(_b and c_) The children of the proletariat tend to be much rougher, and are much more inclined to become criminals than the children of the well-to-do. Among young proletarians, we find more criminals than among adults. The towns are the true breeding-grounds of youthful criminals. To-day vagrant children in the streets are as constant a feature of town life as the street-lamps. The conditions of proletarian life make the proper upbringing of children impossible at the best of times. All the more is it impossible when the conditions are bad, as when crime, prostitution, and alcoholism prevail in the family circle. The principal cause of youthful criminality is to be found in the very character of proletarian family life, which makes education impossible, and often forces the child into a career of crime. It is well known that a considerable proportion of proletarian children receive no schooling at all--that is, they grow up unable to read and write, and a large number of criminals and prostitutes are made up of such illiterates. A notable proportion of youthful criminals are recruited from the class of wage-earning children, and these latter are almost all proletarians, and most of them have been forced to adopt wage-labour in very early youth. A foul dwelling-place contaminates the mind as well as the body; an enormous preponderance of proletarian children live in such contaminating surroundings. A principal cause of youthful criminality is to be found in the direct influence of poverty, _i.e._ poverty operating otherwise than through the education and environment. However well educated a child may have been, it must steal when starving and freezing. Poverty forces children to adopt a course of action which may enable them to satisfy their immediate and most pressing needs. About half of the girls who go wrong become prostitutes; about half of the boys in similar case become thieves.