In the cultivation of plants the gardner considers the nature and needs of different stages of growth, furnishing the nourishment and care that will be most helpful just at that time. So in boyhood we observe various stages of development, whose natures and needs must be studied that we may properly provide for them.
It has been said: “That the home, the church, the school with their natural and uplifting influences have been responsible in the past, and must continue to be in the future, for the manhood and womanhood of this nation.” It is a well-known fact that the home sometimes fails, or there is no home, or one which the church and the school do not reach. There are times when even these have no power over a boy’s acts. A boy who violates the laws of the land is answerable not to the home, the church or the school, but to the State.
Crime among boys, in America, is greatly on the increase. The reports, official and unofficial, that are made public, of the per cent. of the criminals serving time in our jails, workhouses, reform schools, and even our penitentiaries, are astounding, and almost beyond belief.
How to check this is a problem of the greatest importance, and it cannot be solved without the hearty co-operation of every person.
Among the first things to be done must be the recognition of the power of home and our neighbors. We cannot live without our neighbor. Each home depends upon some other home; and when the boy leaves his home to go upon the street, he is at once overcome by the stronger power and influence of a boy of some other home, and, perhaps where the rearing and training was not good. The boy is a result more or less, of all influences and environment of the lives of his companions. Every good mother recalls the pang that came over her heart when for the first time she led her boy to school, knowing that her influence must be shared with that of the teacher. It is not long until the boy quotes his teacher, and sometimes in defiance, when he says: “My teacher says so an’ so.” And how many times we hear this from the boy when away from home, more frequently than the sayings of his mother. The boy’s school life soon begins to develop self-reliance, full of possibilities, of curiosity and questionings, the period of formation of thoughts, feelings and desires. And when a boy reaches that stage in his life when he is permitted to go down town alone—he at once begins a new life. And there is not a mother in our country but who makes this pleading request to her son as he is about to start: “Don’t go into bad company.”
It is on this line that the Newsboys’ Association, with all its varied interests and objects, through its many channels of work, backed with that true spirit of Christianity characteristic of everything that means good, with the aid of its president and its many working officers, in the name of God and humanity, aims to make the bad boy of the streets of our cities and towns good, so that the mother will not find it necessary to say: “Now, my dear son, don’t go into bad company.”
Let us all hope, and pray, and work for the time to come when there will be no “bad company” on the streets.