Produced by Gary Sandino, from scans by Google. Digitized by Google. THE DANGEROUS CLASSES OF NEW YORK, AND TWENTY YEARS' WORK AMONG THEM. BY CHARLES LORING BRACE, AUTHOR OF "HUNGARY IN 1851," "HOME LIFE IN GERMANY," "THE RACES OF THE OLD WORLD," ETC., ETC. "Ameliorer l'homme par le terre et le terre par l'homme."--_Demetz._ NEW YORK. WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK, PUBLISHERS, 113 FULTON STREET. ----- 1872. [Illustration: LODGING-HOUSES FOR HOMELESS BOYS--AS THEY WERE. NO. 1.] ------------------------------------------------ ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by CHARLES LORING BRACE, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. ------------------------------------------------ WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK, FINE BOOK PRINTERS. DEDICATION. ----- To the many co-laborers, men and women, who have not held their comfort or even their lives dear unto themselves, but have striven, through many years, to teach the ignorant, to raise up the depressed, to cheer the despairing, to impart a higher life and a Christian hope to the outcast and neglected youth of this city, and thus save society from their excesses, this simple record of common labors, and this sketch of the terrible evils sought to be cured, is respectfully dedicated. INTRODUCTION. ----- The great pioneer in the United States, in the labors of penal Reform and the prevention of crime,--EDWARD LIVINGSTON,--said as long ago as 1833, in his famous "Introductory Report to the Code of Reform and Prison Discipline": "As prevention in the diseases of the body is less painful, less expensive, and more efficacious than the most skillful cure, so in the moral maladies of society, to arrest the vicious before the profligacy assumes the shape of crime; to take away from the poor the cause or pretence of relieving themselves by fraud or theft; to reform them by education and make their own industry contribute to their support, although difficult and expensive, will be found more effectual in the suppression of offences and more economical than the best organized system of punishment."--(p. 322.)