116
 

THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES
 

and burned ux3 on election night. The boys, organized in gangs,
with the one condition of membership that all must "give in
w^ood," store up enormous piles of fuel for months before, and
though the police find and raid a good many of them, incidentally
laying in supplies of kindling A\^ood, for the winter, the x^il^
grows again in a single night as the neighborhood reluctantly con-
 

Night School  in the Seventh Avenue  Boys' Lodging House,
(Edward, the little pedlar, caught napping.)
 

tributes its ash-barrels to the cause. The germ of the gangs that
terrorize AAdiole sections of the city at intervals, and feed our courts
and our jails, may, Avithout much difficulty, be discovered in these
early and rather grotesque struggles of the boys with the police.

Even on the national day of freedom the boy is not left to the
enjoyment of his firecracker Avithout the ineffectual threat of the
laAV. I am not defending the firecracker, but arraigning the fail¬
ure of the law to carry its point and maintain its dignity.    It has