The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among ThemBrace, Charles Loring
History
The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them
Brace, Charles Loring
Child welfare -- New York (State) -- New York; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions; Poor -- New York (State) -- New York
"Without mentioning the many present pupils who are engaged in honorable
pursuits, I can readily name about fifty old attendants who have left
school, now employed in this or other States as printers, confectioners,
jewelers, shoemakers, machinists, carpenters, waiters, carvers, and
farm-hands. To these must be added two who keep and own a neat
confectionery and ice-cream saloon in Grand Street; a shoemaker in
business for himself; another, one of the first three above-mentioned, a
foreman in the very machine-shop in which he served as an apprentice;
one a patented machinist in a steam chocolate manufactory; and, lastly,
one who for the last three years has been foreman in a wholesale
confectionery. I omit to mention those who have gone back to Italy and
are doing well. As a rule, they all remember with gratitude their
friends, to whose efforts and liberality they acknowledge they owe their
present position. From every State in which they settle we receive now
and then encouraging news from some boy; and not long ago we heard, for
the second time, from a boy in Italy, who, after having mentioned that
he was studying Latin, etc., gives vent to his feelings by conveying his
most hearty thanks to all the teachers, mentioning them one by one--to
Mr. Brace, to Mr. Macy, and, not remembering the name of our good
friend, John C. Havemeyer, Esq., he adds, "also to that kind gentleman
who has an office at No. 175 Pearl Street." His letter is very touching,
and reveals noble feeling and mind.
"Nor are parents less grateful and ready to acknowledge the good of
American benevolence. I was conversing one evening with a widow woman,
while her boy was writing to her father in Italy, and called her
attention to the advantage her son had derived from our School, adding
that I still remembered how indifferently she received at first my
advices. She felt a little mortified and replied: '_Caro Maestro_ (Dear
Teacher), having never received any good from anybody, but plenty of
harm, we could not believe that all at once we had become worthy of so
much kindness. We used to have hard treatment at the hand of everybody,
had no friends; even our countrymen in better circumstances despised us,
and, to tell you the truth, we had made up our mind that we would find
charity only in the other world.'
VISITING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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