THE QUEST FOR ADVENTURE
A certain number of the outrages upon the spirit of youth may be
traced to degenerate or careless parents who totally neglect their
responsibilities; a certain other large number of wrongs are due to
sordid men and women who deliberately use the legitimate
pleasure-seeking of young people as lures into vice. There remains,
however, a third very large class of offenses for which the community
as a whole must be held responsible if it would escape the
condemnation, "Woe unto him by whom offenses come." This class of
offenses is traceable to a dense ignorance on the part of the average
citizen as to the requirements of youth, and to a persistent blindness
on the part of educators as to youth's most obvious needs.
The young people are overborne by their own undirected and misguided
energies. A mere temperamental outbreak in a brief period of
obstreperousness exposes a promising boy to arrest and imprisonment,
an accidental combination of circumstances too complicated and
overwhelming to be coped with by an immature mind, condemns a growing
lad to a criminal career. These impulsive misdeeds may be thought of
as dividing into two great trends somewhat obscurely analogous to the
two historic divisions of man's motive power, for we are told that all
the activities of primitive man and even those of his more civilized
successors may be broadly traced to the impulsion of two elemental
appetites. The first drove him to the search for food, the hunt
developing into war with neighboring tribes and finally broadening
into barter and modern commerce; the second urged him to secure and
protect a mate, developing into domestic life, widening into the
building of homes and cities, into the cultivation of the arts and a
care for beauty.
In the life of each boy there comes a time when these primitive
instincts urge him to action, when he is himself frightened by their
undefined power. He is faced by the necessity of taming them, of
reducing them to manageable impulses just at the moment when "a boy's
will is the wind's will," or, in the words of a veteran educator, at
the time when "it is almost impossible for an adult to realize the
boy's irresponsibility and even moral neurasthenia." That the boy
often fails may be traced in those pitiful figures which show that
between two and three times as much incorrigibility occurs between the
ages of thirteen and sixteen as at any other period of life.
The second division of motive power has been treated in the preceding
chapter. The present chapter is an effort to point out the necessity
for an understanding of the first trend of motives if we would
minimize the temptations of the struggle and free the boy from the
constant sense of the stupidity and savagery of life. To set his feet
in the worn path of civilization is not an easy task, but it may give
us a clue for the undertaking to trace his misdeeds to the
unrecognized and primitive spirit of adventure corresponding to the
old activity of the hunt, of warfare, and of discovery.
To do this intelligently, we shall have to remember that many boys in
the years immediately following school find no restraint either in
tradition or character. They drop learning as a childish thing and
look upon school as a tiresome task that is finished. They demand
pleasure as the right of one who earns his own living. They have
developed no capacity for recreation demanding mental effort or even
muscular skill, and are obliged to seek only that depending upon
sight, sound and taste. Many of them begin to pay board to their
mothers, and make the best bargain they can, that more money may be
left to spend in the evening. They even bait the excitement of "losing
a job," and often provoke a foreman if only to see "how much he will
stand." They are constitutionally unable to enjoy anything
continuously and follow their vagrant wills unhindered. Unfortunately
the city lends itself to this distraction. At the best, it is
difficult to know what to select and what to eliminate as objects of
attention among its thronged streets, its glittering shops, its gaudy
advertisements of shows and amusements. It is perhaps to the credit
of many city boys that the very first puerile spirit of adventure
looking abroad in the world for material upon which to exercise
itself, seems to center about the railroad. The impulse is not unlike
that which excites the coast-dwelling lad to dream of
"The beauty and mystery of the ships
And the magic of the sea."
I cite here a dozen charges upon which boys were brought into the
Juvenile Court of Chicago, all of which might be designated as deeds
of adventure. A surprising number, as the reader will observe, are
connected with railroads. They are taken from the court records and
repeat the actual words used by police officers, irate neighbors, or
discouraged parents, when the boys were brought before the judge. (1)
Building fires along the railroad tracks; (2) flagging trains; (3)
throwing stones at moving train windows; (4) shooting at the actors in
the Olympic Theatre with sling shots; (5) breaking signal lights on
the railroad; (6) stealing linseed oil barrels from the railroad to
make a fire; (7) taking waste from an axle box and burning it upon
the railroad tracks; (8) turning a switch and running a street car off
the track; (9) staying away from home to sleep in barns; (10) setting
fire to a barn in order to see the fire engines come up the street;
(11) knocking down signs; (12) cutting Western Union cable.
Another dozen charges also taken from actual court records might be
added as illustrating the spirit of adventure, for although stealing
is involved in all of them, the deeds were doubtless inspired much
more by the adventurous impulse than by a desire for the loot itself:
(1) Stealing thirteen pigeons from a barn; (2) stealing a bathing
suit; (3) stealing a tent; (4) stealing ten dollars from mother with
which to buy a revolver; (5) stealing a horse blanket to use at night
when it was cold sleeping on the wharf; (6) breaking a seal on a
freight car to steal "grain for chickens"; (7) stealing apples from a
freight car; (8) stealing a candy peddler's wagon "to be full up just
for once"; (9) stealing a hand car; (10) stealing a bicycle to take a
ride; (11) stealing a horse and buggy and driving twenty-five miles
into the country; (12) stealing a stray horse on the prairie and
trying to sell it for twenty dollars.
Of another dozen it might be claimed that they were also due to this
same adventurous spirit, although the first six were classed as
disorderly conduct: (1) Calling a neighbor a "scab"; (2) breaking down
a fence; (3) flipping cars; (4) picking up coal from railroad tracks;
(5) carrying a concealed "dagger," and stabbing a playmate with it;
(6) throwing stones at a railroad employee. The next three were called
vagrancy: (1) Loafing on the docks; (2) "sleeping out" nights; (3)
getting "wandering spells." One, designated petty larceny, was cutting
telephone wires under the sidewalk and selling them; another, called
burglary, was taking locks off from basement doors; and the last one
bore the dignified title of "resisting an officer" because the boy,
who was riding on the fender of a street car, refused to move when an
officer ordered him off.
Of course one easily recalls other cases in which the manifestations
were negative. I remember an exasperated and frightened mother who
took a boy of fourteen into court upon the charge of incorrigibility.
She accused him of "shooting craps," "smoking cigarettes," "keeping
bad company," "being idle." The mother regrets it now, however, for
she thinks that taking a boy into court only gives him a bad name, and
that "the police are down on a boy who has once been in court, and
that that makes it harder for him." She hardly recognizes her once
troublesome charge in the steady young man of nineteen who brings home
all his wages and is the pride and stay of her old age.
I recall another boy who worked his way to New York and back again to
Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping
the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad
detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly
admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a
locomotive engineer so that he had played around railroad tracks and
"was onto them ever since he was a small kid."
There are many of these adventurous boys who exhibit a curious
incapacity for any effort which requires sustained energy. They show
an absolute lack of interest in the accomplishment of what they
undertake, so marked that if challenged in the midst of their
activity, they will be quite unable to tell you the end they have in
view. Then there are those tramp boys who are the despair of every one
who tries to deal with them.
I remember the case of a boy who traveled almost around the world in
the years lying between the ages of eleven and fifteen. He had lived
for six months in Honolulu where he had made up his mind to settle
when the irresistible "Wanderlust" again seized him. He was
scrupulously neat in his habits and something of a dandy in
appearance. He boasted that he had never stolen, although he had been
arrested several times on the charge of vagrancy, a fate which befell
him in Chicago and landed him in the Detention Home connected with the
Juvenile Court. The judge gained a personal hold upon him, and the lad
tried with all the powers of his untrained moral nature to "make good
and please the judge." Monotonous factory work was not to be thought
of in connection with him, but his good friend the judge found a
place for him as a bell-boy in a men's club, where it was hoped that
the uniform and the variety of experience might enable him to take the
first steps toward regular pay and a settled life. Through another
bell-boy, however, he heard of the find of a diamond carelessly left
in one of the wash rooms of the club. The chance to throw out
mysterious hints of its whereabouts, to bargain for its restoration,
to tell of great diamond deals he had heard of in his travels,
inevitably laid him open to suspicion which resulted in his dismissal,
although he had had nothing to do with the matter beyond gloating over
its adventurous aspects. In spite of skilful efforts made to detain
him, he once more started on his travels, throwing out such diverse
hints as that of "a trip into Old Mexico," or "following up Roosevelt
into Africa."
There is an entire series of difficulties directly traceable to the
foolish and adventurous persistence of carrying loaded firearms. The
morning paper of the day in which I am writing records the following:
"A party of boys, led by Daniel O'Brien, thirteen years old,
had gathered in front of the house and O'Brien was throwing
stones at Nieczgodzki in revenge for a whipping that he
received at his hands about a month ago. The Polish boy
ordered them away and threatened to go into the house and
get a revolver if they did not stop. Pfister, one of the
boys in O'Brien's party, called him a coward, and when he
pulled a revolver from his pocket, dared him to put it away
and meet him in a fist fight in the street. Instead of
accepting the challenge, Nieczgodzki aimed his revolver at
Pfister and fired. The bullet crashed through the top of his
head and entered the brain. He was rushed to the Alexian
Brothers' Hospital, but died a short time after being
received there. Nieczgodzki was arrested and held without
bail."
This tale could be duplicated almost every morning; what might be
merely a boyish scrap is turned into a tragedy because some boy has a
revolver.
Many citizens in Chicago have been made heartsick during the past
month by the knowledge that a boy of nineteen was lodged in the county
jail awaiting the death penalty. He had shot and killed a policeman
during the scrimmage of an arrest, although the offense for which he
was being "taken in" was a trifling one. His parents came to Chicago
twenty years ago from a little farm in Ohio, the best type of
Americans, whom we boast to be the backbone of our cities. The mother,
who has aged and sickened since the trial, can only say that "Davie
was never a bad boy until about five years ago when he began to go
with this gang who are always looking out for fun."
Then there are those piteous cases due to a perfervid imagination
which fails to find material suited to its demands. I can recall
misadventures of children living within a few blocks of Hull-House
which may well fill with chagrin those of us who are trying to
administer to their deeper needs. I remember a Greek boy of fifteen
who was arrested for attempting to hang a young Turk, stirred by some
vague notion of carrying on a traditional warfare, and of adding
another page to the heroic annals of Greek history. When sifted, the
incident amounted to little more than a graphic threat and the lad was
dismissed by the court, covered with confusion and remorse that he had
brought disgrace upon the name of Greece when he had hoped to add to
its glory.
I remember with a lump in my throat the Bohemian boy of thirteen who
committed suicide because he could not "make good" in school, and
wished to show that he too had "the stuff" in him, as stated in the
piteous little letter left behind. This same love of excitement, the
desire to jump out of the humdrum experience of life, also induces
boys to experiment with drinks and drugs to a surprising extent. For
several years the residents of Hull-House struggled with the
difficulty of prohibiting the sale of cocaine to minors under a
totally inadequate code of legislation, which has at last happily been
changed to one more effective and enforcible. The long effort brought
us into contact with dozens of boys who had become victims of the
cocaine habit. The first group of these boys was discovered in the
house of "Army George." This one-armed man sold cocaine on the streets
and also in the levee district by a system of signals so that the word
cocaine need never be mentioned, and the style and size of the package
was changed so often that even a vigilant police found it hard to
locate it. What could be more exciting to a lad than a traffic in a
contraband article, carried on in this mysterious fashion? I recall
our experience with a gang of boys living on a neighboring street.
There were eight of them altogether, the eldest seventeen years of
age, the youngest thirteen, and they practically lived the life of
vagrants. What answered to their club house was a corner lot on
Harrison and Desplaines Streets, strewn with old boilers, in which
they slept by night and many times by day. The gang was brought to the
attention of Hull-House during the summer of 1904 by a distracted
mother, who suspected that they were all addicted to some drug. She
was terribly frightened over the state of her youngest boy of
thirteen, who was hideously emaciated and his mind reduced almost to
vacancy. I remember the poor woman as she sat in the reception room at
Hull-House, holding the unconscious boy in her arms, rocking herself
back and forth in her fright and despair, saying: "I have seen them go
with the drink, and eat the hideous opium, but I never knew anything
like this."
An investigation showed that cocaine had first been offered to these
boys on the street by a colored man, an agent of a drug store, who
had given them samples and urged them to try it. In three or four
months they had become hopelessly addicted to its use, and at the end
of six months, when they were brought to Hull-House, they were all in
a critical condition. At that time not one of them was either going to
school or working. They stole from their parents, "swiped junk,"
pawned their clothes and shoes,--did any desperate thing to "get the
dope," as they called it.
Of course they continually required more, and had spent as much as
eight dollars a night for cocaine, which they used to "share and share
alike." It sounds like a large amount, but it really meant only four
doses each during the night, as at that time they were taking
twenty-five cents' worth at once if they could possibly secure it. The
boys would tell nothing for three or four days after they were
discovered, in spite of the united efforts of their families, the
police, and the residents of Hull-House. But finally the superior boy
of the gang, the manliest and the least debauched, told his tale, and
the others followed in quick succession. They were willing to go
somewhere to be helped, and were even eager if they could go together,
and finally seven of them were sent to the Presbyterian Hospital for
four weeks' treatment and afterwards all went to the country together
for six weeks more. The emaciated child gained twenty pounds during
his sojourn in the hospital, the head of which testified that at least
three of the boys could have stood but little more of the irregular
living and doping. At the present moment they are all, save one, doing
well, although they were rescued so late that they seemed to have but
little chance. One is still struggling with the appetite on an Iowa
farm and dares not trust himself in the city because he knows too well
how cocaine may be procured in spite of better legislation. It is
doubtful whether these boys could ever have been pulled through unless
they had been allowed to keep together through the hospital and
convalescing period,--unless we had been able to utilize the gang
spirit and to turn its collective force towards overcoming the desire
for the drug.
The desire to dream and see visions also plays an important part with
the boys who habitually use cocaine. I recall a small hut used by boys
for this purpose. They washed dishes in a neighboring restaurant and
as soon as they had earned a few cents they invested in cocaine which
they kept pinned underneath their suspenders. When they had
accumulated enough for a real debauch they went to this hut and for
several days were dead to the outside world. One boy told me that in
his dreams he saw large rooms paved with gold and silver money, the
walls papered with greenbacks, and that he took away in buckets all
that he could carry.
This desire for adventure also seizes girls. A group of girls ranging
in age from twelve to seventeen was discovered in Chicago last June,
two of whom were being trained by older women to open tills in small
shops, to pick pockets, to remove handkerchiefs, furs and purses and
to lift merchandise from the counters of department stores. All the
articles stolen were at once taken to their teachers and the girls
themselves received no remuneration, except occasional sprees to the
theaters or other places of amusement. The girls gave no coherent
reason for their actions beyond the statement that they liked the
excitement and the fun of it. Doubtless to the thrill of danger was
added the pleasure and interest of being daily in the shops and the
glitter of "down town." The boys are more indifferent to this downtown
life, and are apt to carry on their adventures on the docks, the
railroad tracks or best of all upon the unoccupied prairie.
This inveterate demand of youth that life shall afford a large element
of excitement is in a measure well founded. We know of course that it
is necessary to accept excitement as an inevitable part of recreation,
that the first step in recreation is "that excitement which stirs the
worn or sleeping centers of a man's body and mind." It is only when it
is followed by nothing else that it defeats its own end, that it uses
up strength and does not create it. In the actual experience of these
boys the excitement has demoralized them and led them into
law-breaking. When, however, they seek legitimate pleasure, and say
with great pride that they are "ready to pay for it," what they find
is legal but scarcely more wholesome,--it is still merely excitement.
"Looping the loop" amid shrieks of simulated terror or dancing in
disorderly saloon halls, are perhaps the natural reactions to a day
spent in noisy factories and in trolley cars whirling through the
distracting streets, but the city which permits them to be the acme of
pleasure and recreation to its young people, commits a grievous
mistake.
May we not assume that this love for excitement, this desire for
adventure, is basic, and will be evinced by each generation of city
boys as a challenge to their elders? And yet those of us who live in
Chicago are obliged to confess that last year there were arrested and
brought into court fifteen thousand young people under the age of
twenty, who had failed to keep even the common law of the land. Most
of these young people had broken the law in their blundering efforts
to find adventure and in response to the old impulse for
self-expression. It is said indeed that practically the whole
machinery of the grand jury and of the criminal courts is maintained
and operated for the benefit of youths between the ages of thirteen
and twenty-five. Men up to ninety years of age, it is true, commit
crimes, but they are not characterized by the recklessness, the
bravado and the horror which have stained our records in Chicago. An
adult with the most sordid experience of life and the most rudimentary
notion of prudence, could not possibly have committed them. Only a
utilization of that sudden burst of energy belonging partly to the
future could have achieved them, only a capture of the imagination and
of the deepest emotions of youth could have prevented them!
Possibly these fifteen thousand youths were brought to grief because
the adult population assumed that the young would be able to grasp
only that which is presented in the form of sensation; as if they
believed that youth could thus early become absorbed in a hand to
mouth existence, and so entangled in materialism that there would be
no reaction against it. It is as though we were deaf to the appeal of
these young creatures, claiming their share of the joy of life,
flinging out into the dingy city their desires and aspirations after
unknown realities, their unutterable longings for companionship and
pleasure. Their very demand for excitement is a protest against the
dullness of life, to which we ourselves instinctively respond.