s, and rich private houses.

No one doubted then, or during the Orange riot of 1871, the existence of
"dangerous classes" in New York. And yet the separate members of these
riotous and ruffianly masses are simply neglected and street-wandering
children who have come to early manhood.

The true preventive of social catastrophes like these, are just such
Christian reformatory and educational movements as we are about to
describe.

Of the number of the distinctly homeless and vagrant youth in New York,
it is difficult to speak with precision. We should be inclined to
estimate it, after long observation, as fluctuating each year between
20,000 and 30,000. [The homeless children who come each year under the
charitable efforts afterwards to be described amount to some 12,000.]
But to these, as they mature, must be added, in the composition of the
dangerous classes, all those who are professionally criminal, and who
have homes and lodging-places. And again to these, portions of that vast
and ignorant [It should be remembered that there are in this city over
60,000 persons above ten years of age who cannot write their names.]
multitude, who, in prosperous times, just keep their heads above water,
who are pressed down by poverty or misfortune, and who look with envy
and greed at the signs of wealth and luxury all around them, while they
themselves have nothing but hardship, penury, and unceasing drudgery.

CHAPTER III.

THE CAUSES OF CRIME.

The great practical division of causes of crime may be made into
preventible and non-preventible. Among the preventible, or those which
can be in good part removed, may be placed ignorance, intemperance,
over-crowding of population, want of work, idleness, vagrancy, the
weakness of the marriage-tie, and bad legislation.

Among those which cannot be entirely removed are inheritance, the
effects of emigration, orphanage, accident or misfortune, the strength
of the sexual and other passions, and a natural weakness of moral or
mental powers.

IGNORANCE.

There needs hardly a word to be said in this country on the intimate
connection between ignorance and crime.

The precise statistical relation between them in the State of New York
would seem to be this: about thirty-one per cent. of the adult criminals
cannot read or write, while of the adult population at large about six
(6.08) per cent. are i