In January of this year a school-census of the
Fourth and Fifteenth wards,[12] two widely separated localities, differing
greatly as to character of population, gave the following result: Fourth
Ward, total number of children between five and fourteen years, 2,016;[13]
of whom 297 did not go to school. Fifteenth Ward, total number of
children, 2,276; number of non-attendants, 339. In each case the
proportion of non-attendants was nearly one-seventh, curiously
corroborating the estimate made by me for the whole city.

Testimony to the same effect is borne by a different set of records, those
of the reformatories that receive the truants of the city. The Juvenile
Asylum, that takes most of those of the Protestant faith, reports that of
28,745 children of school age committed to its care in thirty-nine years
32 per cent. could not read when received. The proportion during the last
five years was 23 per cent. At the Catholic Protectory, of 3,123 boys and
girls cared for during the year 1891, 689 were utterly illiterate at the
time of their reception and the education of the other 2,434 was
classified in various degrees between illiterate and "able to read and
write" only.[14] The moral status of these last children may be inferred
from the statement that 739 of them possessed no religious instruction at
all when admitted. The analysis might be extended, doubtless with the same
result as to illiteracy, throughout the institutions that harbor the
city's dependent children, to the State Reformatory, where the final
product is set down in 75 per cent. of "grossly ignorant" inmates, in
spite of the fact that more than that proportion is recorded as being of
"average natural mental capacity." In other words, they could have
learned, had they been taught.

[Illustration: "SHOOTING CRAPS" IN THE HALL OF THE NEWSBOYS' LODGING
HOUSE.]

How much of this bad showing is due to the system, or the lack of system,
of compulsory education, as we know it in New York, I shall not venture to
say. In such a system a truant school or home would seem to be a logical
necessity. Because a boy does not like to go to school, he is not
necessarily bad. It may be the fault of the school and of the teacher as
much as of the boy. Indeed, a good many people of sense hold that the boy
who has never planned to run away from home or school does not amount to
much. At all events, the boy ought not to be classed with thieves and
vagabonds. But that is wh