ds full then. I remember being present when they had
to take the square by storm more than once, and there is at least one
captain on the force to-day who owes his promotion to the part he took and
the injuries he suffered in one of those battles. To-day it is as quiet
and orderly a neighborhood as any in the city. Not a squeak has been heard
about "bread or blood" since those trees were planted and the lawns and
flower-beds laid out. It is not all the work of the missions, the
kindergartens, and Boys' clubs and lodging-houses, of which more anon; nor
even the larger share. The park did it, exactly as the managers of the
Juvenile Asylum appealed to the sense of honor in their prisoners. It
appealed with its trees and its grass and its birds to the sense of
decency and of beauty, undeveloped but not smothered, in the children, and
the whole neighborhood responded. One can go around the whole square that
covers two big blocks, nowadays, and not come upon a single fight. I
should like to see anyone walk that distance in Mulberry Street without
running across half a dozen.

Thus far the street and its idleness as factors in making criminals of the
boys. Of the factory I have spoken. Certainly it is to be preferred to the
street, if the choice must be between the two. Its offence is that it
makes a liar of the boy and keeps him in ignorance, even of a useful
trade, thus blazing a wide path for him straight to the prison gate. The
school does not come to the rescue; the child must come to the school, and
even then is not sure of a welcome. The trades' unions do their worst for
the boy by robbing him of the slim chance to learn a trade which the
factory left him. Of the tenement I have said enough. Apart from all other
considerations and influences, as the destroyer of character and
individuality everywhere, it is the wickedest of all the forces that
attack the defenceless child. The tenements are increasing in number, and
so is "the element that becomes criminal because of lack of individuality
and the self-respect that comes with it."[17]

I am always made to think in connection with this subject of a story told
me by a bright little woman of her friend's kittens. There was a litter of
them in the house and a jealous terrier dog to boot, whose one aim in life
was to get rid of its mewing rivals. Out in the garden where the children
played there was a sand-heap and the terrier's trick was to bury alive in
the sand any kitten