Known to the Police

in our land. Yet, truth to tell, the evil is greater now than when sensational writers boomed it. It grows, and will continue to grow, until the conditions that produce it are serio

London slums, who do no regular work, but who seem to live on idleness and disorder, I desire to speak plainly

of disorder in the streets, if caused by the poor and ignorant, was a signal for the cry "The hooligan again!" Rubbish! But the people believed it, and so to some extent our level-headed and kind-hearted magistrates caught the spirit of the thing, and proceeded to impose heavier sentences on boys charged with disorderly conduct in the streets. But this was not enough, for the Home Secretary (Mr. Ritchie) in the House of Commons, in reply to a question about youthful hooligans, said it was thought that the magistrates had been too lenient wi

must confess to a feeling of discomfort when I see a boy of sixteen sent to a month's imprisonment for disorderly conduct in the streets. It is true that he has been a nuisance to his elders, and has bumped against them in running after his pals. Equally true that he uses language repulsive to ears polite; but to him it is ordinary language, to which he has been accustomed his life through. But I am afraid it is

f loafers; but all of them will lose their fear of prison, that fear of the unknown that is the greatest deterrent from crime and disorder. Familiarize these "young gentry" with prison,[Pg 169] and it is all over with them. The sense of fear will depart, and to a dead certainty more serious disorder and grosser crime will follow. Undoubt

contingencies-either to become dull-eyed, weak-chested, slow-witted degenerates, or hooligans. Of the two, I prefer the latter. The streets are the playgrounds of the poor, and the State has need to be thankful, in spite of the drawback in disorder and crime, for the strength and manhood developed in them. It will be a sorry day for England when the children of the poor, after being dragooned to school, are dragooned from the streets into the over

o wonder that our boys and girls seek the excitement of the streets, or that they find comfort in "dustbins." What can big lads of this description do in such surroundings? Curl up and die, or go out and kick somebody. The pity of it is that they always kick the wrong person, but that's no wonder. Tread our narrow streets, where two-storied houses stand flush with the pavements; explore our courts, alleys, and places; climb skyward in our much-belauded dwellings; or come even into our streets that look snugly respectable. You will find them teeming with juvenile life that has learned its first steps in the streets, got its first idea of play in the gutter, and pic

race at Epsom, and the people generally go wild. But when the Hackney boys contend with the boys of Bethnal Green, why, that's another tale. But they cannot go to Lord's or to Putney, so perforce they meet in the places natural to them-the streets. "But they use belts!" Well, they have no boxing-gloves, and it may comfort some folks to know

g

No, He would have made me bigger, wouldn't He? But I have had enough of prison," he said-"I've had enough. I'm going straight when I get out, and I shall be out in three weeks. It is very good of you to come and talk to us, and I am glad to know about all those men you have told us of; but I've come to see you because I want you to tell me how I am to spend my spare time when I am out. I am going back home to live. I've got a job to go to-not much wages, though. I sha

have its public playground, under proper supervision, lit up with electric light in the evening, and open till 10 p.m. Here such inexpensive games as rounders, skittles, tip-cat, tug-of-war, might be organized, and Hackney might have a series of competitions with Bethnal Green, for the competitive element must be provided for. A series of contests of this sort would soon empty our streets of the lads who are now so troublesome. I venture to say that a tournament, even at "coddem" or "shove-ha'penny" alone, would attract hundreds of them, and certainly an organized competition of "pitch-and-toss" would attract thousands. Counters might be used instead of coins, and they would last for ever.[Pg 174] The fact is, that these youths are easily pleased, if we go the right way to work; but we must take them as they are, and must not expect them all to play chess, billiards, and cricket. Football, I think, I would certainly add, for it is a game which any healthy boy can play, and it gives him robust exercise. Give the lads of our slums and congested dwellings a chanc

leness is certain to be demoralizing. Once let boys from the homes I have described-or, indeed, from working men's homes generally-be released from the discipline of school, and the discipline of reasonable and continuous work not be substituted, and it is all over with them and honest aspirations. Now, this difficulty of finding decent and prospective employment for boys is another great factor in the production of[Pg 176] youthful hooligans, but a factor that would be largely eliminated if the age for leaving school were raised to sixteen. The work of errand-boys, van-boys, or "cock-horse" boys is not progressive; neither is it good training for growing boys. To the boys of fourteen such work has its allurements, and the wages offered seem fairly good; but when the boy of fourteen has become the youth of sixteen or seventeen, the work seems childish, and the pay becomes mean. When he requires better wages, his services are dispensed with, and another lad of fourteen is taken on. This procedure alone accounts for thousands of youths being idle upon the streets of London. What can such youths do? Too big for their previous occupation, no skilled training or aptitude for better work, not big or strong enough for ordinary labouring, they become the despair of their parents and pests to society. Very soon the door of

art of that life; let healthy rivalry have a chance of animating them and a feeling of manly joy sometimes pervade them, and these horrible, w

e of the most execrable description, there the public-house thrives, and thrives with disastrous effects. The home-life of[Pg 178] the poor and the public-house act and react on each other. The more miserable the home and the greater the dirt, the more the public-house attracts; the more it attracts, the viler the home-life and the greater misery and dirt. It is no marvel that people who live th

ad, then-'tis y

llow, and she

with seasoned topers. In the evening, when half drunk, they patrol the streets or stand together at some congested corner. They are not amenable to the influence of the police; they are locked up, and the cry[Pg 179] "The hooligans! the hooligans!" is heard in the land; and there is a demand for more punishment, instead of a feeling of shame at the conditions that produce such young people and at the temptations that prevail amongst them. Can it be right-is it decent or wise?-that boys and girls of sixteen should be allowed free access to public-houses, with free libe

also upon a reduction in their alcoholic strength; for, after all, this is the cause of the mischief. In this direction lies the true path of temperance reform. Supposing the alcoholic strength of malt liquors-really malt liquors-was[Pg 180] fixed by imperial statute at 2? per cent. by volume, who would be a penny the worse? The brewer and the publican would get their profits, the Exchequer would get its pound of flesh, the Englishma

course; but this should be followed by a much higher duty on spirits and a law fixing the maximum of their alcoholic strength when offered for

the reforms necessary to the a

or, and a fair chance of

ounds and organized

of school-lif

ple of alcoholic drinks for

181] of malt liquor to 2? per cent. and of spiri

full manhood at sixty. Give us these reforms, and enable the poor to live in clean and sweet content, then their sons shall be strong in body and mind to fight our battles, to people our colonies, and to hand down to future ages a goodly heritage. But there is a content born of indifference, of apathy, of despair. There is the possibility that the wretched may become so perfect in their misery that a wish for better things and aspirations after a higher life may die a death fro