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 constitutes 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.
Games of this sort are also the most effective means of developing, through expression, the boy's sense of justice or fair play. And this sentiment will always be found strong and operative in him unless it has been overcome by the passion to win or by imitation of the bad example of certain debased athletes, popularly known as "muckers." Under proper leadership, the boy soon learns that the true spirit of manly sport is the farthest removed from that of the footpad and the blackguard. Appreciation of successful opponents and consideration for the vanquished can be made effectually to supplant the cheap, blatant spirit which seeks to attribute one's defeat to trickery and chance and uses one's victory as an occasion for bemeaning the vanquished. The presence of a capable director of play is sure to eliminate this evil which has crept in under the sanction of vicious ideals and through gross neglect of boys' play on the part of adults in general and educators in particular. The Decalogue itself cannot compete with a properly directed game in enforcing the fair-play principle among boys. It is worth something to read about fair play, but it is worth much more to practice it in what is, for the time being, a primary and absorbing interest.
A large part of the morality which is most obviously desirable for human welfare consists in bringing the body into habitual obedience to the will. The amount of individual suffering and of loss and expense to society due to failure in this struggle is nothing less than appalling. The victims of emotional hurricanes, "brainstorms," neurotic excess, and intemperate desire are legion. A nation that is overfed, under-exercised, and notably neurasthenic should neglect nothing that makes for prompt and reliable self-control. Lycurgus said, "The citizens of Sparta must be her walls," and in building up a defense for the modern state against forces more disastrous than Persian armies we must turn to the ancient device of the playground and athletic games.
The moral value of play in this respect arises from the instant muscular response to volition. Delay, half-hearted response, inattention, preoccupation, whimsicalness, carelessness, and every sluggish performance of the order of the will, disqualifies the player so that when we take into account the adolescent passion to excel, and the fact that 80 per cent of the games of this period are characterized by intense physical activity, we are forced to place the highest valuation on play as a moral educator; for this enthronement of the will over the body, although having to do with affairs of no permanent importance, has great and abiding value for every future transaction in life.
Indeed, the physical competency attained in athletic games has its reaction upon every mental condition. Many boys who are hampered by unreasonable diffidence, a lack of normal self-confidence and self-assertion, find unexpected ability and positiveness through this avenue alone and, on the other hand, the physical test and encounter of the game serves to bring a proper self-rating to the overconfident.