egularity which can only
be properly corrected at home. To lose work is to be deprived of the
means of subsistence; the only openings left are the workhouse or
crime. It is the latter alternative which is generally chosen, and
thus, the lad is launched on the troubled sea of crime.

It must not be understood that all London boys drift into crime after
the manner I have just described. In some instances these unfortunates
have lived all their life in criminal neighbourhoods, and merely
follow the footsteps of the people around them. What, for instance, is
to be expected from children living in streets such as Mr. Charles
Booth describes in his work on "Life and Labour in East London?" One
of these streets, which he calls St. Hubert Street, swarms with
children, and in hardly any case does the family occupy more than one
room. The general character of the street is thus depicted. "An awful
place; the worst street in the district. The inhabitants are mostly of
the lowest class, and seem to lack all idea of cleanliness or decency
.... The children are rarely brought up to any kind of work, but loaf
about, and, no doubt, form the nucleus for future generations of
thieves and other bad characters." In this street alone there are
between 160 and 170 children; these children do not require to go to
lodging-houses to be contaminated; they breathe a polluted moral
atmosphere from birth upwards, and it is more than probable that a
considerable proportion of them will help to recruit the army of
crime. It is not destitution which will force them into this course,
but their up-bringing and surroundings.

In addition to homeless boys who steal from destitution, there are, as
I have said, a number of decrepit old men who do the same. There is a
period in a workman's life when he becomes too feeble to do an average
day's work. When this period arrives employers of labour often
discharge him in order to make way for younger and more vigorous men.
If his home, as sometimes happens, is broken up by the death of his
wife, his existence becomes a very lonely and precarious one. An odd
job now and again is all he can get to do, and even these jobs are
often hard to find. His sons and daughters are too heavily encumbered
with large families to be capable of rendering any effective
assistance, and the Union looms gloomily in the distance as the only
prospect before the worn-out worker. But it sometimes happens that he
will not face that pros