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[Illustration: THE WHARVES ARE A FAVORITE MEETING PLACE FOR THE GANG]
THE BOY
AND HIS GANG
BY
J. ADAMS PUFFER
_Director of Beacon Vocation Bureau, Boston_
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
BOSTON NEW YORK CHIGAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY J. ADAMS PUFFER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE
Sixty-six boys who were members of gangs are responsible for this
book. They told me the stories of their gang life and I wrote them
out in the form illustrated in Chapter II. I showed these stories
to President G. Stanley Hall, who asked me to present them in the
_Pedagogical Seminary_, where an article appeared in June, 1905. These
original stories of Boys’ Gangs and Boy Leaders later became the basis
for a series of lectures on Boy Problems. In revising my material for
book publication, many interesting criticisms by parents, teachers,
and social workers, in various sections of the country have been
consciously or unconsciously incorporated into it. I have found a wide
interest in and demand for such a book as this--bearing upon the group
psychology of boyhood--and a lamentable scarcity of readable literature
on the subject.
For aid in preparing this book I am indebted first of all to the
boys for their confidence, which I have tried to keep; to President
G. Stanley Hall for his kindly encouragement at the right time; to
President Edmund C. Sanford and Professor William H. Burnham for
pedagogical guidance; to my wife, E. Hope Puffer, who has shared in
the task from the beginning; to Mr. E. T. Brewster for his invaluable
assistance in editing the book, and to _McClure’s Magazine_ for
permission to reprint the illustrations.
J. ADAMS PUFFER.
CONTENTS
PREFACE iii
INTRODUCTION xi
I. THE ETERNAL BOY 1
The nature of the problem, and the persons to whom this work
is addressed.
II. THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE GANG 8
Importance of gangs--Their neglect in the literature of
boyhood--The single conspicuous exception--The author’s
own experience with boys’ gangs and its lessons--Boys’ own
stories of six specimen gangs--Fundamental likeness of all
gangs--Their instinctive basis.
III. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE GANG 26
Age of members--Their habitat, nationality, and social class--
Permanence of and definiteness of organization of gangs--
Their names--Times and places of meeting--Officers--
Initiation ceremonies--Rules--Resignations and expulsions--
Method of settling disputes--Emergence of the group mind.
IV. CERTAIN ACTIVITIES OF THE GANG 39
Analysis of gang activities--Survivals from pre-gang stage--
Group games--Tribal industries--Boys’ reports of these--
Their significance--“Plaguing people”--Boys’ reports--
Instinctive nature of the impulse--Stealing--Reports.
V. FURTHER ACTIVITIES OF THE GANG 50
Migration--Reports--Truancy--Reports--Theatre-going--
Reports--Fighting--Personal fights--Fights between groups
inside the gang--Fights between gangs--A case of war
between federations of gangs.
VI. THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GANG 72
Certain human instincts--Differing instincts of boys and
girls--Many instincts of boyhood are survivals from savagery--
The Recapitulation Theory, therefore, the key to boy
psychology--Not, however, a complete explanation--Certain
qualities of the young look toward the future--Illustrations
of these--Ancestral qualities persist when useful--Examples
from instincts of both boys and girls.
VII. THE CONTROL OF THE MORE PRIMITIVE IMPULSES 83
Certain maladjustments of human instincts to civilized life--
These especially noteworthy in boyhood--Instinctive basis
of cruelty in boys--Other causes of cruelty--Psychology
of “plaguing people”--Pedagogic worthlessness of the
impulse--Its cure--Impulse to plague girls of a different
nature--Apparently protective--The love of fighting--Its
instinctive nature--Fighting is, on the whole, a virtue--
Its pedagogic value--Practical treatment of the problem--
Two working rules--Self-limiting nature of the evil.
VIII. THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PREDATORY IMPULSES 94
Transitory nature of instincts--Acquisitiveness the basis of
boys’ thieving--Self-limiting quality of stealing--Effect
of collections--Of common property--Cure of thievery
must regard origin--Practical hints--Effect of gardens
and shops--Unconscious element in anti-social impulses--
Unfortunate position of city boy--Analysis of reasons for
theft--Removal of specific causes--Summary of two chapters
on anti-social gang activities and their cure.
IX. THE TRIBAL INSTINCTS AND THE WANDERLUST 109
Inherent goodness of the gang impulses now to be discussed--
Balance of home and gang life--General nature of the
problem--Wholesomeness and spontaneity of these interests--
Their usefulness in training for work--Their religious
aspect--Uses of Sunday--Control of the _Wanderlust_--Its
imperiousness--Its dangers--Its good side--Practical
suggestions--Excursions to interesting places and historic
spots--Camping trips--Truancy--Limitations of athletics--
Advantage of non-competitive sports over games--Their value
as permanent sources of happiness.
X. THE INDIVIDUALISTIC ACTIVITIES AND THE GROUP GAMES 124
Education through games--Their social training--The problem
of playgrounds--Example of the best English schools--Value
of swimming--Opportunity and supervision--Skating and
dancing--Their peculiar function at the end of the gang
period--Theatre, circus, and picture show--Analysis of
their influence--Wholesomeness of melodrama.
XI. THE SPECIAL VIRTUES OF THE GANG 141
Psychologic value of the gang period--Biologic aspect of
moral education--Loyalty the foundation of the gang--
The boy’s devotion to ideals--Mistakes of parents and
teachers--Why all boys are not in gangs--Gangs are the
natural training-schools for the social virtues--Pedagogic
value of even anti-social acts--High social value of nearly
all gang activities--This illustrated by typical rules of
gangs--Gangs inculcate coöperation, courage, and other
manly virtues--Late reversal of opinion with regard to the
influence of gangs.
XII. THE GANG IN CONSTRUCTIVE SOCIAL WORK 157
The Boy Scouts--The sound psychology of the organization and
its relation to the boys’ gang--The Church--The psychology
of religious training and its practical method--The
Sunday School--The Home--Prerequisites of good gangs--
Families should unite to provide these--The Boys’ Club--
The Playground--The Summer Camp--its common failings--
Suggestions for the improvement of these--Proper subjects
for study in camp--Special fitness of instruction in hygiene
and morals.
XIII. THE GANG AND THE SCHOOL 177
The nature of the problem--Necessity of comprehending the
gang spirit--Illustration from fighting and by an incident
of real life--Difference between boys and girls--Boys’
motor-mindedness--Practical hints--Importance of using
natural groups--Illustrated by gymnastics--By nature
study--By work in practical arithmetic--By other
coöperative efforts--By pupil self-government--The
important matter is to utilize the great passions of boyhood.
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE WHARVES ARE A FAVORITE MEETING PLACE FOR THE GANG _Frontispiece_
BOYS “JUMP FREIGHTS” BECAUSE THEY “LIKE TO GO AND SEE PLACES” 20
“WE FOUGHT FOR THE FUN OF IT” 20
A FOOTBALL GAME BETWEEN CITY GANGS 44
“A SHANTY OR CLUBHOUSE IN THE WOODS” 44
AN INADEQUATE PLAYGROUND 170
A MODEL PLAYGROUND 170
INTRODUCTION
The gang spirit is the basis of the social life of the boy. It is the
spontaneous expression of the boy’s real interests. A boy must have not
only companions but a group of companions in which to realize himself.
This book had its origin in the minds and hearts of boys still active
in their gangs.
It is evident that nearly all the activities of boys in their group
life are not injurious but wholesome, or can readily be made so. What
grown people too often interpret as done from evil motives the boys
in the gang do from their love of fun. The educational world has not
yet taken the interesting view point, that in the group activities
of boys are cultivated the great fundamental virtues, coöperation,
self-sacrifice, and loyalty. Now that we are coming to understand and
realize what the gang life means, and what can be done with it, the
surprise grows that it has until so recently been left almost entirely
out of account in the work of helping and saving boys.
Mr. Puffer as a graduate student and fellow at Clark University
has taken time to acquaint himself with the literature in this and
adjacent fields, and as a practical worker has shown himself unusually
sympathetic with boys and helpful to them. Mr. Puffer’s writing is
uniquely effective and his book ought to be read by all parents and
friends of boys.
G. STANLEY HALL.
WORCESTER, MASS.,
February 12, 1912.
THE BOY AND HIS GANG
CHAPTER I
THE ETERNAL BOY
We adults do not commonly understand boys. Half of us, to be sure,
were boys ourselves; but when we became men and settled down to our
work, we did not merely put away childish things--we went further and
forgot them. To-day, we read a story of boy life and we say, “Why, yes.
That’s just the way boys do. I used to do exactly that sort of thing
myself.” But the next hour we have forgotten again, and the boy we were
is once more a stranger. Boyville is so far removed, both from Delos
and from Babylon, that we seldom think the thoughts of its inhabitants,
nor see the world with the boys’ eyes. Only a few men are at home
in both worlds,--Lindsay, George, some schoolmasters, an occasional
father,--and these can do anything with a boy.
The difficulty seems not so much to be that we have forgotten the
incidents of our boyhood as that we have lost its feelings. So far as
specific doings are concerned, we probably remember those crowded years
more distinctly than any equal period of our entire lives. Most of us,
too, remember them happily, as happily probably as any years we have
lived. No, the trouble is not with the memory, but with the self. The
experiences of life since we were boys have shifted our psychic centre
of gravity, so that we realize the particular incident far more easily
than we realize the being to whom it occurred. We do not completely
feel that the boy that was is quite ourselves; and while the memory of
the fact is sharp, the memory of the mental state that went with it has
become dim. Therefore, it costs a distinct effort to put one’s self in
the boy’s place. Any proper man will recite by the hour tales of the
old swimming-hole in the summer. But if men actually felt toward the
water as boys do, every club and half the private houses would have a
swimming tank instead of a smoking room.
But if we men fail to comprehend boys, what shall we say of the women!
The experiences which we have forgotten, they have not even had; if
there is a psychic fence which separates men from boys, there are at
least knot-holes in the boards; but between boys and women there is
a solid wall. There are parts of a boy’s soul which any woman may
observe or imagine, but which no woman can ever feel. That women often
do understand boys, understand them sometimes better than men do, is
simply one of the marvels of feminine insight.
This book is, then, addressed, first of all, to fathers, with the
hope that it will, in some sort, serve to revive memories of boyhood
days, not so much of specific acts of boyhood as of long-dead impulses
and past ways of envisaging the world. Every man who sits down and
thinks out for himself, not only what he did as a boy, but also how
it feels to be a boy, and how the world and the people in it appear
through a boy’s eyes, has taken a long step toward the understanding
and the control of his own sons. A scientific account of certain
aspects of boy psychology, such as this book aims to be, may aid this
introspective process.
On the other hand, so far as this book is an account of the natural
history of the genus boy, it may well be an aid to mothers, and to
other women who, with no children of their own, are yet concerned
for the welfare of adolescent males. If it does not help these to a
sympathetic understanding of a boy’s soul, one may at least hope that
it will serve to warn them of those regions of it most foreign to their
sex. Next to a knowledge of boy nature, comes the knowledge of when to
keep hands off and let some man have his chance. To the smaller group
of women, mothers and aunts and elder sisters, and especially teachers,
who already possess the heaven-sent gift of understanding boys, any
assistance may well seem superfluous. Still, intuition may often be
supplemented by science. The clearest insight does sometimes fail,
and need to be helped out by a more analytical approach from another
side than its own. To men, women, and teachers, then, this book,--an
‘apology,’ in a sense, to women, of men who once were boys.
Whoever it was that opined that
“Men are but children of a larger growth”
knew little about boys. The child becomes a youth, and the youth
becomes man, by virtue of a process not so very different from that
which transforms the caterpillar into a butterfly or the tadpole into
a frog. As truly as the caterpillar takes on wings, and the tadpole
lungs and limbs, of which neither had any trace before, the child and
the boy take on not only habits and instincts and ways of getting on in
the world, but actual new structure as well. Boyhood begins with the
second set of teeth; it ends with the advent of the beard and a new set
of enzymes in the blood. Neither child nor boy nor grub nor pollywog
passes on to the next stage of his existence by any mere enlargement.
Nor is it altogether true that with the approach of manhood
“Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.”
The little child, in his father’s house and under his father’s care,
feels the stir of newborn gregarious instincts, and takes his first
steps into the larger life of the world. Boyhood proper begins with the
rise of impulses which make us citizens and lead us to take care of
ourselves; and it ends with the rise of impulses which make us heads
of families and lead us to take care of other people. Each step is an
enlargement of life. Each transition is marked by a psychic change
so profound that it makes the previous narrower condition appear as
shadowy almost as a dream, and almost as difficult to recall.
We are concerned here with the second of the seven ages of men: with
the period, that is, which begins at about the age of ten with the
rise of the herding instincts, and ends with the rise of the mating
instincts at, say, eighteen. The child, who thus far has been a
solitary animal, suddenly becomes a social one. He is profoundly
interested in youth of his own sex, while at the same time he cares
less than nothing for youth of the other. Therefore, he associates
himself with other boys and forms gangs.
The gang, therefore, while it lasts, is for the boy one of the three
primary social groups. These three are, the family, the neighborhood,
and the play group; but for the normal boy the play group is the gang.
All three are instinctive human groupings, formed like pack and flock
and hive, in response to deep-seated but unconscious need. Like all
such instinctive associations, the gang appears useless or stupid to
those who have never felt the inner impulse which caused it, or who,
having felt, have forgotten. The boy’s reaction to his gang is neither
more nor less reasonable than the reaction of a mother to her babe, the
tribesman to his chief, or the lover to his sweetheart. All these alike
belong to the ancient, instinctive, ultra-rational parts of our human
nature. They are felt, and obeyed; but only in part are they to be
explained, for no man understands any of them fully unless he knows how
it feels from the inside.