Home life among the very poor in the congested districts of our large cities is often such as is not worth the name. The practice of taking lodgers which prevails among some foreign elements of the population, means the undermining of family life, and often the breaking down of domestic standards. (Veiler, "Housing reform," p. 33.) "Thousands of children in Chicago alone are being exposed to the demoralizing influences of overcrowded rooms, of inadequate sanitary provisions, and of unavoidable contact with immoral persons."
"Bad housing is associated with the worst conditions in politics, poverty, population density, tuberculosis, and retardation in the schools. It is directly related to many cases of delinquency of boys and girls, who have been brought before the juvenile court." (Breckenridge and Abbott, "The delinquent child and the home.")
Furthermore wrong home conditions result in driving children to the street. The child who finds no room at home to do the things that he wishes to do, not even room to study his school lessons, is inevitably forced into the street, "not only in the day time, but as common observation shows, until late at night, not only in good weather but in foul." Here he grows up, and is educated "with fatal precision." The saloon and its victims, the hoboes and their stories, criminals dodging the police, lurid signboards, a world of money-getting, all become only too familiar to him. Sin loses its sinfulness, and gains in interest and excitement.
Are we placing our attractive children's rooms, clean and orderly, adorned with flowers and fine pictures, where they may be readily seen from the street, where picture books placed in the windows may vie in alluring powers with the nickel-novel window displays?
The boy of the street may be a member of a boys' gang, and if so, this becomes one of the great influences acting upon his life, either for good or for ill. Mr. Puffer makes the statement that three-fourths of all boys are members of gangs. (Puffer, "The boy and his gang," p. 9.)
Those boys are fortunate whose gang is an organized body efficiently directed, such as the Boys' Scout Patrol. This, Mr. Puffer says, "is simply a boys' gang, systematized, overseen, affiliated with other like bodies, made efficient and interesting, as boys alone could never make it, and yet everywhere, from top to bottom a gang." Here lies an opportunity for co-operation on the part of the library, and many are the interests awakened by the Boy Scout movement which may be encouraged by the library.
Another influence constantly appealing to children of the street as well as to others, is the glaring advertisement of the moving-picture show. Moving pictures are now the most important form of cheap amusement in this country; they reach the young, immigrants, family groups, the formative and impressionable section of our cities, as no other form of amusement, and can not but be vital influences for good or ill. In 1910 it was estimated that more than half a million children attended motion pictures daily. (Juvenile Protective Assn. of Chicago, "Five and ten-cent theaters"—pamphlet.)
Is it not possible for the library to make permanent whatever good, though fleeting, impression may be made by educational pictures or pictures from great books, by co-operating with the picture shows, and being ready to supply to the children copies of the stories, nature books, or histories to which the children may have been attracted by the motion pictures?
During the meetings this week our interest in the adult immigrants and their relation to the library has been aroused and augmented, and it has been proven conclusively that the solution of the immigrant problem must of necessity rest with the children. The change in the type of immigration in recent years from a large percentage of English-speaking and Scandinavian races having a low percentage of illiteracy, to a leadership among races of eastern and southern Europe, with a very high percentage of illiteracy, has had a decided influence on standards of living.
These people of other lands do not adapt themselves to American ways as readily as their children. Many do not know the English language, they do not stir far from home or from work, and have few new experiences. "Many things which are familiar to the child in the facts of daily intercourse, in the street or in the school, remain unintelligible to the father and mother. It has become a commonplace that this cheap wisdom on the part of the boy or girl leads to a reversal of the relationship between parent and child. The child who knows English is the interpreter who makes the necessary explanations for the mother to the landlord, the grocer, the sanitary inspector, the charity visitor, and the teacher or truant officer. It is the child again who often interviews the boss, finds the father a job, and sees him through the onerous task of 'joining the union.' The father and mother grow accustomed to trusting to the child's version of what 'they all do in America,' and gradually find themselves at a disadvantage in trying to maintain parental control. The child develops a sense of superiority towards the parent and a resulting disregard of those parental warnings which, although they are not based on American experience, rest on common notions of right and wrong, and would, if heeded, guard the child." (Breckenridge and Abbott, "The delinquent child and the home.")