y dedicated.

INTRODUCTION.

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The great pioneer in the United States, in the labors of penal Reform
and the prevention of crime,--EDWARD LIVINGSTON,--said as long ago as
1833, in his famous "Introductory Report to the Code of Reform and
Prison Discipline": "As prevention in the diseases of the body is less
painful, less expensive, and more efficacious than the most skillful
cure, so in the moral maladies of society, to arrest the vicious before
the profligacy assumes the shape of crime; to take away from the poor
the cause or pretence of relieving themselves by fraud or theft; to
reform them by education and make their own industry contribute to their
support, although difficult and expensive, will be found more effectual
in the suppression of offences and more economical than the best
organized system of punishment."--(p. 322.)

My great object in the present work is to prove to society the practical
truth of Mr. Livingston's theoretical statement: that the cheapest and
most efficacious way of dealing with the "Dangerous Classes" of large
cities, is not to punish them, but to prevent their growth; to so throw
the influences of education and discipline and religion about the
abandoned and destitute youth of our large towns, to change their
material circumstances, and draw them under the influence of the moral
and fortunate classes, that they shall grow up as useful producers and
members of society, able and inclined to aid it in its progress.

In the view of this book, the class of a large city most dangerous to
its property, its morals and its political life, are the ignorant,
destitute, untrained, and abandoned youth: the outcast street-children
grown up to be voters, to be the implements of demagogues, the "feeders"
of the criminals, and the sources of domestic outbreaks and violations
of law.

The various chapters of this work contain a detailed account of the
constituents of this class in New York, and of the twenty years' labors
of the writer, and many men and women, to purify and elevate it; what
the principles were of the work, what its fruits, what its success.

So much interest at home and abroad has been manifested in these
extended charities, and so many inquiries are received continually about
them, that it seemed at length time to give a simple record of them, and
of the evils they have sought to cure.

If the narrative shall le