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Spirit of Youth and the City Streets - Jane Addams · A Tale of Two Cities

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  Speaker 1: Section one of the Spirit of Youth and the City Streets.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. The Spirit of Youth and the
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  Speaker 1: City Streets by Jane Adams, recording by Mary Schneider, Chapter one,
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  Speaker 1: Youth in the City. Nothing is more certain than that
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  Speaker 1: each generation longs for a reassurance as to the value
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  Speaker 1: and charm of life, and is secretly afraid lest it
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  Speaker 1: lose its sense of the youth of the earth. This
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  Speaker 1: is doubtless one reason why it so passionately cherishes its
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  Speaker 1: poets and artists, who have been able to explore for
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  Speaker 1: themselves and to reveal to others the perpetual springs of
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  Speaker 1: life's self renewal. And yet the average man cannot obtain
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  Speaker 1: this desired reassurance through life literature, nor yet through glimpses
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  Speaker 1: of earth and sky. It could come to him only
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  Speaker 1: through the chance embodiment of joy and youth, which life
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  Speaker 1: itself may throw in his way. It is doubtless true
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  Speaker 1: that for the mass of men the message is never
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  Speaker 1: so unchallenged and so invincible as when embodied in youth itself.
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  Speaker 1: One generation after another has depended upon its young to
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  Speaker 1: equip it with gayety and enthusiasm, to persuade it that
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  Speaker 1: living is a pleasure, until men everywhere have anxiously provided
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  Speaker 1: channels through which this wine of life might flow and
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  Speaker 1: be preserved for their delight. The classical city promoted play
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  Speaker 1: with careful solicitude, building the theater and stadium as it
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  Speaker 1: built the market place and the temple. The Greeks held
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  Speaker 1: their games so integral a part of religion and patriotism
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  Speaker 1: that they came to expect from their poets the highest
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  Speaker 1: utterances at the very moments when the sense of pleasure
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  Speaker 1: released the national life. In the medieval city, the knights
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  Speaker 1: held their ajourneys, the guilds their pageants, the people their dances,
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  Speaker 1: and the church made festival for its most cherished saints
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  Speaker 1: with gay street processions and presented a drama in which
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  Speaker 1: no less a theme than the history of creation became
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  Speaker 1: a matter of thrilling interest. Only in the modern city
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  Speaker 1: have men concluded that it is no longer necessary for
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  Speaker 1: the municipality to provide for the insatiable desire for play,
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  Speaker 1: in so far as they have acted upon this conclusion,
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  Speaker 1: they have entered upon a most difficult and dangerous experiment.
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  Speaker 1: And this at the very moment when the city has
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  Speaker 1: become distinctly industrial, and daily labor is continually more monotonous
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  Speaker 1: and subdivided. We forget how new the modern city is,
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  Speaker 1: and how short the span of time in which we
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  Speaker 1: have assumed that we can eliminate public provision for recreation.
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  Speaker 1: A further difficulty lies in the fact that this industrialism
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  Speaker 1: has gathered together multitudes of eager young creatures from all
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  Speaker 1: quarters of the earth as a labor supply for the
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  Speaker 1: countless factories and workshops upon which the present industrial city
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  Speaker 1: is based. Never before in civilization have such numbers of
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  Speaker 1: young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the
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  Speaker 1: home and permitted to walk unintended upon city streets and
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  Speaker 1: to work under alien roofs. For the first time, they
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  Speaker 1: are being prized more for their labor power than for
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  Speaker 1: their innocence, their tender beauty, their ephemeral gaiety. Society cares
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  Speaker 1: more for the products they manufacture than for their immemorial
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  Speaker 1: ability to reaffirm the charm of existence. Never before have
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  Speaker 1: such numbers of young boys earned money independently of the
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  Speaker 1: family life and felt themselves free to spend it as
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  Speaker 1: they choose in the midst of vice, deliberately disguised as pleasure.
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  Speaker 1: This stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize
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  Speaker 1: play has, of course brought about a fine revenge. The
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  Speaker 1: love of pleasure will not be denied. And when it
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  Speaker 1: has turned into all sorts of malignant and vicious appetites,
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  Speaker 1: then we the middle aged, grow quite distracted and resort
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  Speaker 1: to all sorts of restrictive measures. We even try to
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  Speaker 1: dam up the sweet fountain itself because we are affrighted
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  Speaker 1: by those neglected streams. But almost worse than the restrictive
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  Speaker 1: measures is our apparent belief that the city itself has
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  Speaker 1: no obligation in the matter, an assumption upon which the
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  Speaker 1: modern city turns over to commercialism practically all the provisions
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  Speaker 1: for public recreation. Quite as one set of men has
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  Speaker 1: organized the young people into industrial enterprises in order to
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  Speaker 1: profit from their toil, so another set of men, and
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  Speaker 1: also of women, i am sorry to say, have entered
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  Speaker 1: the neglected field of recreation and of organized enterprises which
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  Speaker 1: make profit out of this invincible law of pleasure. In
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  Speaker 1: every city arise so called places gin palaces are called
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  Speaker 1: in fiction. In Chicago, we euphemistically say merely places in
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  Speaker 1: which alcohol is dispensed, not to allay thirst, but ostensibly
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  Speaker 1: to stimulate gaiety. It is sold really in order to
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  Speaker 1: empty pockets. Huge dance halls are open, to which hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of young people are attracted, many of whom stand wistfully
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  Speaker 1: outside a roped circle, for it requires five cents to
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  Speaker 1: procure within it for five minutes the sense of allurement
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  Speaker 1: and intoxication, which is sold in lieu of innocent pleasure.
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  Speaker 1: These coarse and illicit merrymakings remind one of the unrestrained
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  Speaker 1: jollities of Restoration London, and they are indeed their direct
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  Speaker 1: descendants properly commercialized, still confusing joy with lust and gaiety
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  Speaker 1: with debauchery. Since the soldiers of Cromwell shut up the
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  Speaker 1: people's playhouses and destroyed their pleasure fields, the Anglo Saxons
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  Speaker 1: City has turned over the provision of public recreation to
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  Speaker 1: the most evil minded and most unscrupulous members of the community.
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  Speaker 1: We see thousands of girls walking up and down the
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  Speaker 1: streets on a pleasant evening, with no chance to catch
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  Speaker 1: a sight of pleasure, even through a lighted window save
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  Speaker 1: as these lurid places provide. Apparently, the modern city sees
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  Speaker 1: in these girls only two possibilities, both of them commercial. First,
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  Speaker 1: a chance to utilize by day their new and tender
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  Speaker 1: labor power in its factories and shops, and then another
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  Speaker 1: chance in the evening to extract from them their petty
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  Speaker 1: wages by pandering to their love of pleasure. As these
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  Speaker 1: overworked girls stream along the street, the rest of us
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  Speaker 1: see only the self conscious walk, the giggling speech, the
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  Speaker 1: preposterous clothing. And yet through the huge hat with its
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  Speaker 1: wilderness of bedraggled feathers, the girl announces to the world
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  Speaker 1: that she is here. She demands attention to the fact
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  Speaker 1: of her existence. She states that she is ready to live,
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  Speaker 1: to take her place in the world. The most precious
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  Speaker 1: moment in human development is the young creature's assertion that
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  Speaker 1: he is unlike any other human being and has an
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  Speaker 1: individual contribution to make to the world. The variation from
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  Speaker 1: the established type is at the root of all change,
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  Speaker 1: the only possible basis for progress, all that keeps life
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  Speaker 1: from growing unprofitably, stale and repetitious. Is it only the
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  Speaker 1: artists who really see these young creatures as they are
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  Speaker 1: the artists who are themselves endowed with immortal youth. Is
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  Speaker 1: it our disregard of the artist's message which makes us
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  Speaker 1: so blind and so stupid? Or are we so under
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  Speaker 1: the influence of our zeitgeist that we can detect only
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  Speaker 1: commercial values in the young as well as in the old.
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  Speaker 1: It is as if our eyes were holden to the
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  Speaker 1: mystic beauty, the redemptive joy, the civic pride which these
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  Speaker 1: multitudes of young people might supply to our dingy towns.
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  Speaker 1: The young creatures themselves piteously look all about them in
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  Speaker 1: order to find an adequate means of expression for their
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  Speaker 1: most precious message. One day, a serious young man came
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  Speaker 1: to Hull House with his pretty young sister, who, he explained,
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  Speaker 1: wanted to go somewhere every single evening, although she can
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  Speaker 1: only give the flimsy excuse that the flat was too
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  Speaker 1: little and too stuffy to stay in. In the difficult
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  Speaker 1: role of elder brother, he had done his best, stating
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  Speaker 1: that he had taken her quote to all the missions
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  Speaker 1: in the neighbourhood, that she had had a chance to
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  Speaker 1: listen to some awful good sermons and to some elegant hymns,
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  Speaker 1: but that some way she did not seem to care
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  Speaker 1: for the society of the best Christian people. The little
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  Speaker 1: sister reddened painfully under this cruel indictment, and could offer
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  Speaker 1: no word of excuse. But a curious thing happened to me.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps it was the phrase the best Christian people. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: it was the delicate color of her flushing cheeks and
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  Speaker 1: her swimming eyes. But certain it is that, instantly and
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  Speaker 1: vividly there appeared to my mind the delicately tinted piece
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  Speaker 1: of wool in a Roman catacomb where the early Christians,
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  Speaker 1: through a dozen devices of spring flowers, skipping lambs and
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  Speaker 1: a shepherd tenderly guiding the young, had indelibly written down
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  Speaker 1: that the Christian message is one of inexpressible joy. Who
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  Speaker 1: is responsible for forgetting this message delivered by the best
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  Speaker 1: Christian people two thousand years ago? Who was to blame
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  Speaker 1: that the lambs, the little ywe lambs, have been so
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  Speaker 1: caught upon the brambles. But quite as the modern city
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  Speaker 1: wastes this most valuable moment in the life of the girl,
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  Speaker 1: and drives into all sorts of absurd and obscure expressions
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  Speaker 1: her love and yearning towards the world in which she
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  Speaker 1: forecasts her destiny. So it often drives the boy into
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  Speaker 1: gambling and drinking in order to find his adventure. Of
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  Speaker 1: Lincoln's enlistment of two and a half millions soldiers, a
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  Speaker 1: very large number were under twenty one, some of them
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  Speaker 1: under eighteen, and still others were mere children under fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: Even in those stirring times, when patriotism and high resolve
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  Speaker 1: were at the flood, no one responded, as did the boys,
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  Speaker 1: and the great soul who yearned over them, who refused
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  Speaker 1: to shoot. The sentinels, who slept the sleep of childhood
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  Speaker 1: knew as no one else knew, the precious, glowing stuff
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  Speaker 1: of which his army was made. But what of the
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  Speaker 1: millions of boys who are now searching for adventurous action,
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  Speaker 1: longing to fulfill the same high purpose. One of the
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  Speaker 1: most pathetic sights in the public dance halls of Chicago
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  Speaker 1: is the number of young men, obviously honest, young fellows
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  Speaker 1: from the country, who stand about vainly hoping to make
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  Speaker 1: the acquaintance of some nice girl. They look eagerly up
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  Speaker 1: and down the rows of girls, many of whom are
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  Speaker 1: drawn to the hall by the same keen desire for
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  Speaker 1: pleasure and social intercourse which the lonely young men themselves feel.
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  Speaker 1: One Sunday night, at twelve o'clock, I had occasion to
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  Speaker 1: go into a large public dance hall. As I was
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  Speaker 1: standing by the rail looking for the girl I had
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  Speaker 1: come to find, a young man approached me and quite
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  Speaker 1: simply asked me to introduce him to some nice girl,
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  Speaker 1: saying that he did not know any one there. On
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  Speaker 1: my replying that a public dance hall was not the
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  Speaker 1: best place in which to look for a nice girl,
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  Speaker 1: he said, but I don't know any other place where
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  Speaker 1: there is a chance to meet any kind of a girl.
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  Speaker 1: I'm awfully lonesome since I came to Chicago. And then
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  Speaker 1: he added, rather defiantly, some nice girls do come here.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of the best halls in town. He was
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  Speaker 1: voicing the bitter loneliness that many city men remember to
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  Speaker 1: have experienced during the first years after they had come
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  Speaker 1: up to town. Occasionally, the right sort of man and
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  Speaker 1: girl meet each other in these dance halls, and the romance,
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  Speaker 1: with such a tawdry beginning ends happily and respectably, but
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  Speaker 1: unfortunately mingled with the respectable young men seeking to form
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  Speaker 1: the acquaintance of young women through the only channel which
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  Speaker 1: is available to them. Are many young fellows of evil purpose.
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  Speaker 1: And among the girls who have left their lonely boarding
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  Speaker 1: houses or rigid homes for a little fling are likewise
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  Speaker 1: women who openly desire to make money from the young
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  Speaker 1: men whom they meet. And back of it all is
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  Speaker 1: the desire to profit by the sale of intoxicating and
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  Speaker 1: doctored drinks. Perhaps never before have the pleasures of the
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  Speaker 1: young and mature become so definitely separated as in the
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  Speaker 1: modern city. The public dance halls, filled with frivolous and
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  Speaker 1: irresponsible young people in a feverish search for pleasure, are
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  Speaker 1: but a sorry substitute for the old dances on the
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  Speaker 1: village green, in which all of the older people of
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  Speaker 1: the village participated. Chaperonage was not then a social duty,
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  Speaker 1: but natural and inevitable, and the whole courtship period was
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  Speaker 1: guarded by the conventions and restraint which were taken as
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  Speaker 1: a matter of course, and had developed through years of
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  Speaker 1: publicity and simple propriety. The only marvel is that the
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  Speaker 1: stupid attempt to put the fine old wine of traditional
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  Speaker 1: country life into the new bottles of the modern town
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  Speaker 1: does not lead to disaster oftener than it does, and
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  Speaker 1: that the wine so long remains pure and sparkling. We
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  Speaker 1: cannot afford to be ungenerous to the city in which
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  Speaker 1: we live without suffering the penalty which lack of fair
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  Speaker 1: interpretation always entails. Let us know the modern city in
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  Speaker 1: its weakness and wickedness, and then seek to rectify and
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  Speaker 1: purify it, until it shall be free, at least from
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  Speaker 1: the grosser temptations which now beset the young people who
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  Speaker 1: are living in its tenement houses and working in its factories.
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  Speaker 1: The mass of these young people are possessed of good intentions,
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  Speaker 1: and they are equipped with a certain understanding of city life.
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  Speaker 1: This itself could be made a most valuable social instrument
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  Speaker 1: towards securing innocent recreation and better social organization. They are
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  Speaker 1: already serving the city in so far as it is
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  Speaker 1: honeycombed with mutual benefit societies, with pleasure clubs, with organizations
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  Speaker 1: connected with churches, and factories which are filling a genuine
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  Speaker 1: social need. And yet the whole apparatus for supplying pleasure
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  Speaker 1: is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomever may
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  Speaker 1: approach it. Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers.
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  Speaker 1: We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have
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  Speaker 1: come to the city from farms, or who have emigrated
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  Speaker 1: from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers. We
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  Speaker 1: cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to conventions
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  Speaker 1: which are totally unsuited to modern city conditions, nor yet
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  Speaker 1: to be equal to the task of forming new conventions
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  Speaker 1: through which this more agglomerate social life may express itself.
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  Speaker 1: Above all, we cannot hope that they will understand and
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  Speaker 1: the emotional force which seizes them, and which, when it
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  Speaker 1: does not find the traditional line of domesticity, serves as
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  Speaker 1: a cancer in the very tissues of society, and as
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  Speaker 1: a disruptor of the securest social bonds. No attempt is
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  Speaker 1: made to treat the manifestations of this fundamental instinct with
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  Speaker 1: dignity or to give it possible social utility. The spontaneous joy,
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  Speaker 1: the clamor for pleasure, the desire of the young people
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  Speaker 1: to appear finer and better and altogether more lovely than
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  Speaker 1: they really are. The idealization not only of each other,
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  Speaker 1: but of the whole earth, which they regard but as
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  Speaker 1: a theater for their noble exploits the unworldly ambitions, the
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  Speaker 1: romantic hopes, the make believe world in which they live,
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  Speaker 1: If properly utilized, what might they not do to make
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  Speaker 1: our sordid cities more beautiful, more companionable. And yet, at
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  Speaker 1: the present moment every city is full of young people
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  Speaker 1: who are utterly bewildered and uninstructed in regard to the
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  Speaker 1: basic exctens experience which must inevitably come to them, and
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  Speaker 1: which has varied remote and indirect expressions. Even those who
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  Speaker 1: may not agree with the authorities, who claim that it
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  Speaker 1: is this fundamental sex susceptibility which suffuses the world with
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  Speaker 1: its deepest meaning and beauty, and furnishes the momentum towards
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  Speaker 1: all art, will perhaps permit me to quote the classical
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  Speaker 1: expression of this view has set forth in that ancient
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  Speaker 1: and wonderful conversation between Socrates and the wise woman Diotoma.
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  Speaker 1: Socrates asks, what are they doing who show all this
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  Speaker 1: eagerness and heat which is called love? And what is
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  Speaker 1: the object they have in view? Answer me, Diotema replies,
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  Speaker 1: I will teach you. The object which they have in
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  Speaker 1: view is birth in beauty, whether of body or soul.
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  Speaker 1: For love, Socrates is not as you imagine, the love
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  Speaker 1: of the beauty only, but the love of birth in beauty,
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  Speaker 1: because to the mortal creature, your generation is a sort
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  Speaker 1: of eternity and immortality. To emphasize the eternal aspects of
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  Speaker 1: love is not, of course, an easy undertaking, even if
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  Speaker 1: we follow the clue afforded by the heart of every
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  Speaker 1: generous lover, his experience, at least in certain moments, tends
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  Speaker 1: to pull him on and out from passion for one,
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  Speaker 1: to an enthusiasm for that highest beauty and excellence, of
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  Speaker 1: which the most perfect form is but an inadequate expression.
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  Speaker 1: Even the most loutish tenement house youth vaguely feels this,
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  Speaker 1: and at least at rare intervals, reveals it. In his
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  Speaker 1: talk to his girl, his memory unexpectedly brings hidden treasures
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  Speaker 1: to the surface of consciousness, and he recalls the more
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  Speaker 1: delicate and tender experiences of his childhood and earlier youth.
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  Speaker 1: I remember the time when my little sister died that
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  Speaker 1: I wrote out of the cemetery, feeling like everybody in
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  Speaker 1: Chicago had moved away from the town to make room
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  Speaker 1: for that kid's funeral. Everything was so darn lonesome, and
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  Speaker 1: yet it was kind of peaceful too, or quote. I
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  Speaker 1: never had a chance to go into the country when
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  Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I remember one day when
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  Speaker 1: I had to deliver a package out on the west side,
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  Speaker 1: that I saw a flock of sheep in Douglas Park.
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  Speaker 1: I had never thought that a sheep could be anywhere
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  Speaker 1: but in a picture. And when I saw those big
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  Speaker 1: white spots on the green grass beginning to move and
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  Speaker 1: to turn into sheep, I felt exactly as if Saint
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  Speaker 1: Cecilia had come out of her frame over the organ
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  Speaker 1: and was walking in the park. Such moments come into
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  Speaker 1: the life of most prosaic youth living in the most
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  Speaker 1: prouded quarters of the cities. What do we do to
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  Speaker 1: encourage and to solidify these moments, to make them come
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  Speaker 1: true in our dingy towns, to give them expression in
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  Speaker 1: forms of art. We not only fail in this undertaking,
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  Speaker 1: but even debase existing forms of art. We are informed
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  Speaker 1: by high authority that there is nothing in the environment
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  Speaker 1: to which youth so keenly responds as to music. And
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  Speaker 1: yet the streets, the vaudeville shows, the five cent theaters
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  Speaker 1: are full of the most blatant and vulgar songs. The
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  Speaker 1: trivial and obscene words. The meaningless and flippant airs run
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  Speaker 1: through the heads of hundreds of young people for hours
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  Speaker 1: at a time while they are engaged in monotonous factory work.
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  Speaker 1: We totally ignore that ancient connection between music and morals,
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  Speaker 1: which was so long insisted upon by philosophers as well
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  Speaker 1: as poets. The street music has quite broken away from
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  Speaker 1: all control, both of the educator and the patriot, and
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  Speaker 1: we have grown singularly careless in regard to its influence
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  Speaker 1: upon young people. Although we legislate against it in saloons
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  Speaker 1: because of its dangerous influence there, we constantly permit music
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  Speaker 1: in the street to incite that which should be controlled,
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  Speaker 1: to degrade that which should be exalted, to make sensuists
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  Speaker 1: that which might be lifted into the realm of the
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  Speaker 1: higher imagination. Our attitude towards music is typical of our
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  Speaker 1: carelessness towards all those things which make for common joy
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  Speaker 1: and for the restraints of higher civilization. On the streets,
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  Speaker 1: it is as if our cities had not yet developed
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  Speaker 1: a sense of responsibility in regard to the life of
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  Speaker 1: the streets, and continually forget that recreation is stronger than vice,
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  Speaker 1: and that recreation alone can stifle the lust for vice.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Perhaps we need to take a page from the philosophy
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: of the Greeks, to whom the world of fact was
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: also the world of the ideal, and to whom the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: realization of what ought to be involved not the destruction
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: of what was, but merely its perfecting upon its own lines.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: To the Greeks, virtue was not a hard conformity to
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: a law felt as alien to the natural character, but
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a free expression of the inner life. To treat thus
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the fundamental susceptibility of sex, which now so bewilders the
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: street life and drives young people themselves into all sorts
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of difficulties, would mean to loosen it from the things
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: of sense, and to link it to the affairs of
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the imagination. It would mean to fit to this gross
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: and heavy stuff the wings of the mind, to scatter
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: from it the clinging mud of banality and vulgarity, and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: to speed it on through our city streets amid spontaneous laughter,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: snatches of lyric song, the recovered forms of old dances,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and their traditional rondels of merry games. It would thus
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: bring charm and beauty to the prosaic city, and connect
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it subtly with the arts of the past as well
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: as with the vigor and renewed life of the future.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: End of chapter one, Section two of the Spirit of
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Youth and the City Streets. This LibriVox recording is in
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the public domain. The Spirit of Youth and the City
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Streets by Jane Adams read by Mary Schneider, Chapter two,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: The Wrecked Foundations of domesticity. Since with keenest edge unused
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: yet unstealed by scathing fire, lovely feet as yet unbruised,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: on the ways of dark desire, These words, written by
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a poet to his young son, expressed the longing which
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: has at times seized all of us to guard youth
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: from the mass of difficulties, which may be traced to
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the obscure manifestation of that fundamental susceptibility of which we
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: are all slow to speak, and concerning which we evade
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: public responsibility. Although it brings its scores of victims into
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: the police courts every morning. At the very outset, we
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: must bear in mind that the senses of youth are
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: singularly acute and ready to respond to every vivid appeal.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: We know that nature herself has sharpened the senses for
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: her her own purposes, and is deliberately establishing a connection
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: between them and the newly awakened susceptibility of sex. For
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: it is only through the outward senses that the selection
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of an individual maid is made and the instinct utilized
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: for nature's purposes. It would seem, however, that Nature was
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: determined that the force and constancy of the instinct must
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: make up for its lack of precision, and that she
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: was totally unconcerned that this instinct ruthlessly seized the youth
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: at the moment when he was least prepared to cope
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: with it, not only because his powers of self control
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: and discrimination are unequal to the task, but because his
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: senses are helplessly wide open to the world. These early
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: manifestations of the sex susceptibility are for the most part
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: vague and formless, and are absolutely without definition to the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: youth himself. Sometimes months and years elapse before the individual
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: maid is so and determined upon, and during the time
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: when the differentiation is not complete, and it often is not,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: there is of necessity a great deal of groping and waste.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: The period of groping is complicated by the fact that
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the youth's power for appreciating is far ahead of his
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: ability for expression. The inner traffic fairly obstructs the outer current,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and it is nothing short of cruelty to overstimulate his senses,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: as does the modern city. This period is difficult everywhere,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: but it seems at times as if a great city
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: almost deliberately increased its perils. The newly awakened senses are
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: appealed to by all that is gaudy and sensual, by
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: the flippant street music, the highly colored theater posters, the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: trashy love stories, the feathered hats, the cheap heroics of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the revolvers displayed in the pawn shop windows. This fundamental
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: susceptibility is thus evoked without a corresponding stir of the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: higher imagination, and the result is as dangerous as possible.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: We are told upon good authority that quote, if the
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: imagination is retarded while the senses remain awake, we have
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: a state of esthetic insensibility end quote. In other words,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the senses become sodden and cannot be lifted from the ground.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: It is this state of esthetic insensibility into which we
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: allow the youth to fall, which is so distressing and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: so unjustifiable. Sex impulse then becomes merely a dumb and
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: powerful instinct, without in the least awakening the imagination or
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the heart, nor does it overflow into neighboring fields of consciousness.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Every city contains hundreds of degenerates who have been overmastered
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and borne down by it. They fill the casual lodging
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: houses and the infirmaries. In many instances, it has pushed
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: men of ability and promise to the bottom of the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: social scale. Warner, in his American Charities, designates it as
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: one of the steady forces making for failure and poverty,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and contends that quote the inherent uncleanness of their minds
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: prevents many men from rising above the rank of day laborers,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and finally incapacitates them even for that position. He also
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: suggests that the modern man has a stronger imagination than
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the man of a few hundred years ago, and that
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: sensuality destroys him the more rapidly. It is difficult to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: state how much evil and distress might be averted if
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the imagination were utilized in its higher capacities through the
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: historic paths. An English moralist has lately asserted that much
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: of the evil of the time may be traced to
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: outraged imagination. It is the strongest quality of the brain,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and it is starved. Children from their earliest years are
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: hedged in with facts. They are not trained to use
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: their mind on the unseen. In failing to diffuse and
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: utilize this fundamental instinct of sex through the imagination, we
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: not only inadvertently foster vice and enervation, but we throw
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: away one of the most precious implements for ministering to
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: life's highest needs. There is no doubt that this ill
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: adjusted function consumes quite unnecessarily vast stores of vital energy,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: even when we contemplated in its immature manifestations, which are
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: infinitely more wholesome than the dumb swamping process. Every high
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: school boy and girl knows the difference between the concentration
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: and the diffusion of this impulse. Although they would be
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: hopelessly bewildered by the use of the terms, they will
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: declare one of their companions to be in love if
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: his fancy is occupied by the image of a single
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: person about whom all the newly found values gather, and
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: without whom his solitude is in each teal melancholy. But
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: if the stimulus does not appear as a definite image,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and the values evoked are dispensed over the world. The
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: young person suddenly seems to have discovered a beauty and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: significance in many things. He responds to poetry, he becomes
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: a lover of nature, He is filled with religious devotion
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: or with philanthropic zeal. Experience with young people easily illustrates
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the possibility and value of diffusion. It is neither a
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: short nor an easy undertaking to substitute the love of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: beauty for mere desire to place the mind above the senses.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: But is not this the sum of the immemorial obligation
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: which rests upon the adults of each generation if they
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: would nurture and restrain the youth. And has not the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: whole history of civilization been but one long effort to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: substitute psychic impulsion for the driving force of blind appetite.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Society has recognize the imitative play impulse of children, and
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: provides them with tiny bricks with which to build a house,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and dolls upon which they may lavish their tenderness. We
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: exalt the love of the mother and the stability of
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the home, But in regard to those difficult years between childhood,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and maturity. We beg the question, and unless we repress,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: we do nothing. We are so timid and inconsistent that
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: although we declare the home to be the foundation of society,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: we do nothing to direct the force upon which the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: continuity of the home depends. And yet, no one who
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: has lived for years in a crowded quarter, where men,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: women and children constantly jostle each other and press upon
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: every inch of space in shop, tenement and street, nothing
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: is more impressive than the strength, the continuity, the varied
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and powerful manifestations of family affection. It goes without saying.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Every tenement house contains women who, for years spend their
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: hurried days in preparing food and clothing, and pass their
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: sleepless nights in tending and nursing their exigent children, with
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: never one thought for their own comfort, or pleasure or development,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: save as these may be connected with the future of
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: their families. We all know, as a matter of course
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: that every shop is crowded with working men, who year
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: after year spend all of their wages upon the nurture
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: and education of their children, reserving for themselves but the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: shabbiest clothing and a crowded place at the family table.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Bad weather for you to be out in, you remark
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: on a February evening as you meet rheumatic mister s
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: hobbling home through the freezing sleet without an overcoat. Yes
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: it is bad, he hassents, But I've walked to work
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: all this last year. We've sent the oldest boy back
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: to high school, you know, and he moves on with
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: no thought that he is doing other than fulfilling the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: ordinary lot of the ordinary man. These are the familiar
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and the constant manifestations of family affection, which are so
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: intimate a part of life that we scarcely observe them.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: In addition to these, we find peculiar manifestations of family devotion,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: exemplifying that touching affection which rises to unusual sacrifice because
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: it is close to pity and feebleness. Quote. My cousin
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and his family had to go back to Italy. He
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: got to Ellis Island with his wife and five children,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: but they wouldn't let in the feeble minded boy, so
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: of course they all went back with him. My cousin
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: was fearful, disappointed or quote these are the five children
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: of my brother. He and his wife, my father and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: mother were all done for in the bad time at Kishineff.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: It's up to me, all right to take care of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the kids, and I'd no more go back on them
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: than I would on my own or again quote, yes,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: I have seven children of my own. My husband died
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: when Tim was born. The other three children belong to
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: my sister, who died the year after my husband. I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: get on pretty well. I scrub in a factory every
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: night six to twelve and go out washing four days
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: a week. So far the children have all gone through
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the eighth grade before they quit school. She concludes, beaming
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: with pride and joy. That wonderful devotion to the child seems,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: at times, in the midst of our stupid social and
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: industrial arrangements, all that keeps society human, the touch of
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: nature which unites it, as it was that same devotion
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: which first lifted it out of the swamp of bestiality.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: The devotion to the child is quote the inevitable conclusion
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of the two premises of the practical syllogism, the devotion
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of man to woman. It is, of course, this tremendous
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: force which makes possible the family, that bond, which holds
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: society together and blends the experience of generations into a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: continuous story. The family has been called the fountain of morality,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the source of law, the necessary prelude to the state itself.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: But while it is continuous historically, this dual bond must
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: be made anew a myriad times in each generation, and
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the forces upon which his formation depend must be powerful
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: and unerring. It would be too great a risk to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: leave it to a force whose manifestations are intermittent and uncertain.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: The desired result is too grave and fundamental. One Sunday evening,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: an excited young man came to see me, saying that
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: he must have advice. Some one must tell him at
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: once what to do, as his wife was in the
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: state's prison, serving a sentence for a crime which he
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: himself had committed. He had seen her the day before,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: and though she had had been there only a month,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: he was convinced that she was developing consumption. She was
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: only seventeen and couldn't stand the hard work and the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: low down women whom she had for companions. My remark
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: that a girl of seventeen was too young to be
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: in the state penitentiary brought out the whole wretched story.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: He had been unsteady for many years, and the despair
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: of his thoroughly respectable family, who had sent him west
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the year before. In Arkansas, he had fallen in love
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: with a girl of sixteen and married her. His mother
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: was far from pleased, but had finally sent him money
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to bring his bride to Chicago in the hope that
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: he might settle there. And route they stopped at a
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: small town for the naive reason that he wanted to
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: have an aching tooth pulled. But the tooth gave him
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: an excellent opportunity to have a drink, and before he
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: reached the office of the country practitioner he was intoxicated.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: As they passed through the vestibule, he stole an overcoat
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: hanging there. Although the little wife piteously begged him to
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: let it alone. Out of sheer bravado, he carried it
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: across his arm as they walked down the street, and
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: was of course immediately arrested with the goods upon him.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: In sheer terror of being separated from her husband, the
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: wife insisted that she had been an accomplice, and together
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: they were put into the county jail, awaiting the action
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: of the grand jury. At the end of the sixth
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: week on one of the rare occasions when they were
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: permitted to talk to each other through the grating which
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: separated the men's visiting quarters from the women's. The young
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: wife told her husband that she made up her mind
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to swear that she had stolen the overcoat. What could
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: she do if he were sent to prison and she
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: were left free. She was afraid to go to his
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: people and could not possibly go back to hers. In
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: spite of his protest, That very night, she sent for
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the state's attorney and made a full confession, giving her
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: age as eighteen, in the hope of making her testimony
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: more of a valuable. From that time on, they stuck
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: to the lie through the indictment, the trial, and her conviction.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Apparently it had seemed to him only a well arranged
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: plot until he had visited the penitentiary the day before
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and had really seen her piteous plight. Remorse had seized
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: him at last, and he was ready to make every restitution. She, however,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: had no notion of giving up. On the contrary. As
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: she realized more clearly what prison life meant, she was
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: daily more determined to spare him the experience. Her letters,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: written in the unformed hand of a child, for her
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: husband had himself taught her to read and write, were
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: filled with a riot of self abnegation the martyr's joy
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: as he feels the iron enter the flesh. Thus, had
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: an illiterate, neglected girl, through sheer devotion to a worthless
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: sort of young fellow, inclined to drink, entered into that
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: noble company of martyrs. When girls go wrong, what happens?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: How has this tremendous force, valuable and necessary for the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: foundation of the family, become misdirected? When its manifestations follow
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: the legitimate channels of wedded life, we call them praiseworthy.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: But there are other manifestations quite outside the legal and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: moral channels, which yet compel our admiration. A young woman
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: of my acquaintance was married to a professional criminal named Joe.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Three months after the wedding, he was arrested and set
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: up for two years. Molly had always been accustomed to
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: many lovers, but she remained faithful to her absent husband
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: for a year. At the end of that time, she
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: obtained a divorce, which the state law makes easy for
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: the wife of a convict, and married a man who
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: was rich and respectable. In fact, he owned the small
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: manufacturing establishment in which her mother did the scrubbing. He
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: moved his bride to another part of town six miles away,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: provided her with a steam heated flat, furniture upholstered in
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: cut velvet, and many other luxuries of which Molly heretofore
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: had only dreamed. One day, as she was wheeling a
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: handsome baby carriage up and down the prosperous street, her brother,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: who was Joe's pal, came to tell her that Joe
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: was out, had come to the old tenement and was
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: mighty sore because she had gone back on him without
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: a moment's hesitation. Molly turned the baby carriage in the
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: direction of her old home and never stopped tweeling it
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: until she had compassed the entire six miles. She and
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Joe rented the old room and went to housekeeping. The
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: rich and respectable husband made every effort to persuade her
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: to come back, and then another series of efforts to
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: recover his child before he set her free through a
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: court proceeding. Joe, however, steadfastly refused to marry her, still sore,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: because she had not stood by as he worked only
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: intermittently and was too closely supervised by the police to
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: do much at his old occupation. Molly was obliged to
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: support the humble manage by scrubbing in a neighboring lodging
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: house and by washing the odd shirts of the lodgers
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: for five years, during which time two children were born.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: When she was constantly subjected to the taunts of her neighbors,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and when the charitable agencies refused to give help to
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: such an irregular household, Molly happily went on her course
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: with no shade of regret or sorrow. I'm all right
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: as long as Joe keeps out of the jug, was
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: her slogan for happiness. Low in tone, perhaps, but genuine
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and game. Her surroundings were assorted as possible, consisting of
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: a constantly changing series of cheap furnished rooms in which
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the battered baby carriage was the sole witness of better days.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: But Molly's heart was full of courage and happiness, and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: she was never desolate until her criminal lover was sent
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: up again, this time on a really serious charge. These
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: irregular manifestations form a link between them in which each
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: one struggles to live respectable, and that nether world, in
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: which are also found cases of devotion and of enduring
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: affection arising out of the midst of the folly and
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: the shame. The girl there who, through all tribulation, supports
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: her recreant lover, or the girl who overcomes her drink
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and opium habits, who renounces luxuries and goes back to
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: uninteresting daily toil for the sake of the good opinion
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: of a man who wishes her to appear decent, although
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: he never means to marry her. These are also impressive.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: One of our earliest experiences at Hull House had to
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: do with a lover of this type and the charming
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: young girl who had become fatally attached to him. I
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: can see her now running for protection up the broad
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: steps of the columned piazza then surrounding Hull House. Her
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: slender figure was trembling with fright, her tear covered face
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: swollen in blood stained from the blows he had dealt her.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: He is apt to abuse, use me when he is drunk,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: was the only explanation, and that given by way of apology,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: which could be extracted from her. When we discovered that
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: there had been no marriage ceremony, that there were no
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: living children, that she had twice narrowly escaped losing her life,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: it seemed a simple manner to insist that the relation
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: should be broken off. She apathetically remained at Hull House
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: for a few weeks, but when her strength had somewhat returned,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: when her lover began to recover from his prolonged debauch
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: of whiskey and opium, she insisted upon going home every
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: day to prepare his meals and to see that the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: little tenement was clean and comfortable. Because Pierre is always
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: so sick and weak after one of those long ones,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: this of course meant that she was drifting back to him.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: And when she was at last restrained by that moral compulsion,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: by that overwhelming of another's will, which is always so
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: ruthlessly exerted by those who are conscious that virtue is
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: struggling with vice, her mind gave and she became utterly distraught.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: A poor little Ophelia. I met her one night, wandering
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: in the hall, half dressed in the tawdry pink gown
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: that Pierre liked best of all, and groping on the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: blank wall to find the door which might permit her
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to escape to her lover. In a few days, it
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: was obvious that hospital restraint was necessary, but when she
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: finally recovered, we were obliged to admit that there is
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: no civic authority which can control the acts of a
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: girl of eighteen. From the hospital, she followed her heart
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: directly back to Pierre, who had in the meantime moved
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: out of the hull House neighborhood. We knew later that
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: he had degraded the poor child still further by obliging
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: her to earn money for his drugs, by that last
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: method resorted to by a degenerate man to whom a
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: woman's devotion still clings. It is inevitable that a force
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: which is enduring enough to withstand the discouragements, the suffering
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and privation of daily living, strenuous enough to overcome and
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: rectify the impulses which make for greed and self indulgence,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: should be able, even under untoward conditions, to lift up
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and transfigure those who are really within its grasp, and
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: set them in marked contrast to those who are merely
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: playing a game with it or using it for gain.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: But what has happened to those wretched girls? Why has
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: this beneficent current cast them upon the shores of death
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: and destruction when it should have carried them into the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: safe port of domesticity. Through Whose fault has this basic
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: emotion served merely to trick and deride them? Older nations
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: have taken a well defined line of action in regard
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: to it. Among the Hull House neighbors are many of
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the Latin races, who employ a careful chaperonage over their
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: marriageable daughters and provide husbands for them at an early age.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: My father will get a husband for me this winter,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: announces Angelina, whose father has brought her to a party
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: at Hull House, and she adds with a toss of
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: her head. I saw two already, but my father says
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: they haven't saved enough money to marry me. She feels
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: quite as content in her father's wisdom and ability to
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: provide her with the husband as she does in his
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: capacity to escort her home safely from the party. He
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: does not permit her to cross the threshold after nightfall
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: unaccompanied by himself, and unless the dowry and the husband
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: are provided before she is eighteen, he will consider himself
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: derelict in his duty towards her. Francesca can't even come
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: to the sodality meeting this winter. She lives only across
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: from the church, but her mother won't let her come
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: because her father is out west working on the railroad.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Is a comment one often hears. The system works well
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: only when it is carried logically through to the end
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: and an early marriage with a properly provided husband, even
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: with the Latin races. When the system is tried in America,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: it often breaks down, and when the Anglo Saxons anywhere
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: imitate this regime, it is usually utterly futile. They follow
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the first part of the program as far as repression
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: is concerned, but they find it impossible to follow the
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: second because all sorts of inherited notions deter them. The
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: repressed girl, if she is not one of the languishing types,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: takes matters into her own hands and finds her pleasures
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: in illicit ways without her parents knowledge. I had no
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: idea my daughter was going to public dances. She always
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: told me she was spending the night with her cousin
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: on the south side. I hadn't a suspicion of the truth.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Many a broken hearted mother, explains an officer who has
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: had a long experience in the juvenile court of Chicago,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: and has listened to hundreds of cases involving wayward girls,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: gives it as his deliberate impression that a large majority
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of cases are from families where the discipline had been rigid,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: where they had taken but half of the convention of
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: the old world and left the other half. Unless we
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: mean to go back to those old world customs, which
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: are already hopelessly broken, there would seem to be but
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: one path open to us in America. That path implies
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: freedom for the young people, made safe only through their
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: own self control. This, in turn, must be based upon
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: knowledge and habits of clean companionship. In point of fact,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: no course between the two is safe in a modern city,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and in the most crowded quarters, the young people themselves
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: are working out a protective code which reminds one of
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: the instinctive protection that the free ranging child in the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: country learns in regard to poisonous plants and marshy places,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: or of the cautions and abilities that the mountain child
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: develops in regard to ice and precipices. This statement, of course,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: does not hold good concerning a large number of children
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: in every crowded city quarter who may be classed as
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: degenerates the children of careless or dissolute mothers who fall
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: into all sorts of degenerate habits and associations before childhood
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: is past, who cannot be said to have gone wrong
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: at any one moment, because they have never been in
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: the right path, even of innocent childhood. But the statement
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: is sound concerning thousands of girls who go to and
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: from work every day with crowds of young men who
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: meet them again and again in the occasional evening pleasures
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: of the most decent dance halls, or on a Sunday
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: afternoon in the parks. The mothers who are of most
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: use to those normal city working girls are the mothers
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: who develop a sense of companionship with the changing experiences
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: of their daughters, who are willing to modify ill fitting
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: service to their children in their daily lives of factory
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: and adaptability, substitute keen present interests and activity for solemn warnings,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: and restraint self expression for repression. Their vigorous family life
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: allies itself by a dozen bonds to the educational, the
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: industrial and the recreational organizations of the modern city, and
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: makes for intelligent understanding industrial efficiency and sane social pleasures.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: By all means, let us preserve the safety of the home,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: but let us also make safe the street in which
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the majority of our young people find their recreation and
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: form their permanent relationships. Let us not forget that the
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: great processes of social life develop themselves through influences of
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: which each participant is unconscious, as he struggles alone and
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: unaided in the strength of a current which seizes him
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and bears him along with myriads of others, a current
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: which may so easily wreck the very foundations of domesticity.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: It's the end of chapter two, section three of the
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. This LibriVox recording
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The Spirit of Youth and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the City Streets by Jane Adams read by Mary Schneider,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Chapter three, the Quest for Adventure. A certain number of
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the outrages upon the Spirit of Youth may be traced
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: to degenerate or careless parents who totally neglected their responsibilities.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: A certain other large number of wrongs are due to
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: sordid mented women who deliberately use the legitimate pleasure seeking
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: of young people as lures into vice. There remains, however,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a third, very large class of offenses, for which the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: community as a whole must be held responsible if it
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: would escape the condemnation woe unto him by whom offenses come.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: This class of offenses is traceable to a dense ignorance
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: on the part the average citizen as to the requirements
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: of youth, and to a persistent blindness on the part
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: of educators as to youth's most obvious needs. The young
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: people are overborne by their own undirected and misguided energies.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: A mere temperamental outbreak in a brief period of obstreperousness
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: exposes a promising boy to arrest and imprisonment. An accidental
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: combination of circumstances too complicated and overwhelming to be coped
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: with by an immature mind condemns a growing lad to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: a criminal career. These impulsive misdeeds may be thought of
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: as dividing into two great trends, somewhat obscurely analogous to
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: the two historic divisions of man's motive power. For we
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: are told that all the activities of primitive man, and
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: even those of his more civilized successors, may be broadly
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: traced to the impulsion of two elemental appetites. The first
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: drove him to the search for food. The hunt developed
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: into war or with neighboring tribes, and finally broadening into
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: barter and modern commerce. The second urged him to secure
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: and protect a mate, developing into domestic life, widening into
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: building of homes and cities, into the cultivation of the
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: arts and a care for beauty. In the life of
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: each boy, there comes a time when these primitive instincts
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: urge him to action, when he is himself frightened by
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: their undefined power. He is faced by the necessity of
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: taming them, of reducing them to manageable impulses, just at
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: the moment when a boy's will is the wind's will,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: or in the words of a veteran educator, at the
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: time when it is almost impossible for an adult to
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: realize the boy's irresponsibility and even moral neurasthenia that the
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: boy often fails may be traced in those pitiful figures
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: which show that between two and three times as much
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: incorrigibility occurs between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, as
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: at any other period in life. The second division of
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: motive power has been treated in the preceding chapter. The
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: present chapter is an effort to point out the necessity
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: for an understanding of the first trend of motives. If
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: we would minimize the temptations of the struggle and free
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: the boy from the constant sense of the stupidity and
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: savagery of life. To set his feet in the worn
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: path of civilization is not an easy task, but it
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: may give us a clue for the undertaking to trace
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: his misdeeds to the unrecognized and primitive spirit of adventure,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: corresponding to the old activity of the hunt, of warfare
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: and of discovery. To do this intelligently, we shall have
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: to remember that many boys in the years immediately following
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: school find no restraint, either in tradition or character. They
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: drop learning as a childish thing and look upon school
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: as a tiresome task that is finished. They demand pleasure
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: as the right of one who earns his own living.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: They have developed no capacity for recreation, demanding mental effort
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: or even muscular skill, and are obliged to seek only
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: that depending upon site, sound, and taste, Many of them
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: begin to pay board to their mothers and make the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: best bargain they can that more money may be left
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: to spend in the evening. They even bait the excitement
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of losing a job, and often provoke a foreman, if
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: only to see how much he will stand. They are
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: constitutionally unable to enjoy anything continuously and follow their vagrant
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: wills unhindered. Unfortunately, the city lends itself to this distraction.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: At the best, it is difficult to know what to
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: select and what to eliminate as objects of attention among
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: its thronged streets, its glittering shops, its gaudy advertisements of
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: shows and amusements. It is perhaps to the credit of
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: many city boys that the very first puerile spirit of adventure,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: looking abroad in the world for material upon which to
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: exercise itself, seems to center upon the railroad. The impulse
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: is not unlike that which excites the coast dwelling lad
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: to dream of the beauty and mystery of ships and
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: the magic of the sea. I sight here a dozen
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: charges upon which boys were brought into the Juvenile Court
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: of Chicago, all of which might be designated as deeds
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: of adventure. A surprising number, as the reader will observe,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: are connected with railroads. They are taken from the court
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: records and repeat the actual words used by police officers,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: irate neighbors or discouraged parents when the boys were brought
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: before the judge. One building fires along the railroad tracks.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Two flagging trains. Three throwing stones at moving train windows.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Four shooting at the actors in the Olympic theater with
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: sling shots. Five breaking signal lights on the railroad. Six
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: stealing linseed oil barrels from the railroad to make a fire.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Seven taking placed from an axle box and burning it
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: upon the railroad tracks. Eight turning a switch and running
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: a street car off the track. Nine staying away from
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: home to sleep in barns. Ten setting fire to a
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: barn in order to see the fire engines come up
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the street. Eleven knocking down signs. Twelve cutting Western Union cable.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Another dozen charges, also taken from actual court records, might
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: be added as illustrating the spirit of adventure, for although
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: stealing is involved in all of them, the deeds were
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: doubtless inspired much more by the adventurous impulse than by
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: a desire for the loot itself. One stealing thirteen pigeons
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: from a barn. Two stealing a bathing suit, three stealing
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: a tent, four stealing ten dollars from mother with which
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: to buy a revolver. Five stealing a horse blanket to
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: use at night when it was cold, sleeping on the wharf.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Six breaking a seal on a freight car to steal
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: grain for chickens. Seven stealing apples from a freight car.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Eight stealing a candy peddler's wagon to be full up
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: just for once. Nine stealing a hand car. Ten stealing
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: a bicycle to take a ride, eleven stealing a horse
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: and buggy and driving twenty five miles into the country,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: twelve stealing a stray horse on the prairie and trying
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: to sell it for twenty dollars. Of another dozen, it
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: might be claimed that they were also due to this
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: same adventurous spirit, although the first six were classed as
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: disorderly conduct. One calling a neighbor a scab, two breaking
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: down a fence, three flipping cars, four picking up coal
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: from railroad tracks. Five carrying a concealed dagger and stabbing
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: a playmate with it. Six throwing stones at a railroad employee.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: The next three were called vagrancy, one loafing on the docks,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: two sleeping out nights, three wandering spells. One designated petty
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: larceny was cutting telephone wires under the sidewalk and selling them,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: another called burglary was taking locks off from basement doors,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: and the last one bore the dignified title of resisting
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: an officer, because the boy who was riding on the
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: fender of a street car refused to move when an
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: officer ordered him off. Of course, one easily recalls other
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: cases in which the manifestations were negative. I remember an
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: exasperated and frightened mother who took a son of fourteen
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: into court upon the charge of incorrigibility. She accused him
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: of shooting craps, smoking cigarettes, keeping bad company, being idle.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: The mother regrets it now, however, for she thinks that
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: taking a boy into court only gives him a bad name,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: and that the police are down on a boy who
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: has once been in court, and then that makes it
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: harder for him. She hardly recognizes her once troublesome charge
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: in the steady young man of night, who brings home
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: all his wage and is the pride and stay of
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: her old age. I recall another boy who worked his
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: way to New York and back again to Chicago before
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: he was quite fourteen years old, skillfully escaping the truant
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: He told his story with great pride, but always modestly
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: admitted that he could never have done it if his
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: father had not been a locomotive engineer, so that he
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: had played around railroad tracks and was on to them
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: ever since he was a small kid. There are many
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: of these adventurous boys who exhibit a curious incapacity for
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: any effort which requires sustained energy. They show an absolute
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: lack of interest in the accomplishment of what they undertake,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: so marked that if challenged in the midst of their activity,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: they will be quite unable to tell you the end
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: they have in view. Then there are those tramp boys
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: who are the despair of every one who tries to
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: deal with them. I remember the case of a boy
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: who traveled almost around the world in the years lying
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: between the ages of eleven and fifteen. He had lived
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: for six months in Honolulu, where he had made up
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: his mind to settle when the irresistible wanderlust again seized him.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: He was scrupulously neat in his habits and something of
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: a dandy in appearance. He boasted that he had never stolen,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: although he had been arrested several times on the charge
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: of vagrancy, a fate which befell him in Chicago and
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: landed him in the detention home connected with the juvenile court.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: The judge gained a personal hold upon him, and the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: lad tried with all the powers of his untrained moral
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: nature to make good and please the judge. Monotonous factory
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: work was not to be thought of in connection with him,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: but his good friend the judge found a place for
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: him as a bell boy in a men's club, where
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: it was hoped that the uniform in the variety of
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: experience might enable him to take the first steps to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: toward regular pay and a settled life. Through another bellboy, however,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: he heard of the find of a diamond carelessly left in
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: one of the wash rooms of the club. The chance
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: to throw out mysterious hints of its whereabouts, to bargain
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: for its restoration, to tell of great diamond deals he
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: had heard of in his travels inevitably laid him open
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: to suspicion, which resulted in his dismissal, although he had
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the matter beyond gloating over
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: its adventurous aspects. In spite of skillful efforts made to
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: detain him, he once more started on his travels, throwing
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: out such diverse hints as that of a trip into
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Old Mexico or following up Roosevelt into Africa. There is
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: an entire series of difficulties directly traceable to the foolish
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: and adventurous persistence of carrying loaded firearms. The morning paper
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: of the day in which I am writing records the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: following a party of boys led by day Annuel O'Brien,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: thirteen years old, had gathered in front of the house,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: and O'Brien was throwing stones at Niskotsky in revenge for
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: a whipping that he received at his hands about a
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: month ago. The Polish boy ordered them away and threatened
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: to go into the house and get a revolver if
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: they did not stop. Fister, one of the boys in
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: O'Brien's party, called him a coward, and when he pulled
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: a revolver from his pocket, dared him to put it
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: away and meet him in a fistfight in the street.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Instead of accepting the challenge, Nizkotsky aimed his revolver at
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: fister and fired. The bullet crashed through the top of
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: his head and entered the brain. He was rushed to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: the Alexian Brother's hospital, but died a short time after
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: being received there. Nizkotsky was arrested and held without bail.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: This tale could be duplicated Almost every morning. What might
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: be merely a boyish scrap is turned into a tragedy
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: because some boy has a revolver. Many citizens in Chicago
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: had been made heartsick during the past month by the
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: knowledge that a boy of nineteen was lodged in the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: county jail awaiting the death penalty. He had shot and
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: killed a policeman during the scrimmage of an arrest. Although
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: the offense for which he was being taken in was
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: a trifling one. His parents came to Chicago twenty years
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: ago from a little farm in Ohio, the best type
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: of Americans, whom we boast to be the backbone of
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: our cities. The mother, who has aged and sickened since
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: the trial, can only say that Davy was never a
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: bad boy. Until about five years ago when he began
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: to go with this gang who are always looking out
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: for fun. Then there are those piteous cases due to
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: a pervervid imagination which fails to find materials suited to
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: its demands. I can recall misadventures of children living within
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: a few blocks of hull house, which may well fill
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: with chagrin those of us who are trying to administer
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: to their deeper needs. I remember a Greek boy of
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: fifteen keen who was arrested for attempting to hang a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: young Turk, stirred by some vague notion of carrying on
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: a traditional warfare and of adding another page to the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: heroic annals of Greek history. When sifted, the incident amounted
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: to little more than a graphic threat. In the lad
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: was dismissed by the court, covered with confusion and remorse
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: that he had brought disgrace upon the name of Greece
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: when he had hoped to add to its glory. I remember,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: with a lump in my throat, the bohemian boy of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: thirteen who committed suicide because he could not make good
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: in school and wished to show that he too had
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: the stuff in him as stated in the piteous little
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: letter left behind. This same love of excitement, the desire
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: to jump out of the humdrum experience of life, also
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: induces boys to experiment with drinks and drugs to a
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: surprising extent. For several years, the residence of Hull House
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: struggled with the difficulty of prohibiting the sale of cocaine
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: to miners under a totally inadequate code of legislation, which
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: has at last happily been changed to one more effective
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: and enforcible. The long effort brought us into contact with
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: dozens of boys who had become victims of the cocaine habit.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: The first group of these boys was discovered in the
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: House of Army George. This one armed man sold cocaine
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: on the streets and also in the Levee district, by
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a system of signals, so that the word cocaine need
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: never be mentioned, and the style and size of the
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: package was changed so often that even a vigilant police
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: found it hard to locate it. What could be more
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: exciting to a lad than a traffic in a contraband
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: article carried on in this mysterious fashion. I recall our
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: experience with a gang of boys living in a neighboring street.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: There were eight of them altogether, the eldest seventeen years
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: of age, the youngest thirteen, and they practically lived the
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: life of vagrants. What answered to their club house was
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: a corner lot on Harrison and to Plane streets, strewn
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: with old boys, in which they slept by night and
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: many times by day. The gang was brought to the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: attention of Hull House during the summer of nineteen o
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: four by a distracted mother who suspected that they were
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: all addicted to some drug. She was terribly frightened over
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: the state of her youngest boy of thirteen, who was
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: hideously emaciated and his mind reduced almost to vacancy. I
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: remember the poor woman as she sat in the reception
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: room at Hull House, holding the unconscious boy in her arms,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: rocking herself back and forth in her fright and despair, saying,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I have seen them go with the drink and eat
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: the hideous opium, but I never knew anything like this.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: An investigation showed that cocaine had first been offered to
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: these boys on the street by a colored man, an
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: agent of a drug store, who had given them samples
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: and urged them to try it. In three or four months,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: they had become hopelessly addicted to its use, and at
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the end of six months when they were brought to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: Hull House, they were all in a critical condition. At
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: that time, not one of them was either going to
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: school or working. They stole from their parents, swiped junk,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: pawned their clothes and shoes, did any desperate thing to
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: get the dope, as they called it. Of course, they
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: continually required more, and had spent as much as eight
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: dollars a night for cocaine, which they used to share
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: and share alike. It sounds like a large amount, but
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: it really meant only four doses each during the night,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: as at that time they were taking twenty five cents
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: worth at once if they could possibly secure it. The
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: boys would tell nothing for three or four days after
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: they were discovered, in spite of the united efforts of
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: their families, the police, and the residents of Hull House.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: But finally the superior boy of the gang, the manliest
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: and the least debauched, told his tale, and others followed
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: in quick succession. They were willing to go somewhere to
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: be helped, and were even eager if they could go together,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: and finally seven of them were sent to the Presbyterian
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: hospital for four weeks treatment, and afterwards all went to
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the country together for six weeks more. The emaciated child
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: gained twenty pounds during his sojourn in the hospital, the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: head of which testified that at least three of the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: boys could have stood but little more of the irregular
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: living and doping. At the present moment, they are all
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: save one, doing well, although they were rescued so late
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: that they seemed to have but little chance. One is
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: still struggling with the appetite on an Iowa farm and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: dares not trust himself in the city because he knows
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: too well how cocaine may be procured. In spite of
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: better legislation, it is doubtful whether these boys could ever
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: have been pulled through unless they had been allowed to
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: keep together through the hospital and the convalescing period, unless
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: we had been able to utilize the gang spirit and
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: to turn its collective force towards overcoming the desire for
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: the drug. The desire to dream and see visions also
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: plays an important part with the boys who habitually use cocaine.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: I recall a small hut used by boys for this purpose.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: They washed dishes in a neighboring restaurant, and as soon
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: as they had earned a few cents, they invested in cocaine,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: which they kept pinned underneath their suspenders. When they had
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: accumulated enough for a real debauch, they went to this
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: hut and for several days were dead to the outside world.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: One boy told me that in his dreams he saw
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: large rooms paved with gold and silver money, the walls
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: papered with green backs, and that he took away in
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: buckets all that he could carry. This desire for adventure
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: also seizes girls. A group of girls ranging in age
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: from twelve to seventeen, was discovered in Chicago last June,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: two of whom were being trained by older women to
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: open tills in small shops, to pick pockets, to remove handkerchiefs, furs,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and purses, and to lift merchandise from the counters of
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: department stores. All the articles stolen were at once taken
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: to their teachers, and the girls themselves received no remuneration
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: except occasional sprees to the theaters or other places of amusement.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: The girls gave no coherent reason for their actions. Beyond
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: the statement that they liked the excitement and the fun
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: of it. Doubtless to the thrill of danger was added
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: the pleasure and interest of being daily in the shops
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: and the glitter of downtown. The boys are more indifferent
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: to this downtown life, and are apt to carry on
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: their adventures on the docks, the railroad tracks, or best
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: of all, upon the unoccupied prairie. The inveterate demand of
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: youth that life shall afford a large element of excitement
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: is in a measure well founded. We know, of course,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: that it is necessary to accept excitement as an inevitable
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: part of recreation, that the first step in recreation is
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: that excitement which stirs the worn or sleeping centers of
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: a man's body and mind. It is only when it
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: is followed by nothing else that it defeats its own end,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: that it uses up strength and does not create it.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: In the actual experience of these boys, the excitement has
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: demoralized them and led them into law breaking. When, however,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: they seek legitimate pleasure and say with great pride that
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: they are ready to pay for it. What they find
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: is legal, but scarcely more wholesome. It is still merely excitement.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Looping the loop amid shrieks of simulated terror, or dancing
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: in disorderly saloon halls are perhaps the natural reactions to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: a day spent in noisy factories and in trolley cars
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: whirling through the distracting streets. But the city, which permits
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: them to be the acme of pleasure and recreation to
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: its young people, commits a grievous mistake. May we not
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: assume that this love for excitement, this desire for adventure,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: is basic and will be evinced by each generation of
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: city boys as a challenge to their elders. And yet
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: those of us who live in Chicago are obliged to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: confess that last year there were arrested and brought into
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: court fifteen thousand young people under the age of twenty
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: who had failed to keep even the common law of
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: the land. Most of these young people had broken the
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: law in their blundering efforts to find adventure and in
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: response to the old impulse for self expression. It is said, indeed,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: that practically the whole machinery of the grand jury and
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: of the criminal courts is maintained and operated for the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: benefit of youths between the ages of thirteen and twenty
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: five men up to ninety years of age. It is true,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: commit crimes, but they are not characterized by the recklessness,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: the bravado, and the horror which have stained our records
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: in Chicago. An adult with the most sordid experience of
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: life and the most rudimentary notion of prudence could not
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: possibly have committed them. Only a utilization of that sudden
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: burst of energy belonging partly to the future could have
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: have achieved them. Only a capture of the imagination and
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: of the deepest emotions of youth could have prevented them. Possibly,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: these fifteen thousand youths were brought to grief because the
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: adult population assumed that the young would be able to
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: grasp only that which is presented in the form of sensation,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: as if they believed that youth could thus early become
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: absorbed in a hand to mouth existence, and so entangled
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: in materialism that there would be no reaction against it.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: It is as though we were deaf to the appeal
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: of these young creatures claiming their share of the joy
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: of life, flinging out into the dingy city, their desires
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: and aspirations after unknown realities, their unutterable longings for companionship
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and pleasure. Their very demand for excitement is a protest
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: against the dullness of life, to which we ourselves instinctively respond.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: That's the end of chapter three, section four of The
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: Spirit of Youth in the City Streets. This LibriVox recording
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The Spirit of Youth and
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: the City Streets by Jane Adams read by Mary Schneider,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: Chapter four The House of Dreams. To the preoccupied adult
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: who is prone to use the city street as a
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: mere passageway from one hurried duty to another, nothing is
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: more touching than his encounter with a group of children
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: and young people who are emerging from a theater, with
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: the magic of the play still thick upon them. They
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: look up and down the familiar street, scarcely recognizing it
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: and quite unable to determine the direction of home from
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: a tangle of make believe. They gravely scrutinize the real
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: world which they are so reluctant to re enter, reminding
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: one of the absorbed gaze of a child who is
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: groping his way back from fairyland, whether the story has
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: completely transported him. Going to the show for thousands of
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: young people in every industrial city is the only possible
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: road to the realms of mystery and romance. The theatre
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: is the only place where they can satisfy that craving
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: for a conception of life higher than that which the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: actual world offers them. In a very real sense, the drama,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: and the drama alone performs for them the office of art,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: as is clearly revealed in their blundering demand stated in
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: many forms for a play unlike life, the theatre becomes
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: to them a veritable house of dreams, infinitely more real
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: than the noisy streets in the crowded factories. This first
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: simple demand upon the theatre for romance is closely allied
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: to one more complex, which might be described as a
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: search for solace and distraction in those moments of first
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: awakening from the glamour of a youth's interpretation of life
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: life to the sterner realities which are thrust upon his consciousness.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: These perceptions, which inevitably close around and imprison the spirit
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: of youth, are perhaps never so grim as in the
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: case of the way Joarning Child. We can all recall
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: our own moments of revolt against life, sexualities, our reluctance
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: to admit that all life was to be as unheoic
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: and uneventful as that which we saw about us. It
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: was too unbearable that this was all there was, and
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: we tried every possible avenue of escape, as we made
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: an effort to believe, in spite of what we saw,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: that life was noble and harmonious. As we stubbornly clung
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: to poesy in contradiction to the testimony of our senses.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: So we see thousands of young people thronging the theaters,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: bent in their turn upon the same quest. The drama
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: provides a transition between the romantic conceptions which they vainly
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: struggle to keep intact, and in life's cruelties and trivialities,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: which they refuse to admit. A child whose imagination has
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: been cultivated is able to do this for himself through
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: reading and reverie. But for the overworked city youth of
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: meager education, perhaps nothing but the theater is able to
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: perform this important office. The theater also has a strange
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: power to forecast life for the youth. Each boy comes
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: from our ancestral past, not in entire forgetfulness and quite
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: as he unconsciously uses ancient war cries in his street play,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: so he longs to reproduce and to cease set before
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: him the valors and vengeances of a society embodying a
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: much more primitive state of morality than that in which
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: he finds himself. Mister Patten has pointed out that the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: elemental action which the stage presents, the old emotions of
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: love and jealousy, of revenge and daring, take the thoughts
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: of the sad spectator back into deep and well worn
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: channels in which his mind runs with a sense of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: rest afforded by nothing else. The cheap drama brings cause
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: and effect, will, power and action once more into relation,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: and gives a man the thrilling conviction that he may
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: yet be master of his fate. The youth, of course,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: quite unconscious of this psychology, views the deeds of the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: hero simply as a forecast of his own future. And
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: it is this fascinating view of his own career which
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: draws the boy to shows of all sorts. They can
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: scarcely be too improbable for him, portraying as they do
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: his belief in his own prowess. A series of slides
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: which has lately been very popular in the five cent
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: theaters of Chicago, portrayed five masked men breaking into a
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: humble dwelling, killing the father of the family and carrying
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: away the family treasure. The golden haired son of the house,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: aged seven, vows each true ernal vengeance on the spot,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: and follows one villain after another to his doom. The
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: execution of each is shown in lord detail, and the
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: last slide of the series depicts the hero, aged ten,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: kneeling upon his father's grave, counting on the fingers of
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: one hand the number of men that he has killed,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: and thanking God that he has been permitted to be
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: an instrument of vengeance. In another series of slides, a
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: poor woman is wearily bending over some sewing, a baby
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: is crying in the cradle, and two little boys of
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: nine and ten are asking for food. In despair. The
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: mother sends them out into the street to beg but
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: instead they steal a revolver from a pawnshop and with
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: it kill a Chinese laundryman, robbing him of two hundred dollars.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: They rush home with the treasure, which is found by
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: the mother in the baby's cradle, whereupon she and her
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: sons fall upon their knees and send up a prayer
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: of thankfulness for this timely and heaven sent assistance. Is
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: it not astounding that a city allows thousands of its
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: youths to fill their impressionable minds with these absurdities, which
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: certainly will become the foundation for their working moral codes
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: and the data from which they will judge the proprieties
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: of life. It is as if a child starved at
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: home should be forced to go out and search for food,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: selecting quite naturally, not that which is nourishing, but that
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: which is exciting and appealing to his outward sense, often
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: in his ignorance and foolishness, blundering into substances which are
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: filthy and poisonous. Out of my twenty years experience at
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: Hull House, I can recall all sorts of pilferings, petty larcenies,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: and even burglaries due to that never ceasing effort on
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: the part of boys to procure theater tickets. I can
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: also recall indirect efforts towards the same end, which are
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: most pitiful. I remember the remorse of a young girl
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: of fifteen who was brought into the juvenile court after
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: a night spent weeping in the cellar of her home
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: because she had stolen a mass of artificial flowers with
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: which to trim a hat. She stated that she had
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: taken the flowers because she was afraid of losing the
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: attention of a young man whom she had heard say
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: that a girl has to be dressy if she expects
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: to be seen. This young man was the only one
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: who had ever taken her to the theater, and if
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: he failed her, she was sure that she would never
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: go again, and she sobbed out incoherently that she couldn't
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: live at all without it. Apparently the blankness and grayness
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: of life itself had been broken for her only by
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: the portrayal of a different world. One boy, whom I
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: had known from babyhood, began to take money from his
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: mother from the time he was seven years old, and
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: after he was ten, she regularly gave him money for
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: the play Saturday evening. However, the Saturday performance, starting him
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: off like he always went twice again on Sunday, procuring
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: the money in all sorts of illicit ways. Practically all
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: of his earnings after he was fourteen were spent in
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: this way to satisfy the insatiable desire to know of
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: the great adventures of the wide world, which the more
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: fortunate boy takes out in reading Homer and Stevenson. In
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: talking with his mother, I was reminded of my experience
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: one Sunday afternoon in Russia, when the employees of a
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: large factory were seated in an open air theater, watching
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: with breathless interest the presentation of folk stories. I was
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: told that troops of actors went from one manufacturing establishment
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: to another, presenting the simple elements of history and literature
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: to the illiterate employees. This tendency to slight the thirst
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: for adventure by viewing the drama is, of course, but
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: a blind and primitive effort in the direction of culture,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: for he who makes himself its vessel and bearer thereby
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: acquires a freedom from the blindness and soul poverty of
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: daily existence. It is partly in response to this need
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: that more sophisticated young people often go to the theater
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: hoping to find a clue of life's perplexities. Many times,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: the bewildered hero reminds one of Emerson's description of Margaret Fuller.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know where I am going. Follow me Nevertheless,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: the stage is dealing with the moral themes in which
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: the public is most interested. And while many young people
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: go to the theater if only to see represented and
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: to hear discussed the themes which seem to them so
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: tragically important, there is no doubt that what they hear there,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: flimsy and poor as it often is, easily becomes their
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: actual moral guide. In moments of moral crisis, they turn
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: to the sayings of the hero, who found himself in
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: a similar plight. The sayings may not be profound, but
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: at least they are applicable to conduct. In the last
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: few years, scores of plays have been put upon the
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: stage whose titles might be easily translated into proper headings
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: for sociological lectures or sermons, without including the plays of
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: ibsen Shaw and Houtmann, which deal so directly with moral
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: issues that the moralists themselves WinCE under their teachings and
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: declare them brutal. But it is this very brutality which
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: the over refined and complicated city dwellers often crave. Moral
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: teaching has become so intricate, creeds so metaphysical, that in
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: a state of absolute reaction, they demand definite instruction for
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: daily living. Their wholehearted acceptance of the teaching corroborates the
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: statement recently made by an English playwright that the theater
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: is literally making the minds of our urban populations today.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: It is a huge factory of sentiment, of character, of
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: points of honor, of conceptions of conduct, of everything that
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: finally determines the destiny of a nation. Theater is not
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: only a place of amusement. It is a place of culture,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: a place where people learn how to think, act and feel. Seldom, however,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: do we associate the theater with our plans for civic righteousness,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: although it has become so important a factor in city life.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: One Sunday evening last winter, an investigation was made of
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty six theaters in the city of Chicago.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: It was discovered that in the majority of them, the
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: leading theme was revenge, the lover following his rival, the
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour, or the wiping out
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: by death of a blot on a hitherto unstained honor.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: It was estimated that one sixth of the entire population
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: of the city had attended the theaters on that day.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: At that same moment, the churches throughout the city were
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: preaching the gospel of good will? Is not this a
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: striking commentary upon the contradictory influences to which the city
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: youth is constant subjected. The discrepancy between the church and
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: the stage is at times apparently recognized by the five
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: cent theater itself, and a blundering attempt is made to
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: suffuse the songs and moving pictures with piety. Nothing could
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: more absurdly demonstrate this attempt than a song illustrated by
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: pictures describing the adventures of a young man who follows
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty girl through street after street in the hope
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: of snatching a kiss from her ruby lips. The young
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: man is overjoyed when a sudden windstorm drives the girl
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: to shelter under an archway, and he is about to
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: succeed in his attempt, when the Good Lord, ever watchful
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: over innocence, makes the same wind blow a cloud of
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: dust into the eyes of the rubber neck, and his
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: foul purpose is foiled. This attempt at piety is also
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: shown in a series of films depicting Bible stories and
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: the passion play of ober Ammergau, forecasting the time when
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: the moving film will be viewed as a mere mechanical
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: device for the use of the church, the school, and
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the library, as well as for the theater. At present, however,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: most improbable tales hold the attention of the youth of
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: the city night after night and feed his starved imagination
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: as nothing else succeeds in doing. In addition to these fascinations,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: the five cent theater is also fast becoming the general
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: social center and club house in many crowded neighborhoods. It
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: is easy of access from the street. The entire family
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: of parents and children can attend for a comparatively small
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: sum of money, and the performance lasts for at least
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: an hour, and in some of the humbler theaters the
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: spectators are not disturbed for a second hour. The room
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: which contains the mimic stage is small and cozy and
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: less formal than the regular theater, and there is much
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: more gossip and social life, as if the foyer and
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: pit were mingled. The very darkness of the room necessary
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: for an exhibition of the films is an added attraction
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: to many young people, for whom the space is filled
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: with the glamour of love making. Hundreds of young people
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: attend these five cent theaters every evening in the week,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: including Sunday, and what is seen and heard there becomes
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: the sole topic of conversation, forming the ground pattern for
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: their social life. That mutual understanding, which in another social
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: circle is provided by books, travel, and all the arts,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: is here compressed into the topics suggested by the play.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: The young people attend the five cent theaters in groups
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: with something of the gang instinct, boasting of the films
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: and stunts in our theater. They find a certain advantage
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: in attending one theatre regularly, for the habitues are often
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: invited to come upon the stage on amateur nights, which
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: occur at least once a week in all the theaters.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: This is, of course a most exciting experience. If the
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: stunt does not meet with the approval of the audience,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: the performer is greeted with jeers, and a long hook
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: pulls him off the stage. If, on the other hand,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: he succeeds in pleasing the audience, he may be paid
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: for his performance and later a register with a booking agency,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: the address of which is supplied by the obliging manager.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: And thus he fancies that a lucrative and exciting career
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: is opening before him. Almost every night at six o'clock,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: a long line of children may be seen waiting at
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: the entrance of these booking agencies, of which there are
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: fifteen that are well known in Chicago. Thus, the only
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: art which is constantly placed before the eyes of the
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: temperamental youth is a debased form of dramatic art and
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: a vulgar type of music. For this, success of a
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: song in these theaters depends not so much upon its
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: musical rendition as upon the vulgarity of its appeal. In
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: a song which held the stage of a cheap theory
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: in Chicago for weeks, the young singer was helped out
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: by a bit of mirror, from which she threw a
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: flash of light into the faces of successive boys, whom
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: she selected from the audience, as she sang the refrain
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: you are My affinity. Many popular songs relate the vulgar
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: experiences of a city man wandering from amusement park to
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: bathing beach in search of flirtations. It may be that
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: these stunts and recitals of city adventure contain the nucleus
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: of coming poesy and romance. As the songs and recitals
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: of the early minstrels sprang directly from the life of
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: the people, But all the more does the effort need
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: help and direction, both in the development of its technique
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: and the material of its themes. The few attempts which
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: have been made in this direction are astonishingly rewarding to
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: those who regard the power of self expression as one
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: of the most precious boons of education. The Children's theater
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: in New York Work is the most successful example, but
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: every settlement in which dramatics have been systematically fostered can
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: also testify to a surprisingly quick response to this form
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: of art on the part of young people. The Hull
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: House Theater is constantly besieged by children clamoring to take
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: part in the plays of Schiller, Shakespeare and Moliere, although
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: they know it means weeks of rehearsal and the complete
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: memorizing of stiff lines. The audiences sit enthralled by the
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: final rendition, and other children whose tastes have supposedly been
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: debased by constant vaudeville, are pathetically eager to come again
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: and again, even when still more is required from the
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: young actors. Research into the special historic period, copying costumes
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: from old plates, hours of labor, that the th may
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: be restored to its proper place in English speech. Their
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm is unquenched, but quite aside from its educational possibilities,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: one never ceases to marvel at the power of even
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: a mimic stage to afford to the young a magic
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: space in which life may be lived in efflorescence, where
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: manners may be courtly and elaborate without exciting ridicule, where
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: the sequence of events is impressive and comprehensible. Order and
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: beauty of life is what the adolescent youth craves above
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: all else, As the younger child indefatigably demands his story.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: Is this where the most beautiful princess in the world lives,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: asks a little girl peering into the door of the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: hull House theater, Or does Alice in Wonderland always stay here?
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: It is much easier for her to put her feeling
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: into words than it is for the youth who has
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: enchantingly rendered the gentle poetry of ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: or for him who has walked the boards as southeas
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: watt Tyler. His association, however, is quite as clinging and
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: magical as the child's Although he can only say, Gee,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: I wish I could always feel the way I did
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: that night, something would be doing. Then nothing of the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: artist's pleasure, nor of the revelation of that large world
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: which surrounds and completes our own, is lost to him
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: because a careful technique has been exacted. On the contrary,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: this is only dignified and enhanced it. It would also
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: be easy to illustrate youth's eagerness for artistic expression from
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: the recitals given by the pupils of the New York
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: Music Schools Settlement or by those of the Hull House
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: Music School. These attempts also combine social life with the
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: training of the artistic sense, and in this approximate the
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: fascinations of the five cent theater. This spring, a group
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: of young girls accustomed to the life of a five
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: cent theater reluctantly refused an invitation to go to the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: country for a day's outing, because the return on a
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: late train would compel them to miss one evening's performance.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: They found it impossible to tear themselves away, not only
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: from the excitements of the theater itself, but from the
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: gayety of the crowd of young men and girls invariably
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: gathered outside discussing the sensational posters. A steady English shopkeeper
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: lately complained that unless he provided his four daughters with
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: money for the five cent theaters every evening, they would
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: steal it from his till, and he feared that they
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: might be driven to procurate an even more illicit ways.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Because his entire family life had been thus disrupted, he
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: gloomily asserted that this cheap show has ruined his home
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: and was the curse of America. This father was able
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: to formulate the anxiety of many immigrant parents who are
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: absolutely bewildered by the keen absorption of their children in
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: the cheap theater. This anxiety is not, indeed without foundation.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: An eminent alienist of Chicago states that he has had
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: a number of patients among neurotic children whose emotional natures
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: have been so overwrought by the crude appeal to which
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: they had been so constantly subjected in the theaters, that
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: they have become victims of hallucination and mental disorder. The
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: statement of this physician may be the first note of
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: alarm which will awaken the city to its duty in
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: regard to the theater, so that it shall at least
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: be made safe and sane for the city child, whose
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: senses are already so abnormally developed. This testimony of a
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: physician that the conditions are actually pathological may at last
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: induce us to bestir ourselves in regard to procuring a
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: more wholesome form of public recreation. Many efforts in social
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: amelioration have been undertaken only after such exposures. In the meantime,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: while the occasional child is driven distraught, a hundred children
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: permanently injure their eyes watching the moving films, and hundreds
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: more seriously model their conduct upon the standards set before them.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: On this spymic stage, three boys aged nine, eleven, and thirteen,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: who had recently seen depicted the adventures of frontier life,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: including the holding up of a stage coach in the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: last sewing of the driver, spent weeks planning to last sow,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: murder and rob a neighborhood milkman who started on his
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: route at four o'clock in the morning. They made their
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: headquarters in a barn and saved enough money to buy
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: a revolver, adopting as their watchword the phrase dead men
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: tell no tales. One spring morning, the conspirators, with their
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: faces covered with black cloth, lay in ambush for the milkman.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: Fortunately for him, as the lariat was thrown, the horse shied,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: and although the shot was appropriately fired, the milkman's life
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: was saved. Such a direct influence of the theater is
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: by no means rare, even among older boys. Thirteen young
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: lads were brought into the Municipal Court in Chicago during
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: the first week that Raffles the Amateur Cracked was upon
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: the stage, each one with an outfit of Burglar's tools
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: in his possession, and each one shamefacedly admitting that the
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: gentlemanly Burglar in the play has suggested to him a
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: career of similar adventure. In so far as the illusions
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: of the theater succeed in giving youth the rest and
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: recreation which comes from following a more primitive code of morality,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: it has a close relation to the function performed by
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: public games. It is, of course less valuable because the
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: sense of participation is largely confined to the emotions and
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: the imagination, and does not involve the entire nature we
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: might illustrate by the Wild West show in which the
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: onlooking boy imagines himself an active participant. The Scouts, the Indians,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: the Bucking Ponies are his real intimate companions and occupy
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: his entire mind. In contrast with this, we have the
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: omnipresent game of tag, which is doubtless also founded upon
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: the chase. It gives the boy exercise and momentary echoes
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: of the old excitement, but it is barren of suggestion
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: and quickly degenerates into horse play. Well considered public games,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: easily carried out in a park or athletic field, might
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: both fill the mind with the imaginative material constantly supplied
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: by the theater, and also afford the activity which the
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: cramped muscles of the town dweller so sorely need. Even
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: the unquestioned ability which the theater possesses to bring men
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: together into a common mood and to afford them a
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: mutual topic of conversation is better accomplished with the one
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: national game, which we already possess, and might be infinitely
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: extended through the organization of other public games. The theater
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: even now by no means competes with the baseball league games,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: which are attended by thousands of men and boys. Who
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: during the entire summer discussed the respective standings of each
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: nine and the relative merits of every player. During the
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: neon hour, all the employees of a city factory gather
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: in the nearest vacant lot to cheer their own home
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: team in its practice for the next game with the
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: nine of a neighboring manufacturing establishment, And on a Saturday afternoon,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: the entire male population of the city betakes itself to
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: the baseball field. The ordinary means of transportation are supplemented
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: by gay stage coaches and huge automobiles, noisy with blowing horns,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: in depth with gay penants. The enormous crowd of cheering
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: men and boys are talkative, good natured, full of the
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: holiday spirit, and absolutely released from the grind of life.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: They are lifted out of their individual affairs and so
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: fused together that a man cannot tell whether it is
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: his own shout or another's that fills his ears, whether
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: it is his own coat or another's that he is
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: wildly waving to celebrate a victory. He does not call
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: the stranger who sits next to him his brother, but
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: he unconsciously embraces him in an overwhelming outburst of kindly
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: feeling when the favorite player makes a home run. Does
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: not this contain a suggestion of the undoubted power of
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: public recreation to bring together all classes of a community
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: in the modern city unhappily so full of devices for
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: keeping men apart. Already, some American cities are making a
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: beginning toward more adequate public recreation. Boston has its municipal gymnasiums,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: cricket fields, and golf grounds. Chicago has seventeen parks with
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: playing fields, gymnasiums, and baths which at present and roll
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: thousands of young people. These same parks are provided with
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: beautiful halls which are used for many purposes rent free,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: and are given over to any group of young people
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: who wish to conduct dancing parties, subject to city supervision
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: and sheperon. Many social clubs have deserted neighboring saloon halls
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: for these municipal drawing rooms, beautifully decorated with growing plants
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: supplied by the park greenhouses, and flooded with electric lights
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: supplied by the park powerhouse. In the saloon halls, the
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: young people were obliged to pass money freely over the bar,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: and in order to make the most of the occasion,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: they usually stayed until morning. At such times, the economic
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: necessity itself would override the councils of the more temperate
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: and the thrifty door keeper would not insist upon invitations,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: but would take in any one who had the price
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: of a ticket. The free rent in the park hall,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: the good food in the park restaurant supplied at cost,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: have made three parties closing at eleven o'clock no more
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: expensive than one party breaking up at daylight too often
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: in disorder. Is not this an argument that the drinking,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: the late hours, the lack of decorum are directly traced
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: to the commercial enterprise, which ministers to pleasure in order
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: to drag it into excess because excess is more profitable.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: To thus commercialized pleasure is as monstrous as it is
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: to commercialize art. It is intolerable that the city does
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: not take over this function of making provision for pleasure,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: as wise communities in Sweden and South Carolina have taken
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: the sale of alcohol out of the hands of enterprising publicans.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: We are only beginning to understand what might be done
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: through the festival, the street procession, the band of marching
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: musicians orchestral music. In public squares or parks with the
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: magic power they all possess to formulate the sense of
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: companionship and solidarity. The experiments which are being made in
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: public schools to celebrate the national holidays, the changing seasons,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: the birthdays of heroes, the planting of trees, are slowly
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: developing little ceremony which may in time work out into
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: pageants of genuine beauty and significance. No other nation has
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: so unparalleled an opportunity to do this through its schools
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: as we have. For no other nation has so wide
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: spreading a school system. While the enthusiasm of children and
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: their natural ability to express their emotions through symbols gives
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: the securest possible foundation to this growing effort. The City
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: schools of New York have affected the organization of high
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: school girls into groups for folk dancing. These old forms
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: of dancing, which have been worked out in many lands
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: and through long experiences, safeguard unwary and dangerous expression, and
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: yet afford a vehicle through which the gayety of youth
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: may flow. Their forms are indeed those which lie at
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: the basis of all good breeding, forms which at once
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: express and restrain, urge forward, and set limits One may
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: also see another center of growth for public recreation and
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: the beginning of a pageantry for the people in the
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: many small parks and athletic fields which almost every American
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: city is hastening to provide for its youth. These small
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: parks have innumerable athletic teams, each with its distinctive uniform,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: with track meets and match games arranged with the teams
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: from other parks and from the public schools. Choruses of
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: trade unionists or of patriotic societies fill the park halls
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: with eager listeners. Labor Day processions are yearly becoming more
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: carefully planned and more picturesque in character, as the desire
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: to make an overwhelming impression with mere size gives way
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: to a growing ambition to set forth the significance of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: the craft and skill of the workmen. At moments they
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: almost rival the dignified showing of the processions of the
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: German tern Beenes, which are also often seen in our
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: city streets. The many foreign colonies which are found in
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: all American cities afford an enormous reserve of material for
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: public recreation and street festival. They not only celebrate the
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: feasts and holidays of the fatherland, but have each their
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: own public expression for their mutual benefit societies, and for
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: the observance of American anniversaries. From the gay celebration of
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: the Scandinavians when war was averted and two neighbouring nations
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: were united, to the equally gay celebration of the centenary
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: of Garibaldi's birth. From the Chinese dragon cleverly trailing its
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: way through the streets, to the Greek banners flung out
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: in honour of immortal heroes. There is an infinite variety
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: of suggestions and possibilities for public recreation and for the
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: corporate expression of stirring emotions. After all, what is the
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: function of art but to preserve, in permanent and beautiful
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: form those emotions and solaces which cheer life and make
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: it kindlier, more heroic, and easier to to comprehend, which
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: lift the mind of the worker from the harshness and
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: loneliness of his task, and, by connecting him with what
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: has gone before, free him from a sense of isolation
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: and hardship. Where American cities really eager for municipal art,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: they would cherish as genuine beginnings. The Tarantella danced so
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: interminably at Italian weddings, the primitive Greek pipe played throughout
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: the long summer nights, the Bohemian theaters crowded with eager Slavophiles,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: the Hungarian musicians strolling from street to street, the fervid
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: oratory of the young Russians preaching social righteousness in the
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: open square. Many Chicago citizens who attended the first annual
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: meeting of the National Playground Association of America will never
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: forget the long summer day in the large playing field
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: filled during the morning with hundreds of little children romping
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: through the kindergarten, games, in the afternoon with the young
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: men and girls contending in athletic sports, and the evening
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: light made gay by the bright colored garments of Italians, Lithuanians, Norwegians,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: and a dozen other nationalities reproducing their old dances and
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: festivals for the pleasure of the more stolid Americans. Was
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: this a forecast of what we may yet see accomplished
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: through a dozen agencies promoting public recreation, which are springing
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: up in every city of America, as they already are
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: found in the large towns of Scotland and England. Let
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: us cherish these experiments as the most precious beginnings of
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: an attempt to supply the recreational needs of our industrial cities.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: To fail to provide for the recreation of youth is
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: not only to deprive all of them of their natural
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: form of expression, but is certain to subject some of
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: them to the overwhelming temptation of illicit and self destroying pleasures.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: To insist that young people shall forecast their rosy colored
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: head the future only in a house of dreams is
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: to deprive the real world of that warmth and reassurance
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: which it so sorely needs, and to which it is
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: justly entitled. Furthermore, we are left outside with a sense
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: of dreariness, in company with that shadow which already lurks
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: only around the corner for most of us, a skepticism
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: of life's value. That's the end of chapter four, section
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: five of The Spirit of Youth in the City Streets.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Spirit
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: of Youth and the City Streets by Jane Adams read
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: by Mary Schneider, Chapter five The Spirit of Youth and Industry.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: As it is possible to establish a connection between the
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: lack of public recreation and the vicious excitements in trivial
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: amusements which become their substitutes. So it may be illuminating
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: to trace the connection between the monotony and dullness of
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: factory work and the petty immoralities which are often the
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: youth's protest against them. There are many city neighborhoods in
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: which practically every young person who has attained the age
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: of fourteen years enters a factory. When the work itself
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: offers nothing of interest, and when no public provision is
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: made for recreation, the situation becomes almost insupportable to the youth,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: whose ancestors have been rough working and hard playing peasants.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: In such neighborhoods, the joy of youth is well nigh extinguished,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: and in that long procession of factory workers each morning
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: and evening, the young walk almost as wearily and listlessly
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: as the old. Young people working in modern factories, situated
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: in cities still dominated by the ideals of Puritanism, face
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: a combination which tends almost irresistibly to act overwhelmed the
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: spirit of youth. When the Puritan repression of pleasure was
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: in the ascendant in America, the people it dealt with
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: lived on farms and villages, where although youthful pleasures might
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: be frowned upon and crushed out, the young people still
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: had a chance to find self expression in their work.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: Plowing the fields and spinning the flax could be carried
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: on with a certain joyousness and vigor which the organization
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: of modern industry too often precludes. Present industry, based upon
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: the inventions of the nineteenth century, has little connection with
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: the old patterns in which men have worked for generations.
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: The modern factory calls for an expenditure of nervous energy
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: almost more than it demands muscular effort, or at least,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: machinery so far performs the work of the massive muscles
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: that greater stress is laid upon fine and exact movements,
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: necessarily involving nervous strain. But these movements are exactly of
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: the type to which the muscles of a growing boy
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: least re respond quite as the admonition to be accurate
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: and faithful is that which appeals the least to his big,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: primitive emotions. The demands made upon his eyes are complicated
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: and trivial. The use of his muscles is fussy and monotonous.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: The relation between cause and effect is remote and obscure.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Apparently no one is concerned as to what may be
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: done to aid him in this process and to relieve
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: it of its dullness and difficulty, to mitigate its strain
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: and harshness. Perhaps never before have young people been expected
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: to work from motives so detached from direct emotional incentive.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: Never has the age of marriage been so long delayed,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: Never has the work of youth been so separated from
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: the family life and the public opinion of the community.
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: Education alone can repair these losses. It alone has the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: power of organizing a child's activities with some reference to
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: the life he will later lead, and of giving him
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: a clue as to what to select and what to
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: eliminate when he comes into contact with contemporary social and
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: industrial conditions. And until educators take hold of the situation,
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: the rest of the community is powerless. In vast regions
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: of the city which are completely dominated by the factory,
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: it is as if the development of industry had outrun
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: all the educational and social arrangements. The revoltive youth against
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: uniformity and the necessity of following careful directions laid down
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: by some one else, many times results in such nervous
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: irritability that the youth, in spite of all sorts of
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: prudential reasons, throws up his job, if only to get
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: outside the factory walls into the freer street, just as
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: the narrowness of the school enclosure induces many a boy
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: to jump to the fence. When the boy is on
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: the street, however, and is standing around on the corner
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: with a gang to which he mysteriously attaches himself, he
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: finds the difficulties of direct, untrammeled action almost as great
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: there as they were in the factory, but for an
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: entirely different set of reasons. The necessity so strongly felt
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: in the factory for an outlet to his sudden and
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: furious bursts of energy, his overmastering desire to prove that
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: he could do things without being bossed all the time
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: finds a little chance for expression, for he discovers that
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: in whatever really active pursuit he tries to engage, he
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: is promptly suppressed by the police. After several futile attempts
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: at self expression, he returns to his street corners, subdued
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: and so far discouraged that when he has the next
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: impulse to vigorous action, he concludes that it is of
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: no use, and sullenly settles back into inactivity. He thus
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: learns to persuade himself that it is better to do nothing, or,
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: as the psychologist would say, to inhibit his motor impulses.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: When the same boy, as an adult workman, finds himself
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: confronted with an unusual or an untoward condition in his work,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: he will fall back into this habit of inhibition, of
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: making no effort toward independent action. When slack times come,
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: he will be the workmen of least value and the
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: first to be dismissed, calmly accepting his position in the
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: ranks of the unemployed because it will not be so
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: unlike the many hours of idleness and vacuity to which
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: he was accustomed as a boy. No help having been
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: extended to him in the moment of his first irritable
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: revolt against industry, his whole life has been given a
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: twist toward idleness and futility. He has not had the
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: chance of recovery which the school system gives a like
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: rebellious boy in a truant school. The unjustifiable lack of
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: educational supervision during the first years of factory work makes
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: it quite impossible for the modern educator to offer any
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: real assistance to young people during that trying transitional period
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: between school and industry. The young people themselves, who fail
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: to conform, can do little but rebel against the entire situation,
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: and the expression of revolt roughly divide themselves into three classes.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: The first resulting in idleness, may be illustrated from many
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: a sad story of a boy or a girl who
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: has spent in the first spurt of premature and uninteresting work,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: all the energy which should have carried them through years
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: of steady endeavor. I recall a boy who had worked
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: steadily for two years as a helper in a smelting establishment,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: and had conscientiously brought home all his wages one night,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: suddenly announcing to his family that he was too tired
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: and too hot to go on. As no amount of
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: persuasion could make him alter his decision, the family finally
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: threatened to bring him into the juvenile court on a
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: charge of incorrigibility, whereupon the boy disappeared, and such efforts
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: as the family have been able to make in the
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: two years since, have failed to find him. They are
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: convinced that he is trying a spell of tramping, and
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: wish that they had let him have a vacation the
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: first summer when he wanted it so bad. The boy
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: may find in the rough out door life the healing
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: which a wise physician would recommend for nervous exhaustion. Although
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: the tramp experiment is a perilous one, this revolt against
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: factory monotony is sometimes closely allied to that moral fatigue
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: which results from assuming responsibility prematurely. I recall the experience
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: of a Scotch girl of eighteen, who, with her older
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: sister worked in a candy factory, their combined earnings supporting
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: a paralytic father. The older girl met with an accident
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: involving the loss of both eyes, and the financial support
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: of the whole family devolved upon the younger girl, who
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: worked hard and conscientiously for three years, supplementing her insufficient
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: factory wages by evening work at glove making. In the
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: midst of this devotion and monotonous existence, she made the
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: acquaintance of a girl who was a chorus singer in
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: a cheap theater, and the contrast between her monotonous drudgery
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: and the glitter of the stage broke down her allegiance
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: to her helpless family. She left this city, absolutely abandoning
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: the kindred to whom she had been so long devoted,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: and announced that if they all starved, she would never
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: go into a factory again. Every effort failed to find
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: her after the concert troop left Milwaukee, and although the
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: pious Scotch father felt that she had been ensnared by
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: the devil and had brought his gray hairs in sorrow
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: to the grave, I could not quite dismiss the case
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: with this simple explanation, but was haunted by all sorts
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: of social implications. The second line of revolt manifests itself
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: in an attempt to make up for the monotony of
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: the work by a constant change from one occupation to another.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: This is an almost universal experience among thousands of young
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: people in their first impact with the industrial world. The
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: startling results of the investigation undertaken in Massachusetts by the
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: Douglas Commission showed how casual and demoralizing the first few
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: years of factory life become. Two thousands of unprepared boys
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: and girls, in their first restlessness and maladjustment. They changed
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: from one factory to another, working only for a few
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: weeks or months in each, and they exhibit no interest
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: in any of them, save for the amount of wages paid.
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: At the end of their second year of employment, many
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: of them are less capable than when they left school
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: and are actually receiving less wages. The report of the
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: Commission made clear that while the two years between fourteen
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: and sixteen were most valuable for educational purposes, they were
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: almost useless for industrial purposes. That no trade would receive
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: as an apprentice a boy under sixteen, that no industry
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: requiring skill in workmanship could utilize these untrained children, and
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: that they not only demoralized themselves, but in a sense
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: industry itself. An investigation of one thousand tenement children in
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: New York who had taken out their working papers at
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: the age of fourteen, reported that during the first working year,
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: a third of them had averaged six places each. These
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: reports but confirmed the experience of those of us who
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: live in an industrial neighborhood and who continually see these
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: restless young workers. In fact, there are moments when this
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: constant changing seems to be all that saves them from
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: the fate of those other children who hold on to
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: a monotonous task so long that they finally incapacitate themselves
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: for all work. It often seems to me an expression
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: of the instinct of self preservation, as in the case
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: of a young Swedish boy who, during a period of
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: two years, abandoned one piece of factory work after another,
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: saying he could not stand it, until in the chagrin
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: following the loss of his ninth place, he announced his
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: intention of leaving the city and allowing his mother and
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: little sisters to shift for themselves. At this critical juncture,
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: a place was found for him as a lineman in
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: a telephone company, climbing telephone poles and handling wires, apparently
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: supplied with the elements of outdoor activity and danger which
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: were necessary to hold his interest, and he became the
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: steady support of his family. But while we know the
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: discouraging effect of idleness upon the boy who has thrown
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: up his job and refuses to work again, and we
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: also know the restlessness and lack of discipline resulting from
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: the constant change from one factory to another, there is
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: still a third manifestation of maladjustment, of which one's memory
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: and the juvenile court records unfortunately furnish many examples. The
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: spirit of revolt in these cases has led to distinct disaster.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: Two stories will perhaps be sufficient in illustration, although they
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: might be multiplied indefinitely. From my own experience, a Russian
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: girl who went to work at an early age in
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: a factory pasting labels on mucilage bottles, was obliged to
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: surrender all her wages to her father, who in turn
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: gave her only the various necessities of life. In a
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: fit of revolt against the monotony of her work and
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: that nasty, sticky stuff, she stole from her father three
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars, which he had hidden away under the floor
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: of his kitchen, and with this money she ran away
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: to a neighboring city for a spree, having first bought
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: herself the most gorgeous clothing and local department store could supply.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: Of course, this preposterous beginning could have but one end,
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: and the child was sent to reform school to xpiate
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: not only her own sins, but the sins of those
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: who had failed to rescue her from a life of
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: grinding monotony which her spirit could not brook. I know
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: the judge thinks I'm a bad girl, sobbed the poor
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: little prisoner put under bonds for threatening to kill her lover.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: But I have only been bad for one week, and
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: before that I was good for six years. I worked
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: every day in Blank's factory and took home all my
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: wages to keep the kids in school. I met this
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: fellow in a dance hall. I just had to go
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: to dances, sometimes after pushing down the lever of my
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: machine with my right foot and using both with my arms,
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: feeding it for ten hours a day. Nobody knows how
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: I felt. Some nights I agreed to go away with
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: this man for a week. But when I was ready
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: to go home, he tried to drive me out on
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: the street to earn money for him, and of course
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: I threatened to kill him. Any decent girl would, She concluded,
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: as unconscious of the irony of the reflection as she
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: was of the connection between her lurid week and her
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: monotonous years, Knowing as educators do, that thousands of the
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: city youth will enter factory life at an age as
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: early as the state law will permit. Instructed as the
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: modern teacher is as to youth's requirements for a normal
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: mental and muscular development, it is hard to understand the
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: apathy in regard to youth's inevitable experience in modern industry.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: Are the educators, like the rest of us, so caught
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: in admiration of the astonishing achievements of modern industry that
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: they forget the children themselves. A Scotch educator who recently
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: visited America considered it very strange that, with a remarkable
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: industrial development all about us, affording such amazing educational opportunities,
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: our schools to continually cling to a past which did
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: not fit the American temperament, was not adapted to our
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: needs and made no vigorous pull upon our faculties. He
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: concluded that our educators, overwhelmed by the size and vigor
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: of American industry, were too timid to seize upon the
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: industrial situation and to extract its enormous educational value. He
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: lamented that this lack of courage and initiative failed not
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: only to fit the child for an intelligent and conscious
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: participation in industrial life, but that it was reflected in
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: the industrial development itself, that the industry had fallen back
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: into old habits and repeated traditional mistakes until American cities
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: exhibited stupendous extensions of the medievalisms in the traditional ghetto,
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: and of the hideousness of the black country of Lancashire.
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: He contended that this condition is the inevitable result of
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: separating education from contemporary life. Education becomes unreal and far fetched,
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: while industry becomes ruthless and materialistic. In spite of this
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: severity of the indictment, one much more severe and well
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: deserved might have been brought against us. He might have
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: accused us not only of wasting, but of misusing and
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: trampling underfoot the first tender instincts and impulses, which are
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: the source of all charm, and beauty and art, because
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: we fail to realize that by premature factory work for
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: which the youth is unprepared, society perpetually extinguishes that variety
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: and promise, that bloom of life, which is the unique
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: possession of the young. He might have told us that
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: our cities would continue to be traditionally cramped and dreary
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: until we comprehend that youth alone has the power to
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: bring to reality the vision of the coming city of mankind,
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: full of life, full of the spirit of creation. A
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: few educational experiments are carried on in Cincinnati, in Boston,
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: and in Chicago, in which the leaders of education and
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: industry unite in a common aim and purpose. A few
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: more are carried on by trade unionists, who in at
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: least two of the trades, are anxious to give to
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: their apprentices and journeymen the wider culture afforded by the
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: capitalistic trade schools, which they suspect of preparing strike breakers.
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: Still a few other schools have been found by public
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: spirited citizens to whom the situation has become unendurable, and
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: one or two more such experiments are attached to the
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: public school system itself. All of these schools are still
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: blundering in method and unsatisfactory in their results. But a
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: certain trade school for girls in New York, which is
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: preparing young girls of fourteen for the sowing trade, already
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: so overcrowded and subdivided that there remains very little education
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: for the worker, is conquering this difficult industrial situation by
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: equipping each apprentice with the informing mind. If a child
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: goes into a sewing factory with a knowledge of the
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: work she is doing in relation to the finished product,
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: if she is informed concerning the material she is manipulating
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: and the processes to which it is subjected. If she
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: understands the design she is elaborating in its historic relation
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: to art and decoration, her daily life is lifted from
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: drudgery to one of self conscious activity, and her pleasure
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: and intelligence is registered in her product. I remember a
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: little color girl in this New York school who is
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: drawing for the pattern. She was about to embroider a
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: carefully elaborated acanthus leaf. Upon my inquiry as to the design,
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: she replied, it is what the Egyptians used to put
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: on everything, because they saw it so much growing in
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: the Nile, and then the Greeks copied it, and sometimes
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: you can find it now on the buildings downtown. She
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: added shyly. Of course, I like it awfully well, because
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: it was first used by people living in Africa, where
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: the colored folks come from. Such a reasonable interest in
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: work not only reacts upon the worker, but is of
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: course registered in the product itself. Such genuine pleasure is
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: in pitiful contrast to the usual manifestation of the play
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: spirit as it is found in the factories, where at
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: the best its expression is illicit and often is attended
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: with great danger. There are many touching stories by which
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: this might be illustrated. One of them comes from a
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: large steel mill of a boy of fifteen, whose business
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: it was to throw a lever when a small tank
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: became filled with molten metal. During the first moments when
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: the tank was filling, it was his foolish custom to
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: catch the reflection of the metal upon a piece of
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: looking glass, and to throw the bit of light into
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: the eyes of his fellow workmen. Although an exasperated foreman
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: had twice dispossessed him of his mirror with a third fragment,
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: he was one day flicking the gloom of the shop
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: when the neglected tank overflowed, almost instantly, burning off both
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: his legs. Boys working in the stockyards, during their moments
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: of wrestling and rough play, often slash each other painfully
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: with the short knives which they use in their work.
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: But in spite of this, the play impulse is too
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: irrepressible to be denied. If educators could go upon a
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: voyage of discovery into that army of boys and girls
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: who enter industry each year, what values might they not discover?
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: What treasures might they not conserve and develop? If they
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: would direct the play instinct into the art impulse and
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: utilize that power of variation which industry so sadly needs.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: No force will be sufficiently powerful and widespread to redeem
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: industry from its mechanism and materialism, save the freed power
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: in every single individual. In order to do this, however,
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: we must go back a little over the educational road
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: to a training of the child's imagination as well as
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: his careful equipment with a technique. A little child makes
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: a very tottering house of cardboard and calls it a castle.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: The important feature there lies in the fact that he
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: has expressed a castle, and it is not for his
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: teacher to draw undue attention to the fact that the
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: corners are not well put together, but rather to listen
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: to and to direct the story, which centers about his
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: effort at creative expression. A little later, however, it is
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: clearly the business of the teacher to call attention to
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: the quality of the dovetailing in which the boy of
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: the manual training bench is engaged, For there is no
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: value in dovetailing a box unless it is accurately done.
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: At one point, the child's imagination is to be emphasized,
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: and at another point his technique is important, and he
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: will need both in the industrial life ahead of him.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: There is no doubt that there is a third period
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: when the boy is not interested in the making of
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: a castle or a box, or anything else unless it
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: appears to him to bear a direct relation to the future,
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: unless it has something to do with earning a living.
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: At this later moment, he is chiefly anxious to play
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: the part of a man and to take his place
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: in the world. The fact that a boy of fourteen
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: wants to go out and earn his living makes that
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: the moment when he should be educated with reference to
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: that interest, and the records of many high schools show
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: that if he is not thus educated, he bluntly refuses
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: to be educated at all. The forces pulling him to
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: work are not only the overmastering desire to earn money
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: and be a man, but if the family purse is
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: small and empty, include also his family loyalty and affection,
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: and over against them we at present place nothing but
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: a vague belief on the part of his family and
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: himself that education is a desirable thing and may eventually
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: help him on in the world. It is, of course
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: difficult to adapt education to this need. It means that
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: education must be planned so seriously and definitely for those
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: two years between fourteen and sixteen that it will be
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: actual trade training so far as it goes with attention
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: given to the condition under which money will be actually
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: paid for industrial skill. But at the same time that
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: the implications, the connections, the relations to the industrial world
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: will be made clear. A man who makes year after
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: year but one small wheel in a modern watch factory may,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: if his education has properly prepared him, have a fuller
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: life than did the old watchmaker who made a watch
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: from beginning to end. It takes thirty nine people to
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: make a coat in a modern tailoring establishment. Yet those
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: same thirty nine people might produce a coat in a
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: spirit of team work, which would make the entire process
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: as much more exhilarating than the work of the old
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: solitary tailor. As playing in a baseball nine gives more
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: pleasure to a boy than that afforded by a solitary
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: game of handball on the side of the barn. But
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: it is quite impossible to imagine a successful game of
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: baseball in which each player should be drilled only in
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: his own part and should know nothing of the relation
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: of that part to the whole game. In order to
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: make the watch wheel or the coat collar interesting, they
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: must be connected with the entire product, must include fellowship
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: as well as the pleasures arising from skilled workmanship and
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: a cultivated imagination. When all the young people working in
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: the factories shall come to use their faculties intelligently, and
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: as a matter of course, to be interested in what
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: they do, then our manufactured products may at last meet
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: the demands of a cultivated nation, because they will be
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: produced by cultivated workmen. The machine will not be abandoned
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: by any means, but will be subordinated to the intelligence
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: of the man who manipulates it, and will be used
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: as a tool. It may come about in time that
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: an educated public will become inexpressibly bored by manufactured objects
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: which reflect absolutely nothing of the minds of the men
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: who made them. That they may come to dislike an
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: object made by twelve unrelated men, even as we do
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: not care for a picture which has been painted by
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: a dozen different men, not because we have enunciated a
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: theory in regard to it, but because such a picture
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: loses all its significance and has no meaning or message
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: we need to apply the same principle, but very little further,
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: until we shall refuse to be surrounded by manufactured objects
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: which do not represent some gleam of intelligence on the
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: part of the producer. Hundreds of people have already taken
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: that step so far as all decoration and ornament are concerned,
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: and it would require but one short step more. In
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: the meantime, we are surrounded by stupid articles which give
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: us no pleasure, and the young people producing them are
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: driven into all sorts of expedients in order to escape
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: work which has been made impossible because all human interest
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: has been extracted from it. That this is not mere
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: theory may be demonstrated by the fact that many times
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: the young people may be spared the disastrous effects of
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: this third revolt against the monotony of industry if work
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: can be found for them in a place where the
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: daily round is less grinding and presents more variety. Fortunately,
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: in every city there are places outside the factories where
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: occupation of a more normal type of labor may be secured,
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: and often a restless boy can be tided over this
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: period if he is put into one of these occupations.
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: The experience in every boy's club can furnish illustrations of this.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: A factory boy, who had been brought into the juvenile
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: court many times because of his persistent habit of borrowing
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: the vehicles of physicians as they stood in front of
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: the houses of patients, always meaning to get back bed
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: before the doctor came out, led a contented and orderly
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: life after a place had been found for him as
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: a stable boy in a large livery establishment, where his
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: love for horses could be legitimately gratified. Still another boy
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: made the readjustment for himself, in spite of the great
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: physical suffering involved. He had lost both legs at the
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: age of seven flipping cars. When he went to work
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: at fourteen with two good cork legs, which he vainly
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: imagined disguised his disability. His employer kindly placed him where
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: he might sit throughout the entire day, and his task
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: was to keep tally on the boxes constantly hoisted from
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: the warehouse into cars. The boy found this work so
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: dulled that he insisted upon working in the yards where
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: the cars were being loaded and switched. He would come
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: home at night utterly exhausted, more from the extreme nervous
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: tension involved in avoiding accidents than from the tremendous exertion,
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: and although he would weep bitterly from sheer fatigue, nothing
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: could induce him to go back to the duller and
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: safer job. Fortunately, he belonged to a less passionate race
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: than the poor little Italian girl in the Hull House neighborhood,
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: who recently battered her head against the walls so long
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: and so vigorously that she had to be taken to
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: a hospital because of her serious injuries. So nearly as
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: dull grown ups could understand, it had been an hysterical
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: revolt against factory work by day, and no fun in
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: the evening. America, perhaps more than any other country in
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: the world, can demonstrate what applied science has accomplished for industry.
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: It has not only made possible the utilization of all
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: sorts of unpromising raw material, but it has tremendously increased
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: the invention and elaboration of machinery. The time must come. However,
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: if indeed the moment has not already arrived, when applied
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: science will have done all that it can do for
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: the development of machinery, it may be that machines cannot
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: be beat it up any further without putting unwarranted strain
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: upon the nervous system of the worker. It may be
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: that further elaboration will so sacrifice the workmen who feeds
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: the machine, that industrial advance will lie not in the
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: direction of improvement in machinery, but in the recovery and
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: education of the workmen. This refusal to apply the art
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: of life to industry continually drives out of it many
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: promising young people, some of them, impelled by a creative
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: impulse which will not be denied, avoid industry altogether and
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: demand that their ambitious parents give them lessons in china,
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: painting and artwork, which clutters the overcrowded parlor of the
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: more prosperous working man's home with useless decorated plates and
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: hand painted drapes, whereas the plates upon the table and
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: the rugs upon the floor, used daily by thousands of
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: weary housewives, are totally untouched by the beauty and variety
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: which this ill directed art instinct might have given them
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: had it been incorporated into industry. I could cite many
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: instances of high spirited young people who suffer a veritable
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: martyrdom in order to satisfy their artistic impulse. A young
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: girl of fourteen, whose family had for years displayed a
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: certain artistic aptitude, the mother having been a singer, and
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: the grandmother with whom the young girl lived a clever
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: worker in artificial flowers, had her first experience of wage
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: earning in a box factory. She endured it only for
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: three months, and then gave up her increasing wage in
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: exchange for a dollar fifty a week, which she earns
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: by making sketches of dresses, cloaks, and hats for the
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: advertisements of a large department store. A young Russian girl
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: of my acquaintance starves on the irregular pay which she
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: receives for her occasional contributions to the Sunday newspapers, meanwhile
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: writing her novel, rather than returned to the comparatively prosperous
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: wages of a necktie factory, which she regards wards with horror.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Another girl WASH's dishes every evening in a cheap boarding
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: house in order to secure the leisure in which to
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: practice her singing lessons, rather than to give them up
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: and return to her former twelve dollar a week job
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: in an electrical factory. The artistic expression in all these
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: cases is crude. But the young people are still conscious
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: of that old sacrifice of material interest which art has
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: ever demanded of those who serve her, and which doubtless
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: brings its own reward. That the sacrifice is in vain
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: makes it all the more touching, and is an indictment
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: of the educator who has failed to utilize the art instinct.
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: In industry, something of the same sort takes place among
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: many lads who find little opportunity in the ordinary factories
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: to utilize the instinct for workmanship, or among those more
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: prosperous young people who establish studios and art shops in which,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: with a vast expenditure of energy, they manufacture luxurious articles.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: The educational system in Germany is deliberately planned to sift
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: out and to retain in the service of industry all
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: such promising young people. The method is as yet experimental
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: and open to many objections, but it is so far
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: successful that made in Germany means made by a trained artisan,
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: and in many cases by a man working with the
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: freed impulse of the artist. The London County Council is
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: constantly urging plans which may secure for the gifted children
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: in the board schools, support in technological institutes. Educators are
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: thus gradually developing the courage and initiative to conserve for
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: industry the young worker himself, so that his mind, his
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: power of variation, his art instinct, his intelligent skill may
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: ultimately be reflected in the industrial product. That would imply
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: that industry must be seized upon and conquered by those
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: educators who now either avoided altogether by taking refuge in
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: the caves of classic learning, or beg the question by
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: teaching the tool industry advocated by Ruskin and Morris in
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: their first reaction against the present industrial system. It would
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: mean that educators must bring industry into the kingdom of
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: the mind and pervade it with the human spirit. The
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: discovery of the labor power of youth was to our
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: age like the discovery of a new natural resource, although
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: it was merely incidental to the invention of modern machinery
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: and the consequent subdivision of labor and utilizing it thus ruthlessly,
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: we are not only in danger of quenching the divine
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: fire of youth, but we are imperiling industry itself when
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: we venture to ignore these very sources of beauty, of variety,
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: and of suggestion that is the end of chapter five,
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: section six of the Spirit of Youth and the City Streets.
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Spirit
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: of Youth and the City Streets by Jane Adams read
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: by Mary Schneider, Chapter six, the thirst for righteousness. Even
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: as we pass by the joy and beauty of youth
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: on the streets without dreaming it is there, so we
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: may hurry past the very presence of august things without recognition.
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: We may easily fail to sense those spiritual realities which
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: in every age have haunted youth and called to him
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: without ceasing. Historians tell us that the extraordinary advances in
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: human progress have been made in those times when quote
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: the ideals of freedom and law, of youth, and beauty
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: of knowledge, and virtue of humanity and religion high things,
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: the conflicts between which have caused most of the disruptions
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: and despondences of human society, seem for a generation or
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: two to lie in the same direction. Are we, perhaps
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: at least twice in life's journey, dimly conscious of the
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: needlessness of this disruption and of the futility of the despondency?
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: Do we feel at first when young ourselves, we long
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: to interrogate the transfigured few among our elders, whom we
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: believe to be carrying forward affairs of gravest import Failing
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: to accomplish this, are we for the second time dogged
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: by a sense of lost opportunity, of needless waste, and perplexity.
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: When we, too, as adults, see again the dreams of
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: youth in conflict with the efforts of our own contemporaries,
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: we see idealistic endeavor, on the one hand, lost in
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: ugly friction, the heat and burden of the day borne
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: by mature men and women, on the other hand, increased
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: by their consciousness of youth's misunderstanding and high scorn. It
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: may relieve the mind to break forth in moments of
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: irritation against the folly of the coming generation. But whoso
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: pauses in his plotting way to call even his youngest
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: and rashest brother a fool ruins thereby the joy of
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: his journey. For youth is so vivid an element in
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: life that unless it is cherished, all the rest is spoiled.
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: The most praiseworthy journey grows dull and leaden unless companioned
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: by youth's iridescent dreams. Not only that, but the mature
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: of each generation run a grave risk of putting their
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: efforts in a futile direction, in a blind alley, as
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: it were, unless they can keep in touch with the
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: youth of their own day and know at least the
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: trend in which eager dreams are driving them, those dreams
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: that fairly buffet our faces as we walk the city streets.
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: At times, every one possessed with a concern for social
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: progress is discouraged by the formless and unsubdued modern city
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: as he looks upon that complicated life which drives men
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: almost without their own volition, that life of ingenuous enterprises,
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: great ambitions, political jealousies, where men tend to become mere
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: slaves of possessions. Doubtless, these striving men are full of
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: weakness and sensitiveness, even when they rend each other and
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: are but caught in the coils of circumstance. Nevertheless, a
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: serious attempt to ennoble and enrich the content of city
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: life that it may really fill the ample space their
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: ruthless wills are provided means that we must call upon
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: energies other than theirs when we count over the resources
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: which are at work to make order out of casualty,
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: beauty out of confusion, justice, kindliness, and mercy out of
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: cruelty and inconsiderate pressure. We find ourselves appealing to the
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: confident spirit of youth. We know that it is crude
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: and filled with conflicting hopes, some of them unworthy and
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: most of them doomed to disappointment. Yet these young people
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: have the advantage of mourning in their hearts. They have
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: such power of direct action, such ability to stand free
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: from fear, to break through life's trammelings, that in spite
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: of ourselves, we become convinced that quote they to the
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: disappointed earth, shall give the lives we meant to live.
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: That this solace comes to us only in fugitive moments
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: and is easily misleading, may be urged as an excuse
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: for our blindness and insensitiveness to the august moral resources
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: which the youth of each city offers to those who
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: are in the midst of the city's turmoil. A further
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: excuse is afforded in the fact that the form of
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: the dreams for beauty and righteousness change with each generation,
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: and that while it is always difficult for the fathers
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: to understand the sons. At those periods when the demand
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: of the young is one of social reconstruction, the misunderstanding
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: easily grows into bitterness. The old desire to achieve, to
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: improve the world seizes the ardent youth today with a
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: stern command to bring about juster social conditions. Youths divine
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: in patience with the world's inheritance of wrong and injustice
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: makes him scornful of rose water for the plague prescriptions,
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: and he insists upon something strenuous and vital. One can
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: find innumerable illustrations of this idealistic impatience with existing conditions
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: among the many Russian subjects found in the foreign quarters
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: of every American city. The idealism of these young people
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: might be utilized to a modification of our general culture
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: and point of view, somewhat as the influence of the
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: young Germans who came to America in the early fifties,
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: bringing with them the hopes and aspirations embodied in the
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: revolutions of eighteen forty eight, made a profound impression upon
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: the social and political institutions of America. Long before they emigrated,
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: thousands of Russian young people had been caught up in
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 1: the excitements and hopes of the Russian Revolution in Finland,
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 1: in Poland, in the Russian cities, in the university towns,
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: life had become intensified by the consciousness of the suffering
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: and starvation of millions of their fellow subjects. They had
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: been living with a sense of discipline and of preparation
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: for a coming struggle which, although grave in import was
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: vivid and adventurous. Their minds had been seized by the
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: first crude forms of social theory, and they had cherished
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: a vague belief that they were the direct instruments of
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: a final and ideal social reconstruction. When they come to America,
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: they sadly missed this sense of importance and participation in
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: a great and glorious conflict against a recognized enemy. Life
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: suddenly grows stale and un profitable. The very spirit of
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: tolerance which characterizes American cities is that which strikes most
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: unbearably upon their ardent spirits. They look upon the indifference
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: all about them with an amazement which rapidly changes to irritation.
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: Some of them in a short time lose their ardor others,
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: with incredible rapidity, make the adaptation between American conditions and
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: their store of enthusiasm. But hundreds of them remain restless
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: and ill at ease. Their only consolation, almost their only
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: real companionship, is when they meet in small groups for discussion,
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: or in larger groups to welcome a well known revolutionist
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: who brings them direct news from the conflict, or when
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: they arrange for a demonstration in memory of the Red
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: Sunday or the death of Grishuni. Such demonstrations, however, are
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: held in honor of men whose sense of justice was
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: obliged to seek an expression quite outside the regular channels
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: of established government. Knowing that Russia has forced thousands of
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: her subjects into this position, one would imagine that patriotic
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: teachers in America would be most desirous to turn into
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: governmental channels all that insatiable desire for juster relations in
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: industrial and political affairs. A distinct and well directed campaign
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: is necessary if this enthusiasm is ever to be made
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: part of that old and stilling, complete effort to embody
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: in law, the law that abides and falters, not ages
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: long the highest aspirations of justice. Unfortunately, we do little
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: or nothing with this splendid store of youthful ardor and
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: creative enthusiasm. Through its very isolation, it tends to intensify
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: and turn in upon itself, and no direct effort is
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: made to moralize it, to discipline it, to make it
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: operative upon the life of the city. And yet it
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: is perhaps what American cities need above all else. For
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: it is but too true that democra a people ruling,
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: the very name of which the Greeks considered so beautiful,
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: no longer stirs the blood of the American youth, and
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: that the real enthusiasm for self government must be found
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: among the groups of young immigrants who bring over with
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: every ship a new cargo of democratic aspirations. That many
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: of these young men look for a consummation of these
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: aspirations to a social order of the future in which
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: the industrial system as well as government, shall embody democratic relations,
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: simply shows that the doctrine of democracy, like any other
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: of the living faiths of men, is so essentially mystical,
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: that it continually demands new formulation. To fail to recognize
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: it in a new form, to call it hard names,
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: to refuse to receive it may mean to reject that
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: which our fathers cherished and hand it on as an
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: inheritance not only to be preserved but also to be developed.
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: We allow a great deal of this precious stuff, this Veltschmertz,
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: of which each generation has need not only to go unutilized,
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: but to work havoc among the young people themselves. One
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: of the saddest illustrations of this in my personal knowledge
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: was that of a young Russian girl who lived with
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: a group of her compatriots on the West side of Chicago.
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: She recently committed suicide at the same time that several
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 1: others in the group tried it and failed. One of
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: these latter, who afterwards talked freely of the motives which
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: led her to this act, said that there were no
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: great issues at stake in this country, that America was
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: wholly commercial in its interests and absorbed in money making.
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: That Americans were not held together by any historic bonds
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: nor great mutual hopes, and were totally ignorant of the
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: stirring social and philosophical movements of Europe. That her life
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: here had been a long, dreary economic struggle, unrelieved by
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: any of the higher interests. That she was tired of
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: getting seventy five cents for trimming a hat that sold
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: for twelve dollars and was to be put upon the
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: empty head of some one who had no concern for
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: the welfare of the woman who made it. The statement
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: doubtless reflected something of the sorrows of worthr but the
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: entire tone was nobler and more highly socialized. It is
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: difficult to illustrate what might be accomplished by reducing to
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: action the ardor of those youths who so bitterly arraign
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: our present industrial order. While no part of the social
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: system can be changed rapidly, we would all admit that
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: the present industrial arrangements in America might be vastly improved,
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: and that we are failing to meet the requirements of
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: our industrial life with courage and success, simply because we
• 2:32:44
  Speaker 1: do not realize that unless we established that humane legislation,
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: which has its roots in a consideration for human life,
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: our industrialism itself will suffer from inbreeding, growing ever more
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: unrestrained and ruthless. Would seem obvious that in order to
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: secure relief in a community dominated by industrial ideals, an
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: appeal must be made to the old spiritual sanctions for
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: human conduct. That we must reach motives more substantial and
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: enduring than the mere fleeting experiences of one phase of
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: modern industry, which vainly imagines that its growth would be
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: curtailed if the welfare of its employees were guarded by
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: the state. It would be an interesting attempt to turn
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: that youthful enthusiasm to the aid of one of the
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: most conservative of present social efforts, the almost worldwide movement
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: to secure protective legislation for women and children in industry,
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: in which America is so behind the other nations. Fourteen
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: of the great European powers protect women from all night work,
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: from excessive labor by day, because paternalistic governments prize the
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 1: strength of women for the bearing and rearing of healthy
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: children to the state. And yet in a republic, it
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: is the citizens themselves who must be convinced of the
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: need of this protection, unless they would permit industry to
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: maim the very mothers of the future. In one year
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: in the German Empire, one hundred thousand children were cared
• 2:34:14
  Speaker 1: for through money paid from the state insurance fund to
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: their widowed mothers or to their invalided fathers. And yet
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: in the American States it seems impossible to pass a
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: most rudimentary Employer's Liability Act, which would be but the
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: first step towards that code of beneficent legislation which protects
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: the widow and fatherless in Germany and England. Certainly we
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: shall have to bestir ourselves if we would care for
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: the victims of the industrial order as well as do
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 1: other nations. We shall be obliged speedily to realize that
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: in order to secure protective legislation from a governmental body
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: in which the most powerful interests represented are those of
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: the producers and transporters of manufactured goods, it will be
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: necessary to exhort to a care for the defenseless from
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: the religious point of view. To take even the non
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: commercial point of view would be to assert that evolutionary
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 1: progress assumes that a sound of physique is the only
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: secure basis of life, and to guard the mothers of
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: the race is simple sanity. And yet from lack of preaching,
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: we do not unite for action, because we are not
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: stirred to act at all. And protective legislation in America
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: is shamefully inadequate. Because it is always difficult to put
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: the championship of the oppressed above the councils of prudence.
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: We say in despair sometimes that we are a people
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: who hold such varied creeds that there are not enough
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: of one religious faith to secure anything. But the truth
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: is that it is easy to unite for action people
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: whose hearts have once been filled by the fervor of
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: that willing devotion which may easily be generated in the
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: youthful breast. It is comparatively easy to enlarge a moral concept,
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: but extremely difficult to give it to an adult for
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: the first time. And yet when we attempt to appeal
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 1: to the old sanctions for disinterested conduct, the conclusion is
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: often forced upon us that they have not been ingrained
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 1: into character, that they cannot be relied upon when they
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 1: are brought into contact with the arguments of industrialism, that
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: the colors of the flag flying over the ford of
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: our spiritual resources wash out and disappear when the storm
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: actually breaks. It is because the ardor of youth has
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: not been attracted to the long effort to modify the
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 1: ruthlessness of industry by humane enactments, that we sadly miss
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: their resourceful enthusiasm, and that at the same time, groups
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: of young people who hunger and thirst after social righteousness
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: are breaking their hearts because the social reform is so
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: long delayed in an unsympathetic and hard hearted society frustrates
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: all their hopes. And yet these ardent young people, who
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: obscure the issue by their crying and striving and looking
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 1: in the wrong place, might be of inestimable value if
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: so called political leaders were in any sense social philosophers.
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: To permit these young people to separate themselves from the
• 2:37:12
  Speaker 1: contemporaneous efforts of ameliorating society and to turn their vague
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: hopes solely toward an ideal commonwealth of the future is
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: to withdraw from an experimental self government founded in enthusiasm,
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 1: the very stores of enthusiasm which are needed to sustain it.
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: The championship of the oppressed came to be a spiritual
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 1: passion with the Hebrew prophets. They saw the promises of
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: religion not for individuals, but in the broad reaches of
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: national affairs and in the establishment of social justice. It
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: is quite possible that such a spiritual passion is again
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: to be found among the ardent young souls of our cities.
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: They see a vision not of a purified nation, but
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: of a regenerated and re organized society. Shall we throw
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 1: all this into the future, into the futile prophecy of
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 1: those who talk because they cannot achieve or shall we
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: commingle their ardor their overmastering desire for social justice with
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: that more sober effort to modify existing conditions? Are we
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: once more forced to appeal to the educators? Is it
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 1: so difficult to utilize this ardor because educators have failed
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: to apprehend the spiritual quality of their task, It would
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: seem a golden opportunity for those to whom is committed
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: the task of spiritual instruction. For to preach and seek
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: justice in human affairs is one of the oldest obligations
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: of religion and morality. All that would be necessary would
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: be to attach this teaching to the contemporary world in
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 1: such wise that the eager youth might feel a tug
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: upon his faculties and a sense of participation in the
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: moral life about him. To leave it unattached to actual
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 1: social movements means that the moralist is speaking in incomprehensible terms.
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: Without this connection, the religious teachers may have conscientiously carried
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: out their traditional duties and yet have failed utterly to
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: stir the fires of spiritual enthusiasm. Each generation of moralists
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: and educators find themselves facing an inevitable dilemma, first to
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: keep the young committed to their charge unspotted from the world,
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: and second to connect the young with the ruthless and
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: materialistic world all about them in such wise that they
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: may make it the arena for their spiritual endeavor. It
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: is fortunate for these teachers that sometime during the Golden
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: Age the most prosaic youth is seized by a new
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: interest in remote and universal ends, and that if but
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: given a clue by which he may connect his lofty
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: aims with his daily living, he himself will drag the
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: very heavens into the most sordid tenement. The perpetual difficulty
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 1: consists in finding the clue for him and placing it
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: in his hands, For if the teaching is too detached
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: from life, it does not result in any psychic impulsion
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: at all. I remember, as an illustration of the saving
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: power of this definite connection a tale told me by
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 1: a distinguished labor leader in England. His affections had been
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: starved even as a child, for he knew nothing of
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: his parents, his earliest memories being associated with a wretched
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: old woman who took the most casual care of him.
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 1: When he was nine years old, he ran away to sea,
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: and for the next seven years led the rough life
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 1: of a dock laborer, until he became much interested in
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: a little crippled boy who, by the death of his father,
• 2:40:43
  Speaker 1: had been left solitary on a freight bote. My English
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: friend promptly adopted the boy as his own, and all
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: the questionings of life centered about his young protege. He
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: was constantly driven to attend evening meetings, where he heard
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: discussed though social condition which bear so hard upon the
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: weak and sick. The crippled boy lived until he was fifteen,
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: and by that time the regeneration of his foster father
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 1: was complete. The young docker was committed for life to
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: the bettering of social conditions. It is doubtful whether any
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: abstract moral appeal could have reached such a roving nature. Certainly,
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 1: no attempt to incite his ambition would have succeeded, only
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: a pull upon his deepest sympathies and affections. His desire
• 2:41:30
  Speaker 1: to protect and cherish a weaker thing could possibly have
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: stimulated him and connected him with the forces making for
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: moral and social progress. This, of course, has ever been
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 1: the task of religion to make the sense of obligation personal,
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 1: to touch morality with enthusiasm, to bathe the world in affection,
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: and on all sides. We are challenging the teachers of
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 1: religion to perform this task for the youth of the city.
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: For thousands of years, definite religion instruction has been given
• 2:42:01
  Speaker 1: by authorized agents to the youth of all nations, emphasized
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: through tribal ceremonials, the assumption of the Roman Toga, the
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 1: bar Mitzvah of the Jews, the first communion of thousands
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: of children in Catholic Europe, the Sunday schools of even
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: the least formal of the evangelical sex. It is as
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: if men had always felt that this expanding period of
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 1: human life must be seized upon for spiritual ends, that
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: the tender tissue and newly awakened emotions must be made
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: the repository for the historical ideals and dogmas, which are,
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: after all the most precious possessions of the race. How
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: has it come about that so many of the city
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: youth are not given their share in our common inheritance
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: of life's best goods. Why are their tender feet so
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: often ensnared even when they are going about youth's legitimate business.
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: One would suppose that in such an age as ours,
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: moral teachers would be put upon their mond, that moral
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 1: authority would be forced to speak with no uncertain sound,
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: if only to be heard above the din of machinery
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 1: and the roar of industrialism, that it would have exerted
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: itself as never before, to convince the youth of the
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: reality of the spiritual life. Affrighted as the moralists must
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: be by the sudden new emphasis placed upon wealth, despairing
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: of the older men and women who are already caught
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: by its rewards, one would say that they would have
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 1: seized upon the multitude of young people, whose minds are
• 2:43:33
  Speaker 1: busied with issues which lie beyond the portals of life,
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: as the only resource which might save the city from
• 2:43:39
  Speaker 1: the fate of those who perish through the lack of vision. Yet,
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 1: because this inheritance has not been attached to conduct, the
• 2:43:47
  Speaker 1: youth of Jewish birth may have been taught that prophets
• 2:43:51
  Speaker 1: and statesmen for three thousand years declared Jehovah to be
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: a god of justice who hated oppression and desired righteousness.
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: But there is no real life appeal to his spirit
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: of moral adventure, unless he is told that the most
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: stirring attempts to translate justice into the modern social order
• 2:44:09
  Speaker 1: have been inaugurated and carried forward by men of his
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: own race, and that until he joins in the contemporary
• 2:44:15
  Speaker 1: manifestations of that attempt, he is recreant to his highest
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 1: traditions and obligations. The Christian youth may have been taught
• 2:44:24
  Speaker 1: that man's heart breaking adventure to find justice in the
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 1: order of the universe moved the God of Heaven himself
• 2:44:30
  Speaker 1: to send a mediator in order that the justice man
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 1: craves and the mercy by which alone he can endure
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 1: his weakness might be reconciled. But he will not make
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: the doctrine his own unless he reduces it to action
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: and tries to translate the spirit of his master into
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: social terms. The youth who calls himself an evolutionist. It
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 1: is rather hard to find a name for this youth,
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 1: but there are thousands of him, and a fine fellow
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: he often is has read of that struggle beginning with
• 2:45:01
  Speaker 1: the earliest tribal effort to establish just relations between man
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: and man. But he still needs to be told that,
• 2:45:09
  Speaker 1: after all justice can only be worked out upon this
• 2:45:12
  Speaker 1: earth by those who will not tolerate a wrong to
• 2:45:15
  Speaker 1: the feeblest member of the community, and that it will
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: become a social force only in proportion as men's didfastly
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: strive to establish it. If these young people who are
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 1: subjected to varied religious instruction are also stirred to action,
• 2:45:32
  Speaker 1: or rather if the instruction is given validity because it
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 1: is attached to conduct, then it may be comparatively easy
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: to bring about certain social reforms so sorely needed in
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 1: our industrial cities. We are at times obliged to admit, however,
• 2:45:47
  Speaker 1: that both the school and the church have failed to
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 1: perform this office, and are indicted by the young people themselves.
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 1: Thousands of young people in every great city are either
• 2:45:58
  Speaker 1: frankly Heydenistic or are vainly attempting to work out for
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: themselves a satisfactory code of morals. They cast about in
• 2:46:06
  Speaker 1: all directions for the clue which shall connect their loftiest
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 1: hopes with their actual living. Several years ago, a committee
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: of lads came to see me in order to complain
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: of a certain high school principle because he never talks
• 2:46:21
  Speaker 1: to us about life. When urged to make a clearer statement,
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: they added, he never asked us what we are going
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 1: to be. We can't get a word out of him
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 1: except lessons in keeping quiet in the halls of the
• 2:46:33
  Speaker 1: dozens of young women who have begged me to make
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: a connection for them between their dreams of social usefulness
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: and their actual living. I recall one of the many
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 1: whom I had sent back to her clergyman, returning with
• 2:46:47
  Speaker 1: this remark. His only suggestion was that I should be
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: responsible every Sunday for fresh flowers upon the aldar. I
• 2:46:55
  Speaker 1: did that when I was fifteen and liked it then.
• 2:46:58
  Speaker 1: But when you have come back from college and are
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 1: twenty two years old, it doesn't quite fit in with
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 1: the vigorous efforts you have been told are necessary in
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: order to make our social relations more Christian. All of
• 2:47:11
  Speaker 1: us forget how very early we are in the experiment
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 1: of founding self government in this trying climate of America,
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 1: and we are making the experiment in the most materialistic
• 2:47:22
  Speaker 1: period of all history, having as our court of last
• 2:47:25
  Speaker 1: appeal against that materialism. Only the wonderful and inexplicable instinct
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: for justice which resides in the hearts of men, which
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 1: is never so irresistible, as when the heart is young.
• 2:47:38
  Speaker 1: We may cultivate this most precious possession, or we may
• 2:47:41
  Speaker 1: disregard it. We may listen to the young voices rising
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 1: clear above the roar of industrialism and the prudent counsels
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: of commerce, or we may become hypnotized by the sudden
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: new emphasis placed upon wealth and power and forget the
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 1: supremacy of spiritual forces in men's affairs. It is as
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 1: if we ignored a wistful, often confident creature who walked
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 1: through our city streets, calling out, I am the spirit
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: of youth. With me, all things are possible. We fail
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 1: to understand what he wants, or even to see his doings,
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 1: although his acts are pregnant with meaning, and we may
• 2:48:21
  Speaker 1: either translate them into a sordid chronicle of petty vice
• 2:48:25
  Speaker 1: or turn them into a solemn school for civic righteousness.
• 2:48:30
  Speaker 1: We may either smother the divine fire of youth, or
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 1: we may feed it. We may either stand stupidly staring
• 2:48:38
  Speaker 1: as it sinks into a murky fire of crime and
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 1: flares into the intermittent blaze of folly, or we may
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 1: tend it into a lambent flame with power to make
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 1: clean and bright our dingy city streets. That is the
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 1: end of chapter six and the end of the spirit
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: of youth and the city streets. Read with great pleasure
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 1: by Mary Schneider