ngest public sentiment, kept always up to the point of prompt
action, avails to ward off this peril. But public sentiment soon wearies
of such watch-duty, as instanced on this occasion, when several bills
radically remodelling the tenement-house law and repealing some of its
most beneficent provisions, had passed both houses and were in the hands
of the Governor before a voice was raised against them, or anyone beside
the politicians and their backers seemed even to have heard of them. And
this hardly five years after a special commission of distinguished
citizens had sat an entire winter under authority of the State considering
the tenement-house problem, and as the result of its labors had secured as
vital the enactment of the very law against which the raid seemed to be
chiefly directed!

The tenement and the saloon, with the street that does not always divide
them, form the environment that is to make or unmake the child. The
influence of each of the three is bad. Together they have power to
overcome the strongest resistance. But the child born under their evil
spell has none such to offer. The testimony of all to whom has fallen the
task of undoing as much of the harm done by them as may be, from the
priest of the parish school to the chaplain of the penitentiary, agrees
upon this point, that even the tough, with all his desperation, is weak
rather than vicious. He promises well, he even means well; he is as
downright sincere in his repentance as he was in his wrong-doing; but it
doesn't prevent him from doing the very same evil deed over again the
minute he is rid of restraint. He would rather be a saint than a sinner;
but somehow he doesn't keep in the _role_ of saint, while the police help
perpetuate the memory of his wickedness. After all, he is not so very
different from the rest of us. Perhaps that, with a remorseful review of
the chances he has had, may help to make a fellow-feeling for him in us.

That is what he needs. The facts clearly indicate that from the
environment little improvement in the child is to be expected. There has
been progress in the way of building the tenements of late years, but they
swarm with greater crowds than ever--good reason why they challenge the
pernicious activity of the politician; and the old rookeries disappear
slowly. In the relation of the saloon to the child there has been no
visible improvement, and the street is still his refuge. It is, then, his
opportunities outside