0; beggars, 542; children committed for peddling, 51;
as witnesses, 50. Of the whole lot barely a hundred, comprised within the
last two items, might be supposed to be harmless, though there is no
assurance that they were. Of the Protectory children I have already
spoken. It will serve further to place them to say that nearly one-third
of the 941 received last year were homeless, while fully 35 per cent. of
all the boys suffered when entering from the contagious eye disease that
is the scourge of the poorest tenements as of the public institutions that
admit their children. I do not here take into account the House of Refuge,
though that is also one of the institutions designated by law for the
reception of truants, for the reason that only about one-fifth of those
admitted to it last year came from New York City. Their number was 55. The
rest came from other counties in the State. But even there the percentage
of truants to those committed for stealing or other crimes was as 53 to
47.

This is the "system," or one end of it--the one where the waste goes on.
The Committee spoken of reported that the city paid in 1890, $63,690 for
the maintenance of the truants committed by magistrates, at the rate of
$110 for every child, and that two truant schools and a home for
incorrigible truants could be established and maintained at less cost,
since it would probably not be necessary to send to the home for
incorrigibles more than 25 per cent. of all. It further advised the
creation of the special office of Truant Commissioner, to avoid dragging
the children into the police courts. In his report for the present year
Superintendent Jasper renews in substance these recommendations. But
nothing has been done.

The situation is this, then, that a vast horde of fifty thousand children
is growing up in this city whom our public school does not and cannot
reach; if it reaches them at all it is with the threat of the jail. The
mass of them is no doubt to be found in the shops and factories, as I have
shown. A large number peddle newspapers or black boots. Still another
contingent, much too large, does nothing but idle, in training for the
penitentiary. I stopped one of that kind at the corner of Baxter and Grand
Streets one day to catechise him. It was in the middle of the afternoon
when the schools were in session, but while I purposely detained him with
a long talk to give the neighborhood time to turn out, thirteen other lads
of his