WEST SIDE STUDIES
CARRIED ON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF
PAULINE GOLDMARK
FORMERLY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR NEW YORK
SCHOOL OF PHILANTHROPY, MEMBER OF
INDUSTRIAL BOARD NEW YORK STATE
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
BOYHOOD
AND LAWLESSNESS
THE NEGLECTED GIRL
By RUTH S. TRUE
PREFACE TO WEST SIDE STUDIES
In the summer of 1912 the field work was completed for the West Side
studies published in these volumes. They are part of a wider survey
of the neighborhood which it was proposed to make under the Bureau
of Social Research of the New York School of Philanthropy with funds
supplied by the Russell Sage Foundation. Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay,
director of the School, and I were in charge of the Bureau and together
planned the scope and nature of the inquiry. To his inspiriting
influence was due in large measure the enthusiasm and harmonious work
of our staff.
The investigators in the Bureau were men and women who had been
awarded fellowships by the School of Philanthropy. There were junior
fellowships, given for one year only, and intended to provide training
in social research for students without much previous experience, who
were required to give part of their time to class work and special
reading. There were also senior fellowships given to more advanced
students who devoted full time to investigation. After two years’ work
it was felt that to carry out the original plan satisfactorily would
require the employment of a permanent staff of investigators who were
well trained and equipped. The School, therefore, decided not to carry
the survey further and reorganized the Bureau on a different basis.
This brief account of the Bureau is needed to explain the special
topics dealt with in these volumes. The personal qualifications of the
investigators as well as the available opportunities for investigation
necessarily determined the choice of subjects.
A word must be said, too, as to the selection of this particular West
Side district of New York City. These 80 blocks which border upon the
Hudson River, between Thirty-fourth and Fifty-fourth Streets, contrast
sharply with almost all other tenement neighborhoods of the city. They
have as nearly homogeneous and stable a population as can be found
in any part of New York. The original stock was Irish and German. In
each generation the bolder spirits moved away to more prosperous parts
of the city. This left behind the less ambitious and in many cases
the wrecks of the population. Hence in this “backset” from the main
current of the city’s life may be seen some of the most acute social
problems of modern urban life--not the readjustment and amalgamation of
sturdy immigrant groups, but the discouragement and deterioration of an
indigenous American community.
The quarter which we studied is strangely detached from the rest of
the city. Only occasionally an outbreak of lawlessness brings it to
public notice. Its old reputation for violence and crime dates back
many generations and persists to the present day. So true is this
that we considered it essential at the beginning of our undertaking
to ascertain the main facts of the district’s development. To Otho G.
Cartwright was assigned the task of collecting this material. He did
not make an exhaustive inquiry, but obtained from reliable sources
sufficient information to give the historical background of life in
the district today. His work serves as a general introduction to the
more intensive studies which follow.
The study of juvenile delinquency, Boyhood and Lawlessness, shows
clearly the need of special intimate knowledge of social phenomena
if their underlying causes are to be understood. It describes the
inadequacies of the present system: the innumerable arrests for petty
offenses or for playing in the streets, and the failure of the police
to bring the ringleaders into court. All this seems so unreasonable
to the neighborhood and has so often aroused its antagonism that the
influence of the Children’s Court is seriously undermined. In fact,
the fathers and mothers of its charges look upon it only as a hostile
authority in league with the police, while its real purpose is entirely
hidden from them. The evidence is clear, too, that both parents and
community have failed to understand and provide for the most elementary
physical needs of the boys.
The same tragic lack of opportunity and care characterizes the lives
of the girls. Ruth S. True’s portrayal of these lives in The Neglected
Girl rests upon close personal acquaintance with a special group of
girls who, though they were not brought up on charges in the Children’s
Court, yet were without question in grave need of probationary care.
In neither of these two studies was it possible to suggest adequate
remedies for the evils described. It is true that steps have already
been taken by the Children’s Court to make its probation staff more
effective. But the more fundamental need for modification of the
conditions of the child’s life and environment has still to be
pondered. Clearly it is not the child alone who needs reformation.
Similarly, Katharine Anthony’s report, Mothers Who Must Earn, reveals
much more than isolated cases of hardship and suffering due to accident
or death. She has studied the social and economic causes which compel
the mother of a family to become a wage-earner, and the consequences
of such employment for her home and family. The occupations where her
services are in demand were carefully examined. The underpayment of
many of the husbands, which drives their already overburdened wives
into wage-earning, is perhaps the most significant fact disclosed. To
relieve such severe economic pressure there is certainly need of more
radical and far-reaching readjustments than can be effected by any one
remedial measure. Relief giving is at best only a temporary stop-gap.
This is rather a labor problem of the utmost gravity, affecting whole
classes of underpaid laborers.
Indeed, if there is any one truth which emerges from these studies,
it is the futility of dealing with social maladjustments as single
isolated problems. They are all closely interrelated, and the first
step in getting order out of our complexities must be knowledge of what
exists. To such knowledge these studies aim to make a contribution.
They are not intended to prove preconceived ideas nor to test the
efficacy of any special remedies. They aim to describe with sympathy
and insight some of the real needs of a neglected quarter of our
city--“to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature.”
The various investigators who took part in the inquiry are given
herewith: Edward M. Barrows, Clinton S. Childs, Eleanor H. Adler,
Beatrice Sheets, and Ruth S. True contributed to the study of the West
Side boy, here published under the title Boyhood and Lawlessness.
Thomas D. Eliot, a junior fellow, also assisted. Associated with Ruth
S. True in the study of the neglected girl, were Ann Campion and
Dorothy Kirchwey. All three shared the responsibility of conducting the
Tenth Avenue club for the observation of the girls described in their
report. The volume Mothers Who Must Earn is the result of work done by
Katharine Anthony, who was assisted in her field work by Ruth S. Waldo,
a junior fellow.[1]
In the fall of 1912 practically the whole staff at that time employed
devoted two months’ time to inspection of the industrial establishments
of the district, under authority of the New York State Factory
Investigating Commission. The results were published as Appendix V, to
Volume I, of the Commission’s Preliminary Report, 1912.
Thanks are due to many persons who gave unstintedly of their time to
the various investigators. Our indebtedness is especially great to
the staff of the Clinton District office of the Charity Organization
Society, who brought us in touch with many families in their care,
and through their varied experience helped us in interpreting many
aspects of neighborhood life. Among other agencies, Hartley House
was particularly generous in making us acquainted with its Italian
neighbors and in giving us the opportunity to visit them in their
homes. The teachers of various local schools should also be mentioned
with appreciation for the help they gave us in many ways.
PAULINE GOLDMARK.
[Illustration: JUST BOYS!
Why not make them a community asset?]
RUSSELL SAGE
FOUNDATION
BOYHOOD
AND LAWLESSNESS
WEST SIDE STUDIES
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
MCMXIV
Copyright, 1914, by
THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
[Illustration]
THE TROW PRESS
NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION
When the Bureau of Social Research began, early in 1909, an
investigation of the Middle West Side, it was soon realized that of
all the problems presented by the district, none was more urgent and
baffling, none more fundamental, than that of the boy and his gang.
His anti-social activities have forced him upon public attention as
an obstruction to law and business and a menace to order and safety.
Because of this lawlessness and because of New York’s backwardness in
formulating wise preventive measures to meet it, a special study of the
West Side boy was begun.
In order to gain an intimate knowledge of neighborhood conditions which
affect the boy, two men workers, Edward M. Barrows and Clinton S.
Childs, went to live in the district, the former remaining for nearly
two years. During their residence they came in close touch with several
gangs and clubs of boys. Their experiences, while they yielded some
of the most vital and significant material of our study, did not lend
themselves to statistical treatment; they were not recorded in the form
of family and individual histories, but as a running day-by-day diary,
which formed the basis of the chapters dealing with the activities and
the environment of the boys.
Since the West Side boy, either through personal contact or through
association with gang leaders, is inseparable from the Children’s
Court, attention was naturally drawn to the extent and the result of
his relation to this institution. For this reason the Bureau made a
special study of 294 boys[2] selected from the district with particular
reference to their delinquency and their court records.[3]
Of these boys 28 were under twelve years, 71 more were fourteen, and
102 more were under sixteen. In view of these significant facts it
became necessary not only to examine the environment of the West Side
boy, but also to estimate the influence of the Children’s Court and
other institutions upon him when toughness, truancy, gambling, or other
temptations had carried him over the brink into real delinquency.
That society should feel itself compelled to resort continually to
the arrest and trial of children is in itself a confession of defeat.
But when even these resources fail, it becomes imperative to analyze
all the factors in the situation; to set the destructive and the
constructive elements over against each other, and to determine the
chances which the boy and the various public and private agencies
organized to regenerate him have of understanding one another.
To many the study may serve to show at their doors a world undreamed
of; a world in which, through causes which are even now, removable,
youth is denied the universal rights of life, liberty, and happiness.
To the court it may be of use in throwing light into dark places and
in showing where old paths should be abandoned, as well as in offering
suggestions at a critical period in its history.
And, indeed, every suggestion which will tend to lessen the troubles of
the Middle West Side is peculiarly needed. The whole community--from
molested property owners to the most disinterested social workers--are
agreed that the worst elements rule the streets and that neither police
nor court authority succeed in enforcing decency and order. And the
center of the problem is the boy, for in him West Side lawlessness
finds its most perennial and permanent expression.
The aim of this study, therefore, is to trace the principal influences
which have formed the West Side boy; to consider some of the means
which have heretofore been employed to counteract these influences; and
to picture him as he is, exemplifying the results of circumstances for
which not he but the entire community is responsible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
I. His Background 1
II. His Playground 10
III. His Games 24
IV. His Gangs 39
V. His Home 55
VI. The Boy and the Court 79
VII. The Center of the Problem 141
APPENDIX.
Tables 165
Excerpts from Report of Children’s Court,
County of New York, 1913 177
INDEX 201
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Photographs by Lewis W. Hine
FACING
PAGE
Just Boys! _Frontispiece_
Tenth Avenue 4
Eleventh (“Death”) Avenue 4
Bounce Ball with Wall as Base. Property is Safe 10
Bounce Ball with Steps as Base. Windows in Danger 10
Wading in Sewage-laden Water 20
A “Den” Under the Dock 20
Pigeon Flying. A Roof Game 28
Marbles. A Street Game 28
Prize Fighters in Training 34
Craps with Money at Stake 34
Boy Scouts and Soldiers 40
After the Battle 40
Resting. What Next? 48
Early Lessons in Craps 48
Approaching the “Gopher” Age 64
One Diversion of the Older Boys 64
Replenishing the Wood Box 74
A Rich Find 74
A Ball Game Near the Docks 82
“Obstructing Traffic” on Twelfth Avenue 82
“We Ain’t Doin’ Nothin’” 98
The Same Gang at Craps 98
An Embryo Gangster 122
The “Toughest Kid” on the Street 122
Carrying Loot from a Vacant Building 142
Closed by the Gangs 142
De Witt Clinton Park 146
A Favorite Playground 146
LIST OF TABLES
APPENDIX
TABLE PAGE
1. Sources from which the names of the 294 boys
studied were obtained 167
2. Ages of boys 167
3. Length of residence in the district of 183 families 168
4. Country of birth of parents 168
5. Nationality of American-born parents 169
6. Two hundred families classified according to number
of persons in households and number of rooms
occupied 169
7. Living children in 231 families 170
8. Status of mothers in 222 families 170
9. Conjugal condition of parents in 233 families 171
10. Relief records of 241 families 171
11. Duration of relief records of families known to have
received aid from relief societies 172
12. Court disposition of cases involving 454 arrests
affecting 259 boys and 221 families 172
13. Final disposition of 92 West Side paroled cases and
of 1,492 paroled cases disposed of by the Manhattan
Court in 1909 173
14. Truancy records of 215 boys, classified as delinquent
or not delinquent 173
15. Status of 163 boys not gainfully employed 174
16. Occupation and wages of 100 boys gainfully employed 175
CHAPTER I
HIS BACKGROUND
The influence of environment on character is now so fully recognized
that no study of juvenile offenders would be complete without a
consideration of their background. In the lives of the boys with whom
this study deals this background plays a very large part. One-third
of the 241 families studied, 82, are known to have lived in the
district from five to nineteen years, and a somewhat larger number,
88, for twenty years or more.[4] This means that the boys belonged
almost completely to the neighborhood. Most of them had lived there
all their lives, and many of them always will live there. If they are
to be understood aright, this neighborhood which has given them home,
schooling, streets to play in, and factories to work in must also be
pictured and understood.
In New York, owing perhaps to the shape of the island, the
juxtaposition of tenement and mansion is unusually frequent. Walk
five blocks along Forty-second Street west from Fifth Avenue and you
are in the heart of the Middle West Side. The very suddenness of the
change which these blocks present makes the contrast between wealth
and poverty more striking and enables you to appreciate the particular
form taken by poverty in this part of the city. Eighth Avenue, at
which our district begins, looks east for inspiration and west for
patronage. It is the West Sider’s Broadway and Fifth Avenue combined.
Here he promenades, buys his clothes, travels up and down town on the
cars, or waits at night in the long queue before the entrance to a
moving picture show. The pavement is flanked by rows of busy stores;
saloons and small hotels occupy the street corners. There is plenty
of life and movement, and as yet no obvious poverty. On Saturdays and
“sale” days, the neighborhood department stores swarm with custom.
Ninth Avenue has its elevated railroad, and suffers in consequence
from noise, darkness, and congestion of traffic. Here the storekeeper
can no longer rely on his window to attract customers. He knows the
necessity of forceful advertising, and his bedsteads and vegetables,
wooden Indians and show cases, everywhere encroach upon the sidewalk.
On Saturday nights “Paddy’s Market”[5] flares in the open street,
supplying for a few hours a picturesqueness which is greatly needed.
Poor and untidy as this avenue is, the small tradesmen who live in it
profess to look down on their less prosperous neighbors nearer the
river.
West of Ninth Avenue tenements begin and rents decrease. At Tenth
Avenue, where red and yellow crosstown cars swing round the corner
from Forty-second Street, you have reached the center of the West
Side wage-earning community, and a street which on a bright day is
almost attractive. Four stories of red brick tenements surmount the
plate glass of saloons and shops. Here and there immense colored
advertisements of tobacco or breakfast foods flame from windowless
side walls, and the ever-present three brass balls gleam merrily in
the sunlight. But the poverty is unmistakable. You see it in the
tradesman’s well-substantiated boast that here is “the cheapest house
for furniture and carpets in the city.” You see it in the small
store, eking out an existence with cigars and toys and candy. You see
it in the ragged coats and broken shoes of the boys playing in the
street; in the bareheaded, poorly dressed women carrying home their
small purchases in oil-cloth bags; in the grocer’s amazing values in
“strictly fresh” eggs; in the ablebodied loafers who lounge in the
vicinity of the corner saloon, subsisting presumably on the toil of
more conscientious brothers and sisters. And in one other feature
besides its indigence Tenth Avenue is typical of this district. At
the corner of Fiftieth Street stands the shell of what was once a
flourishing settlement, and beside it a smaller building which was
once a church. Both, as regards their original uses, are now deserted.
Both are a concrete expression not merely of failure, but of failure
acquiesced in. These West Side streets are more than poor. They have
ceased to struggle in their slough of despond, and have forgotten to be
dissatisfied with their poverty.
Eleventh Avenue is much more dirty and disconsolate. In its dingy
tenements live some of the poorest and most degraded families of this
district. On the west side of the avenue and lining the cross streets
are machine shops, gas tanks, abattoirs, breweries, warehouses, piano
factories, and coal and lumber yards whose barges cluster around the
nearby piers. Sixty years ago this avenue, in contrast to the fair
farm land upon which the rest of the district grew up, was a stretch
of barren and rocky shore, ending at Forty-second Street in the flat
unhealthy desolation of the Great Kill Swamp. Land in such a deserted
neighborhood was cheap and little sought for, and permission to use it
was readily given to the Hudson River Railroad.[6] Today the franchise,
still continued under its old conditions, is an anomaly. All day
and night, to and from the Central’s yard at Thirtieth Street, long
freight trains pass hourly through the heterogeneous mass of trucks,
pedestrians, and playing children; and though they now go slowly and a
flagman stands at every corner, “Death Avenue” undoubtedly deserves its
name.
De Witt Clinton Park, the only public play space in the district, lies
westward between Fifty-second and Fifty-fourth Streets. It is better
known as “The Lane” from days, not so long ago, when a pathway here
ran down to the river, and on either side of it the last surviving
farm land gave the tenement children a playground, and the young
couples of the neighborhood a place to stroll in. The usual well kept
and restrained air of a small city park is very noticeable here.
There is almost no grass, the swings and running tracks are, perhaps
necessarily, caged by tall iron fences, and uninteresting asphalt paths
cover a considerable part of the limited area. A large stone pergola,
though of course it has obvious uses, somehow deepens the impression
that an opportunity was lost in the laying out of this place. At
one side of the pergola, however, lie the plots of the school farm in
which small groups of boys and girls may often be seen at work. Little
attempt has been made to develop a play center in the park. On a fine
Saturday afternoon it is often practically empty.[7]
[Illustration: TENTH AVENUE]
[Illustration: ELEVENTH (“DEATH”) AVENUE]
Twelfth Avenue adjoins the Hudson River, losing itself here and there
in wharves and pier-heads. Two of the piers belong to the city, one
being devoted to the disposal of garbage, the other to recreation.
Factories and an occasional saloon are on the inland side, but there
are almost no shacks or tenements.
* * * * *
At first sight there are no striking features about the Middle West
Side. Hand-to-mouth existence reduces living to a universal sameness
which has little time or place for variety. In street after street are
the same crowded and unsanitary tenements; the same untended groups
of playing children; the same rough men gathered round the stores
and saloons on the avenue; the same sluggish women grouped on the
steps of the tenements in the cross streets. The visitor will find no
rambling shacks, no conventional criminal’s alleys; only square, dull,
monotonous ugliness, much dirt, and a great deal of apathy.
The very lack of salient features is the supreme characteristic of
this neighborhood. The most noticeable fact about it is that there is
nothing to notice. It is earmarked by negativeness. There is usually a
lifelessness about the streets and buildings, even at their best, which
is reflected in the attitude of the people who live in them. The whole
scene is dull, drab, uninteresting, totally devoid of the color and
picturesqueness which give to so many poor districts a character and
fascination of their own. Tenth Avenue and the streets west of it are
lacking in the crowds and bustle and brilliant lights of the East Side.
Eleventh Avenue by night is almost dark, and throughout the district
are long stretches of poorly lit cross streets in which only the dingy
store windows shine feebly. Over the East River great bridges throw
necklaces of light across the water; here the North River is dark and
unspanned.
What is it that has brought about this condition? Why is this part
of New York so utterly featureless and depressing? The answer lies
primarily not with the present or past inhabitants, but in the
isolation and neglect to which for years it has been subjected. Much
of the Middle West Side was once naturally attractive, with prosperous
homesteads and cottages with gardens.[8] But while other parts of
Manhattan were being developed as a city, the Middle West Side was left
severely alone. It was one of the last sections of the city to become
thickly populated. When the first factories arrived, they brought the
tenements in their wake. The worst kinds of tenements were hastily
built--anything was supposed to be good enough for the poor Irish who
settled there; and these tenements have long survived in spite of
their dilapidated condition because until recently there has been no
one who cared for the rough and dull West Sider. East Side problems
were much more picturesque and inviting. So our district has grown up
under a heritage of desolation and neglect, uninteresting to look at,
unpleasant to live in, overlooked, unsympathized with, and neglected
into aloofness, till today its static population is almost isolated
from and little affected by the life of the rest of the city. The
casual little horse car which jingles up Tenth Avenue four times an
hour is typical of the West Sider’s home, just as the Draft Riots of
1863 were typical of his temper.
The nationalities which largely form the basis of the population
on the Middle West Side are the German and the Irish, the latter
predominating.[9] Peculiar to the district is the large number of
families of the second generation with parents who have been born and
brought up in the immediate neighborhood.
The nationality of the American-born parents throws additional light
on the subject of racial make-up of the population.[10] There were 81
American-born fathers and 92 American-born mothers in the 241 families.
The parentage of 67 American-born fathers for whom information was
available was as follows: 28, German; 21, Irish; 15, American; and 3,
English. The parentage of 73 American-born mothers was: 28, German; 25,
Irish; 18, American; and 2, English. The country of birth of parents
of 14 of the American-born fathers and 19 of the American-born mothers
could not be ascertained.[11]
We are accustomed to regard the German as the best of European
emigrants. He brings with him a thrift and solidity which have taught
us to depend on him. He has been a welcome immigrant as he has become
a successful citizen. Yet here are large numbers of Germans living in
a wild no-man’s-land which has a criminal record scarcely surpassed by
any other district in New York. Surely this is more than a case of the
exception proving the rule. It shows that our estimate of the Middle
West Side is correct.
The district is like a spider’s web. Of those who come to it very few,
either by their own efforts, or through outside agency, ever leave
it. Now and then a boy is taken to the country or a family moves to
the Bronx, but this happens comparatively seldom. Usually those who
come to live here find at first (like Yorick’s starling) that they
cannot get out, and presently that they do not want to. It is not that
conditions throughout the district are economically extreme, although
greater misery and worse poverty cannot be found in other parts of New
York. But there is something in the dullness of these West Side streets
and the traditional apathy of their tenants that crushes the wish for
anything better and kills the hope of change. It is as though decades
of lawlessness and neglect have formed an atmospheric monster, beyond
the power and understanding of its creators, overwhelming German and
Irish alike.
Such, in brief, is the background of the West Side boy. It is a gray
picture, so gray that the casual visitor to these streets may think it
over-painted. But this is because a superficial glance at the Middle
West Side is peculiarly misleading. So much lies below the surface. It
is obvious that this district has come to be singularly unattractive,
and that its methods of life are extraordinarily rough. And it is
equally true that hundreds of boys never know any other place or life
than this, and that most of their offenses against the law are the
direct result of their surroundings. The charges brought against them
in court are only in part against the boys themselves. The indictment
is in the main against the city which considers itself the greatest and
most progressive in the New World, for allowing any of its children
to start the battle of life so poorly equipped and so handicapped for
becoming efficient American citizens. Not that these youngsters have
not their share of “devilment” and original sin, but in estimating the
work of the juvenile court with the boys of this neighborhood, it is
absolutely essential to bear in mind not only the crimes they commit,
but their chances for escaping criminality. If heredity and environment
have any meaning, Tenth Avenue has much to answer for.