HIS GANGS
It is frequently necessary in these chapters to consider the boy of
the Middle West Side as a type; and in discussing the causes and
possible solution of the conditions which have produced him it is easy
to forget that what the individual boy actually is at the moment is
also of very real importance. But as a matter of fact it is not the
boy individually but the boy collectively that is the policeman’s bane
and the district’s despair. Once on the street the boy is no longer
an individual but a member of a gang; and it is with and through the
gang that he justly earns a reputation which provoked an irate citizen
recently to suggest that for the New York street urchin boiling in
burning oil was too good a fate. The court finds him a little villain,
and newspapers tell the public that he is a little desperado; but those
who know him best know that he is probably worse than either court or
public suppose, and that for this the development of the gang on the
West Side is primarily responsible.
The formation of “sets” or “gangs” is almost a law of human nature, and
boyhood one of its most constant exponents, for a boy is gregarious
naturally as well as by training. And over here, where the sociable
Irish-American element predominates and children rarely mention the
word “home,” it is inevitable that the gang should flourish and its
members try to find in its activities the rough affection, comfort,
and amusement which a dirty and overcrowded tenement room has failed to
give.
The West Side gang is in its origin perfectly normal. In the words of
one of the boys, “De kids livin’ on de street jist naturally played
together, an’ stuck together w’en anything came up about kids from
any other street.” Nothing is more entirely natural and spontaneous,
and it is exasperating to reflect that nothing could be a more
persuasive and uplifting power in the boy’s life than the gang’s
development when given proper scope and direction. Its influence is
strong and immediate. The gang contains the friends to whose praise
and criticism he is most keenly sensitive, its standards are his aims,
and its activities his happiness. Untrammeled by the perversion of
special circumstances it might encourage his latent interests, train
him to obedience and loyalty, show him the method and the saving of
co-operation, and teach him the beauty of self-sacrifice. Gang life
at its best does so. The universal endorsement and success of the Boy
Scout movement, for instance, in almost every country living under
Western civilization, shows this most clearly. Association and rivalry
should bring out what is best in a boy; but on the Middle West Side it
almost invariably brings out what is worst. Practically, under present
conditions, it is inevitable that this should be so; but with the first
movement toward amelioration such a result becomes less necessary.
[Illustration: BOY SCOUTS AND SOLDIERS]
[Illustration: AFTER THE BATTLE]
Take the case of a certain gang typical of this neighborhood. This gang
is now several years old, but its membership is almost exactly what it
was four or five years ago. Its members singled each other out from
the throng of children in their immediate neighborhood and first
made for themselves a cave between two lumber piles in a neighboring
yard. All one summer they met in this “hang-out”; here they brought
the “loot,” as they call the product of their marauding expeditions,
threw craps, pitched pennies, played cards, smoked, told stories, and
fought. But they were disturbed by early disaster in the shape of
the business needs of the lumber company, which one day caused their
shack to be torn down over their heads. They made their headquarters
next in the empty basement of a tenement, but soon moved at the well
reinforced request of the landlord. After an exiled period of meeting
on the street corners, the boys conceived the idea of building their
own habitation in the protection of their own homes. They began a small
wooden structure in the areaway of the tenement in which the leader
lived. But civil war broke out, and in one unhappy culmination the
leader of the gang chased his own little brother up two flights of
stairs with a hatchet. The little brother promptly “squealed,” and the
projected headquarters was destroyed by parental decree.
There followed another interval of meeting on the streets, and then
one of the workers in a neighboring settlement became interested.
She arranged to have the boys hold meetings in the settlement once a
week. They were given certain privileges in the gymnasium and game
rooms also, which kept them happily occupied and away from the street
influences. But the settlement was closed suddenly and the gang went
back to the streets once more. Here is a case in which a gang were from
the outset driven from pillar to post by the deficiencies of their
surroundings as a playground, and made to feel that every man’s hand
was against them. When kindness was shown to them they responded at
once. And scores of other gangs, if they were given the chance, would
respond in the same way.
There are two salient features of gang life in this neighborhood. Both
can be easily explained and abundantly illustrated; the second alone
applies equally to schoolboy gangs and to adult gangs--for bands of
adult rowdies exist, too, and the semi-mythical “Gopher Gang”[14] is
a terror to conjure with. The first of these features is the loyalty
which the gang invariably shows to a single street or block. As a
gang is naturally formed of boys who live in the same tenement or
next door to each other, or at least in the same block, and as their
chief playground is likely to be the street in front of that block, it
naturally becomes a matter of convenience as well as of honor to defend
that playground from the inroads of any other gang. In this way loyalty
to one block becomes a principle and a basis of gang organization. But
individuals are not always loyal to their home block. If a boy becomes
a member of a gang on Fiftieth Street, for example, and then moves to
Thirtieth Street, or even farther, he may return and continue to belong
to his old gang. Similarly, a Thirtieth Street gang will number among
its ranks former residents who now live in other localities. At the
same time, both gangs are continually being recruited by new arrivals
in the community. When a boy moves he simply uses his own discretion
as to whether to join the new gang or to continue to belong to the old.
The gang is constantly increasing or decreasing its numbers. It
does not necessarily include the whole street except in a very
general sense. Its nucleus is to be found in probably a dozen or
fifteen kindred spirits in the street. For purposes of war, or for
demonstrations at election time, or on any such occasion when there
is either safety or pleasure in numbers, the other boys in the street
are added to this group. Thus the real Fiftieth Street gang may not
number more than 20 or 25 members, but its fighting strength when
pitted against the Fifty-thirds will be nearly a hundred. Again,
while there may be one group of 15 or 20 boys known as “The Fiftieth
Street Gang,” yet on Fiftieth Street between any two avenues will
be found a dozen or more similar groups, each with a leader and a
coherent social consciousness. The one among these groups which will
be called the Fiftieth Street gang is likely to be so known either
because it contains the boy who, for one reason or another, has become
the recognized street leader, or because its members are better known
or more daring than any other group, so that it will be around this
particular group that all the others will rally when the occasion
calls. The territorial limit of a gang is usually the length of one
single cross street between two avenues. In a single week fights took
place between the Fiftieth Street gang between Tenth and Eleventh
Avenues, and the Fifty-third Street gang in the same district; between
the Forty-ninth Street gang between Ninth and Tenth Avenues combined
with the Forty-ninth Street gang between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues,
and the Forty-seventh Street gang between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
Loyalty to their home block would be a good habit in boyish
_camaraderie_ if it merely took the form of peaceable rivalry; but
as gang life exists at present on the Middle West Side it becomes a
chronic incentive to lawlessness. For the second salient feature of
gang life is the propensity of the gang to street fighting. Personal
and collective jealousies and feuds have become so habitual and endless
among the boys here that the history of their gangs is little less than
a record of continuous violence of every kind. No doubt the strain of
the constant repression before alluded to in some measure accounts
for this; but possibly it is due in general to a contact with the
streets and in particular to the bad influence of the older toughs
on whom they model themselves and who often attain heroic position
in their eyes. The boys of gangs in the country play that they are
armies, emperors, or kings that they have read of in books or heard of
in stories told. But the city boys of the West Side prefer to imitate
local celebrities whom they know or local deeds of fame with which
they are more intimately acquainted. And the danger of this vulgarized
hero worship lies in the fact that, while a country lad must imagine
the surroundings and implements for imitating the deeds of story book
heroes, the city boy can find on every side of him the real materials
used by his models, the Gophers.
The jargon of the thief and the yeggman is common among these boys’
gangs. They talk casually of murder and robbery as though these were
familiar events in their lives. They lay tentative plans for the
robbery of stores or saloons with no more real intention of commission
than the schoolboy football player has of actual achievement when
he imagines what he would do if his team were playing Yale. They
talk easily and knowingly of “turning off” various people in the
neighborhood, by which they mean robbing them. They threaten each other
with murder and other dire forms of assault, and undoubtedly think that
they mean to carry out their threats. The first active manifestation
of this state of mind consists often in carrying concealed weapons.
The boy obtains a broken revolver from some place or finds or steals
a good one. He will reveal this weapon to his awestruck playmates
and soon come to pose as a bold, ruffianly spirit. Usually this
phase passes away harmlessly enough. Few of the younger residents of
this neighborhood are really armed, though most of them would have
their companions believe that they are. Occasionally some youngster
does manage to carry a revolver, bowie knife, or slingshot, and his
subsequent career is likely to bring him very early into serious
contact with the police. But however late or soon the manifestation,
the gangs are permeated by the tendency to disorder and crime which is
the result of criminal example. It is the old story; only the worst and
most vicious form of the gang spirit has a chance of finding expression
in these streets. And so gang warfare has become not the exception
but the rule, and the violence and ferocity with which the small boys
pursue their feuds excites the alarm of the entire neighborhood.
“There has always been more or less fighting among the gangs of boys on
the streets,” a physician of long residence recently remarked, “but
they are getting worse in character every year until now it seems that
they will stop at nothing. They carry knives, clubs, and even, I have
heard, revolvers. Sometimes arrests are made, but they never amount
to anything, for the boys are always released without punishment. If
an outsider tries to interfere, ordinarily both gangs turn on him.
They terrorize the neighborhood with their fights, breaking windows
and injuring passersby with stones. Only recently one of these fights
broke out almost in front of my house, and a score or more, most of
them armed with beer bottles, were engaged in it. I got a boy by the
shoulder and asked him what he was doing with the bottle. ‘Oh,’ he
said, ‘I am just taking it to the store to get it filled.’ Then he
laughed in my face and the rest of the gang burst out laughing. I could
do nothing with them, and had to retire to my office.”
Sometimes fights are more or less unpremeditated, arising from chance
encounters between two rival gangs; but very often they are formally
arranged and generaled in approved military fashion. One evening
recently a furious battle took place between two gangs of small boys
numbering nearly 50 to the gang, and all apparently from eight to
fifteen years old. One gang proceeded down the street from the corner
at which they had assembled and met the other gang coming from the
opposite direction. They stopped about 100 feet apart and formed two
compact masses, screaming and shouting encouragement to their own side
and insults to the enemy. Then one of the gangs moved slowly forward.
Some one among their opponents threw a beer bottle into the advancing
crowd, and a scene of wild riot followed. Clubs, stones, and beer
bottles were hurled through the air, many of them taking effect and
many of the bottles smashing on the pavement. A crowd gathered on both
sides behind the combatants and windows on all sides were filled with
spectators. None of the boys came into personal contact with their
opponents. Most of them contented themselves with hurling missiles
indiscriminately into the opposing group. In the midst of the mêlée two
boys were maneuvering for over a minute, each armed with a beer bottle
which he was trying to land on his opponent from a distance of not more
than eight or ten feet. They ducked, dodged, and side-stepped, then
finally one boy threw his bottle. The other boy dropped flat to the
pavement and the bottle came so close to his body that it looked for
an instant as though it had hit him. If it had, it might easily have
killed him, for it was hurled with terrific force. But the boy sprang
up and threw his bottle at the other youngster, who was now retreating.
Just as it was growing dark someone fired two shots from a
revolver--whether loaded with blank or bullet cartridges it was of
course impossible to tell--and now for the first time protest from the
spectators began to rise even above the din of the fight. At the same
moment from scouts in the rear guard of both armies came the watchword
of the West Side, “Cheese it!” In an incredibly short space of time
both gangs were rushing at top speed back toward their respective
gathering places. When everything was quiet, two policemen turned the
corner, walked solemnly down to the middle of the block, and returned.
There were, of course, no arrests. One gang had rallied at a point
about 100 yards to the west of the avenue, and were starting back to
the battleground again when two small boys concealed in a cellarway
at the corner shrieked out another warning. The gang broke up again
and the next minute a discomfited policeman stepped out from a doorway
where he had been concealed and came along the street.
At the corner of Ninth Avenue two men were indignantly discussing the
fight. “Those boys do more to ruin property and lower real estate
values around here than any other three causes,” said one of the men.
“They’re having these fights continually now and they seem to grow
worse all the time. Suppose that some passerby had been in the way of
that revolver which was shot down the street just now. Nothing could
have been done. You can’t find out who had the revolver. The police
won’t try to make any arrests, and if they do, the boys are always let
right out again. The insurance companies won’t insure plate glass in
this neighborhood any more, and the whole place seems to be just at the
mercy of these little ruffians.”
On one occasion a gang was short of bonfire material at election
time. The members raided a neighboring street, took the gang there by
surprise, extinguished its celebration bonfires, and carried the wood
in triumph back to their own street. War was immediately declared by
the despoiled, and a regular after-school campaign followed. Through
an injury to one of their number the gang in an intervening street
became involved, and sided with the bonfire stealers. War then became
general and for a year was a constant subject for discussion among old
and young in the neighborhood. The boys of the defensive gang more than
held their own. They descended upon the allies from the intervening
street and vanquished them on their own territory. They fought with
even honors in foreign territory the gang which originally started the
trouble, and repelled several invasions decisively. Finally these terms
were offered: The defensive gang formally notified their opponents that
if they could succeed in forcing their way from the upper avenue to a
Roman Catholic church about three-quarters of the way down the street,
they would accept defeat. Night after night the gang thus challenged
made the attempt, but never succeeded.
[Illustration: RESTING. WHAT NEXT?]
[Illustration: EARLY LESSONS IN CRAPS]
It is not uncommon for fights to end by a formal match between two
opposing leaders, though very often, particularly if the leader of the
weaker gang wins, these conflicts are indecisive because the stronger
gang will not accept defeat. In one case two gangs entered into a
formal truce because one gang was obliged to go through the other’s
territory on the way to school, and found it inexpedient to fight a
battle four times a day. The other gang recognized the justice of this
position and according to compact permitted their enemies to go through
the street unmolested throughout the school year.
Tales of this kind could be multiplied almost indefinitely, for the
exploits of boyish gangs dominate the West Side problem. Such headlines
as
UPPER WEST SIDE DISTURBED
BOYS DISCHARGE RIFLES--ONE MAN SHOT AND WINDOWS BROKEN[15]
GIRL SHOT IN GANG FIGHT
SERIOUSLY WOUNDED WHILE WALKING IN ELEVENTH AVENUE--ASSAILANT
ESCAPES[16]
are comparatively common in the newspapers; yet most of the occurrences
of this kind in the district never reach the ears of a reporter. The
following is from the press account of a typical gang war:
BOY STABBED BY YOUNG FEUDISTS
IS SECOND HURT[17]
This is the second boy to receive serious injuries because of
the feud which has been raging for the last three weeks between
stone-throwing bands of boys who live in the vicinity of Fiftieth
Street and Tenth Avenue.... Fifty or more boys have received
injuries.... Not only are the lives of school children endangered
but the size of the weapons used makes it perilous for adults to
venture near during the battles. There are a half dozen bands in
the neighborhood, and when any two of them meet there is a fight.
The principal pastime, however, seems to be in a whole crowd
attacking one or two boys who belong to another band.
Teachers in the public schools and Sunday school teachers have
joined in the demand that the Police Department give full
protection against assault to all living in the vicinity. The fever
for stone throwing seems to be spreading through all the territory
between Ninth and Tenth Avenues between Fiftieth and Sixtieth
Streets, and the situation is said to be beyond the control of the
present force of police on duty in that part of the city.
Gang fighting is most prevalent when the nervous youngsters are just
released from the school room and must inevitably encounter their
schoolmate antagonists on the streets.
Here is an account of a gang fight, the events of which were described
by one of the small marauders:
“Last night a gang of boys came down with their pockets full of
brickbats, looking for Willie Harrigan, but Johnnie and Jimmie heard of
it and got the gang together. I came up with my pockets full of stones
and was throwing them when I got hit in the leg myself and it hurt so I
couldn’t throw. Just then three cops suddenly jumped off a car, right
in the middle of the fight. Everybody beat it, but a cop grabbed me and
I dropped my stones and jerked away and ran. They caught three of the
others though, and took them to the station house. I don’t know whether
they got there. Every afternoon this gang comes down and tries to catch
our fellows alone as they did with Willie. We fight with stones and
bottles. No one has been very much hurt lately. One of our gang has a
gun, too, but he can’t fire it for fear of the cops.”
These last sentences reveal, or at least refer to, the most repulsive
of all the ways in which the demoralizing effect of West Side gang
development is shown. Even a confirmed pessimist, if he has any
sympathy with boys and any knowledge of their ways, can discern in the
gang’s activities a striving after the unattainable which is yet a
birthright, an effort which is essentially more pathetic than vicious.
In the raid and the “loot,” the chase and the “hang-out,” it is not
difficult to mark the trail of the Redskin and the hunt and the lure
of danger which is so dear to the heart of a boy. But even the most
persistent of optimists, willing to make many allowances, must demur
against the coldblooded and treacherous methods to which the feuds and
enmities of West Side gangs have reduced their members. If ever these
boys had a sense of the spirit of fair play, they seem to have lost it
completely. They win by planning overwhelming advantages. An attack
upon three or four or even one defenseless boy by 30 or 40 merciless
youngsters, who even attempt to surround their prey and strike from
behind, is not a disgraceful thing to them but an exploit to be proud
of. No mercy is shown to the vanquished. Stories are rife in the
neighborhood of boys of thirteen or fourteen being attacked when alone
and undefended, by 10 or more assailants from another street.
That casualties are not more frequent is due to the dominant spirit of
cowardice with which the mob always taints its members. In the thick of
the fight when no responsibility can be placed and every member feels
secure in the presence of his friends, there is no atrocity which these
boys will not attempt; but relying as they do on the strength of the
mob instead of on individual strength, the first feeling of timidity
immediately develops into a panic. An unexpected move by the enemy at
bay will rout an attacking party of four times their strength. Half a
dozen boys caught at a disadvantage will charge unscathed through a
gang of nearly two score, who fly in all directions at this unexpected
display of bravery. One boy, for instance, was recently beset by eight
others when he was about to leave the factory. Instead of retreating
as they expected, he suddenly seized a club, charged one wing of his
assailants, and escaped unhurt. On the other hand, here is a case in
which one of the victims was caught:
“Jim and me was goin’ down the street, w’en about six fellers from the
Fiftieth Street gang hot-footed after us. We ran but they got right
close and hollered to us to halt. I made out like I was goin’ to stop
but got a fresh start w’en they slacked up and got away. Jim did stop
and they near killed him, they beat him up so.”
“Oh! They would-a killed me if they’d got me,” said one boy, relating
how he had been chased into a hallway by five or six of a rival gang,
armed with bottles, clubs, and bricks. “I hid in a toilet, and when
they came up to look in I rushed out on ’em and took ’em by surprise;
I pushed one feller down the steps and beat it, but they didn’t catch
me.” And a similar story was told by another. “After I wins in my fight
with bot’ Mike and his pal me little brother hears ’em telling one day
how they was goin’ to lay for me in the hallway wit clubs. I runs up
tru de house next door on the roof tru de house where dey was goin’ to
lay for me and hides in the toilet wit a big club. When I hear Mike and
his pal come in an’ talkin’ right near me I rushes out and bangs right
an’ left wit me club. I hits ’em bot’ on de bean (head) an’ dey runs
out. After that they never bothered me.”
Gang fighting, in fact, as practiced in this neighborhood, is conducive
to neither manliness, honor, courage, nor self-respect. The strength
of the boy is the strength of the gang, and under its protection
unspeakable horrors take place for which it is impossible to place
responsibility. Rumors of boys being stabbed, shot, clubbed, maimed,
and even killed are current everywhere, and there is good reason to
believe that many of them are true. Such things are, of course, never
mentioned to strangers, and residents learn of them only by chance
conversation. The moment that any definite questions are asked, the
boys become reticent and change the subject. But there can be no doubt
that many crimes are committed in these blocks which never reach the
ears of the police, and that a considerable proportion of them are due
to the boy and his gang.
And so the word “gang” here has grown to be synonymous with the
worst side of boy life, and the group itself, which might in other
surroundings and under other traditions be a positive civic asset,
simply adds the irresponsibility of the mob to the recklessness of
youth and becomes a force which turns West Side boyhood into cowards
and savages. As a priest of one of the Roman Catholic churches said the
other day, “The social evil may be an important one, but _the_ question
in this neighborhood is that of the gangs.”