UPPER WEST SIDE DISTURBED

Resting. What Next?

Early Lessons in Craps

It is not uncommon for fights to end by a formal match between two opposing leaders, though very often, particularly if the leader of the weaker gang wins, these conflicts are indecisive because the stronger gang will not accept defeat. In one case two gangs entered into a formal truce because one gang was obliged to go through the other’s territory on the way to school, and found it inexpedient to fight a battle four times a day. The other gang recognized the justice of this position and according to compact permitted their enemies to go through the street unmolested throughout the school year.

Tales of this kind could be multiplied almost indefinitely, for the exploits of boyish gangs dominate the West Side problem. Such headlines as

Boys Discharge Rifles—One Man Shot and Windows Broken15

Seriously Wounded While Walking in Eleventh Avenue—Assailant Escapes16

are comparatively common in the newspapers; yet most of the occurrences of this kind in the district never reach the ears of a reporter. The following is from the press account of a typical gang war:

BOY STABBED BY YOUNG FEUDISTSIs Second Hurt17This is the second boy to receive serious injuries because of the feud which has been raging for the last three weeks between stone-throwing bands of boys who live in the vicinity of Fiftieth Street and Tenth Avenue.... Fifty or more boys have received injuries.... Not only are the lives of school children endangered but the size of the weapons used makes it perilous for adults to venture near during the battles. There are a half dozen bands in the neighborhood, and when any two of them meet there is a fight. The principal pastime, however, seems to be in a whole crowd attacking one or two boys who belong to another band.Teachers in the public schools and Sunday school teachers have joined in the demand that the Police Department give full protection against assault to all living in the vicinity. The fever for stone throwing seems to be spreading through all the territory between Ninth and Tenth Avenues between Fiftieth and Sixtieth Streets, and the situation is said to be beyond the control of the present force of police on duty in that part of the city.

Is Second Hurt17

This is the second boy to receive serious injuries because of the feud which has been raging for the last three weeks between stone-throwing bands of boys who live in the vicinity of Fiftieth Street and Tenth Avenue.... Fifty or more boys have received injuries.... Not only are the lives of school children endangered but the size of the weapons used makes it perilous for adults to venture near during the battles. There are a half dozen bands in the neighborhood, and when any two of them meet there is a fight. The principal pastime, however, seems to be in a whole crowd attacking one or two boys who belong to another band.

Teachers in the public schools and Sunday school teachers have joined in the demand that the Police Department give full protection against assault to all living in the vicinity. The fever for stone throwing seems to be spreading through all the territory between Ninth and Tenth Avenues between Fiftieth and Sixtieth Streets, and the situation is said to be beyond the control of the present force of police on duty in that part of the city.

Gang fighting is most prevalent when the nervous youngsters are just released from the school room andmust inevitably encounter their schoolmate antagonists on the streets.

Here is an account of a gang fight, the events of which were described by one of the small marauders:

“Last night a gang of boys came down with their pockets full of brickbats, looking for Willie Harrigan, but Johnnie and Jimmie heard of it and got the gang together. I came up with my pockets full of stones and was throwing them when I got hit in the leg myself and it hurt so I couldn’t throw. Just then three cops suddenly jumped off a car, right in the middle of the fight. Everybody beat it, but a cop grabbed me and I dropped my stones and jerked away and ran. They caught three of the others though, and took them to the station house. I don’t know whether they got there. Every afternoon this gang comes down and tries to catch our fellows alone as they did with Willie. We fight with stones and bottles. No one has been very much hurt lately. One of our gang has a gun, too, but he can’t fire it for fear of the cops.”

These last sentences reveal, or at least refer to, the most repulsive of all the ways in which the demoralizing effect of West Side gang development is shown. Even a confirmed pessimist, if he has any sympathy with boys and any knowledge of their ways, can discern in the gang’s activities a striving after the unattainable which is yet a birthright, an effort which is essentially more pathetic than vicious. In the raid and the “loot,” the chase and the “hang-out,” it is not difficult to mark the trail of the Redskin and the hunt and the lure of danger which is so dear to the heart of a boy. But even the most persistent of optimists, willing to make many allowances, must demur againstthe coldblooded and treacherous methods to which the feuds and enmities of West Side gangs have reduced their members. If ever these boys had a sense of the spirit of fair play, they seem to have lost it completely. They win by planning overwhelming advantages. An attack upon three or four or even one defenseless boy by 30 or 40 merciless youngsters, who even attempt to surround their prey and strike from behind, is not a disgraceful thing to them but an exploit to be proud of. No mercy is shown to the vanquished. Stories are rife in the neighborhood of boys of thirteen or fourteen being attacked when alone and undefended, by 10 or more assailants from another street.

That casualties are not more frequent is due to the dominant spirit of cowardice with which the mob always taints its members. In the thick of the fight when no responsibility can be placed and every member feels secure in the presence of his friends, there is no atrocity which these boys will not attempt; but relying as they do on the strength of the mob instead of on individual strength, the first feeling of timidity immediately develops into a panic. An unexpected move by the enemy at bay will rout an attacking party of four times their strength. Half a dozen boys caught at a disadvantage will charge unscathed through a gang of nearly two score, who fly in all directions at this unexpected display of bravery. One boy, for instance, was recently beset by eight others when he was about to leave the factory. Instead of retreating as they expected, he suddenly seized a club, charged one wing of his assailants, and escaped unhurt. On the other hand, here is a case in which one of the victims was caught:

“Jim and me was goin’ down the street, w’en about six fellers from the Fiftieth Street gang hot-footed after us. We ran but they got right close and hollered to us to halt. I made out like I was goin’ to stop but got a fresh start w’en they slacked up and got away. Jim did stop and they near killed him, they beat him up so.”

“Oh! They would-a killed me if they’d got me,” said one boy, relating how he had been chased into a hallway by five or six of a rival gang, armed with bottles, clubs, and bricks. “I hid in a toilet, and when they came up to look in I rushed out on ’em and took ’em by surprise; I pushed one feller down the steps and beat it, but they didn’t catch me.” And a similar story was told by another. “After I wins in my fight with bot’ Mike and his pal me little brother hears ’em telling one day how they was goin’ to lay for me in the hallway wit clubs. I runs up tru de house next door on the roof tru de house where dey was goin’ to lay for me and hides in the toilet wit a big club. When I hear Mike and his pal come in an’ talkin’ right near me I rushes out and bangs right an’ left wit me club. I hits ’em bot’ on de bean (head) an’ dey runs out. After that they never bothered me.”

Gang fighting, in fact, as practiced in this neighborhood, is conducive to neither manliness, honor, courage, nor self-respect. The strength of the boy is the strength of the gang, and under its protection unspeakable horrors take place for which it is impossible to place responsibility. Rumors of boys being stabbed, shot, clubbed, maimed, and even killed are current everywhere, and there is good reason to believe that many of them are true. Such things are, of course, nevermentioned to strangers, and residents learn of them only by chance conversation. The moment that any definite questions are asked, the boys become reticent and change the subject. But there can be no doubt that many crimes are committed in these blocks which never reach the ears of the police, and that a considerable proportion of them are due to the boy and his gang.

And so the word “gang” here has grown to be synonymous with the worst side of boy life, and the group itself, which might in other surroundings and under other traditions be a positive civic asset, simply adds the irresponsibility of the mob to the recklessness of youth and becomes a force which turns West Side boyhood into cowards and savages. As a priest of one of the Roman Catholic churches said the other day, “The social evil may be an important one, butthequestion in this neighborhood is that of the gangs.”

Amongthe influences which mold the destinies of the West Side boy one still remains to be mentioned. We have tried to sketch the characteristics of the community in which he finds himself and to indicate the causes and the traditions which have produced them. We have watched him in the daylight glare of his playground, and followed him through his games and the maneuvers of his gang. School, and in later years, the shop or factory, rarely work any appreciable change in his make-up. The former is usually treated by the class of boys with whom we are dealing as a long game between himself and the truant officer. The latter comes into his life too late and often too unsuitably to be regarded by him as anything but so many dreary years of necessary imprisonment. But back of his chequered little life on the docks and streets stand his mother and his tenement home, and surely it is to them, if anywhere, that we must look for the guidance that is to help him and the influence that is to counteract the wild persuasions of the playground.

Is this home attractive? Can it be? Does his mother understand her boy and his difficulties, even if she can cope with her own? If she does, how far can she help him? If she does not, how far is she blameworthy? What is her attitude toward the West Side problems? To what extent is she—canshe be—responsible for her children’s conduct? How far right are the judges of the New York children’s court, and how far wrong, in holding West Side parents responsible for the misdemeanors of their sons? Let us look at the home outside and within, visit the mother and hear her side of the story; for these are questions which must be asked and answered before our picture of the West Side boy is complete.

It would be impossible with any truth to call the tenement buildings externally attractive. Surrounding the factories on all sides, wedged between tall, noisy buildings, standing almost alone in a block of lumber and wagon yards, or sometimes occupying entire blocks to the exclusion of everything else, they rise singly, in groups, or in rows along the streets and avenues, ugly, monotonous, of an indistinguishable sameness. Most of them face squarely up to the sidewalk, with no areaway in front, behind them narrow cement-paved courts, round which the shabby walls rear themselves, cutting off sunlight and giving to each little well of air-space the gloominess of a cañon. Every type of obsolete dwelling, condemned by the building laws of a decade ago, is present in block lengths, teeming and seething with human life, and accepted with that philosophy of poverty which holds that such things are a part of the natural scheme which created Fifth Avenue for the man who doesn’t have to work and Eleventh Avenue for the man who does. The “dumb-bell” and “railroad” types of tenement with dark inner rooms, first sanctioned by the laws of the late 70’s but condemned as dangerous and unsanitary nearly a decade ago, predominate. These buildings were erected for the most part overtwenty-five years ago (some are forty years old or more), and in the ten years preceding 1911 only two modern tenements had been erected in the whole district. Most of the tenements so adjoin that the roofs of one are accessible from those on either side. Frequently this condition continues through the whole block, so that a marauder, a fleeing small boy, or a fugitive from justice, may dodge up one stairway, cross several roofs, and descend by another. Similarly, if one street door is locked, the tenement can usually be entered from the adjoining building by way of the roof.

Inside, the tenements offer a depressing study in bad housing conditions. The hall is dark, the stairway small and ill-lighted; modern toilet and sanitary facilities in many cases are absent. The rooms are often infested with mice, roaches, and bed-bugs. The slender airshaft is frequently so inaccessible that refuse and rubbish thrown into it from adjacent windows may lie for months in a rotting accumulation at the bottom. A large proportion of the families are herded in flats containing from two to four rooms, which are very small and receive a minimum of light and air from their few and often overshadowed windows.

The number of rooms occupied by 200 of these families, as shown by the table given in the Appendix,18is to some extent misleading, for the rooms are often not really separate. Owing to restrictions of space there are rarely doors between the rooms in the prevailing type of tenements; only doorways; and whether these are hung with curtains or not, privacy within the home is naturally almost impossible. Family quarrelsor Saturday night’s drunken brawl too often take place in the presence of the children. Moreover, walls are so thin that every word spoken above an ordinary tone of voice is plainly audible through them to the inmates of the next flat. A social worker who was for a time resident here said recently: “In the first part of this month there were three cases of wife-beating in one tenement alone. This tenement is of so-called ‘model’ construction, has an exceptionally high rent, attempts to restrict crowding, and prides itself on an extra high grade of tenants. Yet the quarreling and brawling between husband and wife in all parts of the building seem to be incessant. It even breaks the sleep of the children and other tenants in the early hours of the morning.”

In homes like these it is scarcely possible for even the smallest families to live in decency. But small families are not the rule on the West Side. Of the 231 families for which information regarding the number of living children was secured, 163, or 71 per cent, had four or more children. Families having five children formed the largest group; and one family had 11 living children.19

Day begins for the housewife at 6 o’clock, or even earlier if she works outside the home, and ordinarily her children are up and on the streets by half past seven. For breakfast she usually prepares a quantity of food and leaves it at the disposal of the family. The members, as they rise, successively go to the kitchen and help themselves. The workers go to the stores and factories, and the children to school or the streets. Byhalf past seven the factories are in full operation, the stores are open, and the day’s work has begun. From half past eight to nine, the streets are thronged with children going to school, or sometimes to steal a riotous holiday on the streets and docks as truants. At noon they return to snatch a hasty lunch served in the same impromptu way as breakfast, and then the woman is left alone again to wash and cook and mend and gossip till supper time, if she is not one of the many West Side mothers who must go out to earn.20In that case, the household tasks must be done after she returns home at night.

Such is the average tenement home, abiding place of our West Side boy and his family. In a very large number of cases the family is a “broken” one.21

As regards ambitions and ideals, the word “home” may stand for anything from the thrifty German household with its level head for the budget to a down-at-the-heels, loose-hinged group of people who share the same abiding place, but scarcely claim the name of family. Of course, it must be remembered that this is a neighborhood from which the sturdiest, those having the lucky combination of prosperity, vigor, and ambition, have pulled away. They have shaken clear both from the ill-repaired and inconvenient houses and from the district’s reputation for “toughness.” Here and there a fairly well-to-do family has been held by the ownership of a business or a house,or because to be a power even in a block like one of these is more satisfying than to be second elsewhere. Others have stayed from inertia, shaking their heads over lax West Side customs, but on the whole accepting them with the acquiescence of habit; and naturally, on the level of the neighborhood, they have entered into its life and made their friends here. They will drift back after brief outward excursions, from sheer loneliness. But most commonly the people here are too strongly fettered to break loose; they are bound to these dreary surroundings for their lives.

Practically every family has rubbed elbows with poverty too familiar for comment,22or seen it close at hand among the neighbors in the house and the children who play with their own on the street. In many families poverty is a basic condition underlying their many catastrophes and the whole tenure of their unstable fortunes. Often the budget simply cannot be stretched by any system of economy to cover the requisites for healthy and sturdy growth. Such requisites become luxuries, too extravagant for many a child. Teeth and eyes go uncared for, nourishment is inadequate, and misbehavior may easily spring in the wake of this negligence; often it does. For none of these children is good air obtainable except in short intervals. And very closely associated with the moral indifference of many an adolescent boy are the noise and overcrowding within his own home to which he is accustomed from babyhood. Sleep in a stuffy, dark bedroom, with two or three other occupants, has atelling effect both on mind and body, and never from morning to night are these tenements quiet. At the very outset poverty destroys the possibilities of normal development. The tenement child runs his race, but it is always a handicap.

Facing these harsh circumstances is a set of women who, though intimacy reveals among them varied dispositions and abilities, have yet developed out of the common experience many of the same ideas and lines of action. To their share falls the heaviest responsibility for the discipline and training of the children. The father is in the background and may be used as a court of appeal. Or perhaps he is to be guarded against,—another source of anxiety to the mother, who assumes the difficult role of “standing between.” Among the more intelligent families he usually has a decisive voice in important questions as to school or work, and frequently he is the stricter parent, and carries more authority. But the day-in and day-out management and care is the woman’s. These mothers of the tenements are confronted by the same problems, and they conform to certain types which it is not difficult to recognize.

Very familiar is the figure of the well-meaning woman who has kept her own decency, not without a struggle, but has proved hopelessly ineffective as a mother. She is usually ill-equipped to conceive or enter into the feelings of an imperious, self-absorbed, and overstimulated youngster. Her very decency has often forced her into a dull routine with a gray, colorless outlook, out of sympathy with youth that refuses to accept the shadows of her own overworked and saddened lot. Many of these women came fromIreland as mere girls, alone or “brought by a friend,” to go into the drudgery of living out. Their working days began in childhood. Mrs. Macy drew her own picture: Herself a child of twelve, she started out to “mind” children. “I had a little hat wi’ daisies all roun’ the brim an’ ribbons hangin’ off the back with daisies fastened on, and with one hand I was hangin’ on to a hunk of m’lasses candy. I sure was childish lookin’ help but I held the job for six years.” Then came the marriage “to get a home of my own,” followed by those terrible first years of bitter disillusionment and wretchedness. “He’d leave me alone in the house of an evening—I’d never been used to that. I was frightened, an’ I’d cry.” Soon child came after child, probably with a quota early given to death, and with those who lived arose the problem of their rearing.

Almost at once the women are awakened to the menace of the streets which become their common enemy. “To keep the boy off the streets” is the phrase everywhere repeated, pitiful in its futility. For every contrivance or device is useless once the boy has responded to their lure. The “fixed up” parlor with its lavishness of staring rugs and curtains, its piano, the symbol of many an hour’s toil and ambition, or its phonograph, is exhibited by the mother with much satisfaction. Yet it crops out that in spite of these attractions Willie does not stay at home, and that only for severe punishment is he “kept up.” Or, where restriction is tried, a boy makes use of every sort of subterfuge in order to escape. An errand, a visit to a boy’s house, a club, even church, are thealleged destinations which really serve as a pathway to the “hang-out” of the gang.

If such competition with the street is futile when the family is comparatively well-to-do, what chance has the mother with no such attractions at hand? Her home consists of three or four dark, stuffy rooms, destitute of carpet, or perhaps with a frayed strip or two, and a meager allowance of shabby furniture. There is no space for a separate parlor. The evening meal, the one family event, is eaten in the kitchen, perhaps in cramped quarters where each one takes his turn for a chair. The very conditions which her own standards impose, the fact that she “does not bother with such like in this house,” has “no time for comp’ny,” or “never set foot in one o’ them silly shows,” cut her off completely from comprehending the excitement and charm of the streets to which her children yield so eagerly.

Some of these women have carried for years the burden of a shiftless husband. With dumb patience they accept their lot—there is always the fact that “four or five dollars is better than none, an’ it means a lot to me on the rent.” And when even this help is lacking, it may be “he did used t’ be a good man t’ me an’ in his day he’s worked hard in the slaughter house. He sez I’d be pretty mean t’ turn him out after all these years. He can’t last much longer, an’ it’s hard t’ know what’s right. Most every night he comes up here done. We have to laugh at him a good deal an’ so manage t’ get along.” A pretty grim kind of humor, this. In such cases it is well if the man is no longer there. Sometimes the wife has mustered all her power of decision and made theeffort to eject a chronic loafer from the home. “I talked and I talked for years,” said Mrs. McCarthy, “an’ he thought I wouldn’t do nothin’. I couldn’t put him away, but I got the judge t’ make him keep out of my home. ‘Don’t you never bother this woman,’ he sez. I had got to hate him so I couldn’t stand it to look at him when I heard him come down the hall to the door an’ me standin’ there over me irons and me tub.”

The bitter lesson of endurance so well learned, familiar as second nature, is repeated again and again with sons who are too lazy to work and depend upon the mother’s earnings for what they cannot get by gambling or stealing. Often her force is spent. She is weak, querulous, discouraged. To expect her to stem the tide of outside forces which are molding the boy into the nerveless or vicious man his father was before him is to ask the utterly impossible. Perhaps she will close her eyes, like Mrs. Gates, whose only son has joined a gang of sneak thieves but who maintains that “Jimmy is a good boy and never was no trouble to me.” In her heart she knows there is something amiss, but she turns a deaf ear to any hint of wrongdoing. Sometimes the mother admits everything, enlarging and complaining, but at the end sits weakly back. “What can I do? What th’ b’ys does outside they don’t bes aifter tellin’ inside, an’ I can’t be keepin’ tracks on thim all th’ toime.”

Approaching the “Gopher” Age

One Diversion of the Older Boys

In the judgment of such mothers a boy’s good nature makes up for serious dereliction. A fellow who is thoroughly “in wid de push,” according to her is “just wild like, not bad. He’s thot obliging and does onything I ask about the house.” Many a slip isforgiven a stalwart fellow by the woman who is feeding and clothing him if he brings in her coal, puts up a curtain, and does not “answer back.” So great in their lives is the dearth of common kindliness. When he takes to his heels, she confesses to “feelin’ kind o’ lonely without Dan around,” and nine times out of ten she welcomes him back when his spell of wandering is over.

Too often, however, this good feeling is absent and active antagonism and bickering marks the spirit of the place called “home.” The mother who from “feelin’ it her duty to talk to ’em though they don’t pay no heed” degenerates into the “nagger,” and so has taken the fatal step which makes impossible anything like affection or harmony between her and the boy. The result is always the same: the sullen fellow slouching before the querulous, upbraiding parent, resentful in every line, ready to jerk away snarling, or to flash out in a pitched battle of tempers, leaving behind bitterness, misunderstanding and anger. Sometimes this shipwreck is accepted with a Spartan quiescence; lifelong experience forces these women for mere self-preservation into an endurance grown easier than revolt. Yet the suffering is great, and these mothers, inadequate and weak as they are, form one of the most pitiful chapters in the story of juvenile delinquency.

But there is the woman, here as everywhere, who refuses to fold her hands, who is alert and decisive. She is not likely to be found in homes where the most stringent pressure of want or overwork is felt. Yet she is not of necessity the best educated or most refined. She is always shrewd, with a keen perception of theboy’s side of the story, but also with a very clear and determined perception of her own. Very likely she was born and brought up within a few blocks of her present home. But the experiences of her own childhood form no parallel to those of this generation. In her day everything to the west of Tenth Avenue was open playgrounds; truant officers were unknown, and an arrest was a thing to be spoken of in whispers. Still she has grown up with the district and has listened to the current gossip. Her first axiom is that no knowledge of a boy’s doings will come amiss; her second, that such information cannot be expected from the boy himself. Even among the best of women a system of spying is carried on, although the wisest do not make this apparent unless occasion demands, but quietly “keep an eye on that boy.” It may be a strong motive for staying in an undesirable block that “If we go, James’ll just be back here an’ then he’ll be out from under me.” They understand the fallacy of moving to separate a boy from bad company, unless one can go to a suburb, from which there are difficulties in the way of transportation to the West Side. When conversation among the boys can be overheard they “take occasion to listen.” “I don’t go out very much but I’ve me ways o’ findin’ out,” says Mrs. Moran, “an’ they know they can’t fool me.”

The amount of credit to give to tale bearing and complaints is a question to puzzle the shrewdest. It is an important source of information, yet “you can’t believe everything you hear.” The irate complainant who fails to get the expected warmth of support from maternal authority needs to realize that the life of the West Side boy is one continuous fracas with the landlord,the janitress, the corner grocery man, the “Ginnie” paper dealer, and the “cop.” Complaints come to the mother from all sides and are often unfounded. “I had him up in the house for playin’ hookey, an’ I watched them fellows crookin’ the bolognie off the cart myself, or I might a’ thought it was him.” Moreover, it is understood that a boy has a right to expect a certain amount of support from his mother. Her defense is natural, but she cannot carry it too far or a boy may lose all fear of restraint at home. One mother told of hearing a youngster boast, “Aw—g’wan—tell my mother—she don’t care what I do.” “And that hurts,” she said with emphasis, “fer a boy to give his own mother a name like that.”

Altogether “it’s no easy matter bringin’ up a boy in New York.” Truancy and cigarettes are issues on which many a judicious woman must confess defeat. She knows that surface evidence is not to be taken. The appearance of a boy at the proper hours with his books does not prove that they have not been “kept” in a candy store while the youngster had an eye on the time. Smoking is still harder to regulate, and though a youngster “don’t dare to do it in the house” few women feel sure as to what happens outside. One confessed to avoiding the issue. “I knew he was smoking a long time—smelt it—but I never let on. I thought he’d do it open if I did and do it more.” Amusements which can safely be sanctioned are hard to find. Pigeon flying almost always is frowned upon for fear of accidents on the roofs and because “them pigeons are the ruination of b’ys, keepin’ them out o’ school, an’ into the comp’ny of them big toughs as has ’em.” Every shade of opinionis expressed in regard to the “nickel dumps,” as the moving picture shows are called. Some believe that “them places is the worst thing that ever happened to New York, settin’ b’ys to gamblin’ and stealin’.” Others set upon them the seal of approval. “A b’y’s got t’ do somethin’ an’ I don’t see no harm in a good show that keeps him off the streets.”

It goes without saying that these families have no very large sums of money to give their children, but the wisdom of allowing a boy some spending money is recognized. It is, in fact, far more essential than in most communities, for here almost everything desirable must be paid for, from carfare to a ball ground to the highly coveted coin for a nickel show. Money is usually given to school boys in small quantities and for definite things. “If he gets a quarter a week, he doesn’t get it all at once.” And the boy must show that it was spent as intended. With the boy who is working, the amount he contributes to the household is an important basis of judgment on his character. If he works regularly and hands over his envelope, he may still have peccadilloes, but his main duties are accomplished. If, on the other hand, he is “wise” and “deep,” he will lie as to what he is earning and keep more than is thought to be his due. Or, all too often, he will scorn work altogether and his mother will be known to “have had bad luck with that boy.” The outsider often expresses pity for the child who must hand over the bulk of his meager earnings. But the moral sentiment of the neighborhood insists upon this duty, and with good reason, for the rearing of children is indeed no easy matter here, even when it has not gone much further than supplying necessities. Often theprice paid in weariness, pain, and ill-health has been sore, and the slight help that the child can contribute after the long years of waiting is the father’s or mother’s due.

Nevertheless, when a boy reaches working age, some allowance from his earnings is his by right, and it is this fact which adds to his desire to leave school early. During the first year, when the wage ranges from $3.50 to $5.00 a week, an allowance of 50 cents seems to be general. Occasionally, 25 cents is considered enough, but this is generally felt to be “stingy.” At the same time, “it is not for a boy’s good havin’ too much in his hands.” Sometimes he has $1.00 a week and buys his own clothes. Lunch money and carfares to work are, of course, allowed extra. Tips are generally accorded to be his own; it is a mark of high virtue to surrender them. A woman will tell with pride, “He knew I was hard up and he gave me his tips.” Occasionally a mother dislikes to have her son working in a place where he is tipped, because it is then impossible to know how much money is rightfully his. He can account very easily for the possession of a surplus. The amount a boy is spending is always a matter on which a canny mother “has her eye.” Any doubt brings the sharp question, “Now, where did you get the money for that?” If he is unduly “flush” he is on the borderline of danger, and her suspicions are keen. She knows that the temptation to petty theft is constant. As his wages rise his spending money increases, and if he still lives at home at the age of eighteen or nineteen he usually ceases to hand over his earnings but pays for his board. With this increased independence comes ageneral feeling that the time of subservience is passing and that “you can’t say much to a boy of that age.”

On the whole, this type of mother is lenient and broadminded, realizing that “you can’t keep a boy tied to your apron strings,” and too sensible to set up any impossible standards. But the wisest of them know—and rare and valuable, indeed, is such wisdom—that once a boy has passed the boundary line, punishment must be meted out in no faltering or indecisive way. “He don’t dare do that, he knows he won’t be let,” spoken with a certain emphasis, carries weight, and lucky is the boy who with consistency and firmness “is not let.” But on the West Side such discipline is not common.

Many of the mothers reflect the average opinions of the neighborhood. They are rough-and-ready Irish women who give themselves no airs and “don’t pretend to be better than the people they was raised with”; women with a coarse and hearty good nature, easy-going standards, and, if occasion demands, a good assertive tongue. As a rule, the burden of discipline sits easily on their shoulders. “Oi juist drrive thim out—th’ whole raft o’ thim,” says Mrs. Haggerty, blessed with eight children and four rooms. “Oi can’t be bothered with th’ noise o’ thim, Oi’m that nearvous.” These women are not necessarily “a bad lot” as the district goes, but neither are they over-particular. If a boy has no complaints from school, or has held his job and managed to keep out of the hands of the “cop” for the last few months, “he’s a good b’ye,” and any “wildness” in his past can be excused and forgotten. On the other hand, if he has happened to give “trrouble,” the chance visitor is likely to hear the tale from A to Zand, if the youngster has had the bad luck to be present, with a good, round scolding for him thrown in.

There is little delicacy or finesse about this discipline; it is of the hammer and tongs variety. In the vast majority of these homes, even those of higher type, the emotions rule at one moment with cuff and shout, at the next with a caress or a laugh. No consistency is maintained, and the clever youngster soon learns by the signs when to duck and when to “clear out,” just as a little later he learns the earmarks of the “dinny” and knows when to “cheese it.” There is a constant piling up of threats which mean nothing. When Joseph boasts of his gang and their glories, “What, are youse fightin’ with that crew?” Mrs. Dooley raps out. “You just better not let me catch you or you’ll get all that’s comin’ to youse.” But she can back him up as hotly and unreasonably as she berates him, and the ill-starred policeman who comes beneath the onslaught of her tongue and within the range of her invective will find discretion the better part of valor and do well to hold his peace.

But most tragic and helpless of all is the mother who has gone down before the vicissitudes of her life. She belongs to the scum of our cities, accorded no respect and scant pity, only the scorn of her more “decent” neighbor of the tenements. She may still be holding her family together, but is almost always weak and enervated. Their unkempt and wretched quarters, their nomadic wanderings from house to house and block to block, reflect her own failure. The father may be the “better of the two,” but without her aid he is almost always incapable of keeping their heads far above water. Often he is another of her kind, and both have become thevictims of their own habits. Suspicion and surliness may well be expected from such a family, for they have often much to fear.

Yet it may be that even such a woman as Mrs. Catesby, in her three barren rooms at the top of a rear tenement shack on one of the far river blocks, will receive you without questioning your right to enter and to share her confidence. Perhaps it is a latent desire for human intercourse, perhaps merely the spirit of simple courtesy, so universal among the women of the tenements. She is a slatternly little figure, dressed in a shabby black waist that scarcely covers her, with a tangle of frizzled red hair slipping over her face and held in tether by an odd hairpin or two. Her cheeks are pink, though the skin is loose and flabby, and her eyes are watery but clear and blue. An empty whiskey bottle on the table is a needless index to the chief interest of her sordid life. But although she may not share your opinions, which in her life have proved mere extra weight and have gone overboard as valueless, she is nevertheless very well aware of them. It is harsh to term her effort to play up to your standards deception; perhaps it is a genuine remnant of more decent aspirations. “If company comes it’s then I’m bound not to be clean. Now, don’t you look at the dirt in this house.” The dirt is of long standing, but conventions are appeased.

The picture of her life, her husband, and her children, which the woman paints for you, is colored for your benefit, and is not to be taken at its face value. There are plenty of evasions and falsehoods. Yet the poor shams which she raises to shield herself from your criticism are pitifully weak defenses through which mayeasily be caught many an illuminating glimpse of the dingy realities behind. Nor is her confidence difficult to gain, once your claim to friendliness is established. “Yes, once I was down to that children’s court. I was that frightened they’d take the children off. They was only ten an’ eight when they come in one day, Jenny an’ Paul, with a man I’d never seed before. ‘Good day,’ says he, ‘you’re Mrs. Catesby?’ ‘I am,’ says I, ‘but I’ve never had the pleasure.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’m from the Gerries, and I’ve come for the children. They’ll have to come along with me.’ I was that upset I a’most fainted an’ I was all shaky like. Well, I went out to call papa,—he had work that day,—an’ when we come back, he’d took them clear off just like they was. He’d even left their little caps, an’ there they was, layin’ on the table. There’d been a complaint, I found out, yes, a complaint about how papa was drinkin’ too much, but we got ’em back all right. Wouldn’t it been awful if they’d been took!”

Sometimes the family is broken up, the children are carried away, and the parents left to drink out the rest of their lives as they will. To remove the children may seem high-handed and brutal, but the reverse picture—the family left to vent its weakness and its vice on the plastic children in its care—is surely a worse alternative. Some of these women are known as “harborers.” They send the youngsters out to beg, and wink at their pilfering if they do no worse. School in their eyes, as in the boys’, is an unnecessary regulation and enforced by an arbitrary society. Evasion of law is part of their code, quite as much as is the “working” of any organization or church, which is legitimate prey if there is something to be gained. Beyond the calls upon theirchildren to gather coal and wood and to mind babies there are few restrictions. “Lord, I can’t be aifter botherin’ me heads over thim, lady, they do be off somewheres an’ ye can thrust thim younguns to take care o’ thimselves.” And take care of themselves they do, and quite effectually, until they have the bad luck to run foul of the police. Even then it is probably no very serious matter till Tommy gets to be an old offender. His mother at least is not worried about the condition of his morals, and can be counted on to give the most glowing character to “the Gerry man.” What need to fear the streets for him? Surely they can furnish him few sights more sordid and more impressive to his childish imagination and prematurely sharpened mind than those with which he has grown intimate within the walls of his “home.”

Truly they have a hard life, these West Side tenement mothers, and though many fail and many despair, from first to last the majority make a brave fight of it. When one is born to the lowest rung of the ladder and lives among people who seldom aspire beyond, existence becomes a difficult matter. How can the boy’s home be attractive when there is scarcely room to turn round in it, the family is large, and when year in and year out his mother is merely a drudge? How can his mother, under such conditions, hope to make the home rival the ever-changing lure of the streets? What time and mental energy can she give to her children separately, when she is struggling from morning till night to clothe and feed them? Is the child, produced as he is, so much her fault? Is he not much more a product of a situation for which her responsibility is small?

Replenishing the Wood Box

A Rich Find

Home conditions, the tension of constant quarreling,broken sleep, fear, hatred, and excitement, combine to break down the nervous constitution of the child before it gets a fair start. Little is known or cared about infant nutrition; there is no time to bother over such things. In many families not even once a day is there a regular meal or meal time. Father and children eat the same food, and the boy is accustomed to the stimulus of tea and coffee from childhood. Sugar comes from the grocery fairly clogged with flour. The coffee contains barley and other cheap ingredients. Cheap jellies and condiments poison him with their acids and coloring materials. The owners of delicatessen stores say in defense that it is not worth while to keep the higher grade brands for the neighborhood will not pay the few necessary cents extra to secure them. A storekeeper recently advertised a keg of cider for sale at one cent a glass. When asked for his reason, he said that the cider was so spoiled that nobody but the children would buy it. While he was making this explanation two small boys came in; one gave his penny to the storekeeper and received a glass of cider which he shared with his mate. Often the home food is not sufficient, and it is not at all uncommon for a boy to pick up at least one meal a day in the streets, leaving the house at noon and not returning till late at night. Crushed fruit and stale cakes and rolls are sold to children at half price, and the stalls provide candy which, like the staple foods of this neighborhood, is usually adulterated. But the boys care for quantity rather than quality. The mixture of glue, glucose, aniline dyes, and coarse flour which they eat would upset the digestion of children far better nourished than they, and most adults find it impossible to drink the soda water flavored with cheapcompounds which is sold on the streets. It is scarcely to be wondered at that boyhood on the Middle West Side is physically and morally subnormal; and it can scarcely be contended that West Side motherhood is greatly to blame for it.

If there is cause for wonder at the results of the home life of these tenements, it is wonder that parents do not give up more often. For here indeed it does seem that “the struggle naught availeth.” Perhaps they do not know how to give up. Their ethical sense, even their sense of life itself, is dulled or deadened by the hopelessness and squalor around them. The father’s struggle to meet the rent, provide food and occasional clothes for the family, and still leave enough for the hour or two at the saloon, which is often his only recreation; the mother’s pitiful, incessant effort to keep her dingy tenement habitable and her family together; to make one penny buy the groceries of two; and withal to keep up to some slight extent a decent appearance,—these things have left scant time or energy for attention to the moral needs of the children. So long accustomed to the dangers of the streets, to the open flaunting of vice, drunkenness, and gambling on all sides, they do not take into account the impressions which these conditions are making upon young minds, now and with ever-growing inquisitiveness seeking information and experimenting on all manner of things which come within their ken. Their very poverty itself aids in dimming the moral sense. Mothers frankly say they have no room for their children in the house, and it is nearly always true. They are between the devil and the deep sea. Physical and moral conditions in the home are bad for the boy; the street gives him morelight and air but is more dangerously immoral. In the face of so many apparently insoluble difficulties is it surprising that the parents’ attitude is bewildered and discouraged?

From the midst of this squalid and disjointed home life one fact emerges—that the recreation of the West Side boy lies beyond the power of the family. To look to such homes as those of this district to counteract the tremendous forces that play upon him outside is as unreasonable as it is useless. Wretched as it is, the tenement home has an influence, usually vaguely restrictive, and in a few cases wise enough and strong enough to help a boy who is “steadying down” and “getting sensible”; but this influence can rarely bear the strain of competition with the pull of the street and the gang. And so it happens that one type of mother—most pitiful because so near to efficient motherhood and yet so far from it—is perhaps the saddest of them all; the type that is fully alive to her son’s dangers, but realizes that it is impossible for her to cope with them.

Let us repeat, it is the inadequacy of the tenement home that is the greatest curse of these blocks. Its lack of space for storage helps to force uneconomical marketing; its lack of size and equipment drives the boy to the street. The mother is compelled to become her own boy’s worst enemy. She would gladly keep him off the streets, but the very conditions of her drudgery force him to them, and cut her off from the sympathy which she knows she cannot show him. Of course, the picture is not totally unrelieved. East of the tenements are the brownstone houses, and both here and in other parts of the district there are families which form exceptions of kindliness and comparative successin dealing with the problem of living. But by far the most of our boys would recognize their own homes and mothers in these pages. Dirt, frowsiness, dissoluteness, darkness, and rags—these are too often known to him from infancy. In the far West Side, home seems to be the one place which the children desire to keep away from.

[This investigation was made in 1909-10. Since that time great progress has been made in the children’s court of Manhattan. The failure of the kind of treatment described in Sections II and III of this chapter has been recognized by the court and a great step forward has been taken in the reorganization of its probation work. A number of improvements give evidence of a genuine and growing desire to make the work of the court more thorough and humane. These and other modifications will be noted in detail by footnotes in the following pages.The description of court procedure here given is therefore to be read with the fact always in mind that the conditions described are those of several years ago. The account has been included because the material relating to the court, while partly out of date, is inextricably interwoven with the material describing neighborhood conditions which are practically unchanged. The improvements in the children’s court have not yet had time to seriously affect the district.A further reason for including some statements regarding partly outgrown court conditions here is that they are not wholly outgrown in other cities. There are still children’s courts in other places which have no special children’s judge, where parole is used instead of probation, and where the records are entirely inadequate.]

The description of court procedure here given is therefore to be read with the fact always in mind that the conditions described are those of several years ago. The account has been included because the material relating to the court, while partly out of date, is inextricably interwoven with the material describing neighborhood conditions which are practically unchanged. The improvements in the children’s court have not yet had time to seriously affect the district.

A further reason for including some statements regarding partly outgrown court conditions here is that they are not wholly outgrown in other cities. There are still children’s courts in other places which have no special children’s judge, where parole is used instead of probation, and where the records are entirely inadequate.]

Theforegoing chapters have reviewed the situation back of the boy’s delinquency and have shown that his difficulties are deeply rooted in the whole neighborhood life of the Middle West Side. It cannot be denied that the courts are a necessary instrument in the handling of such lawlessness as we have found to be characteristic of our tenement neighborhood. But it must also be admitted that the unsupplemented efforts of a court of law, however humane its methods,cannot be the ultimate answer to our question of what to do with the West Side boy.

From the point of view of the neighborhood the children’s court takes its place among the various forces which influence him as wholly foreign. In the first place, the point of view of the tribunal is strange to his little savage mind. The judge is a sort of Setebos whom the little Caliban, sprawling in his West Side mire, both fears and scorns. In the second place, the court building itself is far from the district and beyond the range of his familiar haunts. After the boy is arrested, he is taken to the children’s court by way of the detention rooms of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In his own estimation he has made a notable journey by the time he reaches the court. His parents, too, view the trip to court as a considerable journey, which involves putting on their best clothes and the spending of carfare. It may also mean the loss of a day’s work and the possible loss of a job.

In order to make clear the experience of the boy in the court, at this point we must give a brief description of the growth, equipment, and processes of the Manhattan Children’s Court and its allied agencies. Later we shall examine some of the tangible results of this treatment in individual cases from the West Side neighborhood.

As a first essential to an understanding of the causes of arrest and the methods of the court, we must know the legal definition of juvenile delinquency. Chapter 478 of the Laws of 1909 provided that “a child of more than seven and less than sixteen years of age, who shall commit any act or omission which, if committed by an adult, would be a crime not punishable by death or life imprisonment, shall not be deemed guilty of any crime,but of juvenile delinquency only.”23The offenses, however, are still registered in the court according to the law violated. The clauses under which charges are most frequently made are given below. The number of the paragraph in the Penal Law containing the full text of the law is given in each case.

Besides the violations of the penal law, violations ofthe compulsory education law and of the child labor law are frequently the ground of complaint.

The list of offenses with which our special group of 294 boys was charged agrees in the main with those given above. The list of court charges24according to the number of arrests for each is given herewith for the whole group of 463 arrests.

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