A worse snag than the competition of the prisons is struck by the Society in the cheap Bowery lodging-houses--"hotels" they are called--that attract the homeless boys with their greater promise of freedom. There are no troublesome rules to obey there, no hours to keep, and very little to pay. An ordinance of the Health Department, which exercises jurisdiction over those houses, prohibits the admission of boys under sixteen years old, but the prohibition is easily evaded, and many slip in to encounter there the worst of all company for such as they. The lowest of these houses, that are also the cheapest and therefore the ones the boys patronize, are the nightly rendezvous of thieves and, as the police have more than once pointed out, murderers as well. There should be a much stricter supervision over them--supervision by the police as well as by the health officers--and the age limit should be put at eighteen years instead of sixteen. There is this much to be said for the lodging-houses, however, that it is a ticklish subject to approach until the city as a municipality has swept before its own door. They at least offer a bed, such as it is, and shelter after their fashion. The hospitality the city offers to its homeless poor in the police-station lodging-rooms is one of the scandals of a civilized age. The moral degradation of an enforced stay in these dens is immeasurable. To say that they are the resort of tramps and "bums" who know and deserve nothing better, is begging the question. It is true of the majority, but that very fact consigns the helpless minority, too poor to pay and too proud to beg, to a fate worse than death. I myself picked from the mass of festering human filth in a police-station lodging-room, one night last winter, six young lads, not one of whom was over eighteen, and who for one reason or another had been stranded there that night. They were not ruffians either, but boys who to all appearances had come from good homes, the memory of which might not efface the lessons learned that night in a lifetime. The scandal has been denounced over and over again by grand juries, by the Police Commissioners, and by philanthropists who know of the facts, and efforts without end have been made to get the city authorities to substitute some decent system of municipal hospitality for this unutterable disgrace, as other cities have done, but they have all been wrecked by political jobbery or official apathy.