HIS GAMES
It would be impossible to describe the thousand and one uses to which
the West Side boy puts his playground. After all, the street is not
such a bad place to play in if you have known nothing better; and as
you tumble out of school on a fine afternoon, ready for mischief, it
offers you almost anything, from a fight with your best friend to a
ride on the steps of an ice wagon. But certain games and sports are so
universal in this district as to deserve separate mention.
Spring is the season for marbles. On any clear day in March or February
you may find the same scene on roadway and sidewalks of every block--a
huddle of multicolored marbles in the middle of a ring, and a group
of excited youngsters, shrieking, quarreling, and tumbling all over
each other, just outside the circle. Instead of the time-honored chalk
ring the boys often use the covers of a manhole, whose corrugated iron
surface offers obstacles and therefore gives opportunity for unusual
skill. Another game consists in shooting marbles to a straight line
drawn along the middle of the sidewalk; thus one such game may be
continued through the whole length of the block. In another the marbles
are pitched against a brick wall or against the curbstone, and the boy
whose marbles stop closest to a chalked mark wins the marbles of all
competitors.
As the fall days grow shorter and the afternoons more crisp, bonfires
become the rage. The small boy has an aptitude for finding wood at
need in places where one would suppose that no fuel of any kind would
be obtainable. A careless grocer leaves a barrel of waste upon the
sidewalk. In five minutes’ time that barrel may be burning in the
middle of the street with a group of cheering youngsters warming their
hands at the blaze, or watching it from their seats on the curbstone.
The grocer may berate the boys and threaten disaster to the one who
lit the barrel, but he is seldom able to find the culprit. Before the
barrel is completely burned some youngster produces a stick or two
which he has found in an areaway or pulled from a passing wagon, and
adds it to the fire. Stray newspapers, bits of excelsior, rags, and
even garbage are contributed to keep the fire going, regardless of
the effect on the olfactory nerves of the neighborhood. The police
extinguish these fires whenever they can, but the small boy meets this
contingency by posting scouts, and on the alarm of “Cheese it!” the
fire is stamped out and the embers are hastily concealed. The “cop”
sniffs at the smoke and looks at the boys suspiciously, but suspicions
do not bother the boys--they are used to them--and when he has passed
on down the street the fragments of the fire are reassembled and
lighted again. On a cold evening one may see half a dozen of these
bonfires flaming in different directions, each with a group of small
figures playing around them. Sticks are thrust into the fire and waved
in figures in the air; and among them very often circle larger and
brighter spots of light which glow into a full flame when the motion
ceases. These are fire pots, an ingenious invention consisting of an
empty tomato can with a wire loop attached to the top by which to swing
it, and filled with burning wood. This amusement might seem harmless
enough if it were not for the fact that these fire pots, being of small
boy construction, have an unfortunate habit of slipping from the wire
loop just as they are being most rapidly hurled.
On election night, until recently, the boys’ traditional right of
making bonfires has been observed. These bonfires are sometimes
elaborate. As early as the middle of October the youngsters begin
hoarding wood for the great occasion. They pile the fuel in the rear
of a tenement or in the areaway or basement of some friendly grocer,
or perhaps in a vacant lot or at the rear of a factory. Frequently to
save their plunder they find it necessary to post guards for the few
days preceding election, and even so, bonfire material often becomes
the center of a furious gang fight. A few of the stronger gangs have
a settled policy of letting some other gang collect their fuel for
them, and then raiding them at the last minute. The victors carry the
wood back triumphantly to their own block, and the vanquished are left
either to collect afresh or to make reprisal on a still weaker gang.
This kind of warfare continues even while the fires are burning on
election night. A gang will swoop down unawares on a rival bonfire,
scatter the burning material, and retire with the unburnt pieces to
their own block.[13] A recent election time, however, proved a gloomy
one for the little West Siders. Wagons appeared in the streets, filled
with fire hose and manned by firemen and police. The police scattered
the boys while the firemen drenched the fires, and by 8 o’clock the
streets, formerly so picturesque and so dangerous, presented a sad and
sober appearance. The tenement lights shone out on heaps of blackened
embers and on groups of despairing youngsters who were not even
permitted to stand on the corners and contemplate the destruction of
their evening’s festivities.
In the winter the shortcomings of the street as a playground are
especially evident. Frost and sleet and a bitter wind give few
compensations for the discomfort which they bring. Traffic, the street
cleaning department, and the vagaries of the New York climate, make
most ways of playing in the snow impossible. But snowballing continues,
in spite of the efforts of the police to prevent it. It is open to the
same objections as baseball in the street, for the freedom which is
possible in the small towns or in the country cannot be tolerated in
a crowded district where a snowball which misses one mark is almost
certain to hit another. Moreover, owing to the facility with which
these boys take to dangerous forms of sport, the practice of making
snowballs with a stone or a piece of coal in the middle and soaking
them in ice water is even more prevalent here than in most other
localities. Of course, snowballing is forbidden and abhorred by the
neighborhood, and everyone takes a hand in chastising the juvenile
snowball thrower. Nevertheless, the afternoon of the first fall is
sure to bring a snow fight, and the innocent passerby is likely to be
involuntarily included in the game.
Marbles and bonfires and snowballs are the sports of the smaller boys
exclusively, but other games which are less seasonal are played by
old and young alike. “Shooting craps,” for instance, and pitching
or matching pennies, are occupations which endure all the year round
and are participated in by grown men as well as by boys. On a Sunday
morning dozens of crap games are usually in full swing along the
streets. Only two players handle the dice, but almost any number
of bystanders can take part by betting amongst themselves on the
throw--“fading,” as it is called. Pennies, dimes, or dollar bills,
according to the prosperity of the bettor, will be thrown upon the
sidewalk, for craps is one of the cheapest and most vicious forms of
gambling, since there is absolutely no restriction in the betting.
Perfect strangers may join in at will if the players will let them, and
there are innumerable opportunities for playing with crooked dice. It
is one of the chief forms of sidewalk amusements in this neighborhood.
Up above the sidewalks, on the roofs of the tenements, there is some
flying of small kites, but pigeon flying is the chief sport. It
provides an occupation less immediately remunerative, perhaps, than
games of chance, but developed by the same unmoral tendencies which
seem to turn all play in the district into vice. Some boys, through
methods of accretion peculiar to this neighborhood, have a score or
more of pigeons which are kept in the house, and taken up to the roof
regularly every Sunday, and oftener during the summer, for exercise.
The birds are tamed and carefully taught to return to their home
roofs after flight, but ingenious boys have discovered many ways of
luring them to alien roofs, so that now the sport of pigeon flying is
as dangerously exciting as a commercial venture in the days of the
pirates. Pigeon owners also train their birds to circle about the
neighborhood and bring back strangers. These strangers are taken
inside, fed, and accustomed to the place before they are released
again. On Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings the pigeons are to be
seen flying around the neighborhood, while behind the chimneys of every
fourth or fifth tenement house are crouched one or two small boys armed
with long sticks, occasionally giving a low peculiar whistle to attract
the pigeons coming from distant roofs. The sticks have a triple use.
Pigeon owners use them to force their pigeons to fly for exercise;
the little pigeon thieves on the roofs have a net on the end of their
sticks for catching the bird when it alights; and most pigeons are
trained to remain passive at the touch of the stick so that they may be
picked up easily by their owner. This training, of course, operates to
the advantage of the thief as well as of the owner, and valuable birds
are sometimes lured away and held for ransom.
[Illustration: PIGEON FLYING. A ROOF GAME]
[Illustration: MARBLES. A STREET GAME]
The two chief sports of the Middle West Side--baseball and boxing--are
perennial. The former, played as it always is, with utter carelessness
and disregard of surroundings, is theoretically intolerable, but it
flourishes despite constant complaints and interference. The diamond
is marked out on the roadway, the bases indicated by paving bricks,
sticks, or newspapers. Frequently guards are placed at each end of
the block to warn of the approach of police. One minute a game is in
full swing; the next, a scout cries “Cheese it!” Balls, bats, and
gloves disappear with an alacrity due to a generation of practice, and
when the “cop” appears round the corner the boys will be innocently
strolling down the streets. Notwithstanding these precautions, as the
juvenile court records show, they are constantly being caught. In a
great majority of these match games too much police vigilance cannot be
exercised, for a game between a dozen or more boys, of from fourteen to
eighteen years of age, with a league ball, in a crowded street, with
plate glass windows on either side, becomes a joke to no one but the
participants. A foul ball stands innumerable chances of going through
the third-story window of a tenement, or of making a bee line through
the valuable plate glass window of a store on the street level, or
of hitting one of the passersby. And if the hit is a fair one, it is
as likely as not to land on the forehead of a restive horse, or to
strike some little child on the sidewalk farther down the street. When
one sees the words “Arrested for playing with a hard ball in a public
street” written on a coldly impersonal record card in the children’s
court one is apt to become indignant. But when you see the same hard
ball being batted through a window or into a group of little children
on this same public street, the matter assumes an entirely different
aspect.
Clearly, from the community’s point of view, the playing of baseball
in the street is rightly a penal offense. It annoys citizens, injures
persons and property, and interferes with traffic. But for all that,
it is not abolished, and probably under present municipal conditions
never will be, simply because there is another point of view, that of
the boy, and his protest against its suppression is almost equally
unanswerable. The store windows are filled with a tempting array of
baseball gloves and bats offered at prices as close as possible to
his means, and every effort is made by responsible business men, who
themselves know the law and the need for order on the streets, to
induce him to buy them. Selling the boy those bats and balls is a
form of business and is perfectly legal. And the boy cannot see why,
after having paid his money for them, the merchant should have all the
benefit of the transaction. The game is in itself perfectly harmless;
and childhood has an abiding resentment against apparently inexplicable
injustice. Perhaps the small boy believes that except for the odds
against him his right to make use of the street in his own way is as
assured as that of anyone else. Perhaps he reflects that he too has to
make sacrifices; that a broken window means usually a lost ball, and a
damaged citizen, a ruined game. At any rate he continues to play, and
as things are, has a fairly good case for doing so.
This neighborhood is also full of regularly organized ball teams,
ranging in the age of players from ten to thirty years. Many of the
large factories have teams made up of their own employes. Almost every
street gang has its own team, as has almost every social club. These
teams meet in regularly matched games, on the waterfront, in the
various city parks, or over in New Jersey. Practically all the teams,
old and young alike, play for stakes, ranging from two to five dollars
a side. When they do not, they call it simply a “friendly” game. There
is no organization among them; one team challenges another, and the
two will decide on some place to play the game. A few of the adult
teams lease Sunday grounds in New Jersey, but most of them trust to the
chance of finding one. The baseball leaders of the neighborhood usually
have uniforms, and to belong to a uniformed team is one of the great
ambitions of the West Side boy.
Down on the waterfront the broad, smooth quays offer a tempting
place for baseball, especially on Sundays and summer evenings, when
they are generally bare of freight. But it has one serious drawback,
that a foul ball on one side invariably goes into the river, and the
players must have either several balls or a willing swimmer if the
game is to continue long. One Sunday game, for instance, between two
fourteen-year-old teams, played near the water, cost five balls,
varying in price from 50 cents to $1.00 each. The game was played
before a scrap-iron yard, the high fence of which was used as a
backstop. Fifty feet to the right was the Hudson River. Within a
hundred feet of second base, in the center field, a slip reached from
the line of the river to the street, which was just beyond third base
on the other side. Behind the sixteen-foot fence of the scrap-iron yard
were a savage dog at large and a morose watchman to keep out river
thieves. Thus hemmed in by water on two sides, a street car line and a
row of glass windows on the third side, and a high fence, a savage dog,
and a watchman on the fourth, the boys started the game. In the first
inning a new dollar ball was fouled over the fence into the scrap-iron
yard and the watchman refused to let the boys in to hunt for it. The
game was stopped while a deputation of boys from both sides walked up
to a nearby street to buy a new fifty-cent ball. The first boy up when
the game was resumed batted this ball into the Hudson River, where
a youthful swimmer got it, and climbing ashore down the river, made
away with it. A third ball was secured, and before the game was half
over this ball was batted into the river, where it lodged underneath
a barge full of paving stones which was made fast to the dock, and
could not be recovered. Then a fourth ball was produced. This lasted
till the game was almost finished, though it was once batted deep into
center field, where it bounced into the slip and stopped the game while
it was being fished out. Finally it followed the first ball into the
scrap-iron yard, and neither taunts nor pleas could move the obdurate
watchman to let the boys in to find it. The game was finished with a
fifth ball which was the personal property of one of the boys. On the
occasion of another game in this same place two balls were batted into
the scrap-iron yard and lost while the teams were warming up before
the match began. A third ball was batted into the river twice but both
times it was recovered. Baseball is played on the docks unmodified, but
in the streets the boys make use of various adaptations, some of which
dispense with the bat and in consequence lessen the dangers of the game.
Ball playing continues sporadically all the year round, and never
loses popularity, but it is, of course, mainly a game for the summer.
During the winter among the small boys, youths, and men alike, boxing
is the all-absorbing sport. It is hard for an outsider to understand
the tremendous hold which prize fighting has upon the boys in a
neighborhood of this kind. Fights are of course of common occurrence,
not only among children but among grown men. This in itself gives a
great impetus to the study of the art of self-defense. Good fighters
become known early in this district. Professional prize fighters are
everywhere; and for every boy who has actually succeeded in getting
into the prize ring on one or more occasions, there are a dozen who are
eager and anxious for an opportunity. The various athletic clubs of
the city always offer chances to boys from fourteen to sixteen years
old to appear in the “preliminaries,” as the boxing contests which
precede the main bout of the evening are called. A boy who gains a
reputation as a street fighter and boxer will be recommended to the
manager of an athletic club as a likely aspirant. He is given a chance
to box in one or two rounds with another would-be prize fighter in a
“preliminary.” If he makes a good showing, he is paid from five to
fifteen dollars according to his ability and experience, and is given
another chance. If he can continue to make favorable appearances in
these preliminaries, he will soon be given a chance of taking part
in a six or eight-round bout at one of the smaller athletic clubs,
and from that time on he takes regular status as a prize fighter, and
accordingly becomes a hero in his circle of youthful acquaintances.
There are many such small prize fighters in our district, none of them
over twenty-one years of age, and all earning just enough to make it
possible to lead a life of indolence. If they can make ten or fifteen
dollars by appearing in a ring once a week, they are quite content.
But boxing and street fighting by no means always go together on the
Middle West Side. The real professional boxers of the neighborhood
dissociate them in practice as well as in theory; they take their
profession for what it is--a game to be played in a sportsmanlike
manner--and they are usually good-natured. One of the best known prize
fighters of the city, who lives on the Middle West Side, states that
it is years since he was mixed up in a fight of any kind. “I box
because I like the game,” he said, “but I’ve no use for fighting.”
[Illustration: PRIZE FIGHTERS IN TRAINING]
[Illustration: CRAPS WITH MONEY AT STAKE]
Another man, an exceedingly clever lightweight boxer, who has appeared
several times in the ring in New York City clubs, was boxing one night
with a rather crude amateur. The bout was really for the instruction
of the amateur, and both boxers were going very easily by agreement.
Suddenly the amateur landed an unintentionally hard blow upon the eye
of his opponent, just as the latter was stepping forward. The eye
became fearfully discolored and the whole side of the boxer’s face
swelled. But in spite of his evident feeling that the amateur had taken
an unfair advantage in striking so hard when his opponent was off his
guard, the lightweight fighter laughed and submitted to treatment for
the eye without losing his temper in the least, and freely accepted the
apologies of the other.
This is boxing at its best, but unfortunately its tendencies are more
usually toward unfairness and brutality than otherwise. Boys are taught
to box early in this district. It is not uncommon to see a bout between
youngsters of seven or eight being watched by a crowd of young men, who
encourage the combatants by cheering every successful blow, but pay no
attention to palpable fouls or obvious attempts to take a dishonest
advantage. Even some of the best of the prize fighters frankly say that
once in the ring the extent to which they foul is only a question of
how much they can deceive the referee. And when this questionable code
of ethics is passed on by these heroes and leaders of sentiment to
the boys who have no referee and no thought beyond that of winning by
disabling an opponent as much as possible, the sport degenerates into
an unfair and tricky test of endurance. Striking with the open hand,
kicking, tripping, hitting in a clinch, all these unfair practices
are considered a great advantage if one can “get away with it.” The
West Side youngster sees very little of the real professional boxers
who, from the very nature of their somewhat strenuous employment, must
keep in good condition, as a rule retire early, drink little, and do a
great deal of hard gymnastic work. But of their brutalized hangers-on,
the “bruisers,” who frequent the saloons and street corners and pose
as real fighters, he sees a great deal; consequently, as a whole,
prize fighting must be classed as one of the worst influences of the
neighborhood. It is too closely allied with street fighting, and too
easily turned to criminal purposes. The bully who learns to box will
use his acquired knowledge as a means of enforcing his superiority on
the street, and if he is beaten will have recourse to weapons or any
other means of maintaining his prestige.
Baseball and boxing bring to a close the list of common outdoor games
played by boys on the Middle West Side,--just ordinary games, modified
by a particular environment and played in a shifting and spasmodic
way which is characteristic of it. It remains to emphasize the lesson
taught by their effects on boy life as they are practiced in this
neighborhood.
The philosophy of the West Side youngster is practical and not
speculative. Otherwise he could not fail to notice very early in his
career that the world in general, from the mother who bundles him out
of an overcrowded tenement in the morning, to the grown-ups in the
street playground where most of his time is spent, seem to think him
very much in the way. All day long this fact is borne in upon him.
If a wagon nearly runs over him the driver lashes him with the whip
as he passes to teach him to “watch out.” If he plays around a store
door the proprietor gives him a cuff or a kick to get rid of him. If
he runs into someone he is pushed into the gutter to teach him better.
And if he is complained of as a nuisance the policeman whacks him with
hand or club to notify him that he must play somewhere else. Moreover,
everything that he does seems to be against the law. If he plays ball
he is endangering property by “playing with a hard ball in a public
place.” If he plays marbles or pitches pennies he is “obstructing the
sidewalk,” and craps, quite apart from the fact that it is gambling,
constitutes the same offense. Street fighting individually or
collectively is “assault,” and a boy guilty of none of these things may
perforce be “loitering.” In other words he finds that property or its
representatives are the great obstacles between him and his pleasure in
the streets. And in considering our problem neither the principal cause
of this situation nor its results must be lost sight of.
The great drawback to normal life on the Middle West Side is that it
is a dual neighborhood. Tenements and industrial establishments are
so inextricably mixed that the demands of the family and the needs of
industry and commerce are eternally in conflict. The same streets must
be used for all purposes; and one of the chief sufferers is the boy.
More obvious, however, than this cause of a complex situation are the
results of it, two of which are especially noticeable. The first is the
inevitableness with which the boy accepts--and must accept--illegal
and immoral amusements as a matter of course. The spirit of youth is
forced to become a criminal tendency, and sport and the rights of
property are forced into antagonism. And in the second place, partly
because of this, partly because their association with the toughs of
the street predisposes them to imitate vice and rowdyism, the boys come
to take a positive pleasure in such activities as retaliation by theft
and destruction of property. Stores and basements in this district
are sometimes completely abandoned owing to the stone throwing and
persecution of a youthful gang which has found their occupants too
strenuously hostile or defensive. Undoubtedly the street is the most
inadequate of playgrounds and throws many difficulties of prevention
and interruption in the path of sport. But these obstacles are from
their nature provocative of contest, and sport flourishes with a
Hydra-like vitality. Nothing short of impossibility will keep the boy
and his game apart.