With regard to smoking, the little West Sider’s indulgence is entirely unrestrained. On the streets, with his gang, and often in his home, he smokes incessantly from about the time that he is six years old; though, of course, to a stranger or a settlement worker he will deny that he has ever touched a cigarette. A boy’s club in the neighborhood recently insisted that its members be allowed to smoke during club meetings. All of them said that they smoked at home and with their parents’ full knowledge. These were boys ranging from ten to fourteen years of age. In another club, a boy of thirteen said that it was impossible for him to refrain from smoking more than half an hour at a time when he was out of school. Other boys sided with him, saying that they simply had to smoke. By a vote of the club, however, smoking was abolished during club meetings. After that, this boy went to the roof or hallway to smoke at intervals during the session of the club. His was not an extreme case, although he smoked to greater excess than most of the boys. And in another club, which was formed away from settlement influence, it was found practically impossible to keep the majority of the boys from smoking. They were willing enough to vote to abolish it, but were unable to adhere to the principle which they themselves had established. A few parents objected on principle to their boys’ smoking, but they had not the power or opportunity of preventing it. So the cigarette habit is added to the boy’s vices, and the stunted, anemic cigarette fiend is a frequent figure on these streets.
In the same way drinking and intoxication come quite naturally into his life. Beer is a great dinner and supper staple in the tenements, and every day sees a long procession of women, girls, and boys, filing with tin pails to the saloon for the evening drink. Most of the girls make for the “Family Entrance,” though many go unblushingly through the screen door to the main saloon and come out a moment later with a foaming pail of beer. Others,—and this is particularly characteristic of the smaller girls,—ask some lounging male of their acquaintance to go in and get the beer for them. The deputy usually rewards himself by a long pull from the pail before he comes out of the saloon. It is astonishing, however, how large a number even of little girls and boys ten years old or less, walk boldly out of the front door with their pails. Almost every saloon has also its line of ragged urchins, crouched on their hands and knees on the stone doorstep, peering under the screen at the crowd within. Occasionally, on gala Saturday nights, a group of men will hold what is known as a “beer racket.” Each one contributes a sum of money, fifty cents, a dollar, or sometimes more, to a saloon keeper, who agrees to furnish all the beer they can drink. The party then retires to a convenient neighborhood roof, and keg after keg is sent up until the last drinker has succumbed. Usually one or more boys may be found with the group, overcome with drink.
De Witt Clinton Park
The only city playground on a bright Saturday afternoon
A Favorite Playground
The beer pail is frequently refilled during the game
Little attention is paid by the neighborhood to drunkenness, and among the boys themselves it is regarded as rather a joke for one of their number to become intoxicated. The worst feature of intemperance here is, indeed, not the occasional appearance of a boy intoxicated but the indifference with which the adults treat such a spectacle. At the last annual outing of the Tammany leaders in this district a score or more of unaccompanied boys, from ten to fourteen years old, managed by hook or crook to join the excursion party, which counted among its numbers many well known and responsible business men of the neighborhood. From the time the excursion boat left the landing to the time it discharged its passengers, on both incoming and outgoing trips, the excursionists were drenched in a torrent of free beer. Kegs were tapped a dozen at a time, and in pails, in glasses, in trayloads of “schooners,” it was rushed to the upper decks so fast that it sometimes went a-begging even among the hundreds of thirsty West Siders. Naturally, the small boys got hold of it, and on the way home a group of them with a gang of immature youths scarcely beyond boyhood themselves, sequestered a couple of kegs in a nook on the after spar deck and actually emptied both kegs. When the boat landed several of them plainly showed the effects of their revel, and one boy of fourteen was helped ashore by his laughing playmates, his legs reeling, his head rolling from side to side, and his eyes staring with the dull vacuity of drunkenness. Among the men, hundreds of whom saw this sight, not a voice was raised in protest; some laughed; some scolded the boys for their intemperance; most watched with cynical indifference, as though this were to be expected.
Thus it is seen that all these vices—drinking, smoking, ruffianism—come very naturally to the West Side boy. Even if he realizes them for what they are, he is ill-fitted to resist them. He sees them all around him from infancy; and, boylike, he makes them his own through imitation.