing influence of emigration, that so large a proportion of the female criminal class should be Irish-born, though the Irish female laboring class are well known to be at home one of the most virtuous in the world.
A hopeful fact, however, begins to appear in regard to this matter; the worst effects of emigration in this country seem over. The machinery for protecting and forwarding the newly-arrived immigrants, so that they may escape the dangers and temptations of the city, has been much improved. Very few, comparatively, now remain in our sea-ports to swell the current of poverty and crime. The majority find their way at once to the country districts. The quality, too, of the immigration has improved. More well-to-do farmers and peasantry, with small savings, arrive than formerly, and the preponderance, as to nationality, is inclining to the Germans. It comparatively seldom happens now that paupers or persons absolutely without means, land in New York.
As one of the great causes of crime, Emigration will undoubtedly have a much feebler influence in the future in New York than it has had in the past.
WANT OF A TRADE.
It is remarkable how often, in questioning the youthful convicts in our prisons as to the causes of their downfall, they will reply that "if they had had a trade, they would not have been there." They disliked drudgery, they found places in offices and shops crowded; they would have enjoyed the companionship and the inventiveness of a trade, but they could not obtain one, and therefore they were led into stealing or gambling, as a quick mode of earning a living.
There is no doubt that a lad with a trade feels a peculiar independence of the world, and is much less likely to take up dishonest means of living than one depending on manual labor, or chance means of living.
There is nearly always a demand for his work; the lad feels himself a member of a craft and supported by the consciousness of this membership; the means of the "Unions" often sustain him when out of employment; his associates are more honest and respectable than those of boys depending on chance-labor, and so he is preserved from falling into crime.
Of course, if such a lad would walk forth to the nearest country village, he would find plenty of healthy and remunerative employment in the ground, as gardener or farmer. And to a country-lad, the farm offers a better chance than a trade. But many city boys and young men will not consent to leave the excitements of the city, so that the want of a mechanical occupation does expose them to many temptations.
The persons most responsible for this state of things are the members of such "Unions" as refuse to employ boys, or to encourage the training of apprentices. It is well-known that in many trades of New York, hardly any young laborers or apprentices are being trained. The result of this selfish policy will be to reduce the amount of skilled labor in this city, and thus compel the importation of foreign labor, and to increase juvenile crime and the burdens on the poor.
Another cause of this increasing separation from trades among the young is, no doubt, the increasing aversion of American children, whether poor or rich, to learn anything thoroughly; the boys of the street, like those of our merchants, preferring to make fortunes by lucky and sudden "turns," rather than by patient and steady industry.
Our hope in this matter is in the steady demand for juvenile labor in the country districts, and the substantial rewards which await industry there.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
WEAKNESS OF THE MARRIAGE-TIE.
It is extraordinary, among the lowest classes, in how large a number of cases a second marriage, or the breaking of marriage, is the immediate cause of crime or vagrancy among the children. When questioning a homeless boy or street-wandering girl as to the former home, it is extremely common to hear "I couldn't get on with my step-mother," or "My step-father treated me badly," or "My father left, and we just took care of ourselves." These apparently exceptional events are so common in these classes as to fairly constitute them an important cause of juvenile crime. When one remembers the number of happy second marriages within one's acquaintance, and how many children have never felt the difference between their step-mother and their own mother, and what love and patience and self-sacrifice are shown by parents to their step-children, we may be surprised at the contrast in another class of the community. But the virtues of the poor spring very much from their affections and instincts; they have comparatively little self-control, the high lessons of duty and consideration for others are seldom stamped on them, and Religion does not much influence their more delicate relations with those associated with them. They might shelter a strange orphan for years with the greatest kindness; but the bearing and forbearing with the faults of another person's child year after year, merely from motives of duty or affection to its parent, belong to a higher range of Christian virtues, to which they seldom attain. Their own want of self-control and their tendency to jealousy, and little understanding of true self-sacrifice, combine to weaken and embitter these relations with step-children. The children themselves have plenty of faults, and have doubtless been little governed, so that soon both parties jar and rub against one another; and as neither have instincts or affections to fall back upon, mere principle or sense of duty is not enough to restrain them. What would be simply slights or jars in more controlled persons, become collisions in this class.
Bitter quarrels spring up between step-son and mother, or step-daughter and father; the other parent sometimes sides with the child, sometimes with the father; but the result is similar. The house becomes a kind of pandemonium, and the girls rush desperately forth to the wild life of the streets, or the boys gradually prefer the roaming existence of the little city-Arab to such a quarrelsome home. Thus it happens that step-children among the poor are so often criminals or outcasts.
It needs a number of years among the lower working-classes to understand what a force public opinion is in all classes in keeping the marriage-bond sacred, and what sweeping misfortunes follow its violation. Many of the Irish peasants who have landed here have married from pure affection. Their marriage has been consecrated by the most solemn ceremonies of their church. They come of a people peculiarly faithful to the marriage-tie, and whose religion has especially guarded female purity and the fidelity of husband and wife. At home, in their native villages, they would have died sooner than break the bond or leave their wives. The social atmosphere about them and the influence of the priests make such an act almost impossible. And yet in this distant country, away from their neighbors and their religious instructors; they are continually making a practical test of "Free-Love" doctrines. As the wife grows old or ugly—as children increase and weigh the parents down—as the home becomes more noisy and less pleasant,—the man begins to forget the vows made at the altar, and the blooming girl he then took; and, perhaps meeting some prettier woman, or hearing of some chance for work at a distance, he slips quietly away, and the deserted wife, who seems to love him the more the more false he is, is left alone. For a time she has faith in him and seeks him far and near; but at length she abandons hope, and begins the heavy struggle of maintaining her little family herself. The boys gradually get beyond her control; they are kept in the street to earn something for their support; they become wild and vagrant, and soon end with being street-rovers, or petty thieves, or young criminals. The girls are trained in begging or peddling, and, meeting with bold company, they gradually learn the manners and morals of the streets, and after a while abandon the wretched home, and break what was left of the poor mother's hope and courage, by beginning a life of shame.
This sad history is lived out every day in New York. If any theorists desire to see what fruits "Free Love" or a weak marriage-bond can bear among the lowest working-classes, they have only to trace the histories of great numbers of the young thieves and outcasts and prostitutes in this city. With the dangerous classes, "elective affinities" are most honestly followed. The results are suffering, crime, want, and degradation to those who are innocent.
INHERITANCE.
A most powerful and continual source of crime with the young is inheritance—the transmitted tendencies and qualities of their parents, or of several generations of ancestors.
It is well-known to those familiar with the classes, that certain appetites or habits, if indulged abnormally and excessively through two or more generations, come to have an almost irresistible force, and, no doubt, modify the brain so as to constitute almost an insane condition. This is especially true of the appetite for liquor and of the sexual passion and sometimes of the peculiar weakness, dependence, and laziness which make confirmed paupers.
The writer knows of an instance in an alms-house in Western New York, where four generations of females were paupers and prostitutes. Almost every reader who is familiar with village life will recall poor families which have had dissolute or criminal members beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and who still continue to breed such characters. I have known a child of nine or ten years, given up, apparently beyond control, to licentious habits and desires, and who in all different circumstances seemed to show the same tendencies; her mother had been of similar character, and quite likely her grandmother. The "gemmules," or latent tendencies, or forces, or cells of her immediate ancestors were in her system, and working in her blood, producing irresistible effects on her brain, nerves, and mental emotions, and finally, not being met early enough by other moral, mental, and physical influences, they have modified her organization, until her will is scarcely able to control them and she gives herself up to them. All those who instruct or govern "Houses of Refuge," or "Reform Schools," or Asylums for criminal children and youths, will recall many such instances.
They are much better known in the Old World than this; they are far more common here in the country than in the city.
My own experience during twenty years has been in this regard singularly hopeful. I have watched great numbers of degraded families in New York, and exceedingly few of them have transmitted new generations of paupers, criminals, or vagrants.
The causes of this encouraging state of things are not obscure. The action of the great law of "Natural Selection," in regard to the human race, is always towards temperance and virtue. That is, vice and extreme indulgence weaken the physical powers and undermine the constitution; they impair the faculties by which man struggles with adverse conditions and gets beyond the reach of poverty and want. The vicious and sensual and drunken die earlier, or they have fewer children, or their children are carried off by diseases more frequently, or they themselves are unable to resist or prevent poverty and suffering. As a consequence, in the lowest class, the more self-controlled and virtuous tend constantly to survive, and to prevail in "the struggle for existence," over the vicious and ungoverned, and to transmit their progeny. The natural drift among the poor is towards virtue. Probably no vicious organization with very extreme and abnormal tendencies is transmitted beyond the fourth generation; it ends in insanity or cretinism or the wildest crime.
The result is then, with the worst-endowed families, that the "gemmules" or latent forces of hundreds of virtuous, or at least, not vicious, generations, lie hid in their constitutions. The immediate influences of parents or grandparents are, of course, the strongest latent tendencies to good, coming down from remote ancestors, be aroused and developed.
Thus is explained the extraordinary improvement of the children of crime and poverty in our Industrial Schools; and the reforms and happy change is seen in the boys and girls of our dangerous classes when placed in kind Western homes. The change of circumstances, the improved food, the daily moral and mental influences, the effect of regular labor and discipline, and, above all, the power of Religion, awaken these hidden tendencies to good, both those coming from many generations of comparative virtue and those inherent in the soul, while they control and weaken and cause to be forgotten those diseased appetites or extreme passions which these unfortunate creatures inherit directly, and substitute a higher moral sense for the low moral instincts which they obtained from their parents. So it happens, also, that American life, as compared with European, and city life, as compared with country, produces similar results. In the United States, a boundless hope pervades all classes; it reaches down to the outcast and vagrant. There is no fixity, as is so often the fact in Europe, from the sense of despair. Every individual, at least till he is old, hopes and expects to rise out of his condition.
The daughter of the rag-picker or vagrant sees the children she knows, continually dressing better or associating with more decent people; she beholds them attending the public schools and improving in education and manners; she comes in contact with the greatest force the poor know—public opinion, which requires a certain decency and respectability among themselves. She becomes ashamed of her squalid, ragged, or drunken mother. She enters an Industrial School, or creeps into a Ward School, or "goes out" as a servant. In every place, she feels the profound forces of American life; the desire of equality, ambition to rise, the sense of self-respect and the passion for education.
These new desires overcome the low appetites in her blood, and she continually rises and improves. If Religion in any form reach her, she attains a still greater height over the sensual and filthy ways of her parents. She is in no danger of sexual degradation, or of any extreme vice. The poison in her blood has found an antidote. When she marries, it will inevitably be with a class above her own. This process goes on continually throughout the country, and breaks up criminal inheritance.
Moreover, the incessant change of our people, especially in cities, the separation of children from parents, of brothers from sisters, and of all from their former localities, destroy that continuity of influence which bad parents and grandparents exert, and do away with those neighborhoods of crime and pauperism where vice concentrates and transmits itself with ever-increasing power. The fact that tenants must forever be "moving" in New York, is a preventive of some of the worst evils among the lower poor. The mill of American life, which grinds up so many delicate and fragile things, has its uses, when it is turned on the vicious fragments of the lower strata of society.
Villages, which are more stable and conservative, and tend to keep families together more and in the same neighborhoods, show more instances of inherited and concentrated wickedness and idleness. In New York the families are constantly broken up; some members improve, some die out, but they do not transmit a progeny of crime. There is little inherited criminality and pauperism.
A QUESTION.
Among these public influences on the young, it has been often a question with some, whether the Public Schools did not educate the daughters of the poor too much, and thus make them discontented with their condition, and exposed to temptation.
It is said that these working-girls, seeing such fine dresses about them, and learning many useless accomplishments, have become indifferent to steady hand-labor, and have sought in vice for the luxuries which they have first learned to know in the public schools. My own observation, however, leads me to doubt whether this occurs, unless as an exceptional fact. The influence of discipline and regular instruction is against the style of character which makes the prostitute. Where there is a habit of work, there are seldom the laziness and shiftlessness which especially cause or stimulate sexual vice. Some working-girls do, no doubt, become discontented with their former condition, and some rise to a much higher, while some fall; but this happens everywhere in the United States, and is not to be traced especially to the influence of our Free Schools.
We have spoken of the greater tendency of large cities, as compared with villages, in breaking up vicious families. There is another advantage of cities in this matter. The especial virtue of a village community is the self-respect and personal independence of its members. No benefits of charity or benevolent assistance and dependence could ever outweigh this. But this very virtue tends to keep a wicked or idle family in its present condition. The neighbors are not in the habit of interfering with it; no one advises or warns it. The children grow up as other people's children do, in the way the parents prefer; there is no machinery of charity to lift them out of the slime; and if any of their wealthier neighbors, from motives of benevolence, visited the house, and attempted to improve or educate the family, the effort would be resented or misconstrued. The whole family become a kind of pariahs; they are morally tabooed, and grow up in a vicious atmosphere of their own, and really come out much worse than a similar family in the city. This phenomenon is only a natural effect of the best virtues of the rural community.
In a large town, on the other hand, there exist machinery and organization through which benevolent and religious persons can approach such families, and their good intentions not be suspected or resented. The poor people themselves are not so independent, and accept advice or warning more readily; they are not so stamped in public repute with a bad name; less is known of them, and the children, under new influences, break off from the vicious career of their parents, and grow up as honest and industrious persons. Moreover, the existence of so much charitable organization in the cities brings the best talent and character of the fortunate classes to bear directly on the unfortunate, far more than is the fact in villages.
CHAPTER V.
THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
OVERCROWDING.
The source of juvenile crime and misery in New York, which is the most formidable, and, at the same time, one of the most difficult to remove, is the overcrowding of our population. The form of the city-site is such—the majority of the dwellings being crowded into a narrow island between two water-fronts—that space near the business-portion of the city becomes of great value. These districts are necessarily sought for by the laboring and mechanic classes, as they are near the places of employment. They are avoided by the wealthy on account of the population which has already occupied so much of them. The result is, that the poor must live in certain wards; and as space is costly, the landlords supply them with (comparatively) cheap dwellings, by building very high and large houses, in which great numbers of people rent only rooms, instead of dwellings.
Were New York a city radiating from a centre over an almost unlimited space—as Philadelphia, for instance—the laborers or the mechanics might take up their abode anywhere, and land would be comparatively cheap, so that the highest blessing of the laboring class would be attainable—of separate homes for each family. But, on this narrow island, business is so peculiarly concentrated, and population is so much forced to one exit—towards the north—and the poor have such a singular objection to living beyond a ferry, that space will inevitably continue very dear in New York, and the laboring classes will be compelled to occupy it.
To add to the unavoidable costliness of ground-room on this island, has come in the effect of bad government.
It is one of the most unpleasant experiences of the student of political economy, that the axioms of his science can so seldom be understood by the masses, though their interests be vitally affected by them. Thus, every thoughtful man knows that each new "job" among city officials, each act of plunder of public property by members of the municipal government, every loss of income or mal-appropriation or extravagance in the city's funds, must be paid for by taxation, and that taxation always falls heaviest on labor. The laboring classes of the city rule it, and through their especial leaders are the great public losses and wastefulness occasioned.
Yet they never know that they themselves continually pay for these in increased rents. Every landlord charges his advanced taxation in rent, and probably a profit on that. The tenant pays more for his room, the grocer more for his shop, the butcher and tailor and shoemaker, and every retailer have heavier expenses from the advance in rents, and each and all charge it on their customers. The poor feel the final pressure. The painful effect has been, that the expense for rent has arisen enormously with the laboring classes of this city during the last five years, while many of the other living expenses have nearly returned to the standard before the war.
The influence of high rents is to force more people into a given space, in order to economize and divide expense.
The latest trustworthy statistics on this important subject are from the excellent Reports of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1866. From these, it appears that the Eleventh Ward of this city, with a population of 58,953, has a rate of population of 196,510 to the square mile, or 16 1/10 square yards to each person; the Tenth Ward, with 31,587 population, has a rate of 185,512 to the square mile, or 17 1/10 square yards to each; the Seventeenth Ward, with 79,563, has the rate of 153,006; the Fourteenth, with 23,382, has a rate of 155,880; the Thirteenth, with 26,388, has 155,224; and so on with others, though in less proportion.
The worst districts in London do not at all equal this crowding of population. Thus, East London shows the rate of 175,816 to the square mile; the Strand, 141,556; St. Luke's, 151,104; Holborn, 148,705; and St. Jame's, Westminster, 144,008.
If particular districts of our city be taken, they present an even greater massing of human beings than the above averages have shown. Thus, according to the Report of the Council of Hygiene in 1865, the tenant-house and cellar population of the Fourth Ward numbered 17,611 packed in buildings over a space less than thirty acres, exclusive of streets, which would make the fearful rate of 290,000 to the square mile.
In the Seventeenth Ward, the Board of Health reports that in 1868, 4,120 houses contained 95,091 inhabitants, of whom 14,016 were children under five years. In the same report, the number of tenement-houses for the whole city is given at 18,582, with an estimate of one-half the whole population dwelling in them—say 500,000.
We quote an extract from a report of Mr. Dupuy, Visitor of the Children's Aid Society of the First Ward, describing the condition of a tenement-house:
"What do you think of the moral atmosphere of the home I am about to describe below? To such a home two of our boys return nightly.
"In a dark cellar filled with smoke, there sleep, all in one room, with no kind of partition dividing them, two men with their wives, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, two men and a large boy of about seventeen years of age, a mother with two more boys, one about ten years old, and one large boy of fifteen; another woman with two boys, nine and eleven years of age—in all, fourteen persons.
"This room I have often visited, and the number enumerated probably falls below, rather than above the average that sleep there."
It need not be said that with overcrowding such as this, there is always disease, and as naturally, crime. The privacy of a home is undoubtedly one of the most favorable conditions to virtue, especially in a girl.
If a female child be born and brought up in a room of one of these tenement-houses, she loses very early the modesty which is the great shield of purity. Personal delicacy becomes almost unknown to her. Living, sleeping, and doing her work in the some apartment with men and boys of various ages, it is well-nigh impossible for her to retain any feminine reserve, and she passes almost unconsciously the line of purity at a very early age.
In these dens of crowded humanity, too, other and more unnatural crimes are committed among those of the same blood and family.