Beyond putting
two and two together, there was very little reasoning about it.
That such conditions as were all about us should result in making
"toughs" of the boys was not strange. Rather, it would have been
strange had anything else come of it. With the home corrupted by
the tenement; the school doors closed against them where the swarms
were densest, and the children thrown upon the street, there to take
their chance; with honest play interdicted, every natural right of
the child turned into a means of oppression, a game of ball become
a crime for which children were thrust into jail, indeed, shot down
like dangerous criminals when running away from the policeman who
pursued them;[Footnote: Such a case occurred on Thanksgiving Day,
1897. A great public clamor arose and the policeman was sent to
Sing Sing.] with dead-letter laws on every hand breeding blackmail
and bringing the police and authority into disrepute; with the
lawlessness of the street added to want of rule at home, where
the immigrant father looked on helpless, himself dependent in the
strange surroundings upon the boy and no longer his master--it
seemed as if we had set out to deliberately make the trouble under
which we groaned.
Pages:
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415