I was at Police Headquarters, where I saw the
East Side, that had been orderly, becoming thievish and immoral.
Going to the schools, I found them overcrowded, ill ventilated,
dark, without playgrounds, repellent. Following up the boys, who
escaped from them in disgust--if indeed they were not barred out;
the street swarmed with children for whom there was not room--I saw
them herded at the prison to which Protestant truants were sent,
with burglars, vagrants, thieves, and "bad boys" of every kind.
They classified them according to size: four feet, four feet seven,
and over four feet seven! No other way was attempted. At the Catholic
prison they did not even do that. They kept them on a "footing
of social equality" by mixing them all up together; and when in
amazement I asked if that was doing right by the truant who might
be reasonably supposed to be in special danger from such contact,
the answer I got was "would it be fair to the burglar to set him
apart with the stamp on him?" I went back to the office and took
from the Rogues' Gallery a handful of photographs of boy thieves
and murderers and printed them in the _Century Magazine_ with a
statement of the facts, under the heading, "The Making of Thieves
in New York.
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