“I tell my man,” the janitor added, after giving me the details of the two robberies, “he must get my dog license. My dog more use than the police. What the police do for me?—way down on the street—my dog he stay here. When I go I tell him: ‘You stay.’ Nobody come in when my dog’s here.” Later I heard of these two girl robbers at least a dozen times. According to later reports they had annexed, or been annexed by, two young men. One report was to the effect that the parents of one of them had taken the matter up with the police in the hope of finding their child and inducing her to return home. In some of the best built and cared for tenement-houses in that section of my district, there was not a door that had not been jimmied. Janitor and tenants agreed that most of this was done by boys, scarcely more than children. They also agreed that a dog was the best and only protection against these thieves. Crossing the back yard on my way to a rear tenement in the lower gas-house district, I once noticed a lot of writing on a fence. It was in chalk, and had the appearance of being freshly done. “Mary will go too” and “Seen you was” were two sentences that attracted my attention. While waiting for my knock at the door of the rear tenement to be answered, I saw a young man, a lad, saunter into the yard, read the writing, and then hurry out. As I was leaving, having seen the dog’s license, another boy sauntered in, read the writing, and hurried out. The dog-owner, on catching sight of the second boy as he entered, drew back and out of his sight. When I asked for an explanation, she assured me that the writing was the work of a gang of young crooks. She said everybody in the two houses knew about their writing signals on that fence, but dare not interfere. When I proposed to rub off the writing, she became alarmed and implored me not to touch it, not to walk on that side of the yard, or show that I saw it. Not being a very gullible woman, I set about questioning janitors and dog-owners in that vicinity. According to these persons that gang was only one of many infesting that section. Several of them told me that she was in hourly dread of learning that her own son or daughter was a member of such a gang, and a criminal. Always the wail was: “I can’t keep track of ’em. We had to take a boarder in to help us pay rent. Evenin’s there ain’t room here for us all to set down, much less have company. Young folks must have company.” The persons responsible for these conditions, the tenement-owners, were ninety-nine out of every hundred well-to-do if not hugely rich. Their claim that it was the high cost of labor and materials that forced them to raise rents, in my district at least, was a lie.