Turning again to the pages of "Les Miserables," the story of Gavroche,
the gamin of Paris, may easily be found, and the tale of this youth
is not far different from that of the "kid" of Chicago. Here is what
Victor Hugo says of Gavroche in that section of his great novel called
"Marius": "This child was muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but
he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did
not get it from his mother.
"Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still he
had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him and his
mother did not love him.
"He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all; one
of those who have father and mother and who are orphans nevertheless.
"This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The
pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart.
"His parents had dispatched him into life with a kick. He simply took
flight.
"He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wideawake, jeering lad, with
a vicious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played, scraped
the gutters, stole a little, but like cats and sparrows. He had no
shelter, no bread, no fire, no love. When these poor creatures grow
to be men the millstones of the social order meet them and crush
them, but so long as they are children they escape because of their
smallness."
This is a true picture of the urchin of Chicago. These tiny atoms
of humanity are sponges that absorb all the filth, the vice, the
sin and the crime of the streets. They pick up all that is evil and
nothing that is good. They are nurtured at the breast of poverty and
viciousness, and are reared on a diet of depravity and degradation.
There is nothing they do not know of crime and of wickedness. They are
thoroughly saturated with everything that is evil, unprincipled and
debased.
Is it any wonder, then, that the city brings forth an appalling annual
crop of criminals? There may be heroes among the gamins in Chicago,
but most of them are only heroes so long as they remain uncaught.
When they fall into the hands of the police and are taken to jail they
are sorry-looking heroes.
And in the meantime the problem of the boy is still unsolved.