vagrants. What answered to their club house was a corner lot on
Harrison and Desplaines Streets, strewn with old boilers, in which
they slept by night and many times by day. The gang was brought to the
attention of Hull-House during the summer of 1904 by a distracted
mother, who suspected that they were all addicted to some drug. She
was terribly frightened over the state of her youngest boy of
thirteen, who was hideously emaciated and his mind reduced almost to
vacancy. I remember the poor woman as she sat in the reception room at
Hull-House, holding the unconscious boy in her arms, rocking herself
back and forth in her fright and despair, saying: "I have seen them go
with the drink, and eat the hideous opium, but I never knew anything
like this."

An investigation showed that cocaine had first been offered to these
boys on the street by a colored man, an agent of a drug store, who
had given them samples and urged them to try it. In three or four
months they had become hopelessly addicted to its use, and at the end
of six months, when they were brought to Hull-House, they were all in
a critical condition. At that time not one of them was either going to
school or working. They stole from their parents, "swiped junk,"
pawned their clothes and shoes,--did any desperate thing to "get the
dope," as they called it.

Of course they continually required more, and had spent as much as
eight dollars a night for cocaine, which they used to "share and share
alike." It sounds like a large amount, but it really meant only four
doses each during the night, as at that time they were taking
twenty-five cents' worth at once if they could possibly secure it. The
boys would tell nothing for three or four days after they were
discovered, in spite of the united efforts of their families, the
police, and the residents of Hull-House. But finally the superior boy
of the gang, the manliest and the least debauched, told his tale, and
the others followed in quick succession. They were willing to go
somewhere to be helped, and were even eager if they could go together,
and finally seven of them were sent to the Presbyterian Hospital for
four weeks' treatment and afterwards all went to the country together
for six weeks more. The emaciated child gained twenty pounds during
his sojourn in the hospital, the head of which testified that at least
three of the boys could have stood but little more of the irregular
living and doping. At the present mo