They scorned me at the City Hall for it. It was all
guess-work they said, and so it was. We had first to have a school
census, and we got one, so that we might know where we were at. But
when we had the result of that first census before us, behold! it
showed that of 339,756 children of school age in the city, 251,235
were accounted for on the roster of public or private schools,
28,452 were employed, and 50,069 on the street or at home. So that,
if I am not smart at figuring, I may reasonably claim to be a good
guesser.
The showing that a lack of schools which threw an army of children
upon the street went hand in hand with overcrowded jails made us
get up and demand that something be done. From the school executive
came the helpless suggestion that the thing might be mended by
increasing the classes in neighborhoods where there were not enough
schools from sixty to seventy-five. Forty or forty-five pupils is
held to be the safe limit anywhere. But the time had passed for
such pottering. New York pulled itself together and spent millions
in building new schools while "the system" was overhauled; we dragged
in a truant school by threatening the city authorities with the
power of the State unless they ceased to send truants to institutions
that received child criminals.
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