It will be remembered that little Gavroche, the gamin in "Les
Miserables," came to his death on a barricade in the streets of Paris.
It was during the fatal insurrection of 1830. The lad allied himself
with the insurrectionists and found he was in his element. He did
prodigies of valor and was robbing the dead bodies of the enemy of
cartridges when he was shot. Even after he had been shot once and had
fallen to the earth he raised himself to a sitting posture and began
to sing a revolutionary song.
"He did not finish," says Hugo. "A second bullet from the same
marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face downward on the
pavement and moved no more. This grand little soul had taken flight."
Thus it is to be seen that Hugo has made a hero of this lad. But what
of the little gamins that throng Chicago's streets? Will they find any
such glorious end? It is not likely.
Jacob Leib is but 17 years old, and Alfred Lafferty, accused of
twenty-three burglaries, is only 16. The John Worthy School is full
of boys who have been gathered in by the police; the Junior Business
Club, another reform organization, has a big membership, and the
Juvenile Protective League is hard at work trying to do something to
arrest the boy in his mad race to the reform school, prison and the
penitentiary.
In looking about for the causes of crime among boys I found that
poverty, liquor, divorce, yellow newspapers, cigarettes and bad
company played important parts. Certain streets of Chicago are schools
of crime, where boys are taught the rudiments of larceny and soon
become adepts.
Hardened criminals use the more agile youths they find idle to do work
they are unable to do. Certain sections of the city swarm with boys
who are steeped in vice and crime and are in embryo the murderers, the
burglars and the forgers of tomorrow.