Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/43

Rh of this, oven in Boston, and in most counties of Massachusetts, I think nothing at all, not even a trade which he can practise when his term expires! I have been told a story, and I wish it might be falsely told, of a boy, in this city, of sixteen, sent to the house of correction for five yew because he stole a bunch of keys, and coming out. of that gaol at twenty-one, unable to write, or read, or calculate, and with no trade but that of picking oakum. Yet he had been five years the child of the State, and in that College for the Poor! Who would employ such a youth; with such a reputation; with the smell of the gaol in his very breath? Not your shrewd men of business, they know the risk; not your respectable men, members of churches and all that; not they! Why it would hurt a man's reputation for piety to do good in that way. Besides the, risk w great, and it argues a great deal more Christianity than it is popular to have, for a respectable man to employ such a youth. He is forced back into crime again. I say, forced, for honest men will not employ him when the State shoves him out of the gaol. Soon you will have him in the court again, to be punished more severely, Then he goes to the State Prison, and then again, and again, till death mercifully ends his career!

Who is to blame for all that? I will ask the beet man among the best of you, what he would have become, if thus abandoned, turned out in childhood, and with no culture, into the streets, to herd with the wickedest: of men! Somebody says, there are "organic sins" in society which nobody is to blame for. But by this sin organized in society, these vagrant children ore training up to become thieves, pirates, and murderers. I cannot blame them. But there is a terrible blame somewhere, for it is not the will of God that one of these little ones should perish. Who is it that organizes the sin of society? Let us next look at the parents of these vagrants, at the adult poor. It is hot easy or needed for this purpose, to define very nicely the limits of a class, and tell where the rich end, and the poor begin. However, men may, in reference to this matter, be divided into three classes. The first acts on society mainly by their capital; the second mainly by their skill, mental and manual, by educated