abetting and encouraging the principal actors therein. And their homes,
what are they? Their fathers, often out of work, are unable to support
their families; their clothes, their bedding, their furniture, all gone
to the pawn-shop; father, mother, and children, are often compelled to
sleep on the bare boards, huddling close together for warmth in one
ill-built, ill-ventilated room. Amid their misery, this neglect of the
common decencies of life, this unblushing effrontery of reckless vice
and crime, what chance have these poor unhappy little children of
becoming decent members of society. They are sickly from the want of
proper nourishment, vicious from example, ignorant because they do not
care to learn, and their parents take no trouble to compel them to do
so, and must inevitably grow up only to swell the already fearful sum
total of our criminal population. At ten the boys are thieves, at
fifteen the girls are all prostitutes.

A system of State reformatories and State apprenticeships on an
extensive scale is the only way of grappling with this terrible state
of things. Such institutions as the House of Refuge on Randall's Island
have done and are doing much, but a dozen such institutions might be
established with advantage in the State of New York alone. On Randall's
Island the young criminal has the opportunity of acquiring regular
habits and learning a useful trade. They are subject to a humane,
though strict discipline, and a very large per centage, especially of
the boys, do undoubtedly become reformed. This reformatory, a wise
combination of school and prison, can accommodate one thousand inmates.
There are at present about eight hundred boys, and one hundred and
fifty girls on the register. The boys' building is divided into two
compartments, the first division, in the one, is thus entirely
separated from the second division, in the other compartment. The
second division is composed of those whose characters are decidedly