The problem of the boy is a great one, and the more we have to do with
his life upon the street the greater the task of solution becomes. It
is said that two great factors make the sum of human life—heredity
and environment. We are told that if you will gather up soil from the
arctic regions and carry it on a steamer southward, you will soon see
it covered with vegetation. If the soil of the tropics is taken to the
frozen regions of Franz Joseph Land, it will become barren. The soil
of both regions is full of heredity, but the difference of environment
greatly modifies the result. There are in all of us hereditary
tendencies to both vice and virtue, and under favorable surroundings,
these tendencies will be either dormant or developed.
A thief may come from a morally healthy family, a happy prosperous
home, but he is an unhealthy exception not the rule. It is the
offense of our day that the tendency of life is toward destruction
of character. The crowding of population to the cities, is gradually
destroying the home feeling. This rapidly increasing rush from the
country and small towns to the centres of individual energy, brings a
dependent class of boys, and the official reports show a significant
increase in the number of juvenile criminals, from small towns, and
also that they are much younger than formerly. This does not mean
that the energetic young man of the country should stay away from the
cities, or should not seek employment or business in a city; it simply
means that christian people should take a greater personal interest in
trying to make the boy good before he leaves his home, and that the
city people should make city life purer.
So long as our best reputed citizens, the first men of many of our
churches, own the dilapidated tenement houses, receiving from such
occupants a rental sufficient to pay taxes, and without caring who
occupies the premises or for what purposes, the criminal tendency must
increase.
For a time charitably-inclined people may check and partially correct
an evil, but the tendency will remain, sure to assert itself in one
form or another. If the present cheap-John tenements should be wiped
out, and it were made possible for the proper classes to secure homes
in the country, modest as necessarily they would be, it would go a
long way towards correcting one of the greatest evils of the day.
“The prison returns of one of our great States show that fifty per
cent. of all young criminals come from bad homes, from tenement houses
owned by rich men, and only nine per cent. from good homes.”
Since the Humane societies are so well organized, and doing such
magnificent work, much may be expected for the better in the condition
of the houses of the poor. There are many streets in our great cities
where people shudder when compelled to walk, on account of their bad
reputation.
The tenants may be bad, but are they worse than the owners of the
property? Have you ever stopped to think who owns a building under
whose roof lives a dozen bad characters?
One Sunday morning, a gentleman in the city was walking down an avenue
of considerable importance when he was surprised to see two young
newsboys coming out of the rear door of a saloon, each trying to keep
the other from falling to the ground.
The building was old and rickety. On the second floor were not a half
dozen whole panes of glass in eight window frames.
Astonished at this, a question was asked, of a passer-by who owned the
saloon property?
“Mr.—— owns all the property on that side of the street. He is now
teaching a Sunday-school class while boys are in his building drinking.
This thing’s repeated every Sunday. It’s headquarters for young men.”
When our leading men of business, our wealthy citizens, men of
influence, men who stand high in the commercial world, are renting
their property to persons who, for the money they make, are ruining
hundreds of young lives, what can we expect?
We need an era of enforcement of law, less of pretense, more of
purpose. Whether the laws be good or bad, is not a question. If they
are good, they should be enforced for the welfare of the community and
the vindication of the State. If they are bad, they should be enforced
so that their injustice may prove sufficiently oppressive to lead to
their appeal.
The saloons will always be with us, and so long as the State, and the
city receive the price for their existence, and grant them recognition
and endorsement, they should be protected in accordance with the laws
governing their business, but beyond all this, there is a law, a moral
law, a law of decency, of respect, for the welfare and happiness of
mankind, that should appeal to every man engaged in the selling of
liquors.
Five men, of our acquaintance, engaged in the saloon business, have for
many years mutually agreed to do certain things. They do not open their
places of business on Sunday. They do not admit a minor into their
saloons for any cause. They will not sell liquor to a man who shows the
least sign of being intoxicated.
If every man engaged in the saloon business would follow to the letter
these few simple rules, thousands of good wives, and innocent children
would be happy, and the influence for good could not be estimated. Our
Sunday-closing laws should be enforced.
The lives of a majority of men, hard-working men, are dreary enough for
six days of the week without having all of the desolation compressed
into the seventh and drilled into them through the avarice of selfish
men who aim to take advantage of a man under the influence of liquor,
and take from him his last cent and then throw him into the street.
We are learning to regard the majority of youthful offenders,
especially in our large cities, as the victims of environment,
sufferers from lack of opportunity for good. In nine cases out of
ten, boys who are found in saloons come from well-to-do families, and
are permitted to be there through neglect and carelessness of their
parents.