THE DANGEROUS CLASSES OF NEW YORK.*

AT a moment when the question of prison reform is occupying so large a portion of general attention, it is well to look at the results

of the experience of one who for twenty years has grappled, and on the whole grappled successfully, with the most difficult questions in that most intricate of social problems. The conditions of life in London and New York are not so wholly dissimilar, but that facto

which tell in the one case must have some weight in the other ; see all know that New York suffers from the fact that through it

filters the outcast population of half the Old World, and that when out of this population those willing and those able to work have been drafted off, there remains a large residuum comprising iu itself all the elements of a criminal class, and, more- over, a criminal class of the worst kind, since the individual atoms of which it is cmposed are mostly cut off absolutely from all the restraints which home, or custom, or a recognized law could throw around them. It was about twenty years ago that some half- dozen men of cool judgment and persistent philanthropy decided that if New York were not to bring up the most hopelessly danger- ous population in the world, the children of these social pariahs must somehow be cared for. There is a wonderful family likeness among the young street Arabs everywhere, and those who have the good fortune to know what Mr. Bernardo and men like- minded are doing among our little East-End Arabs at home, will follow Mr. Brace easily in his details of the difficulties which surrounded his work in New York.

A very good key to the position of these children as to ignorance, shrewdness, and social condition may be found in the words of one of them, who, when a missionary while vainly endeavouring to drive some religious ideas into their minds, asked the question, "My dear boys, when your father and mother forsake you, who will take you up ? "gravely replied, "The purlice, Sir [very seriously], the purlice ! " But it may be as well for a moment to look at a few of the hard facts Mr. Brace had to face, when he first entered upon the work to which he has since devoted his life. Careful calculation and long observation led him to estimate the vagrant and houseless youth of New York as fluctuating each year between 20,000 and 30,000. This is exclusive of the professionally criminal class. One of the greatest sources of evil is, of course, the over- crowding, which, bad as it is in our larger towns, is intensified in New York. For instance, the eleventh ward of that city, with a population of 58,953, has a rate of population of 196,510 to the square mile, or 16 1-10th square yards to each person. The worst districts of London do not afford less than a square mile to 175,715. Nor is the above the worst instance that could be given. For Mr. Brace states that in 1865 the tenant-house and cellar population of the fourth ward numbered 17,611 persons, packed in buildings covering a space of less than thirty acres. Here is one dark cellar in this crowded area, a fair specimen of the rest ; in it sleep two men with their wives, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, two men, and a large boy of seventeen years of age, a mother with two more boys, ages teu and fifteen, another woman with two boys, ages nine and eleven, in all, fourteen persons. These dens become so revolting at last that the lads leave them in * The Dangerous Clones of New Fork By Charles Loring Brace. New York Wynkoop and Hallenbeck. London: TrUbner. 1872.

sheer disgust by thousands every year, preferring an outcast life, with some old box or barge for shelter, to the horrors of the den that is called home. It is with these thousands Mr. Brace eventu- ally came to deal, and found, of course, that ignorance and want of a legitimate trade were the two fertile sources of crime which he had to overcome ; and here, we may observe, Mr. Brace is not a philanthropist with a theory. He has looked a little too keenly into facts to waste time in dogmatising about them. Absolutely convinced himself that " Christianity is the highest education of character," he is unsectarian in his own teaching, and while believing in but one principle strong enough permanently to raise a human son), he does not highly value technical religious instruc- tion ;-

" The problem is to guard such a human being, so exposed, against powerful temptations: to raise him above them ; to melt his bad habits and inherited faults in some new and grand emotion; to create within him a force which is stronger than, and utterly opposed to, the selfish greed for money, or the attractions of criminal indulgence, or the rush of passion, or the fire of anger. The object is to implant in his breast such a power as Plato dreamed of—the Love of some perfect Friend, whose character by sympathy shall purify his, whose feeling is believed t o go with the fortunes of the one forgotten by all others, and who has the power of cleansing from wrong and saving from sin."

While saying this, he yet observes that, considering the peculiar position of the class with which he is called to deal, he has never set much value on what is popularly known as "religious instruc- tion." That Christ should be known as a Friend and Saviour he holds essential, but much that is included in Sunday-school oratory he clearly considers to be what, in Yankee boys' slang, is termed " gas ; " while so intense is his conviction of the evil of ignor- ance that, with regard to the much-vexed question of religious teaching in the free schools, though personally an advocate for it, he says, " Give us Free Schools without religion, rather than no Flee Schools at all." It was in 1853 that an association was organized in New York to make a permanent effort to diminish crime by preventiou, and rescue as many thousands as might be from a life of misery and evil, and place them in an honest calling. Mr. Brace accepted the arduous task of executive officer of this association, and if we needed a testimony to the way he has given himself to the work, we should find it in a chance remark more significant than a thousand details. He says, speak- ing of one who for seventeen years had proved herself an angel of mercy and sympathy to every unfortunate family within her reach, and who seemed never tired in her labours of love :—

" The present writer, for his own part, confesses that he could not possibly have borne the harrowing and disagreeable scenes with which he has been so long familiar, without making a strict rule never to think or speak of the poor when ho was away from his work, and im- mediately absorbing himself in some entirely different subject. The spring of the mind would have been broken."

It is when "virtue has gone out of him " that a man feels thus, and his work is always a living one. The first work of the asso- ciation was with the news-boys, the veritable Gavroches of New York ; and here they had a double necessity to take care not to destroy their independence, and not too suddenly to assail either their habits or their prejudices. So the first thing the association, which had called itself the Children's Aid Society, undertook, was to treat the lads as independent little dealers, give them nothing without payment, but at the same time offer them more for their money than they could get anywhere else, and leave moral, reli- gious, and other educational influences to come in afterwards. " Securing them through their interests," says Mr. Brace, "we had

a permanent bold of them." It is our haste to see results which spoils half our work; we are continually remembering our "twenty years," and forgetting God has time.

Well, it was thus the first lodging-house for street and news- boys was opened in America. The affair has since become an extensive one, as the following items will sufficiently show. The plan has been in existence eighteen years, and during that time 91,326 different boys have been lodged, 7,278 boys have been restored to their friends, 5,126 provided with homes, and 469,461

meals have been supplied. The expense of all this has amounted to 132,888 dollars, of which adm the boys themselves have paid

32,306. The vagrant girls were found to be a far more difficult class to deal with, yet the industrial schools, in which as much variety and amusement as were possible were introduced into the life, were found so successful, that out of 2,000 girls trained in them only five became drunkards, prostitutes, or criminals. Mr. Brace argues distinctly in favour of general education rather than industrial schools for boys, finding through many unsuccessful experiments that benevolence cannot compete with self-interest in business, and that "a child in any degree educated and disciplined can easily make an honest living in America."

In all cases, whether dealing with boys or girls, where, as was often the case, the direct tendency of the nature inherited, perhaps through three generations, was towards vicious habits, a direct change of all the circumstances of life was found to be the only

real chance, and" placing out" has proved the most successful of any of these well-planned schemes of philanthropy. To awaken a demand for the children, circulars were sent out to all the country districts, and hundreds of applications from farmers, &c., poured in.

Little companies of emigrants were formed, placed under a respon- sible agent, and after being thoroughly cleaned and clothed, they were conveyed to some village where there was a farming com- munity, where there is always enough and to spare of the sub- stantial things of this life, and the children's labour could be of use. Mr. Brace meets Mr. Fawcett's objection that this is giving to the children of the vicious a boon the honest poor would be glad to get, by the simple rejoinder which any one who has a tithe of his practical acquaintance with the poor will endorse, that, as a rule, the virtuous poor will not part with their children while they are young to any considerable distance. Mr. Brace

enters largely into the " asylum " question, and as a conclusion—

the conclusion, be it remembered, of very unusually wide oppor- tunities for observation—says, " The plainest farmer's home, rather than the best asylum,—a thousand times ! People will always forget the necessity for excitement, for active work and active amusement, which exists in these Arab natures. At all events, Mr. Brace can point, after nearly twenty years of effort in this direction, to between twenty and twenty-four thousand children, who have been placed out in homes or provided with work, who,. on the whole, have done exceedingly well, hardly any of the eatire number returning to the criminal ranks from which they were originally drawn. Mr. Brace observes :—

" Were our movement allowed its full scope, we could take the place- of every Orphan Asylum and Alms-house for pauper children in and around New York, and thus save the public hundreds of thousands of dollars, and immensely benefit the children. We could easily `locate' 5,000 children per annum, from the ages of two years to fifteen, in good homes in the West, at an average net cost of fifteen dollars per head."

Of course, one question instantly suggests itself,—has all this effort told on the statistics of crime ?—al ways a difficult question to meet when dealing with an enormous city like New York, and we have not space to follow Mr. Brace through many of the results he gives ; but one may be taken, and dealing as it does with the most difficult class, it may serve as an index of what may be expected of the rest. We give the facts in Mr. Brace's words :—

" The most important field of the Children's Aid Society has been among the destitute and street-wandering and tempted little girls, its labours embracing many thousands annually of this unfortunate class. Has crime increased with them ? The great offence of this class, either as children or as young women, comes under the heading of ' Vagrancy' —this including their arrest and punishment, either as street-walkers, or prostitutes, or homeless persona. In this there is, during the past thirteen years, a most remarkable decrease—a diminution of crime- probably unexampled in any criminal records through the world. The rate in the commitments to the city prisons, as appears in the reports of the Board of Charities and Correction, runs thus :—Of female vagrants, there were in 1857, 3,449 ; 1859, 5,778; 1860, 5,880 ; 1861, 3,172 ; 1862, 2,243 ; 1863, 1,756; 1864, 1,342 ; 1869, 785 ; 1870, 671; 1871, 548. We have omitted some of the years on account of want of space ; they do not, however, change the steady rate of decrease in this offence. Thus, in eleven years, the imprisonments of female vagrants have fallen off from 5,880 to 548. This, surely, is a good show ; and yet in that period our population increased about thirteen and a half per cent., so that, according to the usual law, the commitments should have been this year over 4,700."

There are many points upon which we could like to follow Mr. Brace further, as, for instance, with regard to the necessity for very marked individuality of character in the agents carrying on

the work, or the results of a very wide application of Pester,- lozzi's system of teaching, &c., but our apace forbids.