HIS HOME
Among the influences which mold the destinies of the West Side boy
one still remains to be mentioned. We have tried to sketch the
characteristics of the community in which he finds himself and to
indicate the causes and the traditions which have produced them.
We have watched him in the daylight glare of his playground, and
followed him through his games and the maneuvers of his gang. School,
and in later years, the shop or factory, rarely work any appreciable
change in his make-up. The former is usually treated by the class of
boys with whom we are dealing as a long game between himself and the
truant officer. The latter comes into his life too late and often too
unsuitably to be regarded by him as anything but so many dreary years
of necessary imprisonment. But back of his chequered little life on the
docks and streets stand his mother and his tenement home, and surely it
is to them, if anywhere, that we must look for the guidance that is to
help him and the influence that is to counteract the wild persuasions
of the playground.
Is this home attractive? Can it be? Does his mother understand her boy
and his difficulties, even if she can cope with her own? If she does,
how far can she help him? If she does not, how far is she blameworthy?
What is her attitude toward the West Side problems? To what extent is
she--can she be--responsible for her children’s conduct? How far right
are the judges of the New York children’s court, and how far wrong, in
holding West Side parents responsible for the misdemeanors of their
sons? Let us look at the home outside and within, visit the mother and
hear her side of the story; for these are questions which must be asked
and answered before our picture of the West Side boy is complete.
It would be impossible with any truth to call the tenement buildings
externally attractive. Surrounding the factories on all sides, wedged
between tall, noisy buildings, standing almost alone in a block
of lumber and wagon yards, or sometimes occupying entire blocks
to the exclusion of everything else, they rise singly, in groups,
or in rows along the streets and avenues, ugly, monotonous, of an
indistinguishable sameness. Most of them face squarely up to the
sidewalk, with no areaway in front, behind them narrow cement-paved
courts, round which the shabby walls rear themselves, cutting off
sunlight and giving to each little well of air-space the gloominess of
a cañon. Every type of obsolete dwelling, condemned by the building
laws of a decade ago, is present in block lengths, teeming and seething
with human life, and accepted with that philosophy of poverty which
holds that such things are a part of the natural scheme which created
Fifth Avenue for the man who doesn’t have to work and Eleventh Avenue
for the man who does. The “dumb-bell” and “railroad” types of tenement
with dark inner rooms, first sanctioned by the laws of the late
70’s but condemned as dangerous and unsanitary nearly a decade ago,
predominate. These buildings were erected for the most part over
twenty-five years ago (some are forty years old or more), and in the
ten years preceding 1911 only two modern tenements had been erected in
the whole district. Most of the tenements so adjoin that the roofs of
one are accessible from those on either side. Frequently this condition
continues through the whole block, so that a marauder, a fleeing small
boy, or a fugitive from justice, may dodge up one stairway, cross
several roofs, and descend by another. Similarly, if one street door is
locked, the tenement can usually be entered from the adjoining building
by way of the roof.
Inside, the tenements offer a depressing study in bad housing
conditions. The hall is dark, the stairway small and ill-lighted;
modern toilet and sanitary facilities in many cases are absent.
The rooms are often infested with mice, roaches, and bed-bugs. The
slender airshaft is frequently so inaccessible that refuse and rubbish
thrown into it from adjacent windows may lie for months in a rotting
accumulation at the bottom. A large proportion of the families are
herded in flats containing from two to four rooms, which are very
small and receive a minimum of light and air from their few and often
overshadowed windows.
The number of rooms occupied by 200 of these families, as shown by the
table given in the Appendix,[18] is to some extent misleading, for the
rooms are often not really separate. Owing to restrictions of space
there are rarely doors between the rooms in the prevailing type of
tenements; only doorways; and whether these are hung with curtains or
not, privacy within the home is naturally almost impossible. Family
quarrels or Saturday night’s drunken brawl too often take place in the
presence of the children. Moreover, walls are so thin that every word
spoken above an ordinary tone of voice is plainly audible through them
to the inmates of the next flat. A social worker who was for a time
resident here said recently: “In the first part of this month there
were three cases of wife-beating in one tenement alone. This tenement
is of so-called ‘model’ construction, has an exceptionally high rent,
attempts to restrict crowding, and prides itself on an extra high
grade of tenants. Yet the quarreling and brawling between husband and
wife in all parts of the building seem to be incessant. It even breaks
the sleep of the children and other tenants in the early hours of the
morning.”
In homes like these it is scarcely possible for even the smallest
families to live in decency. But small families are not the rule on
the West Side. Of the 231 families for which information regarding the
number of living children was secured, 163, or 71 per cent, had four or
more children. Families having five children formed the largest group;
and one family had 11 living children.[19]
Day begins for the housewife at 6 o’clock, or even earlier if she works
outside the home, and ordinarily her children are up and on the streets
by half past seven. For breakfast she usually prepares a quantity of
food and leaves it at the disposal of the family. The members, as
they rise, successively go to the kitchen and help themselves. The
workers go to the stores and factories, and the children to school or
the streets. By half past seven the factories are in full operation,
the stores are open, and the day’s work has begun. From half past
eight to nine, the streets are thronged with children going to school,
or sometimes to steal a riotous holiday on the streets and docks as
truants. At noon they return to snatch a hasty lunch served in the same
impromptu way as breakfast, and then the woman is left alone again to
wash and cook and mend and gossip till supper time, if she is not one
of the many West Side mothers who must go out to earn.[20] In that
case, the household tasks must be done after she returns home at night.
Such is the average tenement home, abiding place of our West Side
boy and his family. In a very large number of cases the family is a
“broken” one.[21]
As regards ambitions and ideals, the word “home” may stand for anything
from the thrifty German household with its level head for the budget
to a down-at-the-heels, loose-hinged group of people who share the
same abiding place, but scarcely claim the name of family. Of course,
it must be remembered that this is a neighborhood from which the
sturdiest, those having the lucky combination of prosperity, vigor,
and ambition, have pulled away. They have shaken clear both from the
ill-repaired and inconvenient houses and from the district’s reputation
for “toughness.” Here and there a fairly well-to-do family has been
held by the ownership of a business or a house, or because to be a
power even in a block like one of these is more satisfying than to be
second elsewhere. Others have stayed from inertia, shaking their heads
over lax West Side customs, but on the whole accepting them with the
acquiescence of habit; and naturally, on the level of the neighborhood,
they have entered into its life and made their friends here. They will
drift back after brief outward excursions, from sheer loneliness. But
most commonly the people here are too strongly fettered to break loose;
they are bound to these dreary surroundings for their lives.
Practically every family has rubbed elbows with poverty too familiar
for comment,[22] or seen it close at hand among the neighbors in
the house and the children who play with their own on the street.
In many families poverty is a basic condition underlying their many
catastrophes and the whole tenure of their unstable fortunes. Often
the budget simply cannot be stretched by any system of economy to
cover the requisites for healthy and sturdy growth. Such requisites
become luxuries, too extravagant for many a child. Teeth and eyes go
uncared for, nourishment is inadequate, and misbehavior may easily
spring in the wake of this negligence; often it does. For none of these
children is good air obtainable except in short intervals. And very
closely associated with the moral indifference of many an adolescent
boy are the noise and overcrowding within his own home to which he is
accustomed from babyhood. Sleep in a stuffy, dark bedroom, with two or
three other occupants, has a telling effect both on mind and body,
and never from morning to night are these tenements quiet. At the very
outset poverty destroys the possibilities of normal development. The
tenement child runs his race, but it is always a handicap.
Facing these harsh circumstances is a set of women who, though
intimacy reveals among them varied dispositions and abilities, have
yet developed out of the common experience many of the same ideas and
lines of action. To their share falls the heaviest responsibility for
the discipline and training of the children. The father is in the
background and may be used as a court of appeal. Or perhaps he is to be
guarded against,--another source of anxiety to the mother, who assumes
the difficult role of “standing between.” Among the more intelligent
families he usually has a decisive voice in important questions as to
school or work, and frequently he is the stricter parent, and carries
more authority. But the day-in and day-out management and care is the
woman’s. These mothers of the tenements are confronted by the same
problems, and they conform to certain types which it is not difficult
to recognize.
Very familiar is the figure of the well-meaning woman who has kept
her own decency, not without a struggle, but has proved hopelessly
ineffective as a mother. She is usually ill-equipped to conceive
or enter into the feelings of an imperious, self-absorbed, and
overstimulated youngster. Her very decency has often forced her into
a dull routine with a gray, colorless outlook, out of sympathy with
youth that refuses to accept the shadows of her own overworked and
saddened lot. Many of these women came from Ireland as mere girls,
alone or “brought by a friend,” to go into the drudgery of living out.
Their working days began in childhood. Mrs. Macy drew her own picture:
Herself a child of twelve, she started out to “mind” children. “I had a
little hat wi’ daisies all roun’ the brim an’ ribbons hangin’ off the
back with daisies fastened on, and with one hand I was hangin’ on to
a hunk of m’lasses candy. I sure was childish lookin’ help but I held
the job for six years.” Then came the marriage “to get a home of my
own,” followed by those terrible first years of bitter disillusionment
and wretchedness. “He’d leave me alone in the house of an evening--I’d
never been used to that. I was frightened, an’ I’d cry.” Soon child
came after child, probably with a quota early given to death, and with
those who lived arose the problem of their rearing.
Almost at once the women are awakened to the menace of the streets
which become their common enemy. “To keep the boy off the streets” is
the phrase everywhere repeated, pitiful in its futility. For every
contrivance or device is useless once the boy has responded to their
lure. The “fixed up” parlor with its lavishness of staring rugs and
curtains, its piano, the symbol of many an hour’s toil and ambition,
or its phonograph, is exhibited by the mother with much satisfaction.
Yet it crops out that in spite of these attractions Willie does not
stay at home, and that only for severe punishment is he “kept up.” Or,
where restriction is tried, a boy makes use of every sort of subterfuge
in order to escape. An errand, a visit to a boy’s house, a club, even
church, are the alleged destinations which really serve as a pathway
to the “hang-out” of the gang.
If such competition with the street is futile when the family is
comparatively well-to-do, what chance has the mother with no such
attractions at hand? Her home consists of three or four dark, stuffy
rooms, destitute of carpet, or perhaps with a frayed strip or two,
and a meager allowance of shabby furniture. There is no space for a
separate parlor. The evening meal, the one family event, is eaten in
the kitchen, perhaps in cramped quarters where each one takes his turn
for a chair. The very conditions which her own standards impose, the
fact that she “does not bother with such like in this house,” has “no
time for comp’ny,” or “never set foot in one o’ them silly shows,” cut
her off completely from comprehending the excitement and charm of the
streets to which her children yield so eagerly.
Some of these women have carried for years the burden of a shiftless
husband. With dumb patience they accept their lot--there is always the
fact that “four or five dollars is better than none, an’ it means a lot
to me on the rent.” And when even this help is lacking, it may be “he
did used t’ be a good man t’ me an’ in his day he’s worked hard in the
slaughter house. He sez I’d be pretty mean t’ turn him out after all
these years. He can’t last much longer, an’ it’s hard t’ know what’s
right. Most every night he comes up here done. We have to laugh at him
a good deal an’ so manage t’ get along.” A pretty grim kind of humor,
this. In such cases it is well if the man is no longer there. Sometimes
the wife has mustered all her power of decision and made the effort
to eject a chronic loafer from the home. “I talked and I talked for
years,” said Mrs. McCarthy, “an’ he thought I wouldn’t do nothin’. I
couldn’t put him away, but I got the judge t’ make him keep out of my
home. ‘Don’t you never bother this woman,’ he sez. I had got to hate
him so I couldn’t stand it to look at him when I heard him come down
the hall to the door an’ me standin’ there over me irons and me tub.”
The bitter lesson of endurance so well learned, familiar as second
nature, is repeated again and again with sons who are too lazy to work
and depend upon the mother’s earnings for what they cannot get by
gambling or stealing. Often her force is spent. She is weak, querulous,
discouraged. To expect her to stem the tide of outside forces which are
molding the boy into the nerveless or vicious man his father was before
him is to ask the utterly impossible. Perhaps she will close her eyes,
like Mrs. Gates, whose only son has joined a gang of sneak thieves but
who maintains that “Jimmy is a good boy and never was no trouble to
me.” In her heart she knows there is something amiss, but she turns
a deaf ear to any hint of wrongdoing. Sometimes the mother admits
everything, enlarging and complaining, but at the end sits weakly
back. “What can I do? What th’ b’ys does outside they don’t bes aifter
tellin’ inside, an’ I can’t be keepin’ tracks on thim all th’ toime.”
[Illustration: APPROACHING THE “GOPHER” AGE]
[Illustration: ONE DIVERSION OF THE OLDER BOYS]
In the judgment of such mothers a boy’s good nature makes up for
serious dereliction. A fellow who is thoroughly “in wid de push,”
according to her is “just wild like, not bad. He’s thot obliging and
does onything I ask about the house.” Many a slip is forgiven a
stalwart fellow by the woman who is feeding and clothing him if he
brings in her coal, puts up a curtain, and does not “answer back.” So
great in their lives is the dearth of common kindliness. When he takes
to his heels, she confesses to “feelin’ kind o’ lonely without Dan
around,” and nine times out of ten she welcomes him back when his spell
of wandering is over.
Too often, however, this good feeling is absent and active antagonism
and bickering marks the spirit of the place called “home.” The mother
who from “feelin’ it her duty to talk to ’em though they don’t pay no
heed” degenerates into the “nagger,” and so has taken the fatal step
which makes impossible anything like affection or harmony between her
and the boy. The result is always the same: the sullen fellow slouching
before the querulous, upbraiding parent, resentful in every line, ready
to jerk away snarling, or to flash out in a pitched battle of tempers,
leaving behind bitterness, misunderstanding and anger. Sometimes this
shipwreck is accepted with a Spartan quiescence; lifelong experience
forces these women for mere self-preservation into an endurance grown
easier than revolt. Yet the suffering is great, and these mothers,
inadequate and weak as they are, form one of the most pitiful chapters
in the story of juvenile delinquency.
But there is the woman, here as everywhere, who refuses to fold her
hands, who is alert and decisive. She is not likely to be found in
homes where the most stringent pressure of want or overwork is felt.
Yet she is not of necessity the best educated or most refined. She
is always shrewd, with a keen perception of the boy’s side of the
story, but also with a very clear and determined perception of her
own. Very likely she was born and brought up within a few blocks of
her present home. But the experiences of her own childhood form no
parallel to those of this generation. In her day everything to the west
of Tenth Avenue was open playgrounds; truant officers were unknown,
and an arrest was a thing to be spoken of in whispers. Still she has
grown up with the district and has listened to the current gossip. Her
first axiom is that no knowledge of a boy’s doings will come amiss;
her second, that such information cannot be expected from the boy
himself. Even among the best of women a system of spying is carried on,
although the wisest do not make this apparent unless occasion demands,
but quietly “keep an eye on that boy.” It may be a strong motive for
staying in an undesirable block that “If we go, James’ll just be back
here an’ then he’ll be out from under me.” They understand the fallacy
of moving to separate a boy from bad company, unless one can go to a
suburb, from which there are difficulties in the way of transportation
to the West Side. When conversation among the boys can be overheard
they “take occasion to listen.” “I don’t go out very much but I’ve me
ways o’ findin’ out,” says Mrs. Moran, “an’ they know they can’t fool
me.”
The amount of credit to give to tale bearing and complaints is a
question to puzzle the shrewdest. It is an important source of
information, yet “you can’t believe everything you hear.” The irate
complainant who fails to get the expected warmth of support from
maternal authority needs to realize that the life of the West Side boy
is one continuous fracas with the landlord, the janitress, the corner
grocery man, the “Ginnie” paper dealer, and the “cop.” Complaints come
to the mother from all sides and are often unfounded. “I had him up
in the house for playin’ hookey, an’ I watched them fellows crookin’
the bolognie off the cart myself, or I might a’ thought it was him.”
Moreover, it is understood that a boy has a right to expect a certain
amount of support from his mother. Her defense is natural, but she
cannot carry it too far or a boy may lose all fear of restraint at
home. One mother told of hearing a youngster boast, “Aw--g’wan--tell
my mother--she don’t care what I do.” “And that hurts,” she said with
emphasis, “fer a boy to give his own mother a name like that.”
Altogether “it’s no easy matter bringin’ up a boy in New York.” Truancy
and cigarettes are issues on which many a judicious woman must confess
defeat. She knows that surface evidence is not to be taken. The
appearance of a boy at the proper hours with his books does not prove
that they have not been “kept” in a candy store while the youngster had
an eye on the time. Smoking is still harder to regulate, and though a
youngster “don’t dare to do it in the house” few women feel sure as to
what happens outside. One confessed to avoiding the issue. “I knew he
was smoking a long time--smelt it--but I never let on. I thought he’d
do it open if I did and do it more.” Amusements which can safely be
sanctioned are hard to find. Pigeon flying almost always is frowned
upon for fear of accidents on the roofs and because “them pigeons are
the ruination of b’ys, keepin’ them out o’ school, an’ into the comp’ny
of them big toughs as has ’em.” Every shade of opinion is expressed in
regard to the “nickel dumps,” as the moving picture shows are called.
Some believe that “them places is the worst thing that ever happened to
New York, settin’ b’ys to gamblin’ and stealin’.” Others set upon them
the seal of approval. “A b’y’s got t’ do somethin’ an’ I don’t see no
harm in a good show that keeps him off the streets.”
It goes without saying that these families have no very large sums of
money to give their children, but the wisdom of allowing a boy some
spending money is recognized. It is, in fact, far more essential than
in most communities, for here almost everything desirable must be paid
for, from carfare to a ball ground to the highly coveted coin for a
nickel show. Money is usually given to school boys in small quantities
and for definite things. “If he gets a quarter a week, he doesn’t get
it all at once.” And the boy must show that it was spent as intended.
With the boy who is working, the amount he contributes to the household
is an important basis of judgment on his character. If he works
regularly and hands over his envelope, he may still have peccadilloes,
but his main duties are accomplished. If, on the other hand, he is
“wise” and “deep,” he will lie as to what he is earning and keep more
than is thought to be his due. Or, all too often, he will scorn work
altogether and his mother will be known to “have had bad luck with
that boy.” The outsider often expresses pity for the child who must
hand over the bulk of his meager earnings. But the moral sentiment of
the neighborhood insists upon this duty, and with good reason, for the
rearing of children is indeed no easy matter here, even when it has not
gone much further than supplying necessities. Often the price paid
in weariness, pain, and ill-health has been sore, and the slight help
that the child can contribute after the long years of waiting is the
father’s or mother’s due.
Nevertheless, when a boy reaches working age, some allowance from his
earnings is his by right, and it is this fact which adds to his desire
to leave school early. During the first year, when the wage ranges from
$3.50 to $5.00 a week, an allowance of 50 cents seems to be general.
Occasionally, 25 cents is considered enough, but this is generally felt
to be “stingy.” At the same time, “it is not for a boy’s good havin’
too much in his hands.” Sometimes he has $1.00 a week and buys his
own clothes. Lunch money and carfares to work are, of course, allowed
extra. Tips are generally accorded to be his own; it is a mark of high
virtue to surrender them. A woman will tell with pride, “He knew I
was hard up and he gave me his tips.” Occasionally a mother dislikes
to have her son working in a place where he is tipped, because it
is then impossible to know how much money is rightfully his. He can
account very easily for the possession of a surplus. The amount a boy
is spending is always a matter on which a canny mother “has her eye.”
Any doubt brings the sharp question, “Now, where did you get the money
for that?” If he is unduly “flush” he is on the borderline of danger,
and her suspicions are keen. She knows that the temptation to petty
theft is constant. As his wages rise his spending money increases,
and if he still lives at home at the age of eighteen or nineteen he
usually ceases to hand over his earnings but pays for his board. With
this increased independence comes a general feeling that the time of
subservience is passing and that “you can’t say much to a boy of that
age.”
On the whole, this type of mother is lenient and broadminded, realizing
that “you can’t keep a boy tied to your apron strings,” and too
sensible to set up any impossible standards. But the wisest of them
know--and rare and valuable, indeed, is such wisdom--that once a boy
has passed the boundary line, punishment must be meted out in no
faltering or indecisive way. “He don’t dare do that, he knows he won’t
be let,” spoken with a certain emphasis, carries weight, and lucky is
the boy who with consistency and firmness “is not let.” But on the West
Side such discipline is not common.
Many of the mothers reflect the average opinions of the neighborhood.
They are rough-and-ready Irish women who give themselves no airs and
“don’t pretend to be better than the people they was raised with”;
women with a coarse and hearty good nature, easy-going standards, and,
if occasion demands, a good assertive tongue. As a rule, the burden
of discipline sits easily on their shoulders. “Oi juist drrive thim
out--th’ whole raft o’ thim,” says Mrs. Haggerty, blessed with eight
children and four rooms. “Oi can’t be bothered with th’ noise o’ thim,
Oi’m that nearvous.” These women are not necessarily “a bad lot” as the
district goes, but neither are they over-particular. If a boy has no
complaints from school, or has held his job and managed to keep out of
the hands of the “cop” for the last few months, “he’s a good b’ye,” and
any “wildness” in his past can be excused and forgotten. On the other
hand, if he has happened to give “trrouble,” the chance visitor is
likely to hear the tale from A to Z and, if the youngster has had the
bad luck to be present, with a good, round scolding for him thrown in.
There is little delicacy or finesse about this discipline; it is of
the hammer and tongs variety. In the vast majority of these homes,
even those of higher type, the emotions rule at one moment with cuff
and shout, at the next with a caress or a laugh. No consistency is
maintained, and the clever youngster soon learns by the signs when to
duck and when to “clear out,” just as a little later he learns the
earmarks of the “dinny” and knows when to “cheese it.” There is a
constant piling up of threats which mean nothing. When Joseph boasts of
his gang and their glories, “What, are youse fightin’ with that crew?”
Mrs. Dooley raps out. “You just better not let me catch you or you’ll
get all that’s comin’ to youse.” But she can back him up as hotly and
unreasonably as she berates him, and the ill-starred policeman who
comes beneath the onslaught of her tongue and within the range of her
invective will find discretion the better part of valor and do well to
hold his peace.
But most tragic and helpless of all is the mother who has gone down
before the vicissitudes of her life. She belongs to the scum of our
cities, accorded no respect and scant pity, only the scorn of her more
“decent” neighbor of the tenements. She may still be holding her family
together, but is almost always weak and enervated. Their unkempt and
wretched quarters, their nomadic wanderings from house to house and
block to block, reflect her own failure. The father may be the “better
of the two,” but without her aid he is almost always incapable of
keeping their heads far above water. Often he is another of her kind,
and both have become the victims of their own habits. Suspicion and
surliness may well be expected from such a family, for they have often
much to fear.
Yet it may be that even such a woman as Mrs. Catesby, in her three
barren rooms at the top of a rear tenement shack on one of the far
river blocks, will receive you without questioning your right to enter
and to share her confidence. Perhaps it is a latent desire for human
intercourse, perhaps merely the spirit of simple courtesy, so universal
among the women of the tenements. She is a slatternly little figure,
dressed in a shabby black waist that scarcely covers her, with a tangle
of frizzled red hair slipping over her face and held in tether by an
odd hairpin or two. Her cheeks are pink, though the skin is loose and
flabby, and her eyes are watery but clear and blue. An empty whiskey
bottle on the table is a needless index to the chief interest of her
sordid life. But although she may not share your opinions, which in
her life have proved mere extra weight and have gone overboard as
valueless, she is nevertheless very well aware of them. It is harsh to
term her effort to play up to your standards deception; perhaps it is
a genuine remnant of more decent aspirations. “If company comes it’s
then I’m bound not to be clean. Now, don’t you look at the dirt in this
house.” The dirt is of long standing, but conventions are appeased.
The picture of her life, her husband, and her children, which the woman
paints for you, is colored for your benefit, and is not to be taken
at its face value. There are plenty of evasions and falsehoods. Yet
the poor shams which she raises to shield herself from your criticism
are pitifully weak defenses through which may easily be caught many
an illuminating glimpse of the dingy realities behind. Nor is her
confidence difficult to gain, once your claim to friendliness is
established. “Yes, once I was down to that children’s court. I was
that frightened they’d take the children off. They was only ten an’
eight when they come in one day, Jenny an’ Paul, with a man I’d never
seed before. ‘Good day,’ says he, ‘you’re Mrs. Catesby?’ ‘I am,’ says
I, ‘but I’ve never had the pleasure.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’m from the
Gerries, and I’ve come for the children. They’ll have to come along
with me.’ I was that upset I a’most fainted an’ I was all shaky like.
Well, I went out to call papa,--he had work that day,--an’ when we come
back, he’d took them clear off just like they was. He’d even left their
little caps, an’ there they was, layin’ on the table. There’d been a
complaint, I found out, yes, a complaint about how papa was drinkin’
too much, but we got ’em back all right. Wouldn’t it been awful if
they’d been took!”
Sometimes the family is broken up, the children are carried away, and
the parents left to drink out the rest of their lives as they will. To
remove the children may seem high-handed and brutal, but the reverse
picture--the family left to vent its weakness and its vice on the
plastic children in its care--is surely a worse alternative. Some of
these women are known as “harborers.” They send the youngsters out to
beg, and wink at their pilfering if they do no worse. School in their
eyes, as in the boys’, is an unnecessary regulation and enforced by an
arbitrary society. Evasion of law is part of their code, quite as much
as is the “working” of any organization or church, which is legitimate
prey if there is something to be gained. Beyond the calls upon their
children to gather coal and wood and to mind babies there are few
restrictions. “Lord, I can’t be aifter botherin’ me heads over thim,
lady, they do be off somewheres an’ ye can thrust thim younguns to take
care o’ thimselves.” And take care of themselves they do, and quite
effectually, until they have the bad luck to run foul of the police.
Even then it is probably no very serious matter till Tommy gets to be
an old offender. His mother at least is not worried about the condition
of his morals, and can be counted on to give the most glowing character
to “the Gerry man.” What need to fear the streets for him? Surely they
can furnish him few sights more sordid and more impressive to his
childish imagination and prematurely sharpened mind than those with
which he has grown intimate within the walls of his “home.”
Truly they have a hard life, these West Side tenement mothers, and
though many fail and many despair, from first to last the majority make
a brave fight of it. When one is born to the lowest rung of the ladder
and lives among people who seldom aspire beyond, existence becomes a
difficult matter. How can the boy’s home be attractive when there is
scarcely room to turn round in it, the family is large, and when year
in and year out his mother is merely a drudge? How can his mother,
under such conditions, hope to make the home rival the ever-changing
lure of the streets? What time and mental energy can she give to her
children separately, when she is struggling from morning till night
to clothe and feed them? Is the child, produced as he is, so much her
fault? Is he not much more a product of a situation for which her
responsibility is small?
[Illustration: REPLENISHING THE WOOD BOX]
[Illustration: A RICH FIND]
Home conditions, the tension of constant quarreling, broken sleep,
fear, hatred, and excitement, combine to break down the nervous
constitution of the child before it gets a fair start. Little is known
or cared about infant nutrition; there is no time to bother over such
things. In many families not even once a day is there a regular meal
or meal time. Father and children eat the same food, and the boy is
accustomed to the stimulus of tea and coffee from childhood. Sugar
comes from the grocery fairly clogged with flour. The coffee contains
barley and other cheap ingredients. Cheap jellies and condiments poison
him with their acids and coloring materials. The owners of delicatessen
stores say in defense that it is not worth while to keep the higher
grade brands for the neighborhood will not pay the few necessary cents
extra to secure them. A storekeeper recently advertised a keg of cider
for sale at one cent a glass. When asked for his reason, he said that
the cider was so spoiled that nobody but the children would buy it.
While he was making this explanation two small boys came in; one gave
his penny to the storekeeper and received a glass of cider which he
shared with his mate. Often the home food is not sufficient, and it is
not at all uncommon for a boy to pick up at least one meal a day in
the streets, leaving the house at noon and not returning till late at
night. Crushed fruit and stale cakes and rolls are sold to children at
half price, and the stalls provide candy which, like the staple foods
of this neighborhood, is usually adulterated. But the boys care for
quantity rather than quality. The mixture of glue, glucose, aniline
dyes, and coarse flour which they eat would upset the digestion of
children far better nourished than they, and most adults find it
impossible to drink the soda water flavored with cheap compounds which
is sold on the streets. It is scarcely to be wondered at that boyhood
on the Middle West Side is physically and morally subnormal; and it can
scarcely be contended that West Side motherhood is greatly to blame for
it.
If there is cause for wonder at the results of the home life of these
tenements, it is wonder that parents do not give up more often. For
here indeed it does seem that “the struggle naught availeth.” Perhaps
they do not know how to give up. Their ethical sense, even their sense
of life itself, is dulled or deadened by the hopelessness and squalor
around them. The father’s struggle to meet the rent, provide food and
occasional clothes for the family, and still leave enough for the hour
or two at the saloon, which is often his only recreation; the mother’s
pitiful, incessant effort to keep her dingy tenement habitable and her
family together; to make one penny buy the groceries of two; and withal
to keep up to some slight extent a decent appearance,--these things
have left scant time or energy for attention to the moral needs of the
children. So long accustomed to the dangers of the streets, to the open
flaunting of vice, drunkenness, and gambling on all sides, they do not
take into account the impressions which these conditions are making
upon young minds, now and with ever-growing inquisitiveness seeking
information and experimenting on all manner of things which come within
their ken. Their very poverty itself aids in dimming the moral sense.
Mothers frankly say they have no room for their children in the house,
and it is nearly always true. They are between the devil and the deep
sea. Physical and moral conditions in the home are bad for the boy;
the street gives him more light and air but is more dangerously
immoral. In the face of so many apparently insoluble difficulties is it
surprising that the parents’ attitude is bewildered and discouraged?
From the midst of this squalid and disjointed home life one fact
emerges--that the recreation of the West Side boy lies beyond the
power of the family. To look to such homes as those of this district
to counteract the tremendous forces that play upon him outside is as
unreasonable as it is useless. Wretched as it is, the tenement home
has an influence, usually vaguely restrictive, and in a few cases wise
enough and strong enough to help a boy who is “steadying down” and
“getting sensible”; but this influence can rarely bear the strain of
competition with the pull of the street and the gang. And so it happens
that one type of mother--most pitiful because so near to efficient
motherhood and yet so far from it--is perhaps the saddest of them all;
the type that is fully alive to her son’s dangers, but realizes that it
is impossible for her to cope with them.
Let us repeat, it is the inadequacy of the tenement home that is the
greatest curse of these blocks. Its lack of space for storage helps to
force uneconomical marketing; its lack of size and equipment drives
the boy to the street. The mother is compelled to become her own boy’s
worst enemy. She would gladly keep him off the streets, but the very
conditions of her drudgery force him to them, and cut her off from the
sympathy which she knows she cannot show him. Of course, the picture
is not totally unrelieved. East of the tenements are the brownstone
houses, and both here and in other parts of the district there are
families which form exceptions of kindliness and comparative success
in dealing with the problem of living. But by far the most of our boys
would recognize their own homes and mothers in these pages. Dirt,
frowsiness, dissoluteness, darkness, and rags--these are too often
known to him from infancy. In the far West Side, home seems to be the
one place which the children desire to keep away from.