“C—— gang fought with E—— gang. Everybody thought the E—— fellows were picking on the little fellows too much. We had it all arranged right, but there was a traitor in our gang. He told the E——s. We met in the middle of the ice on M—— River. Fought with clubs, sticks, and stones. There were about four hundred of our boys and about the same number on their side. We licked. One of our fellows got knocked out. Half of us got it on the arms. The ice broke in on the river and a lot of our fellows pulled the other fellows out. We did not like to see them drown. One little fellow on the other side got drowned. In close quarters where we could not use our clubs, we used our fists.”
This story reads like a fairy tale, but it is not. The battle was fought to protect the small boys of C——, as noble a principle in the boys as “Taxation without Representation” was to our fathers.
There is a great difference of opinion in regard to the pedagogical value of fighting. Many trainers of boys think that a fight is bad and should be universally condemned. But there appears to be no road to self-respect and social independence except for the youth to fight for his rights. The boy who refuses to fight, and runs away when he is being imposed upon, feels himself a coward. He loses respect for himself and the respect of his playmates. Non-resistance is, without dispute, an ideal for mature manhood, but there is grave danger of forcing standards of grown-up people on youths. More of interest in regard to boys’ fighting will appear in a later study of the boy leader.
CHAPTER VI
THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GANG
It is not easy to realize that it was only a single generation ago when we used to think that the animals are ruled by instinct, man by reason. We know better now. What was once the “new” psychology has taught us that man has more separate instincts than any other creature that breathes, and that however superior his rational life, it is still based upon a substructure of primitive instincts which he shares with the beasts of the field.
The newborn infant feels on his skin the air of a cold world, and sucks in his first breath without knowing how or why. He manages, the first time he tries, about as well as he ever will, the decidedly complex operation of taking breath and food at the same time, crossing the two streams in his throat, and sending each to its proper destination without confusion with the other. When the proper time comes, the child who has gone on all fours like an animal gets up on his hind legs to walk like a man.
We are all of us, therefore, man and animals alike, born with the particular set of instincts which prompt us, without our taking thought, to whatever acts are essential to our physical life. Some of these instincts are active at birth; more lie dormant, to ripen and manifest themselves only at the proper age, each in its proper time. The impulse to walk and to utter words comes suddenly, in babyhood. The mating instincts appear only toward the end of adolescence. Metchnikoff will have it that at the end of a well-spent life, an instinctive longing for death replaces the will to live.
The physical differences between boys and girls are strikingly correlated with a difference in instinctive interests. Brought up alike, in a hundred little ways they are dissimilar. I have seen at a children’s party, on the advent of a baby, every little girl leave the supper table to surround the new-comer, while every little boy kept on with his meal. Where the girl plays with dolls, the boy plays with bats and balls.
Among other divergences, the boy forms gangs. Girls do not form gangs. They belong to sets, and sets and gangs are quite different institutions. The set is exclusive, undemocratic. It has no organization, leaders, history, and it owns no property. The set snubs its rivals; the gang fights them. The members of a set also snub one another, quarrel, and backbite. There is none of the deep-seated, instinctive loyalty which the members of a gang have for each other. The normal boy may fight his friend; he does not “get mad at” him.