The Boy and His Gang

THE WHARVES ARE A FAVORITE MEETING PLACE FOR THE GANG
J. ADAMS PUFFER Director of Beacon Vocation Bureau, Boston
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON NEW YORK CHIGAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY J. ADAMS PUFFER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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.
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.