New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-02-10
CHILD MURDERERS.

"JOhn Schafer aged ten years. was seriously
wounded on Friday night by shot from
another boy Of thirteen. His life is despared
EFF. The lads were in public house on
"Sixth-ave., inspecting some fancy dogs"
There is a text that needs no sermon. When
the Spartans wished to disgust their children
with vice, the story goes that they showed
them a drunken slave but this country must
see it's children drunken and debauched before
it can realize as it ought the british condition
of its morals. People abroad point TO tho
story of Fisk's life and death, or to the Credit
Mobiler scandal, as peculiar to our civlliza-
ton and symptoms of the uncleanness and
rottenness of American society; but, to our
mind they are not half so significant as this
little extract from our police reports. The
man who, out of the tapes and buttons of his
peddler's wagon, constructed an enormous for
tune, who ruled men and won women without
education or personal charm of any sort, was
an engine Of tremendous power, which needed
but the right controlling motive to have become
a helper for humanity and God
The men who have lately sold themselves
openly, and made our legislative houses a den
of thieves, have yet the intellectual force, the
culture, the knowledge of all that goes TO
make up an honorable man every qualifica-
ton, IN fact, but the will to become honest
men and efficient servants of the people. The
lamp was all ready to burn only the oil was
lacking. 1t is the fault of individual educa-
ton, not of society, that the oil was not
there.
But that children barely clear of their era
dies, should assemble at night In taverns TO
inspect bull-pups, with pistols in their pock-
cts, argues a condition of society little raised
above the brute. They have parents as de-
graded no doubt as they will be; the facts
show that Putting all question of humanity
aside, what does society do to guard itself
against this rank future growth of vice
What becomes of the children massed to-
gether in our Houses of Correction or Re
formatories The truth may as well be told:
there is an occasional outbreak of indignation
because they are unwhOlesOmely or ineti-
GENTLY fed or cruelty treated, which allega-
tions may be just or not. What is fact.
however. is that, with a few notable excep-
tions, these institutions are hot beds of crime.
where the homeless child, whose only fault
is vagrancy, goes in comparatively innocent.
and comes out an accomplished thief and rufian.
honorable men will read these words this
morning whose chief hopes in life, most prob
ably, center on boys just the ages of these
lads. 1t is for their fair honorable future THAI
they plan and scheme to lay up wealth; it ia
that they may be kept pure and free from
shame, that their fathers follow them with in
cessant, watchful care, and their mothers have
besieged Gods throne with prayers since they
carried them babes upon their breasts. These
fathers and mothers are Christian men and
women, asking night .and morning that His
kingdom may speedily come. How do they
hasten its comingf Where are John Schafer.
aged ten, and William Barker, aged thirteen.
to find it'll In the pOlice-cOurt, or the Tombsf
Who goes in search of them there to tell them
of the God that made them, that left the
chance for them too to be honest, honorable
menP
When on one column of one page we read
such facts as these, and on the next an appeal
for half million to pay off the debt on tho
carvings and pictures of city church, and on
the third an cutlery from educated Christian
women for careers and Opportunities TO use
"their talents" we are sure that there il q
strange lack of common sense and something
yet more essential in the ordinary system Of
sectarian working. System and thoroughness.
such as are introduced into every other bust
ness, with the steady application of the wealth
of the Christian church to preaching its Cos
pel, would bring every waif and stray like
these poor boys under the direct influence Of
the church of Christ.