Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/651

Rh, though more subdued, is no less ready at repartee. Each gives evidence of an acute mind and a keen perception. But playing in the street, vending the public prints, running of errands, and like employments, do little to instruct or elevate, and, though by no means barring the door to more praiseworthy and remunerative vocations, are so beset with allurements as to dissuade the average youngster from entering. Reared in the street, he is accustomed to excitement, and, as he grows up, discovers neither aptitude for trade nor inclination for any other occupation. In the city of New York are thousands of these street urchins: some live in the street from choice, while others are driven thither; some go to the public schools, some to the reformatories in lieu; while others, again, add variety to their existence by devoting a part of the year to the one and a part to the other. But public schools, excellent as they are in New York, could scarcely be expected to succeed in teaching those not inclined to learn; and there are those who assert that reformatories do not reform, and hence it is that the lad who has spent the allotted time in the process of being schooled and reformed, often starts active life too young for manual labor, and too ignorant and unskilled for the work of the artisan. As a result, those are led into a career of crime or indolence whose instincts, under more favorable conditions, would have inclined them in the contrary direction, and whose latent abilities gave more than ordinary promise. Having once tasted the pleasures of untrammeled existence, they evince impatience under restraint and cold indifference to persuasion, and have, therefore, come to be looked upon as incorrigibles, and beyond the reach of charitable effort.

Dissenting from the prevailing opinion as to these lads, a number of New York business-men, having succeeded in other fields scarcely more promising, determined to see for themselves if kindly treatment and careful instruction would not serve to wean them, or some of them, from the street, and encourage them to employ their energies to better purpose. Led by Felix Adler, whose theories on this subject they had come to adopt, they established, some seven years ago, what is called the Workingman's School,

They sought to base their system upon common-sense principles, in which the manual labor of the artisan and the mental work of the scholar should go hand in hand, and both be rendered attractive. It was, too, a theory with these men, that the children of the poorest, even those of the professional mendicant, could be made, with intelligent treatment and instruction, the equals of their fellows reared amid more fortunate surroundings; and from the inception of the enterprise down to the present time they have eagerly sought out those children who, from appearance and situation, might not unreasonably be looked upon as the least promising subjects for instruction. How well they have succeeded it is not the purpose of this paper to decide. It will be sought simply to lay before the reader a general synopsis of