THE MODERN CITY AND THE NORMAL BOY[3]
Modern cities have been built to concentrate industrial opportunity.
They have taken their rise and form subsequent to the industrial
revolution wrought by steam and as a result of that revolution. So far
they have paid only minor attention to the conservation or improvement
of human life. Justice, not to mention mercy, toward the family and the
individual has not been the guiding star. The human element has been
left to fit as best it could into a system of maximum production at
minimum cost, rapid and profitable transportation, distribution
calculated to emphasize and exploit need, and satisfactory dividends on
what was often supposititious stock; and because these have been the
main considerations the latent and priceless wealth of boyhood has been
largely sacrificed.
The amazing and as yet unchecked movement of population toward the city
means usually a curtailment of living area for all concerned. The more
people per acre the greater the limitation of individual action and the
greater the need of self-control and social supervision. Restrictions of
all sorts are necessary for the peace of a community wherein the
physical conditions almost force people to jostle and irritate one
another. In such a situation the more spontaneous and unconventional the
expression of life the greater the danger of bothering one's neighbors
and of conflicting with necessary but artificial restrictions. Even
innocent failure to comprehend the situation may constitute one
anti-social or delinquent, and the foreigner as well as the boy is often
misjudged in this way.
But on the score of the city's inevitable "Thou shalt not," it is the
boy who suffers more than any other member of the community. His
intensely motor propensities, love of adventure, dim idea of modern
property rights, and the readiness with which he merges into the
stimulating and mischief-loving "gang" operate to constitute him the
peerless nuisance of the congested district, the scourge of an
exasperated and neurasthenic public, the enemy of good order and private
rights.
Hence juvenile delinquency and crime increase proportionately with the
crowding of the modern city, the boy offending five times to the girl's
once, and directing 80 per cent of his misdemeanors against property
rights. In the city of Chicago alone the 1909 records show that in one
year there passed through the courts 3,870 children under seventeen
years of age, 10,449 under twenty years, and 25,580 under twenty-five
years of age. But it is not the actual delinquency of which the law
takes account that most impresses one; it is rather the weight of
failure and mediocrity, the host of "seconds" and "culls" that the city
treatment of childhood produces.
The constrictions, vicissitudes, and instability of city life often make
such havoc of the home that the boy is practically adrift at an early
age. He has no abiding-place of sufficient permanency to create a wealth
of association or to develop those loyalties that enrich the years and
serve as anchorage in the storms of life. He moves from one flat to
another every year, and in many cases every six months. In such a
kaleidoscopic experience the true old-fashioned neighbor, whose
charitable judgment formerly robbed the law of its victims, is sadly
missed. Formerly allowance was made out of neighborly regard for the
parents of bothersome boys, but among the flat-dwellers of today
proximity means alienation, familiarity breeds contempt, and far from
being neighbors, those who live across the hall or above or below are
aggrieved persons who have to put up with the noise of an unknown rascal
whose parents, like themselves, occupy temporarily these restricted
quarters--these homes attenuated beyond recognition.
A garden plot, small live stock, pets, woodpile, and workshop are all
out of the question, for the city has deprived the average boy not only
of fit living quarters but of the opportunity to enact a fair part of
his glorious life-drama within the friendly atmosphere of home. He
cannot collect things with a view to proprietorship and construction and
have them under his own roof. The noise and litter incident to building
operations of such proportions as please boys will not be tolerated.
Moreover, this home, which has reached the vanishing point, makes almost
no demand for his co-operation in its maintenance. There are no chores
for the flat boy wherein he may be busy and dignified as a partner in
the family life. To make the flat a little more sumptuous and call it an
apartment does not solve the problem, and with the rapid decrease of
detached houses and the occupation of the territory with flat buildings
the city is providing for itself a much more serious juvenile problem
than it now has.
But the industrial usurpation takes toll of the family in other ways.
The intense economic struggle and the long distance "to work" rob the
boy of the father's presence and throw upon the mother an unjust burden.
To return home late and exhausted, to be hardly equal to the economic
demand, to see the prenuptial ideals fade, to pass from disappointment
to discouragement and from chronic irritability to a broken home is not
uncommon. The boy is unfortunate if the "incompatibility" end in
desertion or divorce, and equally unfortunate if it does not.
Owing to the fact that the male usually stands from under when the home
is about to collapse, and to the further fact that industrial accidents,
diseases, and fatalities in the city claim many fathers, there
frequently falls upon the mother the undivided burden of a considerable
family. If she goes out to work the children are neglected; if she takes
roomers family life of the kind that nurtures health and morality is at
an end. And just as the apparently fortunate boy of the apartment is
forced upon the street, so the boy from the overcrowded old-fashioned
house is pushed out by the roomers who must have first attention because
of bread-and-butter considerations. Much more could be said of all the
various kinds of neglect, misfortune, and avarice that commit boys to
the doubtful influences of the city street, but the main object is to
point out the trend of home life in the modern city without denying that
there are indeed many adequate homes still to be found, especially in
suburban districts.
A survey of the street and its allied institutions will throw light upon
the precocious ways of the typical city boy. The street is the
playground, especially of the small boy who must remain within sight and
call of home. Numerous fatalities, vigorous police, and big recreation
parks will not prevent the instinctive use of the nearest available open
area. If congestion is to be permitted and numerous small parks cannot
be had, then the street must have such care and its play zones must be
so guarded and supervised that the children will be both safe from
danger and healthfully and vigorously employed.
[Illustration: FIND THE PLAYGROUND]
In the busier parts of the city the constant street noise puts a nervous
tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving
objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements
creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a
smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and
the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the
overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to elude observation and to
deceive one's parents abound; social control weakens; ideals become
neurotic, flashy, distorted; the light and allurement of the street
encourage late hours; the posters and "barkers" of cheap shows often
appeal to illicit curiosity, and the galaxy of apparent fun and
adventure is such as to tax to the full the wholesome and restraining
influence of even the best home.
The cheap show is an adjunct of the street and a potent educational
factor in the training of the city lad. These motion-picture shows have
an estimated daily patronage in the United States of two and a quarter
millions, and in Chicago 32,000 children will be found in them daily.
Many of these children are helplessly open to suggestion, owing to
malnutrition and the nervous strain which the city imposes; and harmful
impressions received in this vivid way late at night cannot be resisted.
At one time, after a set of pictures had been given on the West Side
which depicted the hero as a burglar, thirteen boys were brought into
court, all of whom had in their possession housebreakers' tools, and all
stated they had invested in these tools because they had seen these
pictures and they were anxious to become gentlemanly burglars.[4]
Through censorship bureaus, national and municipal, the character of the
films put on exhibition is being greatly improved, and the moving
picture is destined to a large use by educational and religious
agencies.
Many instances of valuable moving-picture exhibits come to mind,
including those on travel, nature-study, the passion play, athletic
sports, sanitation (especially the exhibits showing the breeding and
habits of the house-fly), and various others having to do with the
health, happiness, and morality of the people; and from the study of
hundreds of nickel shows one is forced in justice to say that although
there are dangers from the children's being out late at night and going
to such places unattended, and although the recreation is passive and
administered rather than secured by wholesome muscular exercise, yet
there has been brought within the reach of the entire family of moderate
means an evening of innocent enjoyment which may be had together and at
small expense. Properly regulated, it is an offset to the saloon and a
positive medium of good influence.
Such a commendation, however, can safely be made for those communities
only which take the pains to censor all films before exhibition is
permitted. In less than two years the censorship bureau of Chicago has
excluded one hundred and thirteen miles of objectionable films. It
should be said also that the vaudeville, which now often accompanies the
nickel and dime shows, is usually coarse and sometimes immoral. The
music, alas, speaks for itself and constitutes a sorry sort of education
except in the foreign quarters of our great cities where, in conformity
to a better taste, it becomes classic and valuable.
But to describe a typical film of the better sort and to indicate its
practical use may have some suggestive value for wide-awake ministers
who wish to turn to good account every legitimate social agency. During
the Christmas season of 1911 the following film story was set forth to
vast audiences of people with telling effect: In a wretched hovel you
see a lame mother with three pale children. The rich young landlord
comes to collect rent and is implored to improve the place. This he
refuses to do because of his small returns on the property. He departs.
The father of the family returns from work. They eat the bread of the
desolate.
The landlord marries and sets out on an ocean voyage with his bride. On
the same ship the father of the tubercular family, working as stoker or
deck hand, reaches the last stages of the disease and in his dying hours
is mercifully attended by the bride. She contracts the disease and later
appears weak and fading. The husband, ascertaining the real nature of
her malady, brings her home with the purpose of placing her in the
private sanitarium. There is no room in this institution, but good
accommodations are found in the public sanitarium to which she goes and
where she finds the children from their tenement.
The facts have now been put in such juxtaposition that the husband has a
change of heart. The patients recover and the landlord endows a great
sanitarium for the tuberculous. One may easily criticize the crudeness
of the plot and the improbabilities with which it bristles. But it sets
forth love and death and conversion and an appeal to rescue those who
suffer from the great white plague: and this was sufficient for the
crowd, for all are children when beholding the elemental things of life.
At any rate the women who stood at the exits of the theater selling the
Christmas stamps of the anti-tuberculosis society will tell you that the
purse strings as well as the heart strings of the crowd relaxed to the
crude but deep melody of mercy.
The social hunger also, turning its back upon the meager home and
heightened by the monotony and semi-independence of early toil, takes to
the street. The quest is quickly commercialized and debauched by the
public dance halls which are controlled by the liquor interests. A
recent thorough investigation of 328 of these halls in Chicago showed a
nightly attendance of some 86,000 young people, the average age of the
boys being sixteen to eighteen years and of the girls fourteen to
sixteen years. Liquor was sold in 240 halls, 190 had saloons opening
into them, in 178 immoral dancing went on unhindered. The worst halls
had the least dancing and the longest intermissions. Everything was
conducted so as to increase the sale of liquor, and between the hours of
one and three A.M. the toughest element from the saloons, which close
at one o'clock, poured into the halls to complete the debauch and to
make full use of the special liquor license which is good until the
later hour.[5]
The quest of fun and social adventure can be traced also through other
commercialized channels, in public poolrooms where minors waste time and
money--gamble, smoke, tell unclean stories and plan mischief; in great
amusement parks where the boy and girl on pleasure bent meet as
strangers to each other and without social sponsor, where the deluded
girl not only accepts but often invites a generosity which will tend to
compromise if not break down the morality of both; on excursion boats
which, if neglected, tend to become floating palaces of shame; and in
many ways that lead from the inadequate home to sorrow and disaster.
It is to be doubted whether the average pastor or parent has an adequate
conception of the tremendous odds against which the moral forces contend
for the conservation of the city's childhood and youth, and whether we
have as yet begun to solve the problems that arise from the city's
sinister treatment of the home. Public parks, field-houses, libraries,
and social settlements graciously mitigate the evil, but are far from
curing it.
To turn to the public schools with the expectation that they can
immediately, or at length, make good the injury done the home by
industrial usurpation is to expect more than is fair or possible. They
are doing valiantly and well, they are becoming social centers and in
due time they will have more adequately in hand both the vocational and
recreational interests of youth. With this accession of educational
territory will come a proportionate increase in the number of male
teachers, and a further diminution of the fallacy that the only kind of
order is silence and the prime condition of mental concentration
inaction. The system will become less and the boy more important.
But the whole community is the master educator; the best home is not
exempt from its influence nor the best school greatly superior to its
morality. In fact the school, even as the place of amusement and all
places of congregation, serves to diffuse the moral problems of boyhood
throughout the whole mass. Moral sanitation is more difficult than
physical sanitation, and the spoiled boy is a good conductor of various
forms of moral virus. The moral training involved in the ordinary
working of the public school is considerable and is none the less
valuable because it is indirect. With more attention to physical
condition, corrective exercise, and organized play, and with the
motivating of a larger area of school work, the moral value of the
institution will be still further enhanced.
The church addresses itself to the problem in ways both general and
specific, positive and negative. In its stimulation of public
conscience, in its inspiration of those who work directly for improved
conditions, and in Sunday schools and young people's societies, a
contribution of no small value is continually made. A rather negative,
or at best, concessive attitude toward recreation and a disposition to
rest satisfied with the denunciation of harmful institutions and
activities militates against her greatest usefulness. She must rather
compensate for home shortages and compete with the doubtful allurements
of the city. This she may do in part within her own plant and in part by
encouraging and supporting all wholesome outlets for the athletic zest,
social adventure, worthy ambition, and vocational quest of youth. Those
segments of the church which believe in bringing every legitimate human
interest within the scope and sanction of religion will in the nature of
things offer a more immediate and telling competition to the harmful
devices of the city.
But with the exception of a few boys' clubs and scout patrols, for whose
direction there is always a shameful shortage of willing and able lay
leadership, the church has not as yet grasped the problem; and this
remains true when one grants further the value of organized boys'
classes in the Sunday school and of the "socials" and parties of young
people's societies. To be sure, the Protestant church, expressing itself
through the Young Men's Christian Association, has laid hold of the more
respectable edge of the problem. But with few exceptions this work is
not as yet missionary, militant, or diffused to the communities of
greatest need. A few experiments are now being made, but probably the
Y.M.C.A., more than the individual church, is under the necessity of
treating the underlying economic evils with a very safe degree of
caution; and in both there is the ever-recurrent need of an unsparing
analysis of motive for the purpose of ascertaining which, after all, is
paramount--human welfare or institutional glory.
The tendency ever is to cultivate profitable and self-supporting fields
and sound business policies. But the case of thousands upon thousands of
boys living in localities that are socially impoverished, unfortunate,
and debasing constitutes a call to the missionary spirit and method. If
the impulse which is so ready and generous in the exportation of
religion and so wise in adaptation to the interests and abilities of the
foreign group could but lay hold of our most difficult communities with
like devotion and with scientific care there would be developed in due
time advanced and adequate methods, which in turn would take their
rightful place as a part of civic or educational administration.
As is illustrated in both education and philanthropy, the function of
the church in social development has been of this order, and the mistake
of short-sighted religious leaders has been to desert these children
when once they have found an abode within the civil structure. The
pastoral spirit of the new era claims again the entire parish, however
organized, and guards its children still. The pioneer is needed at home
just as he is needed abroad, and the pioneering agency must have the
same zeal and freedom in order to mark out the way of salvation for
hordes of wild city boys who are the menacing product of blind economic
haste.
[Illustration: WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH ME?]
The church should see this big problem and accept the challenge. Society
should awaken to the fact that in our large cities there is growing up a
generation of boys who morally "cannot discern between their right hand
and their left hand"--this through no fault of theirs, for they are but
a product. If they are unlovely, "smart," sophisticated, ungrateful, and
predatory, what has made them so? Who has inverted the prophetic promise
and given them ashes for beauty and the spirit of heaviness for the
garment of praise? As matters now stand it is not the ninety and nine
who are safe and the one in peril. That ratio tends to be reversed, and
will be unless right-minded people accept individually and in their
organized relations a just responsibility for the new life that is
committed for shaping and destiny to the evolving modern city.