There was a boy about fourteen years of age who would daily menace his widowed mother with denouncing her to the "office." He terrorised the poor woman to such an extent that she allowed him to do whatever he wanted. He never went to school, he smoked, he drank, he boxed, he went to all the moving picture shows, and all this money he obtained from his mother on the threat to tell the "office." The great sin the woman had committed was that she had remarried, a young man, and the groom had decamped with two hundred and fifty dollars that she had saved up in the seven or eight years widowhood and beggary. The whole affair was a secret to the institution, as the woman feared her two dollars weekly pension would be discontinued should they learn of the marriage.

I happened to visit the home one morning. The boy was pacing the room, almost naked, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his lower lip, his face enraged, his eyes red, and as he paced the room he cursed the mother, who was standing at the stove preparing the food. And the language he used! I heard all the curses of the Bowery as I stood near the door.

"I'll fix you up, you old rag—cough up or I'll smash your ivory."

When I knocked at the door he greeted me with "What d'hell d'you want?"

He had his mouth set for another greeting of the same sort when I gently but firmly pushed his insolent face back and entered.

The woman knew me and the boy probably guessed my occupation, for he proceeded to coerce his mother, motioning and making faces, as though to say: "Yes, or I will tell!" The mother ignored his threats so he casually remarked: "Mrs. Carson!"

The woman made a sign that she would yield and the boy dressed in a hurry.

I busied myself with my notebook all the time, just throwing out a question once in a while. When the boy was all dressed up he beckoned to the mother to follow him into the other room. She did so. I heard a suppressed curse and a deep sigh. The boy came out first. As he passed my chair I stood up and seizing his wrists I asked: "Why don't you go to school?"

No answer.

"Why don't you go to work?"

No answer.

"How dare you insult your mother the way you do, you scoundrel?"

Instead of answering me he turned to his mother.

"You squeaked—ha? That's what you did! You old piece of rot."

Thus spoke a son to his mother. I felt the blood rushing to my head and I struck the blaspheming mouth. He tried to fight back and even took the pose, but I was too much for him. I pinned his arms.

The mother had not moved. If anything she was rather satisfied that the boy got his due. Again the boy twisted around, and looking daggers at his mother he said:

"You'll tell tales? Ha? and let this big stiff hit me? And you'll stay there like a lamp post? Ha! that's what you'll do? I'll croak you, I'll put you right—wait!"

"Do you know," he turned to me, "that—"

"George, George," the mother yelled and covered the boy's mouth with her open palm.

"I know it all," I interrupted. "I know that your mother's name is Mrs. Carson."

The poor mother looked as though she had been struck with an iron bar over the head.

"And now, my boy, give back the money you forced from your mother a while ago." From his pocket the mother took out a dollar and some cents. I compelled the boy to go to school, menacing him with everything I thought would scare him, and obtained from him the promise that he would go the next morning. But when I turned to go, I saw the mother shivering as though in the clutches of fever. She motioned me not to go, then sat down and wept. Of course I knew the reason for her tears. She was afraid her pension would be cut off. She had lied to the institution. She had not told them of her unfortunate remarriage. She was afraid of her son. Why? Because, fearing that the investigator might question her son she had been compelled to lie to the boy and teach him to lie, and he grew up with the knowledge that he could obtain anything he wanted from his mother with the threat of telling the truth. The child grew up a blackmailer. The system of organised charity made him one.

And how many, how many similar occurrences have led to similar results? How many men in stripes could trace their downfall to the "question room" of the Investigator!

As to this particular boy—he went to school for a few weeks but his street habits corrupted the other children, and he was expelled. For a time he sold newspapers on the streets, then he gradually sank lower and lower and was later on sent to a reformatory to expiate a minor offence and from there he will be discharged a graduated criminal.

Webster says: "A university is an assemblage of colleges established in any place, with professors for instructing students in the sciences and other branches of learning, and where degrees are conferred. A university is properly a universal school, in which are taught all branches of learning, or the four faculties of theology, medicine, law, and the science and arts."

I know universities where the students are not instructed in the sciences and other branches of learning, and where degrees of a different kind are conferred on the students; a university where other objects than theology, medicine, law and the sciences and arts are taught.

Burglary, blackmailing, safe-blowing, murder and other applied sciences and arts are taught there.

The professors are incomparably superior to the ones in the colleges; they are men with great experience and they impart their knowledge to their pupils without charging fees. They do it for love.

In the underworld the Reformatory is called "the university." And one who knew, one day remarked to me: "If they (meaning the good citizens) had wanted to create a school where crime should be taught they could not have done better than by fixing up a Reformatory. They get a real training there, pass through a sound apprenticeship and are masters of their particular branch when they come out."