Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/870

 850 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

I have in mind at this moment a group of youths, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty years, with whom I have been intimately associated for six years. They came to me first as newsboys and bootblacks, but they are now all mechanics, or other artisans, earning each from one to two dollars a day. There are about thirty-five of them. These are the boys who, through all vicissitudes of removal and change, have stuck to the club, until they now feel that they have outgrown it.

For two years they have had a club of their own, self-sustain- ing, with limited membership, a constitution, and regular busi- ness and social meetings. The presiding officer this winter is a good parliamentarian, and the business meetings are, for the most part, conducted with a goodly degree of decorum, though debate is sometimes windy, and we are at all times liable to sudden, and to me perfectly unaccountable, bursts of hilarity that are sadly disconcerting, and seem always to fall like untimely frosts upon my most serious efforts. The members of this club, as I see them at the meetings, are well-looking, well- dressed, stalwart young fellows, bright, alert, and ambitious. I believe them to be the pick of, perhaps, five hundred boys whose acquaintance I have made during the time I have known them. They are certainly promising in many ways, yet even the eye of love cannot blink their defects. The cruel marks of their street- training are still upon them. They, will, I fear, never be quite rubbed out.

The low ideals of a cheap social life, the craving for excite- ment born of their childish privations and stimulated by the dailv grind of monotonous toil too early thrust upon them these lay them open to the temptations of the saloon, the dance-hall, and the low vaudeville " show." Alas, that it is so difficult to interest them in amusements more elevating in tendency ! Not less deplorable are the low political standards toward which their young eyes are even now turning ; for as they approach the age of full citizenship, the heeler and the boss are already getting in their deadly work. Many of them drink moderately, some of them immoderately at times ; nearly all are users of tobacco. With them, life is taken so lightly, so recklessly. They are still