Not all the “fights” were duels; some of them were petty wars of faction with faction. There was one particularly unfortunate evening when fatal “remarks were passed” and the deadly insult “tough” was used. The waves of bitterness were long in subsiding. The next evening a group of the girls, headed by Maggie Tracy and Clara Denley, appeared at the club wearing large stiff hair bows, some red and some black, which stuck out defiantly on either side. They announced that they had been called tough, so what could one expect? The club leaders began to muster their diplomacy and act as peacemakers, but the air was still belligerent when the opposite faction came in.
Expecting a repetition of the clash between the two sets, we were greatly surprised to see Sadie Fleming, the leader of the newcomers, go up to Maggie Tracy and put her hand affectionately on her enemy’s shoulder, apparently forgetting that a state of war existed between them. Sadie and her companions had collected on their way to the club the most thrilling gossip of the entire year. Father Langan, according to the story, on his way to give holy communion to a woman who was sick, had been attacked by a gang of Gophers. He had thrown open his coat to show the vestment of the priest, but they had robbed him of some money he was carrying and had left him stretched on the sidewalk!
This story was a nine-days’ wonder on the West Side, where, as a usual thing, deeds of violence are promptly forgotten. Father Langan flatly contradicted the report, but this had no effect upon the currency of so picturesque a story. Very likely there were other quarrels besides Sadie’s and Maggie’s which were forgotten and effaced in the mutual thrill over this piece of modernized Irish folklore. Mrs. O’Callahan was graphic, bringing together details heard from various other sources as well.
“The father was just afther going t’ give a dyin’ woman th’ Holy Communion. He was stheppin’ down the street when these fellows set in upon him. ‘B’ys,’ he sez, throwin’ back his coat and takin’ an’ showin’ thim th’ Sacrament which he had in his pocket, ‘d’ye see what I’m carryin’ here? For yer own good,’ he sez, ‘Oi warn ye,’ he sez, ‘not t’ lay hand on a priest,’ he sez, ‘an’ him goin’ t’ a sick old woman,’ he sez. An’ with that they hit him an’ took what money he had—twenty-six dollars he was carryin’, so they say. Oi can’t understand why the fire from above didn’t sthrike thim down dead. In Ireland, a priest there has only t’ stamp with his foot and they’d ha’ been sthruck down where they stood. But America is a bad place, it ain’t like th’ owld counthrey.”
When the youthful gang spirit of Tenth Avenue had been conquered it seemed as though the last difficulty had been surmounted. At the end of ten months we thought we had taken the measure of all the unpropitious influences that threatened our enterprise. But not so. We were yet to capitulate to the last and most powerful enemy of all—industry. First came a “dispossess” notice, and before we could get our breath from the surprise the house-wrecking crew were upon us. It was a simple matter to raze “471” and the adjoining buildings. In a few days they had all disappeared, along with the tiny back yard, where the children had played on hot summer days. On the site was erected a lofty factory building. Tomorrow the machines will be chugging away in the new shops, tended perhaps by some of the same girls who yesterday came knocking at the door of “471” asking for room to play. A neighboring school received the remnants of our clubs. With new conditions, a new environment, and new groups of girls, an entirely new start had to be made.
The observations given in this study of girl life on the West Side do not pretend to be extensive. No attempt was made to gather in numbers. We had 65 girls in our clubs whose home conditions were very well known.[65] But the study was written with much additional information in mind. Other girls came to the house and we were in touch in one way or another with a great many families of the neighborhood besides those of club members. The chief purpose, however, was to know intimately and sympathetically a small group of girls who were typical in many ways of the girls in any poor and neglected city population. As one writer puts it: “The alternative lies, not between knowing a few people and knowing all to an equal degree, but between scratching the surface of the whole field and digging a portion of it spade deep in order to gain some idea of the under-soil throughout.”[66]
How far did our groups represent the girl life of the West Side? It was a comparatively small number whom we knew, and the majority of them came from the “under-soil.” The well cared for did not come to us. Our girls were for the most part the daughters of the poorest poor. As a group they differed essentially from the types of girls usually found in settlement clubs and classes. Some of them were not of the best local repute. They were known as “tough,” and had been practically outlawed by certain settlements and recreation centers for the sake of the more promising element.
The settlement workers in the district repeatedly assured us that it was hard to hold the girls who came from our particular area and impossible to work with them in numbers. This testimony as to the unsocial character of these girls was sadly borne out by our experience in trying to organize them into clubs. There were many who corresponded to the description given by Dr. Katherine Bement Davis,[67] superintendent of Bedford Reformatory: “Our girls as a class are anti-social. It is very hard for them to see their conduct in its relation to the lives of those around them. They are individualistic in the extreme. They have never thought of the necessity for government and law, and can see no reason for obedience to anything but their own impulse.”[68]
But after making all due allowances for the limited number of girls studied and the “tough” reputations of some of them, the fact remains that these 65 girls and their friends were representative of many others who are subjected to the same environment. They had been brought up from babyhood in these blocks. Born in the crowded, dark tenement house they had had for a nursery the crowded sidewalk, and for a playground, the street. They had gone to the nearest school and from there to work in the nearest factory. They had seen the West Side, breathed the West Side, fed on the West Side for fourteen years or more, and had built up their adolescent ideals of the same forlorn material. That they had succumbed to unwholesome influences does not prove them to have been peculiarly weak or susceptible. Nor does it prove that their parents had been culpably delinquent in their duties. Conditions of living in the crowded city have tended to loosen the family bond, and the powerful force of neighborhood influence cannot be adequately combated by parental authority alone. The community must assume the responsibility for the environment of its least protected members.