In order to reach boys and try to help them individually a movement is now on foot to form juvenile protective leagues in all parts of the city. One organization is now working in the vicinity of Halsted and Twenty-second streets to put a stop to race wars between school children. It is thought by some that this new movement will fill a long-needed want. It is admitted by those who have given the matter close study that something must be done.
The records of the Juvenile Court and the books of the John Worthy School emphatically bear out this contention.
Failure to Rule Children Makes Criminals.
What are you doing with your child's sense of right and wrong? Are you certain that you are not training a criminal, beginning with him at two years old? What is your boy at six years of age? Is he liar, thief—perhaps of insane ego as he was when he first toddled from his mother's arms? Inferentially President Roosevelt may have complimented you on the acquisition of a large family, but rather than this, has it occurred to you that the father and mother of one child, brought up in the light of wisdom, may be deliverers of mankind against the numerical inroads of the other type of parent?
Insanity is the mental condition out of which it is impossible for the person of any age to recognize the rights of others in any form. This insanity may be due wholly to the overdevelopment of the primary ego in the child. At one year old the infant may be a potential criminal of the worst type. It lies to the mother by screaming as if in pain in order that she may be brought to its bedside. If the adult should steal personal property as this babe steals food wilfully, the penitentiary would be his end. Angered, this same babe might attempt murder in babyhood, the spirit fostered by the same selfish intolerance that is filling jails and crowding gallows traps.
Respect Rights of Others.
Ego in the community life is the basis of all ill or all good, even to the dream of Utopia. The basis of all ill is the primary ego which is inseparable from the child until teaching has eliminated it. The basis of all good is that secondary ego which recognizes the rights of others.
Morality—good—virtue—all that is considered desirable in the best type of citizenship develop out of the community life. Even in the lower orders of animals a greater intelligence marks the creatures that live community existences than is to be seen in the isolated creatures. And this is from the development of the secondary ego which exacts rights for others.
The child has no knowledge of this secondary virtue save as it is taught it. The mother who, by responding out of a mistaken affection to every wail of the infant, encouraging all, no longer is susceptible to home influences in teaching the lesson. If this youth shall become entangled in the toils of the law and the mistaken parents intercede for him, gaining their ends in saving him from all punishment for his misdeeds, the boy receives through it only another selfish impetus toward more and greater offenses against society.