The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them
by Charles Loring Brace · English · Gutenberg #33431 · 697,662 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them
Author: Charles Loring Brace
Release date: August 14, 2010 [eBook #33431]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANGEROUS CLASSES OF NEW YORK, AND TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM ***
Produced by Gary Sandino, from scans by Google.
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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.
Here, too, congregate some of the worst of the destitute population of
the city--vagrants, beggars, nondescript thieves, broken-down drunken
vagabonds, who manage as yet to keep out of the station-houses, and the
lowest and most bungling of the "sharpers." Naturally, the boys growing
up in such places become, as by a law of nature, petty thieves,
pickpockets, street-rovers, beggars, and burglars. Their only salvation
is, that these dens become so filthy and haunted with vermin, that the
lads themselves leave them in disgust, preferring the barges on the
breezy docks, or the boxes on the side-walk, from which eventually they
are drawn into the neat and comfortable Boys' Lodging-houses, and there
find themselves imperceptibly changed into honest and decent boys. This
is the story of thousands every year.
The cellar-population alone of this city is a source of incessant
disease and crime.
And with the more respectable class of poor who occupy the better kind
of tenement-houses, the packing of human beings in those great
caravansaries is one of the worst evils of this city. It sows pestilence
and breeds every species of criminal habits.
From the eighteen thousand tenement-houses comes seventy-three per cent.
[In 1865, the deaths in tenement-houses were 14,500 out of 19,813, the
total for the city. The death-rate has, however, been brought down by
sanitary improvements from 76 per cent., in 1866, to about 66 per cent,
in 1871, or a gain of 2,900 lives in these wretched houses.] of the
mortality of our population, and we have little doubt as much as ninety
per cent. of the offenses against property and person.
Over-crowding is the one great misfortune of New York. Without it, we
should be the healthiest large city in the world, [Our annual death-rate
is now 28.79 per 1,000, while some of the clean wards show 15 per 1,000,
or about the rate of the Isle of Wight. The rate of London is about 34,
Liverpool has been as high as 40, but is more healthy now, owing to
sanitary improvements. Our Sixth Ward reaches 48, and "Gotham Court," in
Cherry Street, attains the horrible maximum of 195 per 1,000.] and a
great proportion of the crimes which disgrace our civilization would be
nipped in the bud. While this continues as it does now, there is no
possibility of a thorough sanitary, moral, and religious reform in our
worst wards.
Few girls can grow up to maturity in such dens as exist in the First,
Sixth, Eleventh, and Seventeenth Wards and be virtuous; few boys can
have such places as homes and not be thieves and vagabonds. In such
places typhus and cholera will always be rife, and the death-rate will
reach its most terrible maximum. While the poorest population dwell in
these cellars and crowded attics, neither Sunday-schools, nor churches,
nor charities, can accomplish a thorough reform.
What, then, is to be done to remedy this terrible evil?
Experience has proved that our remedial agencies can, in individual
cases cure even the evils resulting from this unnatural condensing of
population. That is, we can point to thousands of lads and young girls
who were born and reared in such crowded dens of humanity, but who have
been transformed into virtuous, well-behaved, and industrious young men
and women, by the quiet daily influence of the charitable organization I
am about to describe.
Still, these cases of reform are, in truth, exceptions. The natural and
legitimate influence of such massing of population is all in the
direction of immorality and degeneracy. Whatever would lessen that,
would at once, and by a necessary law, diminish crime and poverty and
disease.
REMEDIES.
The great remedies are to be looked for in broad, general provisions for
distributing population. Thus far, the means of communication between
business New York and the suburbs have been singularly defective. An
underground railway with cheap workman's trains, or elevated railways
with similar conveniences, connecting Westchester County and the lower
part of the city, or suburbs laid out in New Jersey or on Long Island
expressly for working people, with cheap connections with New York and
Brooklyn, would soon make a vast difference in the concentration of
population in our lower wards. It is true that English experience would
show that laboring-men, after a heavy day's work, cannot bear the jar of
railway traveling. There must be, however, many varieties of labor--such
as work in factories and the like--where a little movement in a
railroad-train at the close of a day would be a refreshment.
Then, as the laboring class was concentrated in suburban districts, the
various occupations which attend them, such as grocers, shoemakers,
tailors, and others, would follow, and be established near them. Many
nationalities among our working class have an especial fondness for
gardens and bits of land about their houses. This would be an additional
attraction to such settlements; and with easy and cheap communications
we might soon have tens of thousands of our laborers and mechanics
settled in pleasant and healthy little suburban villages, each, perhaps
having his own small house and garden, and the children growing up under
far better influences, moral and physical, than they could possibly
enjoy in tenement-houses. There are many districts within half an hour
of New York, where such plots could be laid out with lots at $500 each,
which would pay a handsome profit to the owner, or where a cottage could
be let with advantage for the present rent of a tenement attic.
Improved communications have already removed hundreds and thousands of
the middle class from the city to all the surrounding neighborhood, to
the immense benefit both of themselves and their families. Equal
conveniences suited to the wants of the laboring class will soon cause
multitudes of these to live in the suburban districts. The obstacle,
however, as in all efforts at improvement for the working people, is in
their own ignorance and timidity, and their love of the crowd and bustle
of a city.
More remote even, than relief by improved communications, is a possible
check to high rents by a better government. A cheap and honest
government of the masses in New York would at once lower taxation and
bring down rents. The enormous prices demanded for one or two small
rooms in a tenement-house are a measure (in part) of the cost of our
city government.
Another alleviation to our over crowding has often been proposed, but
never vigorously acted upon, as we are persuaded it might be, and that
is the making the link between the demand for labor in our country
districts and the supply in New York, closer. The success of the charity
which we are about describing in the transfer of destitute and homeless
children to homes in the West, and of the Commissioners of Emigration in
their "Labor Exchange," indicate what might be accomplished by a grand
organized movement for transferring our unemployed labor to the fields
of the West. It is true, this would not carry away our poorest class,
yet it would relieve the pressure of population here on space, and thus
give more room and occupation for all.
But admitting that we cannot entirely prevent the enormous massing of
people, such as prevails in our Eleventh and Seventeenth Wards, we can
certainly control it by legislation. The recent Sanitary Acts of New
York attempt to hold in check the mode of building tenement-houses,
requiring certain means of ventilation and exit, forbidding the
filling-up of the entire space between the houses with dwellings, and
otherwise seeking to improve the condition of such tenement-houses.
There only needs two steps farther in imitation of the British
Lodging-house Acts--one removing altogether the cellar-population, when
under certain unhealthy conditions; and the other limiting by law the
number who can occupy a given space in a tenement-room. The British Acts
assign 240 cubic feet as the lowest space admissible for each tenant or
lodger, and if the inspector finds less space than that occupied, he at
once enters a complaint, and the owner or landlord is obliged to reduce
the number of his occupants, under strict penalties. A provision of this
nature in our New York law would break up our worst dens, and scatter
their tenants or lodgers. The removal of the cellar-population from a
large proportion of their dwellings should also be made. Liverpool
removed 20,000 cellar-occupants in one year (1847), to the immense gain,
both moral and sanitary, of the city. New York needs the reform quite as
much. There would be no real hardship in such a measure, as the tenants
could find accommodations in other parts of the city or the suburbs; and
some would perhaps emigrate to the country.
One often-proposed remedy for the ills of our tenement-house system--the
"Model Lodging-house"--has never been fairly tried here. The theory of
this agency of reform is, that if a tenement-house can be constructed on
the best sanitary principles, with good ventilation, with limited number
of tenants, no overcrowding, and certain important conveniences to the
lodgers, all under moral supervision (so that tenants of notoriously bad
character are excluded), and such a house can be shown to pay, say seven
per cent. net, this will become a "model" to the builders of
tenement-houses; some building after the same style, because public
opinion and their own conscience require it, others because competition
compels it. Thus, in time, the mode of structure and occupancy of all
the new tenement-houses would be changed. But to attain this desirable
end, the model houses must first pay a profit, and a fair one. So long
as they do not succeed in this, they are a failure, however benevolent
their object and comfortable their arrangements. In this point of view,
the "Waterloo Houses," in London, are a success, and do undoubtedly
influence the mode of building and management of private
tenement-houses; in this, also, the "Peabody Houses" are not a success,
and will have no permanent influence.
The Model Houses in London for lodging single men have, as the writer
has witnessed, changed and elevated the whole class of similar private
lodging-houses.
The experiment ought to be tried here, on a merely business basis, by
some of our wealthy men. The evil of crowded tenement-houses might be
immensely alleviated by such a remedy.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
INTEMPERANCE.
The power of the appetite for alcoholic stimulus is something amazing. A
laboring-man feels it especially on account of the drag on his nervous
system of steady and monotonous labor, and because of the few mental
stimuli which he enjoys. He returns to his tenement-house after a hard
day's work, "dragged out" and craving excitement; his rooms are
disagreeable; perhaps his wife cross, or slatternly, and his children
noisy; he has an intense desire for something which can take him out of
all this, and cause his dull surroundings and his fatigue to be
forgotten. Alcohol does this; moreover, he can bear alcohol and tobacco,
to retard the waste of muscle, as the sedentary man cannot. In a few
steps, he can find jolly companions, a lighted and warmed room, a
newspaper, and, above all, a draught which, for the moment, can change
poverty to riches, and drive care and labor and the thought of all his
burdens and annoyances far away.
[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Third Stage.)]
The liquor-shop is his picture-gallery, club, reading-room, and social
_salon,_ at once. His glass is the magic transmuter of care to
cheerfulness, of penury to plenty, of a low, ignorant, worried life, to
an existence for the moment buoyant, contented, and hopeful. Alas that
the magician who thus, for the instant, transforms him with her rod,
soon returns him to his low estate, with ten thousand curses haunting
him! The one thus touched by the modern Circe is not even imbruted, for
the brutes have no such appetite; he becomes a demonized man; all the
treasures of life are trampled under his feet, and he is fit only to
dwell "among the tombs." But, while labor is what it is, and the
liquor-shop alone offers sociality and amusement to the poor, alcohol
will still possess this overwhelming attraction. The results in this
climate, and under the form of alcoholic stimulus offered here, are
terrible beyond all computation. The drunkards' homes are the darkest
spots even in the abyss of misery in every large city. Here the hearts
of young women are truly broken, and they seek their only consolation in
the same magic cup; here children are beaten, or maimed, or
half-starved, until they run away to join the great throng of homeless
street-rovers in our large towns, and grow up to infest society. From
these homes radiate misery, grief, and crime. They are the nests in
which the young fledgelings of misfortune and vice begin their flight.
Probably two-thirds of the crimes of every city (and a very large
portion of its poverty) come from the over-indulgence of this appetite.
As an appetite, we do not believe it can ever be eradicated from the
human race.
If we look at criminal statistics for the effects of this appetite, we
will find that in the New York City prisons, during 1870, there were,
out of 49,423 criminals, 30,507 of confessedly intemperate habits, while
no doubt, with a large portion of the rest, indulgence in liquor was the
cause of their offenses.
In the Albany Penitentiary there were, in 1869-70, 1,093 convicts, of
whom 893 admitted they were intemperate. Of this whole number only 563
could read and write, and only 568 were natives of this country.
Among the children of misfortune in our city, the homeless boys and
girls, and those compelled by poverty to attend the Industrial Schools
(which I shall hereafter describe), it would be safe to say that ninety
out of a hundred are the children of drunkards.
As a direct cause of crime in children, drunkenness takes but a small
place. This is not an appetite of childhood. Very few boys or girls of
the poorest class are addicted to it till they become mature.
The effort for Total Abstinence has been, indeed, an untold blessing to
the working class in this country and many parts of Europe. It may be
said, in many regions, to have broken the wand of the terrible
enchantress. It has introduced a new social habit in drinking. It has
connected abstinence with the ceremonial of religion and the pleasures
of social organizations. It has addressed the working-man--as, in fact,
he often is--as a child, and saved him from his own habits, by a sworn
abstinence. Thousands of men could never have freed themselves from this
most tyrannical appetite, except by absolute refusal to touch. In fact,
it may be said that no vice is ever abandoned by gradual steps. The only
hope for any one under the control of any wrong indulgence is in entire
and immediate abandonment.
With those, too, who had not fallen under the sway of this appetite,
especially if of the working class, abstinence was the safest rule.
The "Total Abstinence Reform" in this country, in Great Britain, and in
Sweden, was one of the happiest events that ever occurred in the history
of the working classes. Its blessings will descend through many
generations. But in its nature it could not last. It was a tremendous
reaction against the heavy and excessive drinking of fifty years since.
It was a kind of noble asceticism. Like all asceticism, it could not
continue as a permanent condition. Its power is now much spent. Wherever
it can be introduced now among the laboring classes, it should be; and
we believe one of the especial services of the Irish Catholic clergy, at
this day, to the world, is in supporting and encouraging this great
reform.
All who study the lower classes are beginning, however, now to look for
other remedies of the evil of intemperance.
It has become remarkably apparent, during the last few years, that one
of the best modes of driving out low tastes in the masses is to
introduce higher. It has been found that galleries and museums and parks
are the most formidable rivals of the liquor-shops. The experience near
the Sydenham Palace, in England, and other places of instructive and
pleasant resort for the laboring masses, is, that drinking-saloons do
not flourish in opposition. Wherever, in the evening, a laboring-man can
saunter in a pleasant park, or, in company with his wife and family,
look at interesting pictures, or sculpture, or objects of curiosity, he
has not such a craving for alcoholic stimulus.
Even open-air drinking in a garden--as is so common on the Continent--is
never so excessive as in an artificial-lighted room. Where, too, a
working-man can, in a few steps, find a cheerfully-lighted reading-room,
with society or papers, or where a club is easily open to him without
drinking, it will also be found that he ceases to frequent the saloon,
and almost loses his taste for strong drink.
Whatever elevates the taste of the laborer, or expands his mind, or
innocently amuses him, or passes his time pleasantly without indulgence,
or agreeably instructs, or provides him with virtuous associations,
tends at once to guard him from habits of intoxication. The Kensington
Museum and Sydenham Palace, of London; the Cooper Union, the Central
Park, and free Reading-rooms of New York, are all temperance-societies
of the best kind. The great effort now is to bring this class of
influences to bear on the habits of the laboring-people, and thus
diminish intemperance.
It is a remarkable fact, in this connection, that, though ninety out of
the hundred of our children in the Industrial Schools are the children
of drunkards, not one of the thousands who have gone forth from them has
been known to have fallen into intemperate habits. Under the elevating
influences of the school, they imperceptibly grow out of the habits of
their mothers and fathers, and never acquire the appetite.
Another matter, which is well worthy of the attention of reformers, is
the possibility of introducing into those countries where "heavy
drinking" prevails, the taste for light wines and the habit of open-air
drinking. The passion for alcohol is a real one. On a broad scale it
cannot be annihilated. Can we not satisfy it innocently? In this
country, for instance, light wines can be made to a vast extent, and
finally be sold very cheaply. If the taste for them were formed, would
it not expel the appetite for whisky and brandy, or at least, in the
coming generation, form a new habit?
There is, it is true, a peculiar intensity in the American temperament
which makes the taking of concentrated stimulus natural to it. It will
need some time for men accustomed to work up their nervous system to a
white heat by repeated draughts of whisky or brandy to be content with
weak wines. Perhaps the present generation never will be. But the laws
of health and morality are so manifestly on the side of drinking light
wines as compared with drinking heavy liquors, that any effort at social
improvement in this direction would have a fair chance of success. Even
the slight change of habit involved in drinking leisurely at a table in
the open air with women and children--after the German fashion--would be
a great social reform over the hasty bar-drinking, while standing. The
worst intoxication of this city is with the Irish and American
bar-drinkers, not the German frequenters of gardens.
LIQUOR LAWS.
In regard to legislation, it seems to me that our New York License laws
of 1866 were, with a few improvements, a very "happy medium" in
law-making. The ground was tacitly taken, in that code, that it
subserved the general interests of morality to keep one day free from
riotous or public drinking, and allow the majority of the community to
spend it in rest and worship; and, inasmuch as that day was one of
especial temptation to the working-classes, they were to be treated to a
certain degree like minors, and liquor was to be refused to them on it.
Under this law, also, minors and apprentices, on weekdays, were
forbidden to be supplied with intoxicating drinks, and the liquor-shops
were closed at certain hours of the night. Very properly, also, these
sellers of intoxicating beverages, making enormous profits, and costing
the community immensely in the expenses of crime occasioned by their
trade, were heavily taxed, and paid to the city over a million dollars
annually in fees, licenses, and fines. The effects of the law were
admirable, in the diminution of cases of arrest and crime on the Sunday,
and the checking of the ravages of intoxication.
But it was always apparent to the writer that, with the peculiar
constitution of the population of this city, it could not be sustained,
unless concessions were made to the prejudices and habits of certain
nationalities among our citizens. Our reformers, however, as a class,
are exceedingly adverse to concessions; they look at questions of habits
as absolute questions of right and wrong, and they will permit no
half-way or medium ground. But legislation is always a matter of
concession. We cannot make laws for human nature as it ought to be, but
as it is. If we do not get the absolutely best law passed, we must
content ourselves with the medium best. If our Temperance Reformers had
permitted a clause in the law, excepting the drinking in gardens, or of
lager-beer, from the restrictions of the License Law, we should not,
indeed, have had so good a state of things as we had for a few years,
under the old law, but we might have had it permanently. Now, we have
nearly lost all control over drinking, and the Sunday orgies and crimes
will apparently renew themselves without check or restraint. If a reform
in legislation claim too much, there is always a severe reaction
possible, when the final effects will be worse than the evils sought to
be corrected.
The true plan of reform for this city would be to cause the License Law
of 1866 to be re-enacted with certain amendments. The "intoxicating
drinks" mentioned should be held not to include lager-beer or certain
light wines; and garden-drinking might be permitted, under strict police
surveillance.
The Excise Board should be allowed very summary control, however, even
over the German gardens and lager-beer drinking-places, so that, if they
were perverted into places of disturbance and intoxication, the licenses
could be revoked.
[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Fourth Stage.)]
By separating absolutely the licenses for light drinks and those for
rum, whisky, and heavy ales, a vast deal of drunkenness might be
prevented, and yet the foreign habits not be too much interfered with,
and comparatively innocent pleasures permitted. In small towns and
villages, a reasonable compromise would seem to be to allow each
municipality to control the matter in the mode it preferred: some
communities in this way, forbidding all sale of intoxicating liquors,
and others permitting it, under conditions; but each being responsible
for the evils or benefits of the system it adopted.
If a student of history were reviewing the gloomy list of the evils
which have most cursed mankind, which have wasted households, stained
the hand of man with his fellow's blood, sown quarrels and hatreds,
broken women's hearts, and ruined children in their earliest years, bred
poverty and crime, he would place next to the bloody name of War, the
black word--INTEMPERANCE. No wonder that the best minds of modern times
are considering most seriously the soundest means of checking it. If
abstinence were the natural and only means, the noble soul would still
say, in the words of Paul: "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to
drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth."
But abstinence is not thoroughly natural; it has no chance of a
universal acceptance; and experience shows that other and wider means
must be employed. We must trust to the imperceptible and widely-extended
influences of civilization, of higher tastes, and more refined
amusements on the masses. We must employ the powers of education, and,
above all, the boundless force of Religion, to elevate the race above
the tyranny of this tremendous appetite.
CHAPTER VII.
ORGANIZATION OF A REMEDY.
In New York, we believe almost alone among the great capitals of the
world, a profound and sustained effort for many years has been made to
cut off the sources and diminish the numbers of the dangerous classes;
and, as the records of crime show, with a marked effect.
In most large cities, the first practical difficulty is the want of a
united organization to work upon the evils connected with this lowest
class. There are too many scattered efforts, aiming in a desultory
manner at this and that particular evil, resulting from the condition of
the children of the streets. There is no unity of plan and of work.
Every large city should form one Association or organization, whose sole
object should be to deal alone with the sufferings, wants, and crimes,
arising from a class of youth who are homeless, ignorant, or neglected.
The injuries to public morals and property from such a class are
important enough to call out the best thought and utmost energy and
inventiveness of charitable men and women to prevent them. Where an
association devotes itself thus to one great public evil, a thousand
remedies or ingenious devices of cure and prevention will be hit upon,
when, with a more miscellaneous field of work, the best methods would be
overlooked. So threatening is the danger in every populous town from the
children who are neglected, that the best talent ought to be engaged to
study their condition and devise their improvement, and the highest
character and most ample means should be offered to guarantee and make
permanent the movements devised for their elevation.
The lack of all this in many European capitals is a reason that so
little, comparatively, has been done to meet these tremendous dangers.
Then, again, in religious communities, such as the English and American,
there is too great a confidence in _technical religious_ means.
We would not breathe a word against the absolute necessity of
Christianity in any scheme of thorough social reform. If the Christian
Church has one garland on its altars which time does not wither nor
skepticism destroy, which is fresh and beautiful each year, it is that
humble offering laid there through every age by the neglected little
ones of society, whom the most enlightened Stoicism despised and
Paganism cast out, but who have been blessed and saved by its
ministrations of love. No skeptical doubt or "rationalism" can ever
pluck from the Christian Church this, its purest crown.
To attempt to prevent or cure the fearful moral diseases of our lowest
classes without Christianity, is like trying to carry through a sanitary
reform in a city without sunlight.
But the mistake we refer to, is a too great use of, or confidence in,
the old technical methods--such as distributing tracts, and holding
prayer-meetings, and, scattering Bibles. The neglected and ruffian class
which we are considering are in no way affected directly by such
influences as these. New methods must be invented for them.
Another obstacle, in American cities, to any comprehensive results of
reform or prevention among these classes, has been the too blind
following of European precedents. In Europe, the labor-market is fully
supplied. There is a steady pressure of population on subsistence. No
general method of prevention or charity can be attempted which
interferes with the rights of honest and self-supporting labor. The
victims of society, the unfortunate, the _enfants perdus,_ must be
retained, when aided at all, in public institutions. They cannot be
allowed to compete with outside industry. They are not wanted in the
general market of labor. They must be kept in _Asylums._
Now, Asylums are a bequest of monastic days. They breed a species of
character which is monastic-indolent, unused to struggle; subordinate
indeed, but with little independence and manly vigor. If the subjects of
the modern monastery be unfortunates--especially if they be already
somewhat tainted with vice and crime--the effect is a weakening of true
masculine vigor, an increase of the apparent virtues, and a hidden
growth of secret and contagious vices. Moreover, the life under the
machinery of an "Institution" does not prepare for the thousand petty
hand-labors of a poor man's cottage. But, greatest of all objections,
the asylum system is, of necessity, immensely expensive, and can reach
but a comparatively small number of subjects.
These various obstacles and difficulties, which impede thorough work for
the elevation of our worst classes, can, however, be overcome.
PIONEER WORK.
Some twenty years ago, the then Chief of Police of New York, Captain
Matsell, put forth a report on the condition of the street-children of
the city, which aroused universal anxiety, and called forth much
compassion. The writer of this was then engaged (in 1852) outside of his
professional duties in rather desultory and despairing labors for the
reform of adult prisoners on Blackwell's Island and the squalid poor in
the Five Points district. It was a Sisyphus-like work, and soon
discouraged all engaged in it. We seemed in those infernal regions to
repeat the toil of the Danaides, and to be attempting to fill the leaky
vessel of society by efforts which left it as empty as before. What soon
struck all engaged in those labors was the immense number of boys and
girls floating and drifting about our streets, with hardly any arguable
home or occupation, who continually swelled the multitude of criminals,
prostitutes, and vagrants.
Saddest of all sights was the thin child's face, so often seen behind
prison-bars, and the melancholy procession of little children who were
continually passing through that gloomy Egyptian portal, which seemed to
some of us then always inscribed with the scroll over the entrance of
the Inferno, "Here leave all hope behind!"
It was evident soon, to all who thought upon the subject, that what New
York most of all needed was some grand, comprehensive effort to check
the growth of the "dangerous classes."
The "Social Evil," of course, was pressed continually on the minds of
those engaged in these labors. Mr. Pease was then making a most heroic
effort to meet this in its worst form in the Five-Points region. No one
whom we have ever known was so qualified for this desperate work, or was
so successful in it. Still, it was but one man against a sea of crime.
The waves soon rolled over these enthusiastic and devoted labors, and
the waste of misfortune and guilt remained as desolate and hopeless as
before. It was clear that whatever was done there, must be done in the
source and origin of the evil--in prevention, not cure.
The impression deepened both with those engaged in these benevolent
labors and with the community, that a general Organization should be
formed which should deal alone with the evils and dangers threatened
from the class of neglected youth then first coming plainly into public
view. Those who possessed property-interests in the city saw the immense
loss and damage which would occur from such an increasing community of
young thieves and criminals. The humane felt for the little waifs of
society who thus, through no fault of their own, were cast out on the
currents of a large city; and the religious recognized it as a solemn
duty to carry the good news of Christianity to these "heathen at home."
Everything seemed in readiness for some comprehensive and well-laid
scheme of benevolence and education for the street-children of New
York.
A number of our citizens, with the present writer threw themselves into
a somewhat original method for benefiting the young "roughs" and
vagabond boys of the metropolis. This was known as the effort of the
"BOYS' MEETINGS."
The theory of these original assemblages was, that the "sympathy of an
audience" might be used to influence these wild and untutored young
Arabs when ordinary agencies were of no avail. The street-boys, as is
well-known, are exceedingly sharp and keen, and, being accustomed to
theatrical performances, are easily touched by real oratory, and by
dramatic instruction; but they are also restless, soon tired of long
exhortations, and somewhat given to _chaff._
The early days of those "Boys' Meetings" were stormy. Sometimes the
salutatory exercises from the street were showers of stones; sometimes a
general scrimmage occurred over the benches; again, the visitors or
missionaries were pelted, by some opposition-gang, or bitter enemies of
the lads who attended the meeting. The exercises, too, must be conducted
with much tact, or they broke up with a laugh or in a row. The platform
of the Boys' Meeting seemed to become a kind of chemical test of the
gaseous element in the brethren's brains. One pungent criticism we
remember--on a pious and somewhat sentimental Sunday-school brother,
who, in one of our meetings, had been putting forth vague and
declamatory religious exhortation--in the words "Gas! gas!" whispered
with infinite contempt from one hard-faced young disciple to another.
Unhappy, too, was the experience of any more daring missionary who
ventured to question these youthful inquirers.
Thus--"In this parable, my dear boys, of the Pharisee and the publican,
what is meant by the 'publican?'"
"Alderman, sir, wot keeps a pot-house!" "Dimocrat, sir!" "Black
Republican, sir!"
Or--"My boys, what is the great end of man? When is he happiest? How
would _you_ feel happiest?"
"When we'd plenty of hard cash, sir!"
Or--"My _dear_ boys, when your father and your mother forsake you, _who_
will take you up?"
"The Purlice, sir (very seriously), the Purlice!"
They sometimes took their own quiet revenge among themselves, in
imitating the Sunday-school addresses delivered to them.
Still, ungoverned, prematurely sharp, and accustomed to all vileness, as
these lads were, words which came forth from the depths of a man's or
woman's heart would always touch some hidden chord in theirs. Pathos and
eloquence vibrated on their heartstrings as with any other audience.
Beneath all their rough habits and rude words was concealed the solemn
monitor, the _Daimon,_ which ever whispers to the lowest of human
creatures, that some things are wrong--are not to be done.
Whenever the speaker could, for a moment only, open the hearts of the
little street-rovers to this voice, there was in the wild audience a
silence almost painful, and every one instinctively felt, with awe, a
mysterious Presence in the humble room, which blessed both those who
spake and those who heard.
Whatever was bold, or practical, or heroic in sentiment, and especially
the dramatic in oratory, was most intently listened to by these children
of misfortune.
The Boys' Meetings, however, were not, and could not, in the nature of
things, be a permanent success. They were the pioneer-work for more
profound labors for this class. They cleared the way, and showed the
character of the materials. Those engaged in them learned the fearful
nature of the evils they were struggling with, and how little any moral
influence on one day can do to combat them. These wild gatherings, like
meetings for street-preaching, do not seem suited to the habits of our
population; they are too much an occasion for frolic. They have given
way to, and been merged in, much more disciplined assemblages for
precisely the same class, which again are only one step in a long series
of moral efforts in their behalf, that are in operation each day of
every week and month, and extend through years.
The first of these meetings was opened in 1848, under the charge of Mr.
A. D. F. Randolph by the members of a Presbyterian church, in a hall on
the corner of Christopher and Hudson Streets. This was followed by
another in a subsequent year in Wooster Street, commenced by the
indefatigable exertions of the wife of Rev. Dr. G. B. Cheever, and
sustained especially by Mr. B. J. Howland and W. C. Russell.
The writer took more or less part in those, but was especially engaged
in founding one in Sixth Street, near Second Avenue; another in 118
Avenue D, from which arose the "Wilson School" and the Avenue D Mission;
one in King Street, near Hudson, from which came the Cottage-Place
Mission; and another in Greenwich Street, near Vandam Street.
CHAPTER VIII.
A NEW ORGANIZATION.
All those who were engaged in these efforts felt their inadequacy and we
resolved to meet at different private houses to discuss the formation of
some more comprehensive effort. At length, in 1853, we organized, and,
to the great surprise of the writer, his associates suggested that he
should take the position of executive officer of the new and untried
Association. He was at that time busied in literary and editorial
pursuits, but had expected soon to carry out the purpose of his especial
training, and to become a preacher. He never dreamed of making a
life-pursuit of it in the beginning, or during a number of years; but
"the call" of the neglected and outcast was too strong for him, finally,
to listen to any other, and the humble charity at length became a moral
and educational movement so profound and earnest as to repay the
life-endeavors of any man. He has never regretted having cast aside
whatever chance he may have had for the prizes and honors of life, for
the sake of the forgotten and the unfortunate, and, above all, for HIS
sake to whom we owe all. Indeed, he holds himself most fortunate in his
profession, for it may be said there is no occupation to which man can
devote himself, where he can have such unmingled happiness, as when he
is assuaging human misery and raising the ignorant and depressed to a
higher life.
THE TRUSTEES.
One of the most energetic members of this new body, in the beginning,
was a nephew of Dr. Channing--a Unitarian, Mr. Wm. C. Russell--a man of
singular earnestness of character, now Professor of History and
Vice-President in Cornell University. With him was associated a friend,
Mr. B. J. Howland, of peculiar compassion of nature, whose life almost
consisted of the happiness it shed on others-he also being a Unitarian.
Then, on the other side, theologically, was Judge John L. Mason, one of
the pillars of the Presbyterian Church, from an old and honored
Presbyterian family. His accurate legality of mind and solidity of
character were of immense advantage to the youthful Association, while,
under a formal exterior, he had a most merciful heart for all kinds of
human misery. He was our presiding officer for many years, and did most
faithful and thorough work for the charity. With him, representing the
Congregationalists, was a very careful and judicious man, engaged for
many years in Sunday-schools and similar movements, Mr. Wm. C. Gilman.
The Dutch Reformed were represented by an experienced friend of
education, Mr. M. T. Hewitt; and the Presbyterians again by one of such
gentleness and humanity, that all sects might have called him
Brother--Mr. W. L. King. To these was added one who has been a great
impelling force of this humane movement ever since-a man of large,
generous nature, and much impulse of temperament, with a high and
refined culture, who has done more to gain support for this charity with
the business community, where he is so influential, than any other one
man--Mr. J. E. Williams, also a Unitarian. Mr. W. had also been engaged
in similar charities in Boston.
During the first year, we added to our board from the Methodists, Dr. J.
L. Phelps; from the Episcopalians, Mr. Archibald Russell (since
deceased), who has accomplished so much as the President of the Board of
the Five Points House of Industry; Mr. George Bird, and Mr. A. S.
Hewitt, who is now the managing head of that great educational
institution, the Cooper Union; from the Presbyterians, the celebrated
Mr. Cyrus W. Field; and from the "Come Outers," Mr. C. W. Elliott, the
genial author of the "New England History." Of all the first trustees,
the only ones in office in 1871 are J. E. Williams, B. J. Howland, M. T.
Hewitt, and C. L. Brace.
On a subsequent year we elected a gentleman who especially represented a
religious body that has always profoundly sympathized with our
enterprise--Mr. Howard Potter, the son of the eminent Episcopal Bishop
of Pennsylvania, and nephew of the Bishop of New York. And yet, of all
the members of our Board, no one has been more entirely unsectarian than
this trustee; and certainly no one has thrown into our charity more
heart and a more unbiased judgment. Mr. Potter is still trustee. Through
him and Mr. B. J. Livingston, who was chosen a few years after, the
whole accounts of the Society were subsequently put in a clear shape,
and the duties of the trustees in supervision made distinct and
regular.
It is an evidence of the simple desire for doing good which actuated
these gentlemen, and of the possibility of a "Christian Union" that,
though representing so many different sects, and ardently attached to
them, there never was in all the subsequent years the slightest
difference among them resulting from their divergent views on
speculative topics. Nearly all of them were engaged practically in
laboring among the dangerous classes. Mr. Howland and Mr. Russell had
struggled most earnestly for a considerable period to reform the morals
and elevate the character of the degraded population near "Rotten Row,"
in Laurens street, and their "Boys' Meeting" had been one of the most
spirited efforts in this direction to be seen in the city.
Several of the gentlemen I have mentioned have become distinguished in
their various professions, but it maybe doubted if they will look back
on any action of their public careers with more satisfaction than their
first earnest efforts to lay firmly the foundations of a broad structure
of charity, education, and reform.
The organization was happily named
"THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY OF NEW YORK."
This association, which, from such small beginnings has grown to so
important dimensions, was thus formed in 1853, and was subsequently
incorporated in 1856, under the general Act of the State of New York in
relation to Charitable Associations.
A small office on the corner of Amity Street was opened, with a single
lad in attendance, besides the present writer.
The public, so profound was the sense of these threatening evils,
immediately came forward with its subscriptions--the first large gift
(fifty dollars) being from the wife of the principal property-holder in
the city, Mrs. William B. Astor.
Most touching of all was the crowd of wandering little ones who
immediately found their way to the office. Ragged young girls who had
nowhere to lay their heads; children driven from drunkards' homes;
orphans who slept where they could find a box or a stairway; boys cast
out by step-mothers or step-fathers; newsboys, whose incessant answer to
our question, "Where do you live?" rung in our ears, _"Don't live
nowhere!"_ little bootblacks, young peddlers "canawl-boys," who seem to
drift into the city every winter, and live a vagabond life; pickpockets
and petty thieves trying to get honest work; child beggars and
flower-sellers growing up to enter courses of crime--all this motley
throng of infantile misery and childish guilt passed through our doors,
telling their simple stories of suffering, and loneliness, and
temptation, until our hearts became sick; and the present writer,
certainly, if he had not been able to stir up the fortunate classes to
aid in assuaging these fearful miseries, would have abandoned the post
in discouragement and disgust.
The following letter, written at this time by the Secretary, is
appended, as showing the feeling of those founding the Society:
"W. L. KING, Esq.:
"MY DEAR SIR--We were very glad to get your first letter to Mr. Russell,
giving us your good wishes and your subscription. It was read aloud to
our committee, and we have several times expressed ourselves as very
much regretting your absence. I should have certainly written you, but I
did not know your address. I received yours from Macon yesterday, and
hasten to reply.
"Everything goes on well. We have taken Judge Mason and Mr. J. E.
Williams (formerly of Boston) into the committee. I enclose a circular,
to which, according to the permission which you gave us, we have placed
your name. We have opened one room for a workshop in Wooster Street,
where we expect to have forty or fifty boys. The work is shoe-making.
The boys jump at the chance gladly. Some three 'Newsboys' Meetings' we
are just getting under way, though the churches move slowly. Our Meeting
in Avenue D is improving every Sunday, and is very full. Next Thursday
eve, I have made arrangements for a lecture on the Magic Lantern to the
boys of our Meeting. We gave out tickets on Sunday. The Girls' meeting
is large, and you know, perhaps, is now widened into an 'Industrial
School' ["The Wilson School."] for girls, which meets every day in our
Building in Avenue D. They have some fifty girls at work there--the
worst vagrant kind. Public attention is arousing everywhere to this
matter; and the first two or three days after our Appeal was published,
we had some $400 sent in, part in cash, without the trouble of
collecting. We shall begin collecting this week. I have been interrupted
here by a very intelligent little newsboy, who is here vagrant and
helpless--ran away from his step-father. One of the pressmen sent him to
me. We shall put him in our workshop.
"I pray with you, dear sir, for God's blessing on our young enterprise.
It is a grand one; but without HIM I see how useless it will be. If we
succeed even faintly, I shall feel that we have not lived in vain.
Surely Christ will be with us in these feeble efforts for his poor
creatures.
"Very truly yours,
"CHARLES L. BRACE.
"NEW YORK, March 7, 1853.
"P. S.--I forgot to tell you the name we have chosen--'Children's Aid
Society.'
"Office, No. 683 Broadway, 2d floor, New York."
The following is the first circular of
THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY.
"This society has taken its origin in the deeply settled feelings of our
citizens, that something must be done to meet the increasing crime and
poverty among the destitute children of New York. Its objects are to
help this class by opening Sunday Meetings and Industrial Schools, and,
gradually as means shall be furnished, by forming Lodging-houses and
Reading-rooms for children, and by employing paid agents whose sole
business shall be to care for them.
"As Christian men, we cannot look upon this great multitude of unhappy,
deserted, and degraded boys and girls without feeling our responsibility
to God for them. We remember that they have the same capacities, the
same need of kind and good influences, and the same Immortality as the
little ones in our own homes. We bear in mind that One died for them,
even as for the children of the rich and happy. Thus far, alms-houses
and prisons have done little to affect the evil. But a small part of the
vagrant population can be shut up in our asylums, and judges and
magistrates are reluctant to convict children so young and ignorant that
they hardly seem able to distinguish good and evil. The class increases.
Immigration is pouring in its multitude of poor foreigners, who leave
these young outcasts everywhere abandoned in our midst. For the most
part, the boys grow up utterly by themselves. No one cares for them, and
they care for no one. Some live by begging, by petty pilfering, by bold
robbery; some earn an honest support by peddling matches, or apples, or
newspapers; others gather bones and rags in the street to sell. They
sleep on steps, in cellars, in old barns, and in markets, or they hire a
bed in filthy and low lodging-houses. They cannot read; they do not go
to school or attend a church. Many of them have never seen the Bible.
Every cunning faculty is intensely stimulated. They are shrewd and old
in vice, when other children are in leading-strings. Few influences
which are kind and good ever reach the vagrant boy. And, yet, among
themselves they show generous and honest traits. Kindness can always
touch them.
"The girls, too often, grow up even more pitiable and deserted. Till of
late no one has ever cared for them. They are the crosswalk sweepers,
the little apple-peddlers, and candy-sellers of our city; or, by more
questionable means, they earn their scanty bread. They traverse the low,
vile streets alone, and live without mother or friends, or any share in
what we should call a home. They also know little of God or Christ,
except by name. They grow up passionate, ungoverned, with no love or
kindness ever to soften the heart. We all know their short wild
life--and the sad end.
"These boys and girls, it should be remembered, will soon form the great
lower class of our city. They will influence elections; they may shape
the policy of the city; they will, assuredly, if unreclaimed, poison
society all around them. They will help to form the great multitude of
robbers, thieves, vagrants, and prostitutes who are now such a burden
upon the law-respecting community.
"In one ward alone of the city, the Eleventh, there were, in 1863, out
of 12,000 children between the ages of five and sixteen, only 7,000 who
attended school, and only 2,500 who went to Sabbath School; leaving
5,000 without the common privileges of education, and about 9,000
destitute of public religious influence.
"In view of these evils we have formed an Association which shall devote
itself entirely to this class of vagrant children. We do not propose in
any way to conflict with existing asylums and institutions, but to
render them a hearty co-operation, and, at the same time, to fill a gap,
which, of necessity, they all have left. A large multitude of children
live in the city who cannot be placed in asylums, and yet who are
uncared-for and ignorant and vagrant. We propose to give to these work,
and to bring them under religious influence. As means shall come in, it
is designed to district the city, so that hereafter every Ward may have
its agent, who shall be a friend to the vagrant child. 'Boys' Sunday
Meetings' have already been formed, which we hope to see extended until
every quarter has its place of preaching to boys. With these we intend
to connect 'Industrial Schools,' where the great temptations to this
class arising from want of work may be removed, and where they can learn
an honest trade. Arrangements have been made with manufacturers, by
which, if we have the requisite funds to begin, five hundred boys in
different localities can be supplied with paying work. We hope, too,
especially to be the means of draining the city of these children, by
communicating with farmers, manufacturers, or families in the country,
who may have need of such for employment. When homeless boys are found
by our agents, we mean to get them homes in the families of respectable,
needy persons the city, and put them in the way of an honest living. We
design, in a word, to bring humane and kindly influences to bear on this
forsaken class--to preach in various modes the gospel of Christ to the
vagrant children of New York.
"Numbers of our citizens have long felt the evils we would remedy, but
few have the leisure or the means to devote themselves personally to
this work with the thoroughness which it requires. This society, as we
propose, shall be a medium through which all can, in their measure,
practically help the poor children of the city.
"We call upon all who recognize that these are the little ones of
Christ; all who believe that crime is best averted by sowing good
influences in childhood; all who are the friends of the helpless, to aid
us in our enterprise. We confidently hope this wide and practical
movement will have its full share of Christian liberality. And we
earnestly ask the contributions of those able to give, to help us in
carrying forward the work.
* * * * * * *
"March, 1858."
DENS OF MISERY AND CRIME.
In investigating closely the different parts of the city, with reference
to future movements for their benefit, I soon came to know certain
centres of crime and misery, until every lane and alley, with its filth
and wretchedness and vice, became familiar as the lanes of a country
homestead to its owner. There was the infamous German "Rag-pickers'
Den," in Pitt and Willett Streets--double rows of houses, flaunting with
dirty banners, and the yards heaped up with bones and refuse, where
cholera raged unchecked in its previous invasion. Here the wild life of
the children soon made them outcasts and thieves.
Then came the murderous blocks in Cherry and Water Streets, where so
many dark crimes were continually committed, and where the little girls
who flitted about with baskets and wrapped in old shawls became familiar
with vice before they were out of childhood.
There were the thieves' Lodging-houses' in the lower wards, where the
street-boys were trained by older pickpockets and burglars for their
nefarious callings; the low immigrant boarding-houses and vile cellars
of the First Ward, educating a youthful population for courses of guilt;
the notorious rogues' den in Laurens Street--"Rotten Row"--where, it was
said, no drove of animals could pass by and keep its numbers intact;
and, farther above, the community of young garroters and burglars around
Hamersley Street and Cottage Place. And, still more north, the dreadful
population of youthful ruffians and degraded men and women in "Poverty
Lane," near Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets and Ninth Avenue, which
subsequently ripened into the infamous "Nineteenth-street Gang."
On the east side, again, was "Dutch Hill," near Forty-second Street, the
squatters' village, whence issued so many of the little peddlers of the
city, and the Eleventh Ward and "Corlear's Hook," where the
"copper-pickers," and young wood-stealers, and the thieves who beset the
ship-yards congregated; while below, in the Sixth Ward, was the Italian
quarter, where houses could be seen crowded with children, monkeys,
dogs, and all the appurtenances of the corps of organ-grinders, harpers,
and the little Italian street-sweepers, who then, ignorant and
untrained, wandered through our down-town streets and alleys.
Near each one of these "fever nests," and centres of ignorance, crime,
and poverty, it was our hope and aim eventually to place some agency
which should be a moral and physical disinfectant--a seed of reform and
improvement amid the wilderness of vice and degradation.
It seemed a too enthusiastic hope to be realized; and, at times, the
waves of misery and guilt through these dark places appeared too
overwhelming and irresistible for any one effort or association of
efforts to be able to stem or oppose them.
How the somewhat ardent hope was realized, and the plan carried out,
will appear hereafter.
The first special effort that we put forth was the providing of work for
these children, by opening
WORKSHOPS.
These experiments, of which we made many at different times, were not
successful. Our object was to render the shops self-supporting. But the
irregularity of the class attending them, the work spoiled, and the
necessity of competing with skilled labor and often with machinery, soon
put us behind. We had one workshop for pegging boots and shoes in
Wooster Street, where we soon got employment for numbers of street-boys;
but a machine was suddenly invented for pegging shoes, which drove us
out of the field. We tried then paper box and bag-making, carpentering,
and other branches; but it may be set down as an axiom, that
"Benevolence cannot compete with Selfishness in business." Philanthropy
will never cut down the expenses of production, as will individual
self-interest.
Moreover, these artificial workshops excite the jealousy of the trades,
while they are not so necessary in this country as in Europe, because
the demand is so great here for children's labor.
We soon discovered that if we could train the children of the streets to
habits of industry and self-control and neatness, and give them the
rudiments of moral and mental education, we need not trouble ourselves
about anything more. A child in any degree educated and disciplined can
easily make an honest living in this country. The only occasional
exception is with young girls depending on the needle for support,
inasmuch as the competition here is so severe. But for these we often
were enabled to provide instruction in skilled labor, which supported
them easily; and, if taught cleanliness and habits of order and
punctuality, they had no difficulty in securing places as upper
servants, or they soon married into a better class.
[Illustration: LODGING-HOUSES FOR HOMELESS BOYS--AS THEY ARE. (The
Newsboys' House.) NO. 2.]
CHAPTER IX.
HOMELESS BOYS.
THE NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.
The spectacle which earliest and most painfully arrested my attention in
this work, were the _houseless_ boys in various portions of the city.
There seemed to be a very considerable class of lads in New York who
bore to the busy, wealthy world about them something of the same
relation which Indians bear to the civilized Western settlers. They had
no settled home, and lived on the outskirts of society, their hand
against every man's pocket, and every man looking on them as natural
enemies; their wits sharpened like those of a savage, and their
principles often no better. Christianity reared its temples over them,
and Civilization was carrying on its great work, while they--a happy
race of little heathens and barbarians--plundered, or frolicked, or led
their roving life, far beneath. Sometimes they seemed to me, like what
the police call them, "street-rats," who gnawed at the foundations of
society, and scampered away when light was brought near them. Their life
was, of course, a painfully hard one. To sleep in boxes, or under
stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter-nights, for a mere
child, was hard enough; but often to have no food, to be kicked and
cuffed by the older ruffians, and shoved about by the police, standing
barefooted and in rags under doorways as the winter-storm raged, and to
know that in all the great city there was not a single door open with
welcome to the little rover--this was harder.
Yet, with all this, a more light-hearted youngster than the street-boy
is not to be found. He is always ready to make fun of his own
sufferings, and to "chaff" others. His face is old from exposure and his
sharp "struggle for existence;" his clothes flutter in the breeze; and
his bare feet peep out from the broken boots. Yet he is merry as a
clown, and always ready for the smallest joke, and quick to take "a
point" or to return a repartee. His views of life are mainly derived
from the more mature opinions of "flash-men," engine-runners,
cock-fighters, pugilists, and pickpockets, whom he occasionally is
permitted to look upon with admiration at some select pot-house; while
his more ideal pictures of the world about him, and, his literary
education, come from the low theatres, to which he is passionately
attached. His morals are, of course, not of a high order, living, as he
does, in a fighting, swearing, stealing, and gambling set. Yet he has
his code; he will not get drunk; he pays his debts to other boys, and
thinks it dishonorable to sell papers on their beat, and, if they come
on his, he administers summary justice by "punching;" he is generous to
a fault, and will always divide his last sixpence with a poorer boy.
"Life is a strife" with him, and money its reward; and, as bankruptcy
means to the street-boy a night on the door-steps without supper, he is
sharp and reckless, if he can only earn or get enough to keep him above
water. His temptations are, to cheat, steal, and lie. His religion is
vague. One boy, who told me he "didn't live nowhere," who had never
heard of Christ, said he had heard of God, and the boys thought it "kind
o' lucky" to say over something to Him which one of them had learned,
when they were sleeping out in boxes.
With all their other vices, it is remarkable how few of these smaller
street-boys ever take liquor. And their kindness to one another, when
all are in the utmost destitution, is a credit to human nature. [Only
recently, a poor hump-backed lad in the Newsboys' Lodging-house gave his
dollar, and collected nine more from the boys, for the family of the
children who were lost in New Jersey.]
Their money is unfortunately apt to slip away, especially for gambling
and petty lotteries, called "policy-tickets." A tradition in the remote
past of some boy who drew a hundred dollars in these lotteries still
pervades the whole body, and they annually sink a considerable portion
of their hard-earned pennies in "policy-tickets."
The choice of these lads of a night's resting-place is sometimes almost
as remarkable as was Gavroche's in "Les Miserables." Two little newsboys
slept one winter in the iron tube of the bridge at Harlem; two others
made their bed in a burned-out safe in Wall Street. Sometimes they
ensconced themselves in the cabin of a ferry-boat, and thus spent the
night. Old boilers, barges, steps, and, above all, steam-gratings, were
their favorite beds.
In those days the writer would frequently see ten or a dozen of them,
piled together to keep one another warm, under the stairs of the
printing-offices.
In planning the alleviation of these evils, it was necessary to keep in
view one object, not to weaken the best quality of this class--their
sturdy independence--and, at the same time, their prejudices and habits
were not too suddenly to be assailed. They had a peculiar dread of
Sunday Schools and religious exhortations--I think partly because of the
general creed of their older associates, but more for fear that these
exercises were a "pious dodge" for trapping them into the House of
Refuge or some place of detention.
The first thing to be aimed at in the plan was, to treat the lads as
independent little dealers, and give them nothing without payment, but
at the same time to offer them much more for their money than they could
get anywhere else. Moral, educational, and religious influences were to
come in afterward. Securing them through their interests, we had a
permanent hold of them.
Efforts were made by the writer among our influential citizens and in
various churches, public meetings were held, articles written, the press
interested, and at length sufficient money was pledged to make the
experiment. The board of the new Society gave its approval, and a loft
was secured in the old "Sun Buildings," and fitted up as a lodging-room,
and in March, 1854, the first Lodging-house for street-boys or newsboys
in this country was opened.
An excellent superintendent was found in the person of a carpenter, Mr.
C. C. Tracy, who showed remarkable ingenuity and tact in the management
of these wild lads. These little subjects regarded the first
arrangements with some suspicion and much contempt. To find a good bed
offered them for six cents, with a bath thrown in, and a supper for four
cents, was a hard fact, which they could rest upon and understand; but
the motive was evidently "gaseous." There was "no money in it"--that was
clear. The Superintendent was probably "a street preacher," and this was
a trap to get them to Sunday Schools, and so prepare them for the House
of Refuge. Still, they might have a lark there, and it could be no worse
than "bumming," _i.e.,_ sleeping out. They laid their plans for a
general scrimmage in the school-room--first cutting off the gas, and
then a row in the bedroom.
The Superintendent, however, in a bland and benevolent way, nipped their
plans in the bud. The gas-pipes were guarded; the rough ring-leaders
were politely dismissed to the lower door, where an officer looked after
their welfare; and, when the first boots began to fly from a little
fellow's bed, he found himself suddenly snaked out by a gentle but
muscular hand, and left in the cold to shiver over his folly. The others
began to feel that a mysterious authority was getting even with them,
and thought it better to nestle in their warm beds.
Little sleeping, however, was there among them that night; but
ejaculations sounded out--such as, "I say, Jim, this is rayther better
'an bummin'--eh?" "My eyes! what soft beds these is!" "Tom! it's 'most
as good as a steam-gratin', and there ain't no M. P.'s to poke neither!"
"I'm glad I ain't a bummer to-night!"
A good wash and a breakfast sent the lodgers forth in the morning,
happier and cleaner, if not better, than when they went in. This night's
success established its popularity with the newsboys. The "Fulton Lodge"
soon became a boys' hotel, and one loft was known among them as the
"Astor House."
Quietly and judiciously did Mr. Tracy advance his lines among them.
"Boys," said he, one morning, "there was a gentleman here this morning,
who wanted a boy in an office, at three dollars a week."
"My eyes! Let _me_ go, sir!" And--_"Me,_ sir!"
"But he wanted a boy who could write a good hand."
Their countenances fell.
"Well, now, suppose we have a night-school, and learn to write--what do
you say, boys?".
"Agreed, sir."
And so arose our evening-school.
The Sunday Meeting, which is now an "institution," was entered upon in a
similarly discreet manner. The lads had been impressed by a public
funeral, and Mr. Tracy suggested their listening to a little reading
from the Bible. They consented, and were a good deal surprised at what
they heard. The "Golden Rule" struck them as an altogether impossible
kind of precept to obey, especially when one was "stuck and short," and
"had to live." The marvels of the Bible--the stories of miracles and the
like--always seemed to them natural and proper. That a Being of such a
character as Christ should control Nature and disease, was appropriate
to their minds. And it was a kind of comfort to these young vagabonds
that the Son of God was so often homeless, and that he belonged humanly
to the working classes. The petition for "daily bread" (which a
celebrated divine has declared "unsuited to modern conditions of
civilization") they always rolled out with a peculiar unction. I think
that the conception of a Superior Being, who knew just the sort of
privations and temptations that followed them, and who felt especially
for the poorer classes, who was always near them, and pleased at true
manhood in them, did keep afterward a considerable number of them from
lying and stealing and cheating and vile pleasures.
Their singing was generally prepared for by taking off their coats and
rolling up their sleeves, and was entered into with a gusto.
The voices seemed sometimes to come from a different part of their
natures from what we saw with the bodily eyes. There was, now and then,
a gentle and minor key, as if a glimpse of something purer and higher
passed through these rough lads. A favorite song was, "There's a Rest
for the Weary," though more untiring youngsters than these never frisked
over the earth; and "There's a light in the Window for Thee, Brother,"
always pleased them, as if they imagined themselves wandering alone
through a great city at night, and at length a friendly light shone in
the window for them.
Their especial vice of money-wasting the Superintendent broke up by
opening a Savings-bank, and allowing the boys to vote how long it should
be closed. The small daily deposits accumulated to such a degree that
the opening gave them a great surprise at the amounts which they
possessed, and they began to feel thus the "sense of property," and the
desire of accumulation, which economists tell us, is the base of all
civilization. A liberal interest was also soon allowed on deposits,
which stimulated the good habit. At present, from two hundred to three
hundred dollars will often be saved by the lads in a month.
The same device, and constant instruction, broke up gambling, though I
think policy-tickets were never fairly undermined among them.
The present Superintendent and Matron of the Newsboys' Lodging-house,
Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor (at Nos. 49 and 51 Park Place), are unsurpassed in
such institutions in their discipline, order, good management, and
excellent housekeeping. The floors, over which two hundred or two
hundred and fifty street-boys tread daily, are as clean as a
man-of-war's deck. The Sunday-evening meetings are as attentive and
orderly as a church, the week-evening school quiet and studious. All
that mass of wild young humanity is kept in perfect order, and brought
under a thousand good influences.
The Superintendent has had a very good preliminary experience for this
work in the military service--having been in the British army in the
Crimea. The discipline which he maintains is excellent. He is a man,
too, of remarkable generosity of feeling, and a good "provider." One
always knows that his boys will have enough to eat, and that everything
will be managed liberally--and justly. It is truly remarkable during how
many years he controlled that great multitude of little vagabonds and
"roughs," and yet with scarcely ever even a complaint from any source
against him. For such success is needed the utmost kindness, and, at the
same time, the strictest justice. His wife has been almost like a mother
to the boys.
In the course of a year the population of a town passes through the
Lodging-house--in 1869 and '70, _eight thousand eight hundred and
thirty-five_ different boys. Many are put in good homes; some find
places for themselves; others drift away--no one knows whither. They are
an army of orphans--regiments of children who have not a home or
friend--a multitude of little street-rovers who have no place where to
lay their heads. They are being educated in the streets rapidly to be
thieves and burglars and criminals. The Lodging-house is at once school,
church, intelligence-office, and hotel for them. Here they are shaped to
be honest and industrious citizens; here taught economy, good order,
cleanliness, and morality; here Religion brings its powerful influences
to bear upon them; and they are sent forth to begin courses of honest
livelihood.
The Lodging-houses repay their expenses to the public ten times over
each year, in preventing the growth of thieves and criminals. They are
agencies of pure humanity and almost unmingled good. Their only possible
reproach could be, that some of their wild subjects are soon beyond
their reach, and have been too deeply tainted with the vices of
street-life to be touched even by kindness, education, or religion. The
number who are saved, however, are most encouragingly large.
The Newsboys' Lodging-house is by no means, however, an entire burden on
the charity of the community. During 1870 the lads themselves paid
$3,349 toward its expense.
The following is a brief description of the rooms during the past five
years:
The first floor is divided into various compartments--a large
dining-room, where one hundred and fifty boys can sit down to a table; a
kitchen, laundry, storeroom, servants' room, and rooms for the family of
the superintendent The next story is partitioned into a school-room,
gymnasium, and bath and wash rooms, plentifully supplied with hot and
cold water. The hot water and the heat of the rooms are supplied by a
steam-boiler on the lower story. The two upper stories are filled with
neat iron bedsteads, having two beds each, arranged like ships' bunks
over each other; of these there are two hundred and sixty. Here are also
the water-vats, into which the many barrelsful used daily are pumped by
the engine. The rooms are high and dry, and the floors clean.
It is a commentary on the housekeeping and accommodations that for
eighteen years no case of contagious disease has ever occurred among
these thousands of boys.
The New York Newsboys' Lodging-house has been in existence eighteen
years. During these years it has lodged 91,326 different boys, restored
7,278 boys to friends, provided 5,126 with homes, furnished 576,485
lodgings and 469,461 meals. The expense of all this has been $132,888.
Of this amount the boys have contributed $32,306.
That the Lodging-house has had a vigorous growth, is shown by the
following table:
TABULAR STATEMENT SINCE ORGANIZATION
========================================================
| | | | |
| | | | Return- |
YEAR | No. of | No. of | No. of | ed to |
| Boys. | Lodgings.| Meals. | friends.|
| | | | |
| | | | |
--------------------------------------------------------
1854 to 1855..| 408 | 6,872 | ........ | ....... |
1855 to 1856..| 374 | 7,599 | ........ | ....... |
1856 to 1857..| 387 | 5,157 | ........ | ....... |
1857 to 1858..| 800 | 8,026 | 11,923 | ....... |
1858 to 1859..| 3,000 | 14,000 | 13,114 | ....... |
1859 to 1860..| 4,500 | 19,747 | 13,341 | 100 |
1860 to 1861..| 4,000 | 27,390 | 16,873 | 247 |
1861 to 1862..| 3,875 | 32,954 | 19,809 | ....... |
1862 to 1863..| 3,000 | 29,409 | 20,000 | 396 |
1863 to 1864..| 6,325 | 36,572 | 25,506 | 437 |
1864 to 1865..| 6,793 | 42,446 | 30,137 | 576 |
1865 to 1866..| 7,256 | 43,797 | 32,867 | 633 |
1866 to 1867..| 8,192 | 49,519 | 33,633 | 719 |
1867 to 1868..| 8,599 | 51,740 | 35,617 | 819 |
1868 to 1869..| 8,944 | 53,610 | 54,092 | 896 |
1869 9 months.| 7,383 | 39,077 | 33,207 | 642 |
1869 to 1870..| 8,655 | 55,565 | 56,128 | 713 |
1870 to 1871..| 8,835 | 53,005 | 53,214 | 1,100 |
|--------|----------|----------|---------|
Total..| 91,326 | 576,485 | 469,461 | 7,278 |
OF NEWSBOYS' LODGING-HOUSE.
=============================================================
| | | |
| | | No. of |
YEAR | Expenses. | Paid by | Boys |Am'nt saved
| | Boys. | using | by them.
| | | Bank. |
| | | |
-------------------------------------------------------------
1854 to 1855..| $1,199.76 | $397.56 | ...... | .........
1855 to 1856..| 1,431.82 | 391.26 | 16 | $643.58
1856 to 1857..| 1,762.56 | 262.56 | 116 | 270.70
1857 to 1858..| 1,925.03 | 298.03 | ...... | .........
1858 to 1859..| 2,199.34 | 807.15 | ...... | .........
1859 to 1860..| 2,113.56 | 955.44 | 23 | 110.10
1860 to 1861..| 3,420.57 | 1,036.98 | 230 | 1,259.77
1861 to 1862..| 2,736.08 | 1,138.88 | 388 | 1,376.59
1862 to 1863..| 3,402.82 | 1,102.33 | 347 | 1,315.10
1863 to 1864..| 5,758.16 | 1,599.10 | 405 | 2,080.06
1864 to 1865..| 7,159.95 | 1,944.22 | 499 | 2,565.92
1865 to 1866..| 10,058.13 | 2,127.44 | 599 | 2,486.43
1866 to 1867..| 10,847.79 | 2,718.79 | 542 | 2,121.76
1867 to 1868..| 12,094.00 | 3,177.69 | 703 | 2,203.45
1868 to 1869..| 23,333.45 | 3,644.49 | 796 | 2,057.76
1869 9 months.| 13,445.24 | 3,180.35 | 659 | 1,688.22
1869 to 1870..| 15,102.11 | 4,214.42 | 1,107 | 2,433.60
1870 to 1871..| 14,898.03 | 3,349.77 | 1,065 | 2,588.31
|------------|------------|--------|-----------
Total..|$132,888.40 | $32,306.96 | 7,495 |$25,141.35
Extracts from the journal of a visitor from the country:
A VISIT TO THE NEWSBOYS.
"It requires a peculiar person to manage and talk to these boys.
Bullet-headed, short-haired, bright-eyed, shirt-sleeved, go-ahead boys.
Boys who sell papers, black boots, run on errands, hold horses, pitch
pennies, sleep in barrels, and steal their bread. Boys who know at the
age of twelve more than the children of ordinary men would have learned
at twenty; boys who can cheat you out of your eye-teeth, and are as
smart as a steel-trap. They will stand no fooling; they are accustomed
to gammon, they live by it. No audience that ever we saw could compare
in attitudinizing with this. Heads generally up; eyes fall on the
speaker; mouths, almost without an exception, closed tightly; hands in
pockets; legs stretched out; no sleepers, all wide-awake, keenly alive
for a pun, a point, or a slangism. Winding up, Mr. Brace said: 'Well,
boys, I want my friends here to see that you have the material for
talkers amongst yourselves; whom do you choose for your orator?'
"'Paddy, Paddy,' shouted one and all. 'Come out, Paddy. Why don't you
show yourself?' and so on.
"Presently Paddy came forward, and stood upon a stool. He is a
youngster, not more than twelve, with a little round eye, a short nose,
a lithe form, and chuck-full of fun.
[Illustration: THE NEWSBOY. (From a photograph.)]
"'Bummers,' said he, 'snoozers, and citizens, I've come down here among
ye to talk to yer a little! Me and my friend Brace have come to see how
ye'r gittin' along, and to advise yer. You fellers what stands at the
shops with yer noses over the railin', smellin' ov the roast beef and
the hash--you fellers who's got no home--think of it how we are to
encourage ye. [Derisive laughter, "Ha-ha's," and various ironical kinds
of applause.] I say, bummers--for you're _all_ bummers (in a tone of
kind patronage)--_I was a bummer once_ [great laughter]--I hate to see
you spendin' your money on penny ice-creams and bad cigars. Why don't
you save your money? You feller without no boots, how would you like a
new pair, eh? [Laughter from all the boys but the one addressed.] Well,
I hope you may get 'em, but I rayther think you won't. I have hopes for
you all. I want you to grow up to be rich men--citizens, Government men,
lawyers, generals, and influence men. Well, boys, I'll tell you a story.
My dad was a hard 'un. One beautiful day he went on a spree, and he came
home and told me where's yer mother? and I axed him I didn't know, and
he clipt me over the head with an iron pot, and knocked me down, and me
mither drapped in on him, and at it they went. [Hi-hi's, and
demonstrative applause.] Ah! at it they went, and at it they kept--ye
should have seen 'em--and whilst they were fightin', I slipped, meself
out the back door, and away I went like a scart dog. [Oh, dry up! Bag
your head! Simmer down!] Well, boys, I wint on till I kim to the 'Home'
[great laughter among the boys], and they took me in [renewed laughter],
and did for me, without a cap to me head or shoes to me feet, and thin I
ran away, and here I am. Now boys [with mock solemnity], be good, mind
yer manners, copy me, and see what you'll become.'
"At this point the boys raised such a storm of hifalutin applause, and
indulged in such characteristic demonstrations of delight, that it was
deemed best to stop the youthful Demosthenes, who jumped from his stool
with a bound that would have done credit to a monkey.
"At this juncture huge pans of apples were brought in, and the boys were
soon engaged in munching the delightful fruit, after which the Matron
gave out a hymn, and all joined in singing it, during which we took our
leave."
A NEWSBOY'S SPEECH. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
"Some of these boys, in all their misfortunes, have a humorous eye for
their situation--as witness the following speech, delivered by one of
them at the Newsboys' Lodging-house, before the departure of a company
to the West. The report is a faithful one, made on the spot. The little
fellow mounted a chair, and thus held forth:
"'Boys, gintlemen, chummies: Praps you'd like to hear summit about the
West, the great West, you know, where so many of our old friends are
settled down and growin' up to be great men, maybe the greatest men in
the great Republic. Boys, that's the place for growing Congressmen, and
Governors, and Presidents. Do you want to be newsboys always, and
shoeblacks, and timber-merchants in a small way by sellin' matches? If
ye do you'll stay in New York, but if you don't you'll go out West, and
begin to be farmers, for the beginning of a farmer, my boys, is the
making of a Congressman, and a President. Do you want to be rowdies, and
loafers, and shoulder-hitters? If ye do, why, ye can keep around these
diggins. Do you want to be gentlemen and independent citizens? You
do--then make tracks for the West, from the Children's Aid Society. If
you want to be snoozers, and rummeys, and policy-players, and Peter
Funks men, why you'll hang up your caps and stay round the groceries and
jine fire-engine and target companies, and go firin' at haystacks for
bad quarters; but if ye want to be the man who will make his mark in the
country, ye will get up steam, and go ahead, and there's lots on the
prairies a waitin' for yez.
"'You haven't any idear of what ye may be yet, if you will only take a
bit of my advice. How do you know but, if you are honest, and good, and
industerous, you may get so much up in the ranks that you won't call a
gineral or a judge your boss. And you'll have servants ov all kinds to
tend you, to put you to bed when you are sleepy, and to spoon down your
vittles when you are gettin' your grub. Oh, boys! won't that be great!
Only think--to have a feller to open your mouth, and put great slices of
punkin pie and apple dumplings into it. You will be lifted on hossback
when you go for to take a ride on the prairies, and if you choose to go
in a wagon, or on a 'scursion, you will find that the hard times don't
touch you there; and the best of it will be that if 'tis good to-day,
'twill be better to-morrow.
"But how will it be if you don't go, boys? Why, I'm afraid when you grow
too big to live in the Lodging-house any longer, you'll be like lost
sheep in the wilderness, as we heard of last Sunday night here, and
you'll maybe not find your way out any more. But you'll be found
somewhere else. The best of you will be something short of judges and
governors, and the feller as has the worst luck--and the worst behaver
in the groceries-will be very sure to go from them to the prisons.
"I will now come from the stump. I am booked for the West in the next
company from the Lodging-house. I hear they have big school-houses and
colleges there, and that they have a place for me in the winter time; I
want to be somebody, and somebody don't live here, no how. You'll find
him on a farm in the West, and I hope you'll come to see him soon and
stop with him when you go, and let every one of yous be somebody, and be
loved and respected. I thank yous, boys, for your patient attention. I
can't say more at present, I hope I haven't said too much.'"
THE BUILDING FUND.
An effort was made in the Legislature, a few years since, to obtain a
building-fund for the Newsboys' Lodging-house. This was granted from the
Excise Fund of the city for the legitimate reason, that those who do
most to form drunkards should be compelled to aid in the expense and
care of the children of drunkards. Thirty thousand dollars were
appropriated from these taxes, provided a similar amount was raised by
private subscription. This sum was obtained by the kindness and energy
of the friends of the enterprise, and the whole amount ($60,000) was
invested in good securities.
In 1872 it had accumulated to $80,000, and the purchase was made of the
"Shakespeare Hotel," on the corner of Duane and Chambers Streets, which
is now being fitted up and rebuilt as a permanent Lodging-house for
Homeless Boys. The building has streets on three sides, and, plenty of
air and light. Shops will be let underneath, so that the payments of the
boys and the rents received will nearly defray the annual expenses of
this charity, thus insuring its permanency.
CHAPTER X.
STREET GIRLS.
THEIR SUFFERINGS AND CRIMES.
A girl street-rover is to my mind the most painful figure in all the
unfortunate crowd of a large city. With a boy, "Arab of the streets,"
one always has the consolation that, despite his ragged clothes and bed
in a box or hay-barge, he often has a rather good time of it, and enjoys
many of the delicious pleasures of a child's roving life, and that a
fortunate turn of events may at any time make an honest, industrious
fellow of him. At heart we cannot say that he is much corrupted; his
sins belong to his ignorance and his condition, and are often easily
corrected by a radical change of circumstances. The oaths,
tobacco-spitting, and slang, and even the fighting and stealing of a
street-boy, are not so bad as they look. Refined influences, the checks
of religion, and a fairer chance for existence without incessant
struggle, will often utterly eradicate these evil habits, and the rough,
thieving New York vagrant make an honest, hardworking Western pioneer.
It is true that sometimes the habit of vagrancy and idling may be too
deeply worked in him for his character to speedily reform; but, if of
tender years, a change of circumstances will nearly always bring a
change of character.
With a girl-vagrant it is different. She feels homelessness and
friendlessness more; she has more of the feminine dependence on
affection; the street-trades, too, are harder for her, and the return at
night to some lonely cellar or tenement-room, crowded with dirty people
of all ages and sexes, is more dreary. She develops body and mind
earlier than the boy, and the habits of vagabondism stamped on her in
childhood are more difficult to wear off.
Then the strange and mysterious subject of sexual vice comes in. It has
often seemed to me one of the most dark arrangements of this singular
world that a female child of the poor should be permitted to start on
its immortal career with almost every influence about it degrading, its
inherited tendencies overwhelming toward indulgence of passion, its
examples all of crime or lust, its lower nature awake long before its
higher, and then that it should be allowed to soil and degrade its soul
before the maturity of reason, and beyond all human possibility of
cleansing!
For there is no reality in the sentimental assertion that the sexual
sins of the lad are as degrading as those of the girl. The instinct of
the female is more toward the preservation of purity, and therefore her
fall is deeper--an instinct grounded in the desire of preserving a
stock, or even the necessity of perpetuating our race.
Still, were the indulgences of the two sexes of a similar character--as
in savage races--were they both following passion alone, the moral
effect would not perhaps be so different in the two cases. But the sin
of the girl soon becomes what the Bible calls "a sin against one's own
body," the most debasing of all sins. She soon learns to offer for sale
that which is in its nature beyond all price, and to feign the most
sacred affections, and barter with the most delicate instincts. She no
longer merely follows blindly and excessively an instinct; she perverts
a passion and sells herself. The only parallel case with the male sex
would be that in some Eastern communities which are rotting and falling
to pieces from their debasing and unnatural crimes. When we hear of such
disgusting offenses under any form of civilization, whether it be under
the Rome of the Empire, or the Turkey of to-day, we know that disaster,
ruin, and death, are near the State and the people.
This crime, with the girl, seems to sap and rot the whole nature. She
loses self-respect, without which every human being soon sinks to the
lowest depths; she loses the habit of industry, and cannot be taught to
work. Having won her food at the table of Nature by unnatural means,
Nature seems to cast her out, and henceforth she cannot labor. Living in
a state of unnatural excitement, often worked up to a high pitch of
nervous tension by stimulants, becoming weak in body and mind, her
character loses fixedness of purpose and tenacity and true energy. The
diabolical women who support and plunder her, the vile society she
keeps, the literature she reads, the business she has chosen or fallen
into, serve continually more and more to degrade and defile her. If, in
a moment of remorse, she flee away and take honest work, her weakness
and bad habits follow her; she is inefficient, careless, unsteady, and
lazy; she craves the stimulus and hollow gayety of the wild life she has
led; her ill name dogs her; all the wicked have an instinct of her
former evil courses; the world and herself are against reform, and,
unless she chance to have a higher moral nature or stronger will than
most of her class, or unless Religion should touch even her polluted
soul, she soon falls back, and gives one more sad illustration of the
immense difficulty of a fallen woman rising again.
The great majority of prostitutes, it must be remembered, have had no
romantic or sensational history, though they always affect this. They
usually relate, and perhaps even imagine, that they have been seduced
from the paths of virtue suddenly and by the wiles of some heartless
seducer. Often they describe themselves as belonging to some virtuous,
respectable, and even wealthy family. Their real history, however, is
much more commonplace and matter-of-fact. They have been poor women's
daughters, and did not want to work as their mothers did; or they have
grown up in a tenement-room, crowded with boys and men, and lost purity
before they knew what it was; or they have liked gay company, and have
had no good influences around them, and sought pleasure in criminal
indulgences; or they have been street-children, poor, neglected, and
ignorant, and thus naturally and inevitably have become depraved women.
Their sad life and debased character are the natural outgrowth of
poverty, ignorance, and laziness. The number among them who have "seen
better days," or have fallen from heights of virtue, is incredibly
small. They show what fruits neglect in childhood, and want of education
and of the habit of labor, and the absence of pure examples, will
inevitably bear. Yet in their low estate they always show some of the
divine qualities of their sex. The physicians in the Blackwell's Island
Hospital say that there are no nurses so tender and devoted to the sick
and dying as these girls. And the honesty of their dealings with the
washerwomen and shopkeepers, who trust them while in their vile houses,
has often been noted.
The words of sympathy and religion always touch their hearts, though the
effect passes like the April cloud. On a broad scale, probably no remedy
that man could apply would ever cure this fatal disease of society. It
may, however, be diminished in its ravages, and prevented in a large
measure. The check to its devastations in a laboring or poor class will
be the facility of marriage, the opening of new channels of female work,
but, above all, the influences of education and Religion.
An incident occurred daring our early labors, which is worth
preserving:
EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL DURING 1854.
THE TOMBS.
"Mrs. Forster, the excellent Matron of the Female Department of the
prison, had told us of an interesting young German girl, committed for
vagrancy, who might just at this crisis be rescued. I entered these
soiled and gloomy Egyptian archways, so appropriate and so depressing,
that the sight of the low columns and lotus capitals is to me now
inevitably associated with the somber and miserable histories of the
place.
"After a short waiting, the girl was brought in--a German girl,
apparently about fourteen, very thinly but neatly dressed, of slight
figure, and a face intelligent and old for her years, the eye passionate
and shrewd. I give details because the conversation which followed was
remarkable.
"The poor feel, but they can seldom speak. The story she told, with a
wonderful eloquence, thrilled to all our hearts; it seemed to us, then,
like the first articulate voice from the great poor class of the city.
"Her eye had a hard look at first, but softened when I spoke to her in
her own language.
"'Have you been long here?'
"'Only two days, sir.'
"Why are you here?'
"'I will tell you, sir. I was working out with a lady. I had to get up
early and go to bed late, and I never had rest. She worked me always;
and, finally, because I could not do everything, she beat me--she beat
me like a dog, and I ran away; I could not bear it.'
"The manner of this was wonderfully passionate and eloquent.
"'But I thought you were arrested for being near a place of bad
character,' said I.
"'I am going to tell you, sir. The next day I and my father went to get
some clothes I left there, and the lady wouldn't give them up; and what
could we do? What can the poor do? My father is a poor old man, who
picks rags in the streets, and I have never picked rags yet. He said, "I
don't want you to be a rag-picker. You are not a child now--people will
look at you--you will come to harm." And I said, "No, father, I will
help you. We must do something now, I am out of place;" and so I went
out. I picked all day, and didn't make much, and I was cold and hungry.
Towards night, a gentleman met me--a very fine, well-dressed gentleman,
an American, and he said, "Will you go home with me!" and I said, "No."
He said, "I will give you twenty shillings," and I told him I would go.
And the next morning I was taken up outside by the officer.'
"'Poor girl!' said some one, 'had you forgotten your mother? and what a
sin it was!'
"'No, sir, I did remember her. She had no clothes, and I had no shoes;
and I have only this (she shivered in her thin dress), and winter is
coming on. I know what making money is, sir. I am only fourteen, but I
am old enough. I have had to take care of myself ever since I was ten
years old, and I have never had a cent given me. It may be a sin, sir
(and the tears rained down her cheeks, which she did not try to wipe
away). I do not ask you to forgive it. Men can't forgive, but God will
forgive. I know about men.
"'The rich do such things and worse, and no one says anything against
them. But I, sir--_I am poor!_ (This she said with a tone which struck
the very heart-strings.) I have never had any one to take care of me.
Many is the day I have gone hungry from morning till night, because I
did not dare spend a cent or two, the only ones I had. Oh, I have wished
sometimes so to die! Why does not God kill me!'
"She was choked by her sobs. We let her calm herself a moment, and then
told her our plan of finding her a good home, where she could make an
honest living. She was mistrustful. 'I will tell you, _mein Herren;_ I
know men, and I do not believe any one, I have been cheated so often.
There is no trust in any one. I am not a child. I have lived as long as
people twice as old.'
"'But you do not wish to stay in prison?'
"'O God, no! Oh, there is such a weight on my heart here. There is
nothing but bad to learn in prison. These dirty Irish girls! I would
kill myself if I had to stay here. Why was I ever born? I have such
_Kummerniss_ (woes) here (she pressed her hand on her heart)--I am
poor!'
"We explained our plan more at length, and she became satisfied. We
wished her to be bound to stay some years.
"'No,' said she, passionately, 'I cannot; I confess to you, gentlemen. I
should either run away or die, if I was bound.'
"We talked with the matron. She had never known, she said, in her
experience, such a remarkable girl. The children there of nine or ten
years were often as old as young women, but this girl was an experienced
woman. The offense, however, she had no doubt was her first.
"We obtained her release; and one of us, Mr. G., walked over to her
house or cabin, some three miles on the other side of Williamsburgh, in
order that she might see her parents before she went to her new home.
"As she walked along, she looked up in Mr. G.'s face, and asked,
thoughtfully. Why we came there for her? He explained. She listened, and
after a little while, said, in broken English 'Don't you think better
for poor little girls to die than live?' He spoke kindly to her, and
said something about a good God. She shook her head, 'No, no good God.
Why am I so? It always was so. Why much suffer, if good God?' He told
her they would get her a supper, and in the morning she should start off
and find new friends. She became gradually almost
ungoverned--sobbed--would like to die, even threatened suicide in this
wild way.
"Kindness and calm words at length made her more reasonable. After much
trouble, they reached the home or den of the poor rag-picker. The
parents were very grateful, and she was to start off the next morning to
a country home, where, perhaps finally, the parents will join her.
"For myself, the evening shadow seemed more somber, and the cheerful
home-lights less cheerful, as I walked home, remembering such a
history.
"Ye who are happy, whose lives have been under sunshine and gentle
influences around whom Affection, and Piety, and Love have watched, as
ye gather in cheerful circles these autumn evenings, think of these
bitter and friendless children of the poor, in the great city. But few
have such eloquent expressions as this poor girl, yet all inarticulately
feel.
"There are sad histories beneath this gay world--lives over which is the
very shadow of death. God be thanked, there is a Heart which feels for
them all, where every pang and groan will find a sympathy, which will
one day right the wrong, and bring back the light over human life.
"The day is short for us all; but for some it will be a pleasant
thought, when we come to lay down our heads at last, that we have eased
a few aching hearts, and brought peace and new hope to the dark lives of
those whom men had forgotten or cast out."
[Illustration: THE STREET-GIRL'S END.]
CHAPTER XI.
LEGAL TREATMENT OF PROSTITUTES.
SHOULD LICENSES BE ALLOWED?
The question of the best mode of legally controlling the great evil of
prostitution, and confining its bad physical effects, is a very
difficult one.
The merely philosophical inquirer, or even the physician, regarding
humanity "in the broad," comes naturally to the conclusion that this
offense is one of the inevitable evils which always have followed, and
always will follow, the track of civilization; that it is to be looked
upon, like small-pox or scarlet fever, as a disease of civilized man,
and is to be treated accordingly, by physical and scientific means, and
must be controlled, as it cannot be uprooted, by legislation. Or they
regard it as they do intoxication, as the effect of a misdirected
natural desire, which is everywhere thought to be a legitimate object
both of permission or recognition by government, as well as of check by
rigid laws.
If medical men, their minds are almost exclusively directed toward the
frightful effects on society and upon the innocent, of the diseases
which attend this offense. They see that legislation would at once check
the ravages from these terrible maladies, and that a system of licenses
such as is practiced in the Continental cities would prevent them from
spreading through society and punishing those who had never sinned. As
scientific healers of human maladies, they feel that anything is a gain
which lessens human suffering, controls disease, and keeps up the
general health of the community. Their position, too, has been
strengthened by the foolish and superstitious arguments of their
opponents. It has been claimed that syphilitic disorders are a peculiar
and supernatural punishment for sin and wrong-doing; that by interfering
with their legitimate action on the guilty, we presume to diminish the
punishments inflicted by the Almighty; and, in so far as we cure or
restrain these diseases, we lessen one great sanction which nature and
Providence have placed before the infraction of the law of virtue.
The medical man, however, replies very pertinently that he has nothing
to do with the Divine sanctions; that his business is to cure human
diseases and lessen human suffering wherever he find them; and that
gout, or rheumatism, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, are as much
"punishments" as the diseases of this vice. If he refused to visit a
patient whenever he thought that his sins had brought upon him his
diseases, he would have very little occupation, and mankind would
receive very little alleviation from the medical art. Nor is he even
called upon to refuse to cure a patient who, he knows, will immediately
begin again his evil courses. The physician is not a judge or an
executioner. He has nothing to do but to cure and alleviate. Influenced
by this aspect of his duty, the medical man almost universally advocates
licenses to prostitutes, based on medical examination, and a strict
legal control of the participants in this offense.
On the other hand, those of us who deal with the moral aspects of the
case, and who know the class that are ruined body and soul by this
criminal business, have a profound dread of anything which, to the
young, should appear to legalize or approve, or even recognize it. The
worst evil in prostitution is to the woman, and the worst element in
that is moral rather than physical.
The man has the tremendous responsibility on his soul of doing his part
in helping to plunge a human being into the lowest depths of misery and
moral degradation. He has also all the moral responsibility which the
Divine law of purity places on each individual, and the farther burden
of possibly causing disease hereafter to the innocent and virtuous.
But the woman who pursues this as a business has seldom any hope in this
world, either of mental or moral health. The class, as a class, are the
most desperate and unfortunate which reformatory agencies ever touch.
Now, any friend of the well-being of society, knowing the strength of
men's passions, and the utter misery and degradation of these victims of
them, will dread any public measure or legislation which will tend to
weaken the respect of young men for virtue, or to make this offense
looked upon as permissible, or which will add to the number of these
wretched women by diminishing the public and legal condemnation of their
debasing traffic.
Among the large class of poor and ignorant girls in a large city who are
always just on the line between virtue and vice, who can say how many
more would be plunged into this abyss of misery by an apparent legal
approval or recognition of the offense through a system of license?
Among the thousand young men who are under incessant temptations in a
city like this, who can say how many are saved by the consciousness that
this offense is looked upon both by morality and law as an offense, and
is not even recognized as permissible and legal? A city license
constitutes a profession of prostitutes. The law and opinion recognize
them. The evil becomes more fixed by its public recognition.
It is true that prostitution will always, in all probability, attend
civilization; but so will all other sins and offenses. It may be
possible, however, to diminish and control it. It is already immensely
checked in this country, as compared with continental countries, partly
through economical and partly through moral causes. It has been
diminished among the daughters of the lowest poor in this city by the
"Industrial Schools." Why should it be increased and established by
legal recognition?
We admit that the present condition of the whole matter in New York is
terrible. The humanity and science which ought to minister to the
prostitute as freely as to any other class, are refused to her by the
public, unless she apply as a pauper. The consequence is, that the
fearful diseases which follow this offense, like avenging Furies, have
spread through not only this class of women, but have been communicated
to the virtuous and innocent, and are undermining the health of society.
This fact is notorious to physicians.
Now we think a reasonable "middle course" might be pursued in this
matter; that, for instance, greater conveniences for medical attendance
and advice in the city (and not on Blackwell's Island) might be afforded
by our authorities to this class, both as a matter of humanity and as a
safeguard to the public health. If there was a hospital or a dispensary
for such cases within the city, it would avoid the disgrace and
publicity of each patient reporting herself to the court as a pauper,
and then being sent to the Island Hospital. Hundreds more would present
themselves for attendance and treatment than do now, and the public
health be proportionately improved. No moral sanction would thus be
given to this demoralizing and degrading business. The simple duties of
humanity would be performed.
The advocates of the license system would still reply, however, that
such a hospital would not meet the evil; that Law only can separate the
sickly from the healthy, and thus guard society from the pestilence; and
the only law which could accomplish this would be a strict system of
license. The friend of public order, however, would urge that a wise
legislator cannot consider physical well-being alone: he must regard
also the moral tendencies of laws; and the influence of a license system
for prostitution is plainly toward recognizing this offense as legal or
permissible. It removes indirectly one of the safeguards of virtue.
Perhaps the _reductio ad absurdum_ in the relation of the State with a
criminal class, and of the Church with the State, was never so absurdly
shown as in the Berlin license laws for prostitutes, twenty years since.
According to these, in their final result, no woman could be a
prostitute who had not partaken of the communion!--that is, the
_Schein,_ or license, was never given to this business any more than to
any other, except on evidence of the person's having been "confirmed,"
or being a member of the State Church, that is, a citizen! This
classing, however, the trade of prostitution with peddling, or any other
business needing a license, did not in the least tend, so far as we have
ever heard, to elevate the women, or save them from moral and mental
degradation. On the contrary, the universal law of Providence that man
or woman must live by labor, and that any unnatural substitute for it
saps and weakens all power and vigor, applies to this class in
Continental cities as much as here. Without doubt, too, wherever the
Germanic races are, no degree of legalizing this traffic can utterly do
away with the public sentence of scorn against the female participants
in it; and the contempt of the virtuous naturally depresses the
vicious.
The "public woman" has a far greater chance of recovery in France or
Italy than in Germany, England, or America. Still, the wise legislator,
though regretting the depression which this public sentiment causes to
the vicious classes, cannot but value it as a safeguard of virtue, and
will be very cautious how he weakens it by legislation.
There is, no doubt, some force in the position that the non-licensing of
these houses is in some degree a terror to the community, and that the
cautious and prudent are kept from the offense through fear of possible
consequences in disease and infection. This, however, does not seem to
us an object which legislators can hold before them as compared with the
duties of humanity in curing and preventing disease and pestilence. They
have nothing to do with adding to the natural penalties of sin, or with
punishing sinners. They are concerned only with human law. But they have
the right, and, as it seems to us, the duty, so to legislate as not to
encourage so great an evil as this of prostitu
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