Don Bosco's perspective was quite broad when he spoke and wrote, bearing in mind the varied circumstances of young people and people in general. Whether he was writing books to uphold the faith or whether he was doing his best to point out the need for welfare and educational intervention beyond his own area of activity for young people, Don Bosco never excluded the widest possibility of applying the preventive system, probably including some additional 'repressive' approaches. For instance, he suggested the use of the preventive system in Turin's prisons to Urban Rattazzi and he suggested to Francis Crispi that the same system be employed for “boys seriously at risk”, amongst whom “vagabonds who end up into the hands of public security agents”. 713
It is evident, however, that Don Bosco's intentions, expressed through the institutions he had brought to completion and his more pressing concerns, are all focused on the young who find themselves at the lowest level and sidelined by society and mostly at risk. This is what the Memoirs from l841 to l844- 45-46 by Father John Bosco to his Salesian sons is all about. It is almost a last will and testament:
The world will always welcome us as long as our concern is for under-developed peoples,
poor children, members of society most in danger. This is our real wealth which no-one will
envy and nobody will take from us.714
This is the direction Don Bosco repeatedly revealed to his Salesians, Cooperators and benefactors, in
the talks addre ssed to them during the last decade of his life, not without explicit reference to the
dangerous social situation of young people who are not adequately assisted. It was his last specification
which might have aroused the sensitivities of his often well -to -do and concerned listeners, thus attracting greater charitable contributions from them.
715
While in Rome, in 1887, Don Bosco urged the Cooperators to help Salesians confront and stem the
onrush of ever -increasing impiety and bad morals dragging so many poor and inexperienced youths to eternal ruin, both in the cities and in the towns. He urged them to help the Salesians lower the quantity
of rascals who, left to the themselves, ran great risk of filling up the prisons.
716
On March 30, 1882, Don Bosco told the Genoa Cooperators:
We see these youngsters scurrying from squares to back streets, shore to shore, growing up
in the grip of idleness and leisure; we see them learn all sorts of obscenities and curses;
later on we see them become scoundrels and criminals; and finally, mostly in the prime of
life, we see them end up in prison.
717
There seemed to him to be an organised plot involved, and therefore works of prevention and defence were needed to counteract it!
development, quality of those running them and of the education they offered. From the monographs available some
excellent research has been done, some less so. Amongst the most important of these concerning works undertaken by
Don Bosco: P. Stella,Don Bosco nella storia economica e sociale (1815-1870), already cited; F. Desramaut, Don Bosco
à Nice. La vie d'une école professionelle catholique entre 1875 et 1919. Paris, Apostolat des Éditions 1980, 397. 713Cf some texts in P. Braido, Don Bosco Eeducatore. Scritti e testimonianze, Rome LAS 1997, pp 85-87, 291-294. 714F. Motto, Memorie dal 1841 al 1884-5-6 pel sac. Gio. Bosco a' suoi figliuoli Salesiani, RSS 4 (1985) 127.
715Especially in his final years it is not to be excluded that Don Bosco's talks were added to by the editor of the Bollettino
Salesiano, Fr John Bonetti.
716BS 2 (1878) no. 3 March, pp. 12-13. “It is a case of freeing them from the dangers that are imminent, from doing evil,
from prison itself” he wrote in 1879, BS 3 (1879) no. 1 Jan., p. 2; The following year again: “Many thousands of young
people, left abandoned, without education or religion, would have become the scourge of society, and maybe not a few
would curse the Creator in prison... were on the contrary led away from evil”; BS 9 (1885) no. 7 July, p. 95.
717BS 6 (1882) no. 4, April. p. 70. Similar presentation of youth especially those who moved to Rome: BS 8 (1884) no. 1,
Jan. p. 2; conference to Roman Cooperators 8 May, BS 8 (1884) no. 6, June, p. 88; in darker tones and described in a
conference in Turin on 1 June 1885, youth in Paris “the big capital of France with 2 million inhabitants”: BS 9 (1885)
no. 7 July, p. 95.