Summer is especially hard on the city boy. If there is no vacation school, wholesome outdoor job, or satisfactory play, then mischief is certain. Indoor life is particularly distasteful during the hot weather and the flat is intolerable. Long hours and late are spent upon the street or in places of public amusementwhere immoral suggestions abound. High temperature always weakens moral resistance and there is no telling into what trouble the boy may drift. Hence to relinquish boys' work in the summer is to fail the boy at the very time of his greatest need. The competent leader does not abandon, he simply modifies his endeavor. As early in the spring as the boys prefer outdoor play he is with them for baseball, track work, tennis, swimming, tramping, fishing, hunting, camping; closing the season with football and remaining out until the boys are eager to take up indoor work. The lack of formal meetings in the summer need not concern the leader. It is sufficient that he give the boys his fellowship and supervision and keep them well occupied.
In all of this outdoor work the program and activities of the Boy Scouts of America are unsurpassed. In cultivating the pioneer virtues and in promoting health, efficiency, good citizenship, nature-study, and humane ideals no movement for boys has ever held such promise, and the promise will be realized if only Scout Masters in proper number and quality can be secured. Here again the gauntlet is thrown at the door of the church and the challenge is to her manhood from the manhood of tomorrow.
Illustration: CITY BOYS HIKINGCITY BOYS "HIKING"
Illustration: A WEEK-END CAMPA WEEK-END CAMP
The ideal club will have its summer outing. When properly planned and conducted, a summer camp is of all things to be desired. For several months it should be enjoyed in anticipation, and if all goes well it will be a joyous climax of club life, an experience never to be forgotten. But like all good work with boys, it is difficult and exacting. Safety and the rights of all cannot be conserved apart from strict military or civic organization; and no leader will take boys to camp and assume responsibility for life and limb without a thorough understanding and acceptance on their part of the discipline and routine which must be scrupulously enforced.
Every boy should be provided well in advance with a list of the utensils and outfit needed, and the organization of the camp should give to each one his proper share of work. The efficiency and dispatch of a corps of boys so organized is only equaled by the joy that comes from the vigorous and systematic program of activities from daylight to dark.
The best way for the leader to become proficient in conducting a camp is to take an outing with an experienced manager of a boys' camp; the next best way is by conference with such a person. TheHandbookof the Boy Scouts ofAmerica will be found very helpful in this respect, andCamping for Boysby H.W. Gibson, Y.M.C.A. Press, is excellent. It is necessary to emphasize the necessity of strict discipline and regularity, a just distribution of all duties, full and vigorous use of the time, extra precaution against accident, some formal religious exercise at the beginning of the day, with the use of the rare opportunity for intimate personal and group conference at the close of the day when the charm of the campfire is upon the lads. When boys are away from home and in this paradise of fellowship their hearts are remarkably open and the leader may get an invaluable insight into their inmost character.
Whenever possible the minister will bring his boys' club work into co-operation with the boys' department of the Y.M.C.A. Where the Y.M.C.A. exists and the church cannot have moderate gymnasium privileges of its own, arrangements should be made for the regular use of the association's gymnasium. It is desirable that the stated use of the gymnasium be secured for the club as such, since the individual use in the general boys' work of the association is not as favorable to building up a strong consciousness in the churchclub. The Y.M.C.A. can best organize and direct the inter-church athletics and it has performed a great service for the church clubs in organizing Sunday-school athletic leagues in the various cities, and in supplying proper supervision for tournaments and meets in which teams from the different churches have participated. To direct these contests properly has been no small tax upon the officials, for the insatiable desire for victory has in some cases not only introduced unseemly and ugly features into the contests but has temporarily lowered the moral standard of certain schools.
Superintendents and pastors have been known to sign entrance credentials for boys who were not eligible under the rules. In some instances church boys have descended to welcome the "ringer" for the purpose of "putting it over" their competitors. In grappling with these difficulties and in interpreting sound morality in the field of play the Y.M.C.A. has already made a successful contribution to the moral life of the Sunday-school boy. Nothing could be more startling to the religious leader, who insists upon facing the facts, than the facility with which the "good" Sunday-school boy turns away from the lofty precepts of his teacher to the brutal ethicsof the "win-at-any-price" mania. The Sunday-School Athletic League under the guidance of the Y.M.C.A. tends to overcome this vicious dualism.
In some districts the leader of the church boys' club may arrange to make use of the social settlement, civic center, or public playground, thus holding his group together for their play and supplementing the church outfit. The object in every case is to maintain and strengthen a group so possessed of the right ideals that it shall shape for good the conduct and character of the members severally. To the many ministers who despair of being able to conduct a club in person it should be said that young men of sixteen or seventeen years of age make excellent leaders for boys of twelve to fifteen years, and that they are more available than older men.
These leaders, including the teachers of boys' classes, should come together for conference and study at least once a month. The Y.M.C.A. will be the most likely meeting-place, and its boys' secretary the logical supervisor of inter-church activities. Wherever there is no such clearing-house, the ministers' meeting or the inter-church federation may bring the boys' leaders together for co-operation on acommunity-wide scale. The multiplication of clubs is to be desired, both for the extension of boys' work throughout all the churches, and for the development of such inter-church activities among boys as will make for mutual esteem and for the growing unity of the church of God.
1.General reading: W.I. Thomas,Source Book for Social Origins,The University of Chicago Press; G. Stanley Hall,Adolescence, D. Appleton & Co.; C.H. Judd,Genetic Psychology for Teachers, D. Appleton & Co.
2.Books recommended:Official Handbook, Boy Scouts of America, 200 Fifth Ave., New York; K.L. Butterfield,Chapters in Rural Progress, The University of Chicago Press; K.L. Butterfield,The Country Church and the Rural Problem, The University of Chicago Press.
3.Books recommended: Jane Addams,The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, Macmillan; D.F. Wilcox,Great American Cities, Macmillan.
4.See monograph onFive-and Ten-Cent Theatresby Louise de Koven Bowen, The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago.
5.See monograph,A Study of Public Dance Halls, by Louise de Koven Bowen, The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago.
6.Books and articles recommended: E.B. Mero,The American Playground,Dale Association, Boston; K. Groos,The Play of Man,D. Appleton & Co.; J.H. Bancroft,Games for the Playground, Home, School, and Gymnasium, Macmillan; C.E. Seashore, "The Play Impulse and Attitude in Religion,"The American Journal of Theology, XIV, No. 4; Joseph Lee, "Play as Medicine,"The Survey, XXVII, No. 5.
7.Books recommended: Frank Parsons,Choosing a Vocation, Houghton Mifflin Co.; Meyer Bloomfield,The Vocational Guidance of Youth, Houghton Mifflin Co.
8.Books recommended: Georg Kerschensteiner,Education for Citizenship,Rand McNally & Co.; William R. George,The Junior Republic, D. Appleton & Co.
9.Books recommended: John L. Alexander,Boy Training, Y.M.C.A. Press; G. Stanley Hall,Youth, Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene,D. Appleton & Co.
10.For bibliography see William B. Forbush,The Coming Generation, D. Appleton & Co., and the appendix ofHandbook for Boys, The Boy Scouts of America.