The Dangerous Classes of New York Part 20

EMIGRATION.

With reference to the cost of this method of charity, we have usually estimated the net expenses of the agent, his salary, the railroad fares, food and clothing for the child, as averaging fifteen dollars per head for each child sent. Whenever practicable, the agent collects from the employers the railroad expenses, and otherwise obtains gifts from benevolent persons; so that, frequently, our collections and "returned fares" in this way have amounted to $6,000 or $8,000 per annum. These gifts, however, are becoming less and less, and will probably eventually cease altogether; the former feeling that he has done his fair share in receiving and training the child.

We are continually forced, also, towards the newer and more distant States, where labor is more in demand, and the temper of the population is more generous, so that the average expense of the aid thus given will in the future be greater for each boy or girl relieved.

The opposition, too, of the bigoted poor increases, undoubtedly under the influence of some of the more prejudiced priests, who suppose that the poor are thus removed from ecclesiastical influences. A cla.s.s of children, whom we used thus to benefit, are now sent to the Catholic Protectory, or are retained in the City Alms-house on Randall's Island.

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.

If Professor Fawcett's objection [See Fawcett on "Pauperism."] be urged, that we are thus doing for the children of the Alms-house poor, what the industrious and self-supporting poor cannot get done for their own children, we answer that we are perfectly ready to do the same for the outside hard-working poor; but their attachment to the city, their ignorance or bigotry, and their affection for their children, will always prevent them from making use of such a benefaction to any large degree. The poor, living in their own homes, seldom wish to send out their children in this way. We do "place out" a certain number of such children; but the great majority of our little emigrants are the "waifs and strays" of the streets in a large city.

OUR AGENTS.

The Charity I am describing has been singularly fortunate in its agents; but in none more so than in those who performed its responsible work in the West.

Mr. E. P. Smith, who writes the interesting description above, of the first expedition we sent to the West, has since become honorably distinguished by labors among the freedmen as agent of the Christian Commission.

Our most successful agent, however, was Mr. C. C. Tracy, who had a certain quaintness of conversation and anecdote, and a solid kindness and benevolence, which won his way with the Western farmers, as well as the little flocks he conducted to their new fold.

One of his favorite apothegms became almost a proverb.

"Won't the boy ran away?" was the frequent anxious inquiry from the farmers.

"Did ye ever see a cow run _away_ from a haystack?" was Mr. Tracy's, rejoinder. "Treat him well, and he'll be sure to stay."

And the bland and benevolent manner in which he would reply to an irritated employer, who came back to report that the "New-York boy" had knocked over the milk-pail, and pelted the best cow, and let the cattle in the corn, and left the young turkeys in the rain, etc, etc, was delightful to behold.

"My dear friend, can you expect boys to be perfect at once? Didn't you ever pelt the cattle when you were a boy?"

Mr. T. testified before the Senate Committee in 1871, that he had transplanted to the West some four or five thousand children, and, to the best of his knowledge and belief, very few ever turned out bad.

Whenever any of these children chanced to be defective in mind or body, or, from any other cause, became chargeable on the rural authorities, we made ourselves responsible for their support, during any reasonable time after their settlement in the West.

Our present agents, Mr. E. Trott and Mr. J. P. Brace, are exceedingly able and judicious agents, so that we transported, in 1871, to the country, some three thousand children, at an expense, including all salaries and costs, of $31,638.

We have also a resident Western agent, Mr. C. R. Fry, who looks after the interests of those previously sent and prepares for future parties, traveling from village to village. The duties of all these agents are very severe and onerous.

It is a matter of devout thankfulness that no accident has ever happened to any one of the many parties of children we have sent out, or to the agents.

The following testimony was given by Mr. J. Macy, a.s.sistant Secretary of the Children's Aid Society, before the Senate Committee, in 1871:--

"Mr. J. Macy testified that he corresponds annually with from eight thousand to ten thousand persons, and, on an average, receives about two thousand letters from children and their employers. He has personal knowledge of a great many boys growing up to be respectable citizens, others having married well, others graduating in Western colleges. Out of twenty-one thousand, not over twelve children have turned out criminals, The percentage of boys returning to the city from the West is too small to be computed, not more than six annually. From correspondence and personal knowledge, he is thoroughly satisfied that but very few turned out bad, and that the only way of saving large boys from falling into criminal practices is to send them into good country-homes. He regarded the system of sending families to the West as one of the best features of the work of the Society. Not a family has been sent West which has not improved by the removal. The Society had never changed the name of a child, and Catholic children had often been intrusted to Catholic families." * * * * *

"Letter from a newsboy to the Superintendent of the Lodging-house:--

"M----, IND., Nov. 24, 1859.

"'TO MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.--So I take my pen in my hand to let you know how I am, and how I am getting along; As far as I see, I am well satisfied with my place; but I took a general look around, and, as far as I see, all the boys left in M---- are doing well, especially myself, and I think there is as much fun as in New York, for nuts and apples are all free. I am much obliged to you, Mr. O'Connor, for the paper you sent me. I received it last night; I read it last night--something about the Newsboys' Lodging-house.

"'All the newsboys of New York have a bad name; but we should show ourselves, and show them, that we are no fools; that we can become as respectable as any of their countrymen, for some of you poor boys can do something for your country-for Franklin, Webster, Clay, were poor boys once, and even Commodore V. C. Perry or Math. C. Perry. But even George Law, and Vanderbilt, and Astor--some of the richest men of New York--and Math. and V. C. Perry were nothing but printers, and in the navy on Lake Erie. And look at Winfield Scott. So now, boys, stand up and let them see you have got the real stuff in you. Come out here and make respectable and honorable men, so they can say, there, that boy was once a newsboy.

"'Now, boys, you all know I have tried everything. I have been a newsboy and when that got slack, you know I have smashed baggage. I have sold nuts; I have peddled, I have worked on the rolling billows up the ca.n.a.l.

I was a boot-black; and you know when I sold papers I was at the top of our profession. I had a good stand of my own, but I found that all would not do. I could not get along, but I am now going ahead. I have a first-rate home, ten dollars a month, and my board; and I tell you, fellows, that is a great deal more than I could sc.r.a.pe up my best times in New York. We are all on an equality, my boys, out here, so long as we keep yourselves respectable.

"'Mr. O'Connor, tell Fatty or F. John Pettibone, to send me a Christmas number of _Frank Leslie's_ and _Harper's Weekly,_ a _Weekly News_ or some other pictorials to read, especially the _Newsboys' Pictorial,_ if it comes out. No old papers, or else none. If they would get some other boys to get me some books. I want something to read.

"I hope this letter will find you in good health, as it leaves me. Mr.

O'Connor, I expect an answer before two weeks--a letter and a paper.

Write to me all about the Lodging-house. With this I close my letter, with much respect to all.

"'I remain your truly obedient friend, "'J. K.'"

CHAPTER XXII.

A PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST AMONG THE YOUNG "ROUGHS."

A sketch of the long and successful efforts for the improvement of the dangerous cla.s.ses we have been describing would be imperfect without an account of

THE OFFICE OF THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY.

This has become a kind of eddying-point, where the two streams of the fortunate and the unfortunate cla.s.ses seem to meet. Such a varying procession of humanity as pa.s.ses through these plain rooms, from one year's end to the other, can nowhere else be seen. If photographs could be taken of the human life revealed there, they would form a volume of pictures of the various fortunes of large cla.s.ses in a great city. On one day, there will be several mothers with babes. They wish them adopted, or taken by any one. They relate sad stories of desertion and poverty; they are strangers or immigrants. When the request is declined, they beseech, and say that the child must die, for they cannot support both. It is but too plain that, they are illegitimate children; As they depart, the horrible feeling presses on one, that the child will soon follow the fate of so many thousands born out of wedlock. Again, a pretty young woman comes to beg a home for the child of some friend, who cannot support it. Her story need not be told; the child is hers, and is the offspring of shame. Or some person from the higher cla.s.ses enters, to inquire for the traces of some boy, long disappeared--the child of pa.s.sion and sin.

But the ordinary frequenters are the children of the street--the Arabs and gypsies of our city.

Here enters a little flower-seller, her shawl drawn over her head, barefooted and ragged--she begs for a home and bread; here a newsboy, wide-awake and impudent, but softened by his desire to "get West;" here "a b.u.mmer," ragged, frouzy, with tangled hair and dirty face, who has slept for years in boxes and privies; here a "canawl-boy," who cannot steer his little craft in the city as well as he could his boat; or a petty thief who wishes to reform his ways, or a bootblack who has conceived the ambition of owning land, or a little "revolver" who hopes to get quarters for nothing in a Lodging-house and "pitch pennies" in the interval. Sometimes some yellow-haired German boy, stranded by fortune in the city, will apply, with such honest blue eyes, that the first employer that enters will carry him off; or a sharp, intelligent Yankee lad, left adrift by sudden misfortune, comes in to do what he has never done before--ask for a.s.sistance. Then an orphan-girl will appear, floating on the waves of the city, having come here no one knows why, and going no one can tell whither.

Employers call to obtain "perfect children;" drunken mothers rush in to bring back their children they have already consented should be sent far from poverty and temptation; ladies enter to find the best object of their charities, and the proper field for their benevolent labors; liberal donors; "intelligent foreigners," inquiring into our inst.i.tutions, applicants for teachers' places, agents, and all the miscellaneous crowd who support and visit agencies of charity.

A PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST.

The central figure in this office, disentangling all the complicated threads in these various applications, and holding himself perfectly cool and bland in this turmoil, is "a character"--Mr. J. Macy.

He was employed first as a visitor for the Society; but, soon betraying a kind of bottled-up "enthusiasm of humanity" under a very modest exterior, he was put in his present position, where he has become a sort of embodied Children's Aid Society in his own person. Most men take their charities as adjuncts to life, or as duties enjoined by religion or humanity. Mr. Macy lives in his. He is never so truly happy as when he is sitting calmly amid a band of his "lambs," as he sardonically calls the heavy-fisted, murderous-looking young vagabonds who frequent the Cottage place Reading-room, and seeing them all happily engaged in reading or quiet, amus.e.m.e.nts. Then the look of beatific satisfaction that settles over his face, as, in the midst of a loving pa.s.sage of his religious address to them, he takes one of the obstreperous lambs by the collar, and sets him down very hard on another bench--never for a moment breaking the thread or sweet tone of his bland remarks--is a sight to behold; you know that he is happier there than he would be in a palace.

His labors with these youthful scapegraces around Cottage Place, during the last fifteen years, would form one of the most instructive chapters in the history of philanthropy. I have beheld him discoursing sweetly on the truths of Christianity while a storm of missiles was coming through the windows; in fact, during the early days of the meeting, the windows were always barricaded with boards. The more violent the intruders were, the more amiable, and at the same time, the more firm he became.

In fact, he never seemed so well satisfied as when the roughest little "b.u.mmers" of the ward entered his Boys' Meeting. The virtuous and well-behaved children did not interest him half so much. By a patience which is almost incredible, and a steady kindness of years, he finally succeeded in subduing these wild young vagrants, frequently being among them every night of the week, holding magic-lantern exhibitions, temperance meetings, social gatherings, and the like, till he really knew them and attracted their sympathies. His cheerfulness was high when the meeting grew into an Industrial School, where the little girls, who perplexed him so, could be trained by female hands, and his happiness was at its acme when the liberality of one or two gentlemen enabled him to open a Reading-room for "the lambs." The enterprise was always an humble one in appearance; but such were the genuineness and spirit of humanity in it--the product of his sisters as well as himself--that it soon met with kind support from various ladies and gentlemen, and now is one of those lights in dark places which must gladden any observer of the misery and crime of this city.

Mr. Macy's salvation in these exhausting and nerve-wearing efforts, and divers others which I have not detailed, is his humor. I have seen him take two lazy-looking young men, who had applied most piteously for help, conduct them very politely to the door, and, pointing amiably to the Third Avenue, say, "Now, my boys, just be kind enough to walk right north up that avenue for one hundred miles into the, country, and you will find plenty of work and food. Good-by! good-by!" The boys depart, mystified.

Or a dirty little fellow presents himself in the office. "Please, sir, I am an orphant, and I want a home!" Mr. Macy eyes him carefully; his knowledge of _"paidology"_ has had many years to ripen in; he sees, perhaps, amid his rags, a neatly-sewed patch, or notes that his naked feet are too white for a "b.u.mmer." He takes him to the inner office. "My boy! Where do you live? Where's your father?"

"Please, sir, I don't live nowhere, and I hain't got no father, and me mither is dead!" Then follows a long and touching story of his orphanage, the tears flowing down his cheeks. The bystanders are almost melted themselves. Not so Mr. Macy. Grasping the boy by the shoulder, "Where's your mother, I say?" "Oh, dear, I'm a poor orphant, and I hain't got no mither!" "Where is your _mother_, I say? Where do you live? I give you just three minutes to tell, and then, if you do not, I shall hand you over to that officer!" The lad yields; his true story is told, and a runaway restored to his family.

In the midst of his highest discouragements at Cottage Place, Mr. Macy frequently had some characteristic story of his "lambs" to refresh him in his intervals of rest And some peculiar exhibition of mischief or wickedness always seemed to act as a kind of tonic on him and restore his spirits.