Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/565

 REVIEWS 551

"has no responsibility in regard to the life of the streets," and in turning over to commercialism practically all the provisions for public recreation "at the very moment when this industrialism has gathered together multitudes of eager young creatures from all quarters of the earth as a labor supply for the coimtless workshops and factories upon which the present industrial city is based."

Miss Addams holds her real brief against society in the fact that "the mass of these young people, possessed of good intentions and equipped with a certain understanding of city life which could be made a most valuable social instrument," are left to seek out, in the bewilderment of the streets, their own means of self- expression, "where the whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it." "It is as if we ignored a wistful, over-confident creature who walked through our streets calling out, 'I am the Spirit of Youth! With me, all things are possible!' We fail to understand what he wants or even to see his doings, although his acts are pregnant with meaning, and we may either translate them into a sordid chronicle of petty vice, or turn them into a solemn school for civic righteousness."

In view of the wide circulation of this volume and that of the periodicals in which most of the chapters have appeared as single articles, we feel particularly grateful to Miss Addams for her frank treatment of the sex impulse and her recognition of the importance of directing and utilizing this fundamental instinct through the development of the imagination and the diffusion of emotion. She lays upon the adults of each generation "the im- memorial obligation of nurturing and restraining the youth," and of conserving "that tremendous force which makes possible the family, that bond which holds society together and blends the ex- perience of generations into a continuous story."

From the crowded tenement quarter about her she brings us some touching stories of the strength and beauty of family affec- tion, of "that wonderful love for the child, which seems at times, in the midst of our stupid social and industrial arrangements, all that keeps society human, that touch of nature which unites it now, as it was that same devotion which first lifted it out of the swamp of bestiality."

In the chapter on "The Spirit of Youth and Industry," the lack of connection between education and life is made responsible