The Minister and the Boy Part 3

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 amus.e.m.e.nt and all places of congregation, serves to diffuse the moral problems of boyhood throughout the whole ma.s.s. 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 inst.i.tution 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 att.i.tude toward recreation and a disposition to rest satisfied with the denunciation of harmful inst.i.tutions 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 compet.i.tion 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 leaders.h.i.+p, the church has not as yet grasped the problem; and this remains true when one grants further the value of organized boys'

cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociation, 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 a.n.a.lysis of motive for the purpose of ascertaining which, after all, is paramount--human welfare or inst.i.tutional 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 const.i.tutes 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 ill.u.s.trated 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

CHAPTER V

THE ETHICAL VALUE OF ORGANIZED PLAY[6]

The value of work as a prime factor in character building must not be overlooked. In the revival of play that is sweeping over our American cities and in the tendency to eliminate effort from modern education there is danger of erecting a superficial and mere pleasure-seeking ideal of life. It is upon the background of the sacred value of work that the equally legitimate moral factor of play is here considered.

Further, the value of _undirected_ play in cultivating initiative, resourcefulness, and imagination, especially in young children, is worth bearing in mind. One must grant also that play is not always enlisted in the service of morality. But neither is religion. Both may be. At any rate it is evident that when boy nature is subjected to city conditions we must either provide proper outlet and guidance for the boy's play instincts or be guilty of forcing him into the position of a law-breaker and a nuisance.

Reduced to its lowest terms, organized play is thus recognized as a convenient subst.i.tute for misconduct. Even the property owner and peace-loving citizen, if moved by no higher motive, will agree to the adage that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," and will welcome the endeavor to safeguard property rights and promote the peace of the community by drawing off the adventurous and mischief-making energies of the boys into the less expensive channels of play. Practical men are quite agreed that it is better for "gangs" to release their energy and ingenuity against one another in a series of athletic games than to seek similar adventure and satisfaction in conflict with established property rights and the recognized agencies of peace and order.

Nevertheless there persists in the church, however unconsciously, a sort of piety that disregards the body, and the conventional Christian ideal has certainly been anemic and negative in the matter of recreation. The Young Men's Christian a.s.sociations with their reproduction of the Greek ideal of physical well-being have served to temper the other-worldly type of Christianity with the idea of a well-rounded and physically competent life as being consonant with the will of G.o.d.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Francke of Halle, an educational organizer and philanthropist of no mean proportion, said, "Play must be forbidden in any and all of its forms. The children shall be instructed in this matter in such a way as to show them, through the presentation of religious principles, the wastefulness and folly of all play. They shall be led to see that play will distract their hearts and minds from G.o.d, the Eternal Good, and will work nothing but harm to their spiritual lives."

Only gradually does "the-world-as-a-vale-of tears" and "the-remnant-that-shall-be-saved" idea give place to a faith that claims for G.o.d the entire world with its present life as well as individual immortality in future felicity. Miracle and cataclysm and postmortem glory--the ever-ready recourse of baffled hope and persecuted Christianity--are giving place more and more to a Christian conquest that is orderly and inclusive of the whole sweep of human life. The church is but dimly conscious, as yet, that through the aid of science she has attained this magnificent optimism; much less does she realize its full implication for social service and the saving of the individual, both body and soul.

The minister as the herald and exemplar of such an imperial salvation cannot ignore the exceptional opportunities which the play interests of boyhood offer. He whose task has been to reconcile men to G.o.d, to bring them into harmony with the universe in its ultimate content, cannot neglect those activities which more than anything else in the life of the boy secure the happy co-ordination of his powers, the placing of himself in right relation with others and in obedience to law. These are the moral and religious accomplishments aimed at in the teaching of reconciliation which bulks so large in Christian doctrine; and by whatever means this right adjustment to self, to others, and to the will of G.o.d is brought about, it always produces the sure harvest of service and joy.

To some undoubtedly it will seem sacrilegious to suggest that play can have anything to do in a transaction so deeply moral and so fundamentally religious. Yet a psychological a.n.a.lysis of both play and wors.h.i.+p at their best will reveal marked similarities in spontaneity, in self-expression for its own sake and free from ulterior ends, in symbolism, semi-intoxication and rhythm, in extension and enrichment of the self, and in preparation for the largest and most effective living.

That such a claim is not altogether extravagant may be demonstrated in part by canva.s.sing the moral reactions of a well-organized group engaged in some specific game. For in merely discussing the play att.i.tude, which is applicable to every interest of life, there is the danger of so sublimating the value of play that its importance, while readily granted, will not affect pastoral or educational methods. This mistake is only comparable with another which dwells upon the religious life of the boy as dependent upon the use of some inherent religious faculty that is quite detached from the normal physical and mental processes.

Such an att.i.tude favors an easy escape from both the labor of character building and the obligations of environmental salvation. Recognizing these dangers and remembering that morality and religion are most valid when acquired and incorporated in actual conduct, one may a.n.a.lyze a standard game in search of its ethical worth.

Baseball, our most popular and distinctively national game, const.i.tutes a fair field for this inquiry. In order to evaluate this form of play as an agency in moral training it is necessary to presume that one has a company of nine or more boys grouped together on the basis of loyalty to a common neighborhood, school, club, church, or the like. They elect a manager who acts for the team in arranging a schedule of games with their various rivals and who serves in general as their business agent; also a captain, usually chosen because of his ability to play the game and his quality of natural leaders.h.i.+p. He directs his players in their contests and in case of dispute speaks for his team.

The boys should also have in every case a trainer older than themselves, a player of well-known ability and exemplary character. It is usually through neglect of supervision of this sort that the ethical value of baseball for boys of from twelve to fifteen years of age is forfeited.

Without the trainer to direct their practice games, and as a recognized expert to try out the players for the various positions, the possibilities of forming a team are few and those of unjust and harmful conduct many.

If at the outset, the group, coming together in park or vacant lot, cannot speedily agree upon a _modus operandi_, their energy is turned into profane disputing about the chief positions, and usually a game cannot be organized, or, if it is, lack of agreement as to put-outs, runs, fouls, and debatable points soon ruins the attempt, with little left to most of the boys except resentment of the might-makes-right policy. On the other hand, whether one has in mind a team or a chance group of players, the presence of a capable adult as an immediate and final court of appeal guarantees fair play for all, prevents personal animosities, and inspires each one to do his best in the presence of a competent judge.

Wherever the team with proper supervision is a possibility the moral value of the game will be at its maximum. Uniforms are not to be despised. Loyalty to the school represented is but boyhood's form of what in later life becomes ability to espouse a cause and to a.s.sume a degree of social responsibility in keeping with that att.i.tude.

Because of this loyalty the boy who expected to play in the prominent position of pitcher takes his less conspicuous place in right field, if by fair trials under the trainer another boy has demonstrated his superior fitness to fill the much-coveted position. For the credit of the community or school which he has the honor to represent, the match game must be won; hence he surrenders his personal glory to the common good. He does more. Under the excitement of the contest and with the consequent strengthening of the team spirit, he encourages the very boy, who would otherwise have been only his personal rival, to do his level best, forgetting utterly any mean individual comparisons and all anti-social self-consciousness, in what he has enthusiastically accepted as the greater common good.

He goes to bat at a critical juncture in the game. The score is close.

He as much as anyone would like to have runs to his credit. But for the sake of the team his chief concern must be to advance the base runner.

So he plays carefully rather than spectacularly, and makes a bunt or a sacrifice hit, with the practical certainty that he will be put out at first base, but with a good probability that he will thus have advanced his fellow one base and so have contributed to the team's success.

The religious value of the principle here involved receives no little attention in sermon and Sunday-school cla.s.s, but how tame and formal is its verbal presentation as compared with its registration in the very will and muscles of a boy at play! Wherever a state has become great or a cause victorious, wherever a hero--a Socrates or a Christ--has appeared among men, there has been the willingness, when necessary, to make the "sacrifice hit." The loyalty that has held itself ready so to serve on moral demand has to its credit all the higher attainments of humanity.

In the great American experiment of democracy, where the welfare of the people is so often bartered for gold, and where public office is frequently prost.i.tuted to private gain, there is a proportionately great need of teaching in every possible way this fundamental virtue of loyalty. Our future will be secure only in the degree in which intelligent and strong men are devoted to the welfare of city and state after the fas.h.i.+on of the boy to his team. It is because war, with all its horrors, has stimulated and exhibited this virtue that its glory persists far into our industrial age; and the hope of a lofty patriotism, that shall be equal to the enervating influences of peace, lies in an educated and self-denying type of loyalty.

The use of this loyalty in the reformation of boy criminals has been remarkably demonstrated in the well-known work of Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver. In a particularly difficult case he says:

I decided to put my influence over him to the test. I told him of the fight I was making for him, showed him how I had been spending all my spare time "trying to straighten things out" for him and Heimel, and warned him that the police did not believe I could succeed. "Now, Lee," I said, "you can run away if you want to, and prove me a liar to the cops.

But I want to help you and I want you to stand by me. I want you to trust me, and I want you to go back to the jail there, and let me do the best I can."

He went, and he went alone--unguarded.

Here is a striking example of the team work of two with the play upon loyalty and the spirit of contest.

Another lesson about boys I learned from little "Mickey" when I was investigating his charge that the jailer had beaten him. The jailer said: "Some o' those kids broke a window in there, and when I asked Mickey who it was, he said he didn't know. Of course he knew. D'yu think I'm goin' to have kids lie to me?" A police commissioner who was present turned to Mickey. "Mickey," he said, "why did you lie?" Mickey faced us in his rags. "Say," he asked, "Do yoh t'ink a fullah ought to snitch on a kid?"

And the way he asked made me ashamed of myself.

Here was a quality of loyalty that we should be fostering in him instead of trying to crush out of him. It was the beginning in the boy of that feeling of responsibility to his fellows on which society is founded. Thereafter,

no child brought before our court was ever urged to turn state's evidence against his partners in crime--much less rewarded for doing so or punished for refusing.

Each was encouraged to "snitch" on himself, and himself only.

Another interview with a boy under sentence to the industrial school emphasizes the same point:

"I can _help_ you, Harry," I said. "But you've got to carry yourself. If I let boys go when they do bad things, I'll lose my job. The people 'll get another judge in my place to punish boys, if _I_ don't do it. I can't let you go." We went over it and over it; and at last I thought I had him feeling more resigned and cheerful, and I got up to leave him. But when I turned to the door he fell on his knees before me and, stretching out his little arms to me, his face distorted with tears, he cried: "Judge! Judge! If you let me go, _I'll never get you into trouble again_!"

I had him! It was the voice of loyalty.... This time he "stuck." "Judge," the mother told me long afterward, "I asked Harry the other day, how it was he was so good for _you_, when he wouldn't do it for me or the policeman. And he says: 'Well, Maw, you see if I gets bad ag'in the Judge he'll lose his job. I've got to stay with him, 'cause he stayed with me.'"

I have used that appeal to loyalty hundreds of times since in our work with the boys, and it is almost infallibly successful.

In eight years, out of 507 cases of boys put upon their honor to take themselves from Denver to the Industrial School at Golden, to which the court had sentenced them, Judge Lindsey had but five failures. In view of such facts, who will think for a moment that we have so much as begun to turn the latent loyalty of boyhood to its highest ethical use?

No doubt much can be said against football, which ranks second in popularity among American athletic games. For some years the elements of hazard and rough treatment have been unhappily too prominent, so that the suspicion is warranted that players have been sacrificed to the bloodthirsty demands of the vast throng of spectators. The tension of playing in the presence of thousands of partisan enthusiasts shows itself in a reckless disregard of physical injury. Furthermore, for boys in early adolescence the tax upon the heart const.i.tutes a common danger which is often rendered more serious by the untrained condition of the players. It is to be hoped that in the further modification of the rules from year to year, the players and their welfare will be kept more in mind and the sensation-loving public, whose gate-fees have been too big a consideration, will be measurably overlooked.

But with this concession, all of the virtue that attaches to baseball will be found in football, only in accentuated form. Physical bravery is, of course, more emphasized; while team loyalty, with all that it implies, is more intense. The relation of the members to one another in a well-organized team amounts to an affection which is never forgotten.

The words of cheer when the team is hard pushed and has to take a "brace"; the fighting spirit that plays the game to a finish, no matter what the odds; the hand extended to help to his feet the man who has just advanced the ball; the pat on the back; the impulsive embrace; the very tears shed in common after a lost game--all of this is a social and moral experience of no small value. Basketball also offers a good field for the subordination of personal glory to team success and, in point of intensity, stands midway between baseball and football with the elimination of the dangerous qualities of the latter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NORMAL BOY IN THE ABNORMAL PLAYGROUND]