The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-12-10

i'm the emp,oyt of two big New York tconnpa nies alone Unlike the taii- | md boys the messenger has to De Ibrieht if be is to get ali there IS 70 ne had out of his job. It taxes the twelve to fourteen year old poy In tne
 fiat" districts very snort .e so learn how to double his pay ana the !. most expert can increase it five times. 4 Tor messengers, as for poltcdmen, the I.srsnderloins is the great prixe. The sports think nothing of liver, one I boy told MT. Poole; they never ask f for change and you can charge them anything you like and they don't care" money, and 1t is a favorite pastime to ret diminutive messenger boy drunk--the smaller he Is. the greater the fun. A little fellow who told a gruesome story of visit to one resort, was asked why he did not try to get
 work in another district. This quest-
 Ion he regarded as simply stupid.
 Why any messenger should want to
 leave district where people paid
 dollar for a twenty-five cent mes
 sage. where he could buy "wine" at
 S3 a bottle and get $4 from the man
 who ordered it--this was beyond his comprehension. temptations which inevitably surround them, the various provisions of the law
 have hitherto been of little avail The
 companies prefer boys of fourteen, the legal limit. but it Is quite simple to say you are fourteen and to produce pa- rents certificate to that effect. Most of the trouble, indeed in enforcing the law comes from false affidavits from
 parents Even when these are found to. be false it Ia not always possible to Induce the police magistrate to put the fear of the law into the hearts of the offenders by severe sentences. In q recent address, F. Tecumseh sherman, State Commissioners of Labor. said that in Queens County--the Borough of Queens ia its official name since the formation of greater New York--some of the magistrates either dismissed all offenders CT suspended sentence
 With the drudgery on the one hand and the mysterious call of the street on the other. many high spirited troi and take to the nomadic life of the city arab. On the ease with which this can be done tho records Of the New York Juvenile Asylum. throw much light. Any unusual wave of em- igration--- such as that now in pro-
 gress from Russia and Southeastern Europe--results almost immediately in an influx of children of that particu- lar nationality to the Asylum. In most
 cases unable to make themselves un-
 derstood, without definite plans and
 helpless as children, the immigrants are forced to settle among their fellow countrymen in the already overflow ing foreign quarters of our great cities and especially in New York, the chief
 gateway to the country Herded here
 whatever family life they may have brought with them vanishes. The parents remain Russians or Hunga- rians or Italians or Greeks or Croat- ians; the children learn In the gutter to be Americans. and one of the first things they are taught there is to de- spise the old-country ways of their parents.
 once the boy has thoroughly mas tered this lesson, he sees no reason for toiling in the factories and stores, on the tail-end of delivery wagons or
 dragging heavy baskets of bread and laundry over the city. Instead he enters on an individual foraging cam paign, the watchword of which Is i'You're not guilty if you're not caught" Formerly society's defense consisted in catching as many as pos- sible of the nimble-witted young no- mads and packing them off to jails and "reformate rfes" of various flames for terms just long enough to enable them to learn all that the other in- mates knew and to re-enter the world wiser and cleverer criminals than be- fore. The establishment or tne children's court was one blow at this vicious system and the gradual adopt ion of the cottage home plan for res formatories--a plan of which tho model village of the New York Juvenile As4 ylum is the most thorough example yet undertaken in this country-is another.
 Children are no longer committed to l the Asylum for terms of month or | so. If they are sent there as to | refuge from neglect and starvation l they remain until suitable provision | can be made for them elsewhere. If | they have been committed for some of- fense, or, as In the case of many, for | being simply incorrigible, they remain | until they have learned better-a re- generation which 1t is assumed has taken place when they have earned by | good conduct a small sum of money. | This money can be earned in about a year and a half. During this time | they study in school. work at some trade or on the farm of 2S5 acres | which surrounds the cottages, and live as nearly as the authorities can make them the normal life of healthy child ren. How necessary Is the work done by the Juvenile Asylum is shown by | the fact that each year 2,00O children are tried for criminal offences in this