——, President,
——, Vice-President,
——, Treasurer,
——, Secretary,
——, Floor Manager.
“Please excuse the writing. I was in haste.
“——, Treasurer.”
The appeal had its effect. The Wayside boys were rescued and there has been quiet in Thirteenth Street since. They have got a new house now, and are looking hopefully forward to the day when “near every boy in that neighborhood,” shall “come walking in” upon an errand of peace.
Most of the clubs close in the summer months, when it has heretofore been supposed that few of the boys would attend. The experience of the Boys’ Club in St. Mark’s Place, which this past summer was kept open a full month later than usual and experienced no such collapse, although the park across the street might be supposed to be an extra attraction on warm evenings, suggests that there is some mistake about this which it would be worth while to find out. The street is no less dangerous to the boy in summer because it is more crowded. The Free Reading-Room for boys in West Fourteenth Street is open all the year round, and though the attendance in summer decreases one-half, yet the rooms are never empty.
The wish expressed by the President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in a public utterance a year ago, that there might be a boys’ club for every ward in the city, has been more than fulfilled. There are more boys’ clubs nowadays than there are wards, though I am not sure that they are so distributed that each has one. There are some wards in which twenty might not come amiss. A directory of the local gangs, which might be obtained by consultation with the corner-grocers and with the policeman on the beat after a “scrap” with the boys, would be a good guide to the right spots and also in the choice of managers. Something over a year ago a club was opened in Bleecker Street that forthwith took on the character of a poultice upon a rather turbulent neighborhood. In the second week more than a hundred boys crowded to its meetings. It “drew” entirely too well. When I looked for it this fall, it was gone—“thank goodness!” said the owner of the tenement, a little woman who kept a shop across the street, with a sigh of relief that spoke volumes. Yet she had no more definite complaint to make than what might be inferred from the emphasis she put on the words “them boys!” A friend of the club, or of some of the boys belonging to it, whom I hunted up, interpreted the sigh and the emphasis. The boys got the upper hand, he said. They had just then made a fresh start under another roof and with a new manager.
Such experiences have not been uncommon, and, as it often happens when inquiry is pursued in the right spirit, the mistakes they buoyed have been the greatest successes of the cause. There has been enough of the other kind too. Any club manager can tell of cases, lots of them, in which the club has been the stepping-stone of the boy to a useful career. In some cases the boys, having outgrown their club, have carried on the work unaided and organized young men’s societies on a plane of in-door respectability that has raised an effectual barrier against the gang and its club-room, the saloon. These things show what a hold the idea has upon the boy and how much more might be made of it. So far, private benevolence has had the field to itself, properly so; but there is a way in which the municipality might help without departing from safe moorings, so it seems to me. Why not lend such schools or class-rooms as are not used at night to boys’ clubs that can show a responsible management, for their meetings? In England the Recreative Evening Schools Association has accomplished something very like this by simply demonstrating its justice and usefulness. “Its object,” says Robert Archey Woods, in his work on English social movements, “is to carry on through voluntary workers evening classes in the board schools, combining instruction and recreation for boys and girls who have passed through the elementary required course. Its plan includes also the use of the schools for social clubs, and the use of school play-grounds for gymnastics and out-door games. This simple programme, as carried out, has shown how much may be accomplished through means which are close at hand. There are in London three hundred and forty-five such classes, combining manual training with entertainment, and their average attendance is ten thousand. Schools of the same kind are carried on in a hundred other places outside of London. Beside their immediate success under private efforts, these schools are bringing Parliament to see the importance of their object. Of late the Government has been assuming the care of recreative evening classes, little by little, and it looks as if ultimately all the work of the Evening Schools Association would be undertaken by the school boards.” I am not advocating the surrender of the boys’ club to our New York School Board. I am afraid it would gain little by it and lose too much. But they might be trusted as landlords, if not as managers. The rent is always the heaviest item in the expense account of a boys’ club, for the lads must have room. If cramped, they will boil over and make trouble. If this item were eliminated, the cause might experience a boom that would more than repay the community for the wear and tear of the school-rooms, by a reduction in the outlay for jails and police courts. There would be another advantage in the introduction of the school to the boy in the rôle of a friend, which might speed the work of the truant officer. I cannot see any serious objection to such a proposition. I have no doubt there are school trustees who can see a whole string of them; but I should not be surprised if they all came to this, that the schools are not for any such purpose. To this it would be a sufficient answer that the schools belong to the people.
