g laborers or apprentices are being trained. The result of this
selfish policy will be to reduce the amount of skilled labor in this
city, and thus compel the importation of foreign labor, and to increase
juvenile crime and the burdens on the poor.

Another cause of this increasing separation from trades among the young
is, no doubt, the increasing aversion of American children, whether poor
or rich, to learn anything thoroughly; the boys of the street, like
those of our merchants, preferring to make fortunes by lucky and sudden
"turns," rather than by patient and steady industry.

Our hope in this matter is in the steady demand for juvenile labor in
the country districts, and the substantial rewards which await industry
there.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAUSES OF CRIME.

WEAKNESS OF THE MARRIAGE-TIE.

It is extraordinary, among the lowest classes, in how large a number of
cases a second marriage, or the breaking of marriage, is the immediate
cause of crime or vagrancy among the children. When questioning a
homeless boy or street-wandering girl as to the former home, it is
extremely common to hear "I couldn't get on with my step-mother," or "My
step-father treated me badly," or "My father left, and we just took care
of ourselves." These apparently exceptional events are so common in
these classes as to fairly constitute them an important cause of
juvenile crime. When one remembers the number of happy second marriages
within one's acquaintance, and how many children have never felt the
difference between their step-mother and their own mother, and what love
and patience and self-sacrifice are shown by parents to their
step-children, we may be surprised at the contrast in another class of
the community. But the virtues of the poor spring very much from their
affections and instincts; they have comparatively little self-control,
the high lessons of duty and consideration for others are seldom stamped
on them, and Religion does not much influence their more delicate
relations with those associated with them. They might shelter a strange
orphan for years with the greatest kindness; but the bearing and
forbearing with the faults of another person's child year after year,
merely from motives of duty or affection to its parent, belong to a
higher range of Christian virtues, to which they seldom attain. Their
own want of self-control and their tendency