The Dangerous Classes of New York Part 31

Were Bible-reading and the Lord's Prayer discontinued in the Schools, we do not doubt that the priests and the popular leaders would still oppose the Free Schools just as bitterly; but they would not have as good an apparent ground, and any pretext of opposition would be taken away. The system of Free Schools is the life-blood of the nation. If it be corrupted with priestcraft, or destroyed by our dissensions, our vitality as a republican people is gone. The whole country would realize then the worst fruits of a popular government without intelligence.

Demagogism and corruption, founded on ignorance, would wield an absolute tyranny, with none of the graces of monarchy, and none of the advantages of democracy. Jarring sects would each have their own schools, and the priests would enjoy an unlimited control over all the ignorant Catholics of the country.

Under no circ.u.mstance should the Protestants of the nation allow the Free Schools to be broken up. They are the foundation of the Republic, and the bulwark of Protestantism and civilization. They undermine the power of the priests, which rests on ignorance, while they leave untouched whatever spiritual force the Roman Catholic Church may truly have and deserve to have. The Protestants should sacrifice everything reasonable and not vital, to retain these blessed agencies of enlightenment.

We respect the sort of pluck of the Protestants, which looks upon the giving-up of Bible-reading in the Schools as being "false to the flag."

But, in looking at the matter soberly, and without pugnacity, does spiritual religion lose anything by giving up these exercises? We think not. They are now of the coldest and most formal kind, and but little listened to. We doubt if they ever affect strongly a single mind. The religious education of each child is imparted in Sabbath Schools, in Churches, or Mission Schools, and its own home.

The Free School under our system does not need any influence from the Church. The American trusts to the separate sects to take care of the religious interests of the children. We separate utterly Church and State. There may be evils from this; but they are less than the danger of destroying our system of popular education by the contests of rival sects. We know how long every effort to secure popular education for England has been wrecked on this rock of Sectarianism.

We behold the fearful harvest of evils which she is reaping from the ignorance of the ma.s.ses, especially induced by the oppositions of sects, who preferred no education for the people to education without their own dogmas.

We desire to avoid these calamities, and we can best do this by making every reasonable concession to ignorance and prejudice.

Give us the Free Schools without Religion, rather than no Free Schools at all!

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

DECREASE OF JUVENILE CRIME IN NEW YORK.

THE COST OF PUNISHMENT AND PREVENTION.

Very few people have any just appreciation of the comparative cost of punishment and prevention in the treatment of crime. The writer recalls one out of many thousand instances in his experience, which strikingly ill.u.s.trates the contrast

THE BROTHERS.

A number of years ago, three boys (brothers), the oldest perhaps seventeen, applied at the Newsboys' Lodging-house of this city for shelter. It was soon suspected that the eldest was a thief, employing the younger as a.s.sistants in his nefarious business. The younger lads finally confessed the fact, and the older brother left them to be taken care of in the Lodging-house. After a sufficient period of training, the two brothers were sent to a farmer in Illinois. They were faithful and hard-working, and soon began to earn money. When the war broke out they enlisted, and served with credit. At the close they pa.s.sed through New York, and visited the superintendent while returning to their village, having already purchased a farm with their wages and bounty-money. They are now well-to-do, respectable farmers.

This "prevention" for the two lads cost just thirty dollars, for their expenses in the Lodging-house were mainly paid by themselves.

The older brother went through a career of thieving and burglary. We have not an accurate catalogue of his various offenses, but he undoubtedly made away with property--wasted or destroyed it--to the amount of two thousand dollars. [We recall three lads who, in one night, broke into a house in Bond Street, and destroyed or made away with property to the value of one thousand three hundred dollars.] He was finally arrested and tried for burglary. It would be safe to estimate the expenses of the trial and arrest at one hundred dollars. He was sentenced to five years in Sing Sing. Allowing the expenses of maintenance there to be what they are on Blackwell's Island, that is, about twelve dollars and fifty cents per month, he cost the State while there some seven hundred and fifty dollars, not reckoning the interest on capital and buildings; so that we have here, in one instance, the very low estimate of two thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars as the expense to the community of one street-boy unreclaimed. Had the Lodging-house taken hold of him five years earlier, he could have been saved at a cost of fifteen dollars.

His brothers have added to the wealth of the community and defended the life of the nation, and are still honest producers. He has already cost the State at least two thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars, besides much immorality and bad example, and he has only begun a career of damage and loss to the city.

PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT COMPARED.

Our criminals last year cost this city, in the City Prisons and Penitentiaries, about one hundred and one thousand dollars for maintenance alone. Our police cost apparently over six hundred thousand dollars.

The amount of property lost or taken by thieves, burglars, and others last year, in New York city, and which came under the knowledge of the police, was one million five hundred and twenty-one thousand nine hundred and forty dollars; but how many sums are never brought to their notice!

The expenses of the arrest and trial of two criminals, Real and Van Echten, are stated, on good authority, to have been sixteen thousand dollars for the first, and twenty thousand dollars for the second.

If the expenses of a great "preventive" inst.i.tution--such as the Children's Aid Society--be examined, it will be found that the two thousand and odd homeless children, boys and girls, placed in country homes, cost the public only some fifteen dollars a head; the three thousand and odd dest.i.tute little girls educated and partly fed and clothed in the "Industrial Schools," only cost some fifteen dollars for each child each year; and the street lads and girls sheltered and instructed in the "Lodging-houses," to the number of some twelve thousand different subjects, or an average of, say, four hundred each night, have been an expense of only some fifty dollars per head through the year to the public. It may, perhaps, be urged in reply to this by the doubting, that all this may be true. "We admit the cheapness of prevention, but we do not see the diminution of crime. If you can show us that fewer young thieves, or vagabonds, or prost.i.tutes, are breeding, we shall admit that your children's charities are doing something, and that the cost of prevention is the most paying outlay in the administration of New York city."

To this we might answer that New York is an exceptional city--a sink into which pour the crime and poverty of all countries, and that all we could expect to accomplish would be what is attempted in European cities--to keep the increase of juvenile crime down equal with the increase of population; that the laws of crime are shown in European cities to be constant, and that we must expect just about so many petty thieves each year, so many pickpockets, so many burglars, so many female vagrants or prost.i.tutes, to so many thousand inhabitants.

We might urge that it is the duty of every friend of humanity to do his little part to alleviate the evils of the world, whether he sees a general diminution of human ills or not.

But, fortunately, we are not obliged to render these excuses.

New York is the only large city in the world where there has been a comprehensive organization to deal with the sources of crime among children; an organization which, though not reaching the whole of the dest.i.tute and homeless youth, and those most exposed to temptation, still includes a vast mult.i.tude every year of the _enfants perdus_ of this metropolis.

This a.s.sociation, during nearly twenty years, has removed to country homes and employment about twenty-five thousand persons, the greater part of whom have been poor and homeless children; it has founded, and still supports, five Lodging-houses for homeless and street-wandering boys and girls, five free Reading-rooms for boys and young men, and twenty Industrial Schools for children too poor, ragged, and undisciplined for the Public Schools. We have always been confident that time would show, even in the statistics of crime in our 19 prisons and police courts, the fruits of these very extended and earnest labors. It required several years to properly found and organize the Children's Aid Society, and then it must be some ten years-when the children acted upon in all its various branches have come to young manhood and womanhood--before the true effects are to be seen. We would not, however, exclude, as causes of whatever results may be traced, all similar movements in behalf of the youthful criminal cla.s.ses. We may then fairly look, in the present and the past few years, for the effects on crime and pauperism of these widely-extended charities in behalf of children.

CRIME CHECKED.

The most important field of the Children's Aid Society has been among the dest.i.tute and street-wandering and tempted little girls, its labors embracing many thousands annually of this unfortunate cla.s.s. Has crime increased with them? The great offense of this cla.s.s, either as children or as young women, comes under the heading of "Vagrancy"-this including their arrest and punishment, either as street-walkers, or prost.i.tutes, or homeless persons. 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 s.p.a.ce; they do not, however, change the steady rate of decrease in this offense.

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. [The population of New York increased from 814,224, in 1860, to 915,520, in 1870, or only about twelve and a half per cent. The increase in the previous decade was about fifty per cent. There can be no doubt that the falling-off is entirely in the middle cla.s.ses, who have removed to the neighboring rural districts. The cla.s.ses from which most of the criminals come have undoubtedly increased, as before, at least fifty per cent.

I have retained for ten years, however, the ratio of the census, twelve and a half per cent.]

If we turn now to the reports of the Commissioners of Police, the returns are almost equally encouraging, though the cla.s.sification of arrests does not exactly correspond with that of imprisonments; that is, a person may be arrested for vagrancy, and sentenced for some other offense, and _vice versa._

The reports of arrests of female vagrants ran thus:--

1861....................2,161 1862....................2,008 1863....................1,728 1867....................1,591 1869....................1,078 1870......................701 1871......................914

We have not, unfortunately, statistics of arrests farther back than 1861.

Another crime of young girls is thieving or petty larceny. The rate of commitments runs thus for females:--

1859......................944 1860......................890 1861......................880 1863....................1,133 1864....................1,131 1865......................877 1869......................989 1870......................746 1871......................572

The increase of this crime daring the war, in the years 1863 and 1864, is very marked; but in twelve years it has fallen from 944 to 572, though, according to the increase of the population, it would have been naturally 1,076.

Another heading on the prison records is "Juvenile delinquency," which may include any form of youthful offense not embraced in the other terms. Under this, in 1860, were two hundred and forty (240) females; in 1870, fifty-nine (59).

The cla.s.sification of commitments of those under fifteen years only runs back a few years. The number of little girls imprisoned the past few years is as follows:--

1863......................408 1864......................295 1865......................275 1868......................239 1870......................218 1871......................212

CRIMES CHECKED AMONG THE BOYS

The imprisonment, of males, for offenses which boys are likely to commit, though not so encouraging as with the girls, shows that juvenile crime is fairly under control in this city. Thus, "Vagrancy" must include many of the crimes of boys; under this head we find the following commitments of males:--

1859..........2,829 1860..........2,708 1862..........1,203 1864..........1,147 1865..........1,350 1870..........1,140 1871............984

In twelve years a reduction from 2,829 to 994, when the natural increase should have been up to 3,225.

Petty larceny is a boy's crime; the record stands thus for males:--