The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-07-27

dlvlduals or OF generations is nodded.
A great Frenchman said once that
without decent home there could be
no family, no manhood, no patriotism.
He might have summed it all up in
two words: No character. 1t is the
offense of our day that the tendency
of its life is toward the destruction
of individuality of character. The
crowding of the population every
where to the cities, to the centers of
industrial energy, where it has been
largely left, so far, to shape itself to-
gether as best it might, has destroy
ed the old home feeling with the
home itself. Simultaneously there
has come significant increase in the
number of criminals from the city;
and more significant yet, they ripen
earlier. The thieves and thugs of to-
day are much younger than they
were. To anyone acquainted with
tenement house life in city like New
York this cannot be matter for won
der. The old shanty on the rocks had
something of home in it which the
best of fats has not of itself, and the
poverty stricken occupants clung to it,
sometimes till the rock was blown
from under them, with strength of
affection at which only the thought
less sneered. The poor tenement is
the fiat idea on the scale of the
pigeon hole. The Frenchman I
quoted had in mind the experience
with group of Partisan tenements
typical of their kind. There were
eight of them, and they contained q
600 tenants in 1900 rooms. The re-
suit, says the record-it was kept
mainly at the police station-was "the
evaporation of the tenant against So
ciety." How could it have been any
thing else?
While such housing conditions
continue to be the rule in the cities,
the criminal tendency must increase
among the young. By extraordinary
repression or philanthropic effort its
manifestation may for a time be
checked, but the tendency will re-
main, sure to assert itself when other
cares or dangers occupy the public
mind and divert attention from it.
The prison returns Il quote from
the statistics of the Elmira Reforma-
tory which tell us that so per cent.
of all the young criminals come from
bad and only 9 per cent from good
homes, point out also that 81 per
cent. kept bad company and only l
per cent. good company prior to COM
ing. Here we have the street and it's
idleness, the alternative of the tene-
ment that has no homes and the
school in which there is no room.
The recent school census in New York
showed that there were $4,000 truants
drifting about the streets. On the
crowded East side to which attention
is constantly attracted by its growing
class of child thieves, a dozen new
schools will hardly supply the exist
ing deficiency.
Public Indifference.
AS an instance of the public indif-
ference that is responsible for both
tenement and truant, and more to
blame than both, let this serve: To-
day, thirteen months after compul-
sorry education law, intended to make
truancy impossible, was passed, six
months after it went into effect, moth
ing has been done to give it force in
New York City. No truant school
has been provided; no machinery for
carrying out the law. The announce
ment that the school census showed
this army of young idlers to be
abroad, stirred no public interest. It
filed the space of stick in the news
papers, which gave columns to the
latest sensational murder, and to the
collapse of the income tax. Yet for
the mischief the fifty thousand will
do in their generation alone, and to
keep them from doing more, New
York will have to pay many times its
share in the income tax for jails and
courts and costly police machinery.
am convinced that the school it.
self, our management of it, is not
blameless. 1t is stupid, soulless.
It's everlasting three RS offer no eff
fectual barrier to the corruption of
the young. 1t needs to be recon
structed on the plan of the three HIS
the head, the heart and the hand
trained together to make a whole
boy. Many young thief is a thief
simply because the best part of him
was never developed. 1t is not that
he is SO much worse than the rest,
but simply that the other half
him didn't get a chance.