Chicago’s Unaccounted-for Children
By Golden Censer
In Chicago there are one hundred and thirty-six thousand children and youths between six and twenty-one years old. Of this number forty-seven thousand four hundred are enrolled in the public schools, twenty-two thousand six hundred in the private schools, and twelve thousand are engaged in work of one kind or another. This leaves fifty-four thousand unaccounted for. There are sixty-one thousand in Protestant Sunday-schools and seventeen thousand in Catholic schools. But while these are the names on the various school rolls, there are probably not over fifty thousand different children upon the average, in attendance upon all the schools in the city upon the Sunday. This leaves eighty-six thousand that are not in the Sunday-schools. One district was found with twenty thousand population where not ten per cent. attended church or Sunday-school. And in another district with fifteen thousand people there is no Protestant church or Sunday-school; and in still another district having twenty-six thousand people there is but one church where services are held in the English language.