Every
foreign neighborhood is full of children, and sad enough is the average
child of poverty. What makes the tenement district of the great city so
terrible to you as you go into it is the sight of the throngs of
children, who know little of home as you know it, have irregular and
scanty meals, and surroundings of intemperance, dirt, foul atmosphere
and speech, disease and vice. No wonder the police in these districts
say that their worst trouble arises from the boys and the gangs of young
"toughs." There is every reason for this unwholesome product. Mr. Hunter
says there are not less than half a million children in Greater New York
whose only playground is the street. Result, the street gang; and this
gang is the really vital influence in the life of most boys in the large
cities. It is this life, which develops, as Mr. Riis says, "dislike of
regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, gambling
propensities, absence of energy, and carelessness of the happiness of
others." The great homeless, yardless tenement, where the children of
the immigrants are condemned to live, is the nursery of sickness and
crime. The child is left for good influence to the school, the
settlement, or the mission.
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