An adventure which befell us on the second evening after our “opening” might have had very serious results. One of the club leaders was engaged in the front basement room with a group of the older girls. Early in the evening a gang of small boys gathered at the window outside to upbraid their sisters for not letting them come into the club. But they withdrew at a word from the “teacher,” who might have suspected such unusual docility, but did not. An hour later when the girls were engaged in their club occupations, there came crashing through the window a weapon seven feet in length, which proved to be a gun with a bayonet attachment. It struck the chair in which the teacher was sitting with such force as to chip the oaken back. As the gun was slowly drawn into the room there was much wringing of hands and a general desire to get a “cop.” The gang had promptly made off, of course, leaving the sidewalk deserted.
It became apparent that the small boy could do serious damage unless conciliated. Treating with him in the darkness of the sidewalk proved not to be successful. It was evident that we must bring him inside and examine him in the light. One evening just after the front shutters had been pried open by depredators who had then promptly run away, one of the club leaders went out to the sidewalk, closing the door behind her. Nobody was in sight. But she had only to continue long enough in a motionless attitude to coax these young animals from their holes. Presently a head came out from behind a stoop, and another from an area opposite. Soon several boys were edging along the pavement toward the solitary figure in the dark, and in a few minutes the whole gang had closed in a circle around the trapper. She led them up the stoop, into the brightly lighted sitting room, and called for a clear statement of grievances. It was all ready. “Say, ain’t no boys gona be let in never?”
The end of this council and of others which followed was that we gave Saturday night to the boys. Gradually, by this concession and others, we were able to conciliate the gangs. The worst of our troubles were over when they had been somewhat enlisted on our side, but there were occasions when the alliance proved embarrassing. For instance, one of the “teachers” leaving the club late in the evening encountered a group of the older boys who gallantly offered to escort her to the car. As they neared the corner she remarked hastily that she must catch a car which had just stopped there. Before she could get her breath, four of the boys rushed ahead, jumped on the front platform, and began putting on the brakes so that the motorman could not start his car. The astonished club leader found herself seized by the other three youths and hoisted upon the rear platform with a parting shove which sent her hurtling into the car. The hooting and confusion were intense, and the passengers stood up in alarm. The boys, however, stood genially waving their caps as the car started. When the conductor came to collect the fare, he said suspiciously to the new passenger, “Did you know them boys?” The young woman was compelled to say that they were friends of hers, to which he replied, “Gee, but you got tough nuts for your friends!”
Stories of the disorder in the neighborhood came into the house in many ways. For instance, it was vividly reproduced in the conversation of the “gentleman friends” of the girls, who were often our guests. This was full of wild Gopher gossip and stories of arrests. There was one evening in particular when Doran thrilled us all with a long story of how he had gone home early one night and was sitting reading his paper, feeling rather queer—the trouble was in the air—when a terrific noise broke out in the hall. A whole gang of fellows had come into the house through the door on the roof and gone plunging down the stairs pursued by a trail of officers.
At this point in the story, Cleaver suggested that Doran must have kept the door shut pretty tight, to which he agreed. Cleaver then accused him of being afraid, and recalled an instance when, as he claimed, Doran had shut the door against him when the “cops” were after him. Doran hotly denied this. The two ruffled spirits had to be smoothed and then the talk ran on, all about arrests and flights and pursuits. The whole conversation indicated how precariously near the edge of trouble these young men felt themselves to be all the time. It showed also the kind of lawlessness and rowdyism on which they built their youthful ideals, which lead in turn to further acts of lawlessness and rowdyism.
Echoes of the Gophers occurred in the talk of the girls. At one of the first club meetings, a tall, attractive girl arose and proposed as a name for the club, the “Gopherettes.” As a motto, she suggested, “Hit one, hit all.” This was Fanny Mayhew, who turned out on nearer acquaintance to be a wonderfully cheerful girl with a happy disposition and very popular with her family and school teachers. Though perfectly able to hold her own, she proved not so belligerent as the episode had suggested. She told a club leader that she had once belonged to a club of girls called the “Gopherettes.” They had paid dues and even rented a basement room for a short time. Later the club had moved to the dock, and she had not been allowed by her mother to go to its meetings.
It was unavoidable that the girls’ conduct should reflect the character of their environment. However, only once was there an outbreak against a club leader. Among the friends of the house who kindly volunteered from time to time to help with an evening’s entertainment was a young woman from another city who had, thanks to her own efforts and the interest of a wealthy friend, raised herself from the ranks of the girls who composed our clubs. On the occasion of this young woman’s visit with us, there arose from the room where she was engaged with a group of girls the sounds of a violent quarrel. One of the regular leaders hastened to the room, arriving just in time to prevent blows. Julia O’Brien had lifted her arm to strike the young woman who had come up from the ranks and who was, moreover, for the moment the center of a hostile, excited group.
The leader of the riot, led downstairs to the kitchen, became instantly repentant, and the story of the quarrel came out. One of the girls had stepped on Julia’s foot and she had exclaimed, “Oh, hell!” It was an unfortunate slip. Julia knew that swearing was not allowed in the club rooms and she was making strenuous efforts, as the leaders knew, to break a lifelong habit. But the young woman from the ranks did not know this and she had rebuked the guilty Julia in a tone of such cold and stinging contempt that it had not only provoked her victim to the point of striking blows but had drawn upon the tactless leader the wrath of every girl present.
A subsequent talk with this young woman revealed the attitude of offensive superiority which the girls had so hotly resented—an unfortunate by-product of her rapid rise into responsibility. A thoroughly self-respecting and deserving person, she had the peculiarly hard and unsympathetic attitude toward those who had failed to surmount their disabilities so often held by persons who have themselves struggled up from the ranks.
“Fights” among the girls were not infrequent. One unusually peaceful and happy evening, for instance, ended in open warfare because Barbara Egan, apparently with no evil intent, had asked Louisa Storm why her fingers were so crooked. No less painful was the quarrel between Mamie Taggart and Anna Strumpf, which was recorded in the following entry in the diary: “Tonight it was raining heavily but about eight or ten girls of the Wednesday night club turned up. Anna Strumpf sent word that she is not coming any more as she is afraid that Mamie Taggart will do her up outside.”