The Dangerous Classes of New York Part 29

We know of an instance like this in an Alms-house in Western New York. A mother, in decent circ.u.mstances, with an infant, was driven into it by stress of poverty. Her child grew up a pauper, and both became accustomed to a life of dependence. The child--a girl--went forth when she was old enough to work, and soon returned with an illegitimate babe.

She then remained with her child. This child--also a girl--grew up in like manner, and, occasionally, when old enough, also went forth to labor, but returned finally, with _her_ illegitimate child, and at length became a common pauper and prost.i.tute, so that, when the State Commissioner of Charity, Dr. Hoyt, visited, in his official tour, this Poor-house, he found _four generations_ of paupers and prost.i.tutes in one family, in this place!

The regular _habitues_ of Alms-houses are bad enough; but it has sometimes seemed to me that the outside dependents on an irregular public charity are worse. They are usually better off than the inmates of Poor-houses, and, therefore, must deceive more to secure aid; the process of obtaining it continually degrades them, and they are tempted to leave regular industry for this unworthy means of support.

"Outdoor relief" is responsible for much of the abuses of the English pauper administration.

We are convinced that it ought to be, if not abandoned, at least much circ.u.mscribed by our own Commissioners of Charities.

Still, private alms, though more indiscriminately bestowed, and often on entirely unworthy objects, do not, in our judgment, leave the same evil effect as public. There is less degradation with the former, and more of human sympathy, on both sides. The influence of the giver's character may sometimes elevate the debased nature of an unworthy dependent on charity. The personal connection of a poor creature and a fine lady, is not so bad as that of a pauper to the State.

Still, private alms in our large cities are abused to an almost unlimited extent. Persons who have but little that they can afford to give, discover, after long experience, that the majority of their benefactions have been indiscreetly bestowed.

When one thinks of the thousands of cases in a city like New York, of unmitigated misfortune; of widows with large families, suddenly left sick and helpless on the world; of lonely and despairing women struggling against a sea of evils; of strong men disabled by accident or sickness; of young children abandoned or drifting uncared-for on the streets, and how many of these are never wisely a.s.sisted, it seems a real calamity that any person should bestow charity carelessly or on unworthy objects.

The individual himself ought to seek out the subjects whom he desires to relieve, and ascertain their character and habits, and help in such a way as not to impair their self-respect or weaken their independence.

The managers of the Charity I have been describing have especially sought to avoid the evils of alms-giving. While many thousands of dollars' worth is given each year in various forms of benefaction, not a penny is bestowed which does not bear in its influence on character. We do not desire so much to give alms as to prevent the demand for alms. In every branch of our work we seek to destroy the growth of pauperism.

Nothing in appearance is so touching to the feelings of the humane as a ragged and homeless boy. The first impulse is to clothe and shelter him free of cost. But experience soon shows that if you put a comfortable coat on the first idle and ragged lad who applies, you will have fifty half-clad lads, many of whom possess hidden away a comfortable outfit, leaving their business next day, "to get jackets for nothing."

You soon discover, too, that the houseless boy is not so utterly helpless as he looks. He has a thousand means of supporting himself honestly in the streets, if he will. Perhaps all that he needs is a small loan to start his street-trade with, or a shelter for a few nights, for which he can give his "promise to pay," or some counsel and instruction, or a few weeks' schooling.

Our Lodging-house-keepers soon learn that the best humanity towards the boys is "to take, not give." Each lad pays for his lodging, and then feels independent; if he is too poor to do this, he is taken in "on trust," and pays his bill when business is successful. He is not clothed at once, unless under some peculiar and unfortunate circ.u.mstances, but is induced to save some pennies every day until he have enough to buy his own clothing. If he has not enough to start a street-trade with, the superintendent loans him a small sum to begin business.

The following is the experience in this matter of Mr. O'Connor, the superintendent of the Newsboys' Lodging-house:--

"The Howland Fund, noticed in previous reports as having been established by B. J. Howland, Esq., one of our Trustees, continues to be the means of doing good. We have loaned from it during the nine months one hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty cents, on which the borrowers have realized three hundred and seven dollars and thirty-nine cents. They have thus made the handsome profit of two hundred and fifty per cent. on the amount borrowed. It has in many cases been returned in a few hours. We have loaned it in sums of five cents and upward; we have had but few defaulters. Of the seventeen dollars and fifty-five cents due last year, six dollars and fifty cents has been returned, leaving at this time standing out eleven dollars and five cents."

When large supplies of shoes and clothing are given, it is usually at Christmas, as an expression of the good-will of the season, or from some particular friend of the boys as an indication of his regard, and thus carries less of the ill effects of alms with the gift.

The very air of these Lodging-houses is that of independence, and no paupers ever graduate from them. We even discourage the street-trades as a permanent business, and have, therefore, never formed a "Boot-black Brigade," as has been done in London, on the ground that such occupations are uncertain and vagrant in habit, and lead to no settled business.

Our end and aim with every street-rover, is to get him to a farm, and put him on the land. For this reason we lavish our gifts on the lads who choose the country for their work. We feed and shelter them gratuitously, if necessary. We clothe them from top to toe; and the gifts bring no harm with them. These poor lads have sometimes repaid these gifts tenfold in later life, in money to the Society. And the community have been repaid a hundredfold, by the change of a city vagabond to an honest and industrious farmer.

Our Industrial Schools might almost be called "Reformatories of Pauperism." Nine-tenths of the children are beggars when they enter, but they go forth self-respecting and self-supporting young girls.

Food, indeed, is given every day to those most in need; but, being connected thus with a School, it produces none of the ill effects of alms. The subject of clothes-giving to these children is, however, a very difficult one. The best plan is found to be to give the garments as rewards for good conduct, punctuality, and industry, the amount being graded by careful "marks"; yet the humane teacher will frequently discover an unfortunate child without shoes in the winter snow, or scantily clad, who has not yet attained the proper number of marks, and she will very privately perhaps relieve the want: knowing, as the teacher does, every poor family whose children attend the School, she is not often deceived, and her gifts are worthily bestowed.

The daily influence of the School-training in industry and intelligence discourages the habit of begging. The child soon becomes ashamed of it, and when she finally leaves school, she has a pride in supporting herself.

Gifts of garments, shoes, and the like, to induce children to attend, are not found wise; though now and then a family will be discovered so absolutely naked and dest.i.tute, that some proper clothing is a necessary condition to their even entering the School.

Some of the teachers very wisely induce the parents to deposit their little savings with them, and perhaps pay them interest to encourage saving. Others, by the aid of friends, have bought coal at wholesale prices, and retailed it without profit, to the parents of the children.

The principle throughout all the operations of the Children's Aid Society, is only to give a.s.sistance where it bears directly on character, to discourage pauperism, to cherish independence, to place the poorest of the city, the homeless children, as we have so often said, not in Alms-houses or Asylums, but on farms, where they support themselves and add to the wealth of the nation; to "take, rather than give;" or to give education and work rather than alms; to place all their thousands of little subjects under such influences and such training that they will never need either private or public charity.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

HOW SHALL CRIMINAL CHILDREN BE TREATED?

REFORMATORIES.

A child, whether good or bad, is, above all things, an individual requiring individual treatment and care. Let any of our readers, having a little fellow given to mischief, who had at length broken his neighbor's windows, or with a propensity to stealing, or with a quick temper which continually brings him into unpleasant sc.r.a.pes, imagine him suddenly put into an "Inst.i.tution" for reform, henceforth designated as "D" of "Cla.s.s 43," or as "No. 193," roused up to prayers in the morning with eight hundred others, put to bed at the stroke of the bell, knowing nothing of his teacher or pastor, except as one of a cla.s.s of a hundred, his own little wants, weaknesses, foibles and temptations utterly unfamiliar to any one, his only friends certain lads who had been in the place longer, and, perhaps, had known much more of criminal life than he himself, treated thus altogether as a little machine, or as one of a regiment.

What could he expect in the way of reform in such a case? He might, indeed, hope that the lad would feel the penalty and disgrace of being thus imprisoned, and that the strict discipline would control careless habits, but he would soon see that the chance of a reform of character was extremely slight.

There was evidently no personal influence on the child. Whatever bad habits or traits he had, were likely to be uneradicated. The strongest agencies upon him were those of his companions; and what boys, even of the moral cla.s.ses, teach one another when they are together in ma.s.ses, need not be told. Were he to be there a length of time, the most powerful forces that mould and form boys in the world outside, would be absent.

The affection of family, the confidence of respected friends, the hope of making a name, and the desire of money and position--these impulses must be banished from the Asylum or Reformatory. The lad's only hope is to escape certain penalties, or win certain marks, and get out of the place. Now and then, indeed, a chaplain of rare spiritual gifts may succeed in wielding a personal influence, in such an Inst.i.tution, over individual children; but this must, of necessity, be unfrequent, on account of the great numbers under his charge.

If the subject of a Reformatory be a poor boy or girl, the kind of work usually chosen is not the one best suited to a child of this cla.s.s, or which he will be apt to take up afterwards. It is generally some plain and easy trade-work, like shoe-pegging, or chair-bottoming, or pocket-book manufacture. The lad is kept for years at this drudgery, and when he leaves the place, has no capital laid up of a skilled trade. He finds such employments crowded, and he seldom enters them again.

Moreover, if he has been a vagrant (as in nine cases out of ten is probable), or a little sharper and thief of the city, or a boy unwilling to labor, and unfitted for steady industry, these years at a table in a factory do not necessarily give him a taste for work; they often only disgust him.

Were such lads, on the other hand, put in gardens, or at farm-work, they would find much more pleasure in it. The watching the growth of plants, the occasional chance for fruit-gathering, the "spurts" of work peculiar to farming, the open air and suns.h.i.+ne, and dealing with flowers and grains, with cattle, horses, and fowls, are all attractive to children, and especially to children of this cla.s.s. Moreover, when they have learned the business, they are sure in this country, of the best occupation which a laboring man can have; and when they graduate, they can easily find places on farms, where they will get good wages, and be less exposed to temptations than if engaged in city trades. There seems to me something, too, in labor in the soil, which is more medicinal to "minds diseased" than work in shops. The nameless physical and mental maladies which take possession of these children of vice and poverty are more easily cured and driven off in outdoor than indoor labor.

I am disposed to think this is peculiarly true of young girls who have begun criminal courses. They have been accustomed to such excitement and stir, that the steady toil of a kitchen and household seldom reforms them.

The remarkable success of Mr. Pease for a few years in his labors for abandoned women in the Five Points, was due mainly to the incessant stir and activity he infused into his "House of Industry," which called off the minds of these poor creatures from their sins and temptations. But, better than this, would be the idea, so often broached, of a "School in gardening" for young girls, in which they could be taught in the open air, and learn the florist's and gardener's art. This busy and pleasant labor, increasingly profitable every year, would often drive out the evil spirit, and fit the workers, for paying professions after they left the School.

The true plan for a Reformatory School, as has so often been said, is the Family System; that is, breaking the Asylum up into small houses, with little "groups" of children in each, under their own immediate "director" or teacher, who knows every individual, and adapts his government to the wants of each.

The children cook meals, and do house-labor, and eat in these small family groups. Each child, whether boy or girl, learns in this way something of housekeeping, and the mode of caring for the wants of a small family. He has to draw his water, split his wood, kindle his fires, light his lamps, and take care of the Cottage, as he will, by and by, have to do in his own little "shanty" or "cottage." Around the Cottage should be a small garden, which each "family" would take a pride in cultivating; and beyond, the larger farm, which they all might work together.

In a Reformatory, after such a plan as this, the children are as near the natural condition as they ever can be in a public inst.i.tution. The results, if men of humanity and wisdom be in charge, will justify the increased trouble and labor. The expense can hardly be greater, as buildings and outfit will cost so much less than with the large establishments. The only defect would, perhaps, be that the labor of the inmates would not bring in so much pecuniary return, as in the present Houses of Refuge; but the improved effects on the children would more than counterbalance to the community the smaller income of the Asylum.

Nor is it certain that farm and garden labor would be less profitable to the Inst.i.tution.

If we are correctly informed, the only Alms-house which supports itself in the country is one near New Haven, that relies entirely on the growth and sale of garden products. Under the Farm and Family School for children, legally committed, we should have, undoubtedly, a far larger proportion of thorough reforms and successes, than under the congregated and industrial Asylums.

The most successful Reformatories of Europe are of this kind. The "Rauhe Haus," at Hamburg, and Mr. Sydney Turner's Farm School at Tower Hill, England, show a greater proportion of reformed cases than any congregated Reformatories that we are familiar with. The Mettrai colony records ninety per cent, as reformed, which is an astonis.h.i.+ngly large proportion. This success is probably much due to the _esprit du corps_ which has become a tradition in the school, and the extent to which the love of distinction and honorable emulation--most powerful motives on the French mind--have been cultivated in the pupils.

We do not deny great services and successes to the existing congregated Reformatories of this country. But their success has been in spite of their system. From the new Family Reformatories, opened in different States, we hope for even better results.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH FOUNDLINGS?

Some of our citizens are now seeking to open in New York a Foundling Asylum to be conducted under Protestant influences. A Roman Catholic Hospital for Foundlings was recently established, and is now receiving aid from the city treasury. In view of these humane efforts, attended, as they must be, by vast expense, it becomes necessary to inquire what is the best system of management attained by experience in other countries. Of the need of some peculiar shelter or shelters for illegitimate children in this city there can be no question. Those who have to do with the poorer cla.s.ses are shocked and pained by the constant instances presented to them, of infants neglected or abandoned by their mothers, or of unmarried mothers with infants in such need and desperation, that infanticide is often the easiest escape. Something evidently should be done for both mothers and children.

THE NUMBERS.

Of the numbers of illegitimate children in New York, it is difficult to speak with any precision. In European countries, we know almost exactly the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births. In Sardinia, it is 2.09 per cent.; in Sweden, 6.56; in England, 6.72; in France, 7.01; in Denmark, 9.35; in Austria, 11.38; in Bavaria, 20.59. Among cities, it is between 3 and 4 per cent, in English cities; in Genoa, 8; in Berlin, 14.9; in St. Petersburg, 18.8; in Vienna, 46. The general average of illegitimate to legitimate children in Europe is 12.8 per cent.

Supposing that the average in New York is the same as in Amsterdam or London, say four per cent, there were in the five years, from 1860 to 1865, out of the 144,724 children born (living or dead) in the city of New York, 5,788 illegitimate, or an average each year of 1,157 children born out of wedlock. More than a thousand illegitimate children are thus, in all probability, thrown upon this community every year.