Part 21

With a poor shawl around her and with heels run down she peers in at the restaurant window, to see other women leading lives very different from hers.

Steadily she has impressed upon her the fact, absolutely undeniable, that as the world is organized there is no especial place for her--certainly no comfort for her.

She finds work, perhaps. Hours as long as the daylight.

Ten minutes late--half a day's fine.

At the end of the day aching feet, aching back, system ill-fed, not enough earned to live upon honestly--and that prospect stretches ahead farther than her poor eyes can see.

"What's the charge, officer?"

"Disorderly conduct, Your Honor."

There's the criminal, good men, politicians, women and bishops, that you are hunting so ardently.

THE BOY

Same story, practically.

He plays on the tenement staircase--cuffed off the staircase.

He plays ball in the street--cuffed, if caught by the policeman.

He swings on the area railing, trying to exercise his stunted muscles--cuffed again.

In burning July, with shirt and trousers on, he goes swimming in the park fountain--caught and cuffed and handed over to "the society."

A few months in a sort of semi-decent imprisonment, treated in a fashion about equivalent to that endured by the sea turtle turned over on its back in the market.

He escapes to begin the same life once more.

He tries for work.

"What do you know?"

"I don't know anything; nobody ever taught me."

He cannot even endure the discipline of ten hours' daily shovelling--it takes education to instil discipline, if only the education of the early pick and shovel.

He has not been taught anything. He has been turned loose in a city full of temptation. He had no real start to begin with, and no effort was ever made to repair his evil beginning. ----

"What's the charge, officer?"

"Attempted burglary; pleads guilty."

"Three years in prison, since it is his first offence."

In prison he gets an education. They teach him how to be a good burglar and not get caught. Patiently the State boards him, and educates him to be a first-rate criminal.

There's your first-rate criminal, Messrs. Bishops, good men, politicians and benevolent women. ----

Dear bishops, noble women, good men and scheming politicians, listen to this story:

In the South Sea Islands they have for contagious diseases a horror as great as your horror of crime.