But Don Bosco met the most dramatic situation when he entered the prisons. he wrote: To see so many boys, from 12 to 18 years of age, all healthy, strong, intelligent, insect bitten, lacking spiritual and material food, was something that horrified me. In the face of such a situation he made his decision: I must by any available means prevent boys ending up here. There were 16 parishes in Turin. The parish priests were aware of the problem of the young but they were expecting them to go to the sacristies and to the Churches for the required catechism classes. They did not realize that because of population growth and migration to the city this way of doing things was inefficient. It was necessary to try new ways, to invent new schemes, to try another form of apostolate, meeting the boys in shops, offices, market places. Many young priests tried this.
Don Bosco met the first boy on December 8, 1841. He took care of him. Three days later there were nine, three months later twenty five and in summer eighty. They were pavers, stone-cutters, masons, plasterers who came from far away places, he recalled in his brief Memoirs.
Thus was born the youth centre (which he called oratorio). This was not simply a charitable institution, and its activities were not limited to Sundays. For Don Bosco the oratorio became his permanent occupation and he looked for jobs for the ones who were unemployed. He tried to obtain a fairer treatment for those who had jobs, he taught those willing to study after their days work.
But some of his boys did not have sleeping quarters and slept under bridges or in bleak public dormitories. Twice he tried to provide lodgings in his house. The first time they stole the blankets; the second they even emptied the hay-loft.
He did not give up though, being the obstinate optimist he was. In the month of May, 1847, he gave shelter to a young lad from Valesia, in one of the three rooms he was renting out in the slums of Valdocco where he was living with his mother. I had three lira when I arrived in Turin said the boy sitting near the fire, but I found no work and no place to sleep.
 After the youngster from Valsesia, another six boys arrived that same year. In the first months money became a dramatic problem for Don Bosco. It would remain a problem throughout his life. His first benefactor was not a countess but his mother. Margaret (Mamma Margherita), a 59 year old poor peasant, had left her house at Becchi to become mother to these poor boys. To be able to put something on the table, for them to eat, she sold her wedding ring, her earrings and her necklace, things which she had kept jealously until then. The boys sheltered by Don Bosco numbered 36 in 1852, 115 in 1854, 470 in 1860 and 600 in 1861, 800 being the maximum some time later.
Some of these boys decided to do what Don Bosco was doing, that is, to spend their lives in the service of abandoned boys. And this was the origin of the Salesian Congregation. Among the first members we find Michael Rua, John Cagliero (who later became a Cardinal), John Baptist Francesia.
In the archives of the Salesian Congregation some extraordinary documents, are to be found, such as: a contract of apprenticeship on ordinary paper, dated November 1851; another one on stamped paper costing 40 cents, dated February 8, 1852; there are others with later dates. These are among the first contracts of apprenticeship to be found in Turin. All of them are signed by the employer, the apprentice and Don Bosco.
In those contracts Don Bosco touched on many sore spots. Some employers made servants and scullery-boys of the apprentices. Don Bosco obliged them to employ them only in their acknowledged trade. Employers used to beat the boys. Don Bosco required of them that corrections be made only through words. He cared for their health, he demanded that they be given rest on feast days, that they be given their annual holidays. But in spite of all the efforts and contracts, the situation of the apprentices of the time remained very difficult.
In autumn 1853 Don Bosco came to a decision. He begun shoemaking and tailoring shops in the Oratory at Valdocco. The shoemaking shop was located in a very narrow place near the bell-tower of the first church he had just finished building. There Don Bosco sat at a cobblers bench and in front of four little boys he pounded away at a leather sole. Then he taught them how to manage an awl and pack-thread.
After these shops for shoemakers and tailors, Don Bosco built other shops aimed at training book-binders, carpenters, printers and mechanics; six shops in which the privileged place was reserved for orphans, the poor and totally abandoned boys. To take care of these shops Don Bosco invented a new type of religious: the Coadjutors or Salesian Brothers. Similar shops were very soon built in other Salesian presences outside Turin. The Salesian Brothers have the same dignity and rights as those of the Salesian Priests and clerics, but they are specialized people for professional schools. (At the time of Don Bosco´s death, the Salesian professional schools numbered 14 in all. They existed in Italy, France, Spain and Argentina. The number later would grow to 200 across the world).
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