The Minister and the Boy Part 2

It must not be thought that the minister is largely to blame for the situation as it now is. Perpetuating inst.i.tutions beyond the time of their usefulness is one of society's worst habits, and it is not to be expected that religious organizations, which in a given stage of the development of Christian truths were vital and necessary, can easily be persuaded to surrender their ident.i.ty, even after the cause that called them into being has been won.

Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great has pa.s.sed away.

But the real religious leader who loves boys will not be balked by the pettiness and inability of denominationalism. His hope lies not solely in the church or the churches, but largely in the intelligence, sympathy, and generosity of the unchurched citizens, whose number and importance in the small town is probably in the inverse ratio of the number of churches. Business men of whatever creed, or of none, are remarkably responsive to any sane endeavor to create a wholesome outlet for juvenile activity, and, whether right or wrong, count such efforts as being more valuable than much of the traditional church endeavor.

The minister will first try to organize boys' work for the whole community, but if co-operation on the part of all or of a group of the churches proves impossible, let him go ahead with such a.s.sistance as his own church and other voluntary supporters will afford, and let him still work in entire freedom from sectarian aim. As a minister of Christ and his kingdom he must give to Christianity an interpretation which will offset provincial and narrow impressions. He must free it from cant and from the other-worldly emphasis and bring it into the realm where boys and business men will respect it as a social factor of primary importance.

All the problems of early adolescence belong to the village boy as to every other. He also gropes about for his vocational discovery. How shall he gain self-control, how can he find himself? How can he relate his life to the great perplexing world and to the G.o.d of all? How can he win his immediate battles with temptation? The public school throws little light upon his possible occupation, trade, or profession, nor does it deal with his moral struggle.

The Sunday school, if it touches him at all, is often regarded as a nuisance to be endured out of respect for others. It addresses itself too much to tradition and too little to modern life. It gets the Israelites from Egypt into possession of Canaan by various miraculous interventions, stops the sea and the sun, knocks down the walls of Jericho by the most uncommon tactics, and reveals the umpire as on the Israelites' side.

The boy knows that if this be intended as sober history things have changed somewhat. For these are the very things that do not and should not happen in the conquest of his promised land. Under Christian guidance he must learn the ethical value of an orderly world, the morality that inheres in cause and effect, the divine help which is not partiality; and if it should turn out that he could master these lessons better through work and play and friendship than through being formally instructed in misapprehended lore, then such work and play and fellowship will prove of greater value than the Sunday-school hour alone.

As for the country boy, perhaps his chief lack is a.s.sociation with his fellows. To meet this and to satisfy the gregarious instinct, which will be found in him as in all boys, the minister's organizing ability must be directed. The gymnasium, in so far as it is a makeshift for lack of proper exercise in the life of the city boy, is not in great demand in the country. The farm boy has in his work plenty of exercise of a general and sufficiently exhausting character, and he has the benefit of taking it out of doors. He, of course, is not a gymnast in fineness and grace of development, and he may need corrective exercises, but the big muscles whose development tells for health and against nervousness are always well used.

In so far, however, as the gymnasium affords a place for organized indoor play through the winter months there is more to be said of its necessity. For it is not exercise but group play that the country boy most needs. The fun and excitement, the contest and the co-ordination of his ability with that of others, all serve to reduce his awkwardness and to supplant a rather painful self-consciousness with a more just idea of his relative rating among his fellows. He finds himself, learns what it is to pull together, and gets some idea of the problems of getting along well with colleagues and opponents.

Wherever the country pastor can secure a room that will do for basket-ball, indoor baseball, and the like, he may, if it is sufficiently central and accessible, perform a useful service for the boys and establish a point of contact. It is highly desirable that shower-baths and conveniences for a complete change of clothing be provided. If Sat.u.r.day afternoon is a slack time and the farmers are likely to come to the village, he should make arrangements to care for the boys then, reserving Sat.u.r.day evening for the young men. Such an arrangement secures economy in heating the building and may overcome for some of the youth the Sat.u.r.day evening attractions of the saloon and public dance.

For the distinctly country church, situated at the cross-roads, a building that may serve as a gymnasium will be practically impossible unless a very remarkable enthusiasm is awakened among the boys and young men. But in many a country village such an equipment is both necessary and well within the reach of a good organizer. The country people have means and know how to work for what they really desire. What they most lack is inspiration and leadership.

During that part of the open season when school is in session the country minister has an excellent opportunity to meet the boys, organize their play, and become a real factor in their lives. In the country one-room school there will be found but few boys over fourteen years of age, but a great deal can be done with the younger boys in some such way as follows: As school "lets out" in the afternoon the minister is on hand. The boys have been under a woman teacher all day and are glad to meet a man who will lead them in vigorous play. It may be baseball, football, trackwork with relay races, military drill, or the like--all they need is one who knows how, who is a recognized leader, and who serves as an immediate court of appeal. If they do not get more moral benefit and real equipment for life's struggle in this hour and a half than they are likely to get from a day's bookwork in the average one-room, all-grades, girl-directed country school, it must be because the minister is a sorry specimen.

The city minister takes his boys on outings to the country. The country minister will bring his boys on "innings" to the city. As they see him he is pre-eminently the apostle of that stirring, larger world. What abilities may not be awakened, what horizons that now settle about the neighboring farm or village may not be gloriously lifted and broadened, what riches that printed page cannot convey may not be planted in the young mind by the pastor who introduces country boys to their first glimpse of great universities, gigantic industries, famous libraries, inspiring churches, and stately buildings of government?

One need not mention such possibilities as taking a group to the fair or the circus, or on expeditions for fishing, swimming, and hunting--all of them easy roads to immortality in a boy's affection.

Further, the minister is not only the apostle of that greater world but the exemplar of the highest culture. He is to bring that culture to the country not only through his own person but by lectures on art and literature, so that the young may partic.i.p.ate in the world's refined and imperishable wealth. This may mean ill.u.s.trated lectures on art and the distribution of good prints which will gradually supplant the chromos and gaudy advertis.e.m.e.nts which often hold undisputed sway on the walls of the farmhouse.

It might also be helpful to our partly foreign rural population to have lectures on history such as will acquaint boys and others with the real heroes of various nations, preserve pride in the best national traditions, and ultimately develop a sane and sound patriotism among all our citizens. The church building is not too sacred a place for an endeavor of this kind. The ordinary stereopticon and the moving picture should not be disdained in so good a cause. Boys are hero-worshipers, and history is full of heroes of first-rate religious significance.

As a further factor in elevating and enriching the life of the country boy, the minister may endeavor to create a taste for good reading. The tendency is that all the serious reading shall be along agricultural rather than cultural lines and that the lighter reading shall be only the newspaper and the trashy story. The minister should enlarge the boy's life by acquainting him with the great cla.s.sics. A taste for good things should be formed early. With the older boys, from the years of sixteen or eighteen upward, organization for literary development and debating should be tried. A good deal in a cultural way is necessary to offset the danger which now besets the successful farmer of becoming a slave to money-making, after the fashion of the great magnates whom he condemns but with rather less of their general perspective of life.

The minister might help organize a mock trial, county council, school board, state legislature, or something of that sort, as a social and educative device for the older boys. Under certain conditions music could well form the fundamental bond of a.s.sociation, and groups gathered about such interests as these could meet from house to house, thus promoting the social life of the parish in no small degree. Young women might well share in the organizations that are literary and musical. The great vogue of the country singing-school a generation ago was no mere accident.

Could not the minister enter into the campaign for the improvement of the conditions of farm life and stimulate the beautifying of the dooryards by giving a prize to the boy who, in the judgment of an impartial committee, had excelled in this good work? Could he not interest his boys' organization in beautifying the church grounds and so enlist them in a practical altruistic endeavor? Might he not find a very vital point of contact with the country boy by conducting inst.i.tutes for farmers' boys, perhaps once a month, in which by the generous use of government bulletins and by ill.u.s.tration and actual experiment he might awaken a scientific interest in farming and impart valuable information?

In connection with this the boys could be induced to conduct experiments on plots of ground on their fathers' farms. Exhibits could be made at the church and prizes awarded. It would be a good thing too if the profits, or part of the profits, from such experimental plots could be voluntarily devoted to some philanthropic or religious cause. This would have the double value of performing an altruistic act and of intelligently canva.s.sing the claim of some recognized philanthropy. So also the raising of chickens and stock might be tried in a limited way with the scientific method and the philanthropic purpose combined.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOY SCOUTS STUDYING THE TREES]

In some places botanical collections can be made of great interest; or the gathering and polishing of all the kinds of wood in the vicinity, with an exhibition in due time, may appeal to the boys. In addition to forestry there is ornithology, geology, and, for the early age of twelve to fifteen, bows and arrows, crossbows, scouting, and various expeditions answering to the adventure instinct.

The wise country minister will certainly keep in touch with the public school, will be seen there frequently, and will give his genuine support to the teacher in all of her endeavor to do a really n.o.ble work with a very limited outfit. He will help her to withstand the gross utilitarianism of the average farmer, who is slow to believe in anything for today that cannot be turned into dollars tomorrow. What with the consolidation of township schools, improved communication by rural delivery and telephone, better roads, the increasing use of automobiles, and the rising interest in rural life generally, together with a broad view of pastoral leadership and the "cure of souls" for the whole countryside, the minister may be a vital factor in shaping the social and religious life of the country boy; and he will, because of his character and office, illumine common needs and homely interests with an ever-refined and spiritual ideal. His ministry, however, cannot be all top, a cloudland impalpable and fleeting. It was with common footing and vital ties that Goldsmith's village preacher

Allured to brighter worlds and led the way.

After such fashion and with thorough rootage in country life must the minister of today turn to spiritual account the wealth-producing methods of farming. Out of soil cultivation he must guarantee soul culture by setting forth in person, word, and inst.i.tution those ideals which have always claimed some of the best boyhood of the country for the world's great tasks.

CHAPTER IV

THE MODERN CITY AND THE NORMAL BOY[3]

Modern cities have been built to concentrate industrial opportunity.

They have taken their rise and form subsequent to the industrial revolution wrought by steam and as a result of that revolution. So far they have paid only minor attention to the conservation or improvement of human life. Justice, not to mention mercy, toward the family and the individual has not been the guiding star. The human element has been left to fit as best it could into a system of maximum production at minimum cost, rapid and profitable transportation, distribution calculated to emphasize and exploit need, and satisfactory dividends on what was often supposit.i.tious stock; and because these have been the main considerations the latent and priceless wealth of boyhood has been largely sacrificed.

The amazing and as yet unchecked movement of population toward the city means usually a curtailment of living area for all concerned. The more people per acre the greater the limitation of individual action and the greater the need of self-control and social supervision. Restrictions of all sorts are necessary for the peace of a community wherein the physical conditions almost force people to jostle and irritate one another. In such a situation the more spontaneous and unconventional the expression of life the greater the danger of bothering one's neighbors and of conflicting with necessary but artificial restrictions. Even innocent failure to comprehend the situation may const.i.tute one anti-social or delinquent, and the foreigner as well as the boy is often misjudged in this way.

But on the score of the city's inevitable "Thou shalt not," it is the boy who suffers more than any other member of the community. His intensely motor propensities, love of adventure, dim idea of modern property rights, and the readiness with which he merges into the stimulating and mischief-loving "gang" operate to const.i.tute him the peerless nuisance of the congested district, the scourge of an exasperated and neurasthenic public, the enemy of good order and private rights.

Hence juvenile delinquency and crime increase proportionately with the crowding of the modern city, the boy offending five times to the girl's once, and directing 80 per cent of his misdemeanors against property rights. In the city of Chicago alone the 1909 records show that in one year there pa.s.sed through the courts 3,870 children under seventeen years of age, 10,449 under twenty years, and 25,580 under twenty-five years of age. But it is not the actual delinquency of which the law takes account that most impresses one; it is rather the weight of failure and mediocrity, the host of "seconds" and "culls" that the city treatment of childhood produces.

The constrictions, vicissitudes, and instability of city life often make such havoc of the home that the boy is practically adrift at an early age. He has no abiding-place of sufficient permanency to create a wealth of a.s.sociation or to develop those loyalties that enrich the years and serve as anchorage in the storms of life. He moves from one flat to another every year, and in many cases every six months. In such a kaleidoscopic experience the true old-fashioned neighbor, whose charitable judgment formerly robbed the law of its victims, is sadly missed. Formerly allowance was made out of neighborly regard for the parents of bothersome boys, but among the flat-dwellers of today proximity means alienation, familiarity breeds contempt, and far from being neighbors, those who live across the hall or above or below are aggrieved persons who have to put up with the noise of an unknown rascal whose parents, like themselves, occupy temporarily these restricted quarters--these homes attenuated beyond recognition.

A garden plot, small live stock, pets, woodpile, and workshop are all out of the question, for the city has deprived the average boy not only of fit living quarters but of the opportunity to enact a fair part of his glorious life-drama within the friendly atmosphere of home. He cannot collect things with a view to proprietorship and construction and have them under his own roof. The noise and litter incident to building operations of such proportions as please boys will not be tolerated.

Moreover, this home, which has reached the vanishing point, makes almost no demand for his co-operation in its maintenance. There are no ch.o.r.es for the flat boy wherein he may be busy and dignified as a partner in the family life. To make the flat a little more sumptuous and call it an apartment does not solve the problem, and with the rapid decrease of detached houses and the occupation of the territory with flat buildings the city is providing for itself a much more serious juvenile problem than it now has.

But the industrial usurpation takes toll of the family in other ways.

The intense economic struggle and the long distance "to work" rob the boy of the father's presence and throw upon the mother an unjust burden.

To return home late and exhausted, to be hardly equal to the economic demand, to see the prenuptial ideals fade, to pa.s.s from disappointment to discouragement and from chronic irritability to a broken home is not uncommon. The boy is unfortunate if the "incompatibility" end in desertion or divorce, and equally unfortunate if it does not.

Owing to the fact that the male usually stands from under when the home is about to collapse, and to the further fact that industrial accidents, diseases, and fatalities in the city claim many fathers, there frequently falls upon the mother the undivided burden of a considerable family. If she goes out to work the children are neglected; if she takes roomers family life of the kind that nurtures health and morality is at an end. And just as the apparently fortunate boy of the apartment is forced upon the street, so the boy from the overcrowded old-fashioned house is pushed out by the roomers who must have first attention because of bread-and-b.u.t.ter considerations. Much more could be said of all the various kinds of neglect, misfortune, and avarice that commit boys to the doubtful influences of the city street, but the main object is to point out the trend of home life in the modern city without denying that there are indeed many adequate homes still to be found, especially in suburban districts.

A survey of the street and its allied inst.i.tutions will throw light upon the precocious ways of the typical city boy. The street is the playground, especially of the small boy who must remain within sight and call of home. Numerous fatalities, vigorous police, and big recreation parks will not prevent the instinctive use of the nearest available open area. If congestion is to be permitted and numerous small parks cannot be had, then the street must have such care and its play zones must be so guarded and supervised that the children will be both safe from danger and healthfully and vigorously employed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIND THE PLAYGROUND]

In the busier parts of the city the constant street noise puts a nervous tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertis.e.m.e.nts creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to elude observation and to deceive one's parents abound; social control weakens; ideals become neurotic, flashy, distorted; the light and allurement of the street encourage late hours; the posters and "barkers" of cheap shows often appeal to illicit curiosity, and the galaxy of apparent fun and adventure is such as to tax to the full the wholesome and restraining influence of even the best home.

The cheap show is an adjunct of the street and a potent educational factor in the training of the city lad. These motion-picture shows have an estimated daily patronage in the United States of two and a quarter millions, and in Chicago 32,000 children will be found in them daily.

Many of these children are helplessly open to suggestion, owing to malnutrition and the nervous strain which the city imposes; and harmful impressions received in this vivid way late at night cannot be resisted.

At one time, after a set of pictures had been given on the West Side which depicted the hero as a burglar, thirteen boys were brought into court, all of whom had in their possession housebreakers' tools, and all stated they had invested in these tools because they had seen these pictures and they were anxious to become gentlemanly burglars.[4]

Through censorship bureaus, national and munic.i.p.al, the character of the films put on exhibition is being greatly improved, and the moving picture is destined to a large use by educational and religious agencies.

Many instances of valuable moving-picture exhibits come to mind, including those on travel, nature-study, the pa.s.sion play, athletic sports, sanitation (especially the exhibits showing the breeding and habits of the house-fly), and various others having to do with the health, happiness, and morality of the people; and from the study of hundreds of nickel shows one is forced in justice to say that although there are dangers from the children's being out late at night and going to such places unattended, and although the recreation is pa.s.sive and administered rather than secured by wholesome muscular exercise, yet there has been brought within the reach of the entire family of moderate means an evening of innocent enjoyment which may be had together and at small expense. Properly regulated, it is an offset to the saloon and a positive medium of good influence.

Such a commendation, however, can safely be made for those communities only which take the pains to censor all films before exhibition is permitted. In less than two years the censorship bureau of Chicago has excluded one hundred and thirteen miles of objectionable films. It should be said also that the vaudeville, which now often accompanies the nickel and dime shows, is usually coa.r.s.e and sometimes immoral. The music, alas, speaks for itself and const.i.tutes a sorry sort of education except in the foreign quarters of our great cities where, in conformity to a better taste, it becomes cla.s.sic and valuable.

But to describe a typical film of the better sort and to indicate its practical use may have some suggestive value for wide-awake ministers who wish to turn to good account every legitimate social agency. During the Christmas season of 1911 the following film story was set forth to vast audiences of people with telling effect: In a wretched hovel you see a lame mother with three pale children. The rich young landlord comes to collect rent and is implored to improve the place. This he refuses to do because of his small returns on the property. He departs.

The father of the family returns from work. They eat the bread of the desolate.

The landlord marries and sets out on an ocean voyage with his bride. On the same ship the father of the tubercular family, working as stoker or deck hand, reaches the last stages of the disease and in his dying hours is mercifully attended by the bride. She contracts the disease and later appears weak and fading. The husband, ascertaining the real nature of her malady, brings her home with the purpose of placing her in the private sanitarium. There is no room in this inst.i.tution, but good accommodations are found in the public sanitarium to which she goes and where she finds the children from their tenement.

The facts have now been put in such juxtaposition that the husband has a change of heart. The patients recover and the landlord endows a great sanitarium for the tuberculous. One may easily criticize the crudeness of the plot and the improbabilities with which it bristles. But it sets forth love and death and conversion and an appeal to rescue those who suffer from the great white plague: and this was sufficient for the crowd, for all are children when beholding the elemental things of life.