Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out!. Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison онлайн

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In many of the crimes committed by young men which we have personally investigated, it has been a question with us who has been the greatest criminal, the state, the parents or the boy. Many a young man would never have reached prison had his parents placed around him any reasonable moral safeguards. When I remember that hundreds of boys who get into the Tombs every year come from homes of poverty, misery, drunkenness, profanity and vice of every name, I do not wonder when I see crime written on their pale faces.

If Gladstone’s dictum were to actuate our state legislature, laws would be forthwith passed, making it a crime to sell to minors the blood-curdling novel, tobacco or cigarettes, or intoxicating liquor in any form. Boys should be prohibited from going to prize fights, the race course, gambling hells, theatres, billiard halls, or even from staying on the street after nine o’clock at night. This might seem harsh, but if strictly carried out we have no doubt whatever that crime would be reduced thereby.