Childhood in the tenements cannot escape the smirch of its brutal and ugly surroundings. The open toilet where little children play has given occasion to the bitterest of tragedies. The corner saloon, without which no block is complete, is always, it must be remembered, a part of some tenement house. It impinges on the homes of 12 or 15 families. The halls reek with the odor of bad whiskey. Snatches of saloon talk and saloon laughter leak through the walls, even by day. Out of homes like this come girls and boys to go to schools from whose neighborhood all liquor selling is legally banished to a distance of at least 200 yards! Truly, our legal protection of childhood is in some respects a farce.
Allowing for great deficiencies, we have still much natural vigor and strength among the young in the district. This is not yet a spot such as some that exist in the London slums, pervaded with the taint of innate mental and physical degeneration. The parents of our girls were mainly Irish immigrants or first generation Irish-Americans. They came of vigorous peasant stock, and from a country which is, by comparison with the rest of Europe, almost free from venereal disease. We found that most of our club girls had a fair physical inheritance. Of a group of 20 who were given physical examinations, 18 were shown to have well-developed muscles and organs. Notwithstanding many signs of weariness and disease, they were not lacking in stamina. All the more for this reason should the girl in her adolescent years live under a régime which will conserve her natural energy. The chance for health and strength should not be thrown away. These are the years of nervous instability in which especially she needs rest, change, exercise, and the healthful freedom of outdoor play and occupation. Her chances for all these things are very limited. Bodies intended to be vigorous are hard used from the start, and during adolescence they are often strained and harried far beyond their recuperative power.
Almost every night some girl came dragging in with heavy eyes and cheeks dead white under the powder. There were complaints galore of weariness and headache. One great reason was the immoderate pace at which the lives of such girls are hurried on. Long hours of work are thrust upon them. Long hours of play are seized with petulant insistence. To wrap packages from 7 a. m. until 5:30 p. m. within the walls of a factory; then several times a week to dance until 2 or 3 a. m. in the stifling closeness, the noise and excitement of a public hall, is a not unusual program. The immature body is bound to fail. With the girl who keeps up her train of pleasures, only a rebellious season now and then, when she loafs and sleeps long mornings, saves her from exhaustion.
Another cause of discomfort and pain, often with serious results, is the prevalence of minor defects of body. They have gone without care for months and years. Practically no girl has had teeth, eyes, and throat kept in good condition. The group of 20 girls were examined for defect in scalp, nose, ears, throat, teeth, eyes, heart, and lungs. Not one examined was without defect. Of the 20, 15 had enlarged tonsils and five had adenoids; 12 had defective teeth; four defective vision; two were cross-eyed; three had spinal curvature; one had trachoma; and one conjunctivitis.
Two sisters brought trachoma to the house from an institution where they had been reared. Sarah had been cured by a delicate and skilful operation. Martha had been discharged without any treatment. She was one of the toughest girls in the club and least concerned about herself or her appearance. When she came to us she was “bumming,” without a job. In her torn and filthy clothing, with reddened eyes half closed with the disease, she looked the most forlorn and neglected of the underworld. For weeks we worked to induce her mother to give her care. “Thank God, there’s nothing much the matter with her eyes,” was the mother’s final answer after she had been warned that blindness was a certain consequence. And from her sister, Sarah’s eyes were re-infected. A case recorded in the group of 20 was also contracted from her.
These examinations were little guide to the most serious physical defects among the girls. Those most in need of care were most difficult and wayward about examination. The mention of a doctor dismayed them. Some who promised to go never reached his office. But a weekly clinic was continued through the winter. Gradually the girls gained confidence and a number of serious troubles came to light. Three cases of tuberculosis—two incipient—were found. The third, which was taking a headlong course, was checked and ultimately cured by sending the girl daily to a hospital boat. Two girls were finally examined and treated for venereal disease. It was noticeable that girls whose histories and habits left little doubt of sexual abuse were under par in general health. Undoubtedly this operated both as cause and as result.
Carrie Fuller drifted into the club irregularly for months. Her voice, her frown, her dragging slouch across the room all told of the absence of any stamina. She never consented to any suggestion of a doctor or of care. It is inevitable that such a condition should make continuous work impossible. She was in a cigarette factory till she “chucked her job.” When we saw her after several weeks of absence, we learned without surprise that she had left home to live with a married sister and “lead a sporting life.” She laughed a bit recklessly and shambled out, leaving only the wonder that she cared to come at all. Without bodily vitality, how shall any of these children live through the long working days of their youth? And, still more, how shall they resist the continual pressure of the viciousness around them? Yet many a girl is scattering to the wind the strength of her youth.
A group composed of 19 of our girls, ranging in age from thirteen to seventeen, were examined in a psychological clinic. Four girls stood above the normal in mental ability, 10 were normal, and two were barely normal. One was below normal, as the result of immoral habits, and two were feeble-minded.
In the full story, broken schooling, low moral standards, the brutal life of the streets, low housing, and physical inferiority all play their part in the coarsened moral outlook of the girls. There is a group demoralized even in childhood by the abuse of their sexual functions. There are some who fall into immorality during the first years of adolescence. For the most part, however, the girls finally slip into the established ways of marriage and family building. From such groups the children of the next generation will be born in the largest proportion. To society, as well as themselves, it matters a great deal whether they have been crippled in mind and body by a wretched and brutal environment.
Such a girl was May Carney, who announced one day to our consternation that she was going to be married. May was only sixteen and a victim of gonorrhea. She had been, however, perfectly “straight” for a couple of years. At the age of sixteen she looked upon herself as a reformed character. “I used to be pretty tough with the boys,” she said. “That’s a pretty bad thing for any girl to say of herself, but I’m over it now.” The physician had said that it would require three years to cure her thoroughly of her disease and had recommended a slight operation immediately. In view of these facts, we could only feel great concern at the news of her immediate marriage. One of the club leaders sought out her mother to remonstrate against the marriage and also to propose that May should go to the hospital for two weeks.