Modern cities have been built to concentrate industrial opportunity. They have taken their rise and form subsequent to the industrial revolution wrought by steam and as a result of that revolution. So far they have paid only minor attention to the conservation or improvement of human life. Justice, not to mention mercy, toward the family and the individual has not been the guiding star. The human element has been left to fit as best it could into a system of maximum production at minimum cost, rapid and profitable transportation, distribution calculated to emphasize and exploit need, and satisfactory dividends on what was often supposititious stock; and because these have been the main considerations the latent and priceless wealth of boyhood has been largely sacrificed.
The amazing and as yet unchecked movement of population toward the city means usually a curtailment of living area for all concerned. The more people per acre the greater the limitation of individual action and the greater the need of self-control and social supervision. Restrictions of all sorts are necessary for the peace of a community wherein the physical conditions almost force people to jostle and irritate one another. In such a situation the more spontaneous and unconventional the expression of life the greater the danger of bothering one's neighbors and of conflicting with necessary but artificial restrictions. Even innocent failure to comprehend the situation may constitute one anti-social or delinquent, and the foreigner as well as the boy is often misjudged in this way.
But on the score of the city's inevitable "Thou shalt not," it is the boy who suffers more than any other member of the community. His intensely motor propensities, love of adventure, dim idea of modern property rights, and the readiness with which he merges into the stimulating and mischief-loving "gang" operate to constitute him the peerless nuisance of the congested district, the scourge of an exasperated and neurasthenic public, the enemy of good order and private rights.
Hence juvenile delinquency and crime increase proportionately with the crowding of the modern city, the boy offending five times to the girl's once, and directing 80 per cent of his misdemeanors against property rights. In the city of Chicago alone the 1909 records show that in one year there passed through the courts 3,870 children under seventeen years of age, 10,449 under twenty years, and 25,580 under twenty-five years of age. But it is not the actual delinquency of which the law takes account that most impresses one; it is rather the weight of failure and mediocrity, the host of "seconds" and "culls" that the city treatment of childhood produces.
The constrictions, vicissitudes, and instability of city life often make such havoc of the home that the boy is practically adrift at an early age. He has no abiding-place of sufficient permanency to create a wealth of association or to develop those loyalties that enrich the years and serve as anchorage in the storms of life. He moves from one flat to another every year, and in many cases every six months. In such a kaleidoscopic experience the true old-fashioned neighbor, whose charitable judgment formerly robbed the law of its victims, is sadly missed. Formerly allowance was made out of neighborly regard for the parents of bothersome boys, but among the flat-dwellers of today proximity means alienation, familiarity breeds contempt, and far from being neighbors, those who live across the hall or above or below are aggrieved persons who have to put up with the noise of an unknown rascal whose parents, like themselves, occupy temporarily these restricted quarters--these homes attenuated beyond recognition.
A garden plot, small live stock, pets, woodpile, and workshop are all out of the question, for the city has deprived the average boy not only of fit living quarters but of the opportunity to enact a fair part of his glorious life-drama within the friendly atmosphere of home. He cannot collect things with a view to proprietorship and construction and have them under his own roof. The noise and litter incident to building operations of such proportions as please boys will not be tolerated. Moreover, this home, which has reached the vanishing point, makes almost no demand for his co-operation in its maintenance. There are no chores for the flat boy wherein he may be busy and dignified as a partner in the family life. To make the flat a little more sumptuous and call it an apartment does not solve the problem, and with the rapid decrease of detached houses and the occupation of the territory with flat buildings the city is providing for itself a much more serious juvenile problem than it now has.
But the industrial usurpation takes toll of the family in other ways. The intense economic struggle and the long distance "to work" rob the boy of the father's presence and throw upon the mother an unjust burden. To return home late and exhausted, to be hardly equal to the economic demand, to see the prenuptial ideals fade, to pass from disappointment to discouragement and from chronic irritability to a broken home is not uncommon. The boy is unfortunate if the "incompatibility" end in desertion or divorce, and equally unfortunate if it does not.
Owing to the fact that the male usually stands from under when the home is about to collapse, and to the further fact that industrial accidents, diseases, and fatalities in the city claim many fathers, there frequently falls upon the mother the undivided burden of a considerable family. If she goes out to work the children are neglected; if she takes roomers family life of the kind that nurtures health and morality is at an end. And just as the apparently fortunate boy of the apartment is forced upon the street, so the boy from the overcrowded old-fashioned house is pushed out by the roomers who must have first attention because of bread-and-butter considerations. Much more could be said of all the various kinds of neglect, misfortune, and avarice that commit boys to the doubtful influences of the city street, but the main object is to point out the trend of home life in the modern city without denying that there are indeed many adequate homes still to be found, especially in suburban districts.
A survey of the street and its allied institutions will throw light upon the precocious ways of the typical city boy. The street is the playground, especially of the small boy who must remain within sight and call of home. Numerous fatalities, vigorous police, and big recreation parks will not prevent the instinctive use of the nearest available open area. If congestion is to be permitted and numerous small parks cannot be had, then the street must have such care and its play zones must be so guarded and supervised that the children will be both safe from danger and healthfully and vigorously employed.
