Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/125

Rh fair?" (if it is in relation to a situation simple enough for a child to see all the bearings of) will be enough to make him choose instantly the right course. That is just what the first hour of freedom aims at giving—opportunities for seeing one another in clear and simple relations. It affords an excellent preparation, too, for the second hour when, to carry out the original idea, it might be said that a higher state of civilization is attained, and consequently it becomes necessary to build upon the simple fundamental law an apparently complicated system if justice and freedom are to be assured each member. It is soon found that the club (or society, to carry out the larger view of club life) should consist of members who not only are ready to comply with a general law, but who as individuals also possess certain characteristics. The wish to discuss these characteristics makes the first raison d'être of the business meeting. A few of the simpler rules of parliamentary law (which, by the way, typifies in itself almost perfectly the law of freedom and justice in complicated relations) are learned from Cushing's Manual. Officers are elected, and then the momentous question arises for discussion, "Do we want as members of our club boys who gamble, steal, smoke, or swear?" We can not wonder much that these are popular sports on the East Side. An overcrowded tenement house is not an inspiring or healthy place to play in. Baseball is forbidden, and running games are almost impossible in the streets. Roller skating and bicycling can not be said to have many devotees for obvious reasons. Thus boys of naturally fine characters are driven to stealing and gambling as the only fields in which to exercise their imaginations, and in which to find excitement and diversion. Of the reasons for these "sports" being wrong, a surprising number have never thought. However, in speaking in public before one's peers, it is possible from the moment the first word is uttered to feel ideas springing into life which one was never conscious of having had before, and to hear one's self arguing eloquently for some cause in which one had little interest two minutes before. The first attempt at self-expression calls together the hitherto scattered fragments of thoughts and impressions, and forms them into deep-rooted convictions. This happens all the time in the business meeting, when the necessity for making their own laws sets all the boys to thinking, and most of them to talking also. It is a bad boy indeed who will do very often what he has convinced himself is wrong.

After days of excited talk nearly every one in the club is ready to admit that it is wrong to steal and gamble, foolish to smoke, and vulgar to swear, and ready to make a law to the effect that these practices are forbidden to the members. The question of punishment for possible backsliders naturally comes next. The first ideas