Part 7

Chairman HADLEY—I think the Chair will declare that motion carried, and on tomorrow morning where there is an order on the program for the response of chairmen of organizations concerned in conservation there will be statements of the representatives of the several states. It is important in the consideration of this question that we should not lose sight of the fact that conservation is a means and not an end, and the real end is the formation and promotion of the happiness and welfare and prosperity of the people. Consequently the most important question of conservation is the question of the conservation of human health and life. There are various phases of this question before the American people today that are of commanding importance; the immense toll that modern industry makes upon its workers amounts to ten every sixty seconds; the number of deaths from unhealthful occupations has presented a record as tragic as any that was ever written in times of war. There is another phase of this question, of conservation of human life, in the manner in which society deals with its deficient and dependents. Any system devised for the prosecution of crime and the protection of society against its enemies that deals only with the question of punishment and revenge is a mistaken system, and does not accomplish anything of permanent results in its benefits to society. They talk of the system in the conduct of penitentiaries and jails and eleemosynary institutes, but unless they send those they heal out into the world better men, women or children, physically, intellectually or morally than when they received them, that system is a mistaken and misguided one. One of the most distinguished representatives of a modern system in the enforcement of our criminal law for the conservation of human life and character is a man who I now have the pleasure of introducing to you, Judge Ben Lindsay, of the State of Colorado, and of the City of Denver, (Applause) who will speak on the subject of the “Country Child vs. the City Child.” Hon. Ben B. Lindsay.

JUDGE LINDSAY—Governor Hadley and delegates, ladies and gentlemen: I am sure it is a great honor to have the privilege of appearing here at this National Conservation Congress to consider some phases of the problem of the child. I do not know whether at past congresses the subject of the child has had a part in the program, but I do know that upon this occasion I feel a great deal as I think a particular boy friend of mine must have felt once in a little episode that happened in my own court nearly ten years ago. We found that when we made an appeal to the loyalty, even of the street boy, the state might find a helper and defender instead of an enemy. I recall when a certain policeman could not capture a certain little rascal of the streets. He went by the nickname of “Moochy.” He came in one day to say to me that another little imp of Satan, as he was supposed to be, by the name of “Mickey,” knew where “Moochy” was, and if he could enlist the services of “Mickey” in the capture of “Moochy” he thought he might save this little citizen. It was with some difficulty that I had to explain to “Mickey” that we were trying to save “Moochy,” in order to get him to tell me where “Moochy” was. When he found we had come to save, to help, and not to hurt, that loyalty for his chum turned to loyalty to the state, and he said, “Judge, I know where the kid is, and I will get him.” In about fifteen minutes down in the wing of a cheap theater in our town there was a howl and a growl that somewhat disconcerted the audience. And when they investigated they found it was “Micky” pinching “Moochey,” as he called it. With some difficulty my little gamin friend succeeded in getting the delinquent to the court house, coming in to say to me with more or less disgust, “that the kid didn’t seem to want to be saved nohow.” A newspaper reporter happened to come along to write a story based upon this episode, to be called “The Pinching of Moochey by Mickey.” It was not complete, in his estimation, without a picture of the two, and he lined them up outside to take their pictures, when “Mickey” balked. He would not stand to have his picture taken. And I was somewhat puzzled, for I rather feared the outcome of this situation when “Mickey” came in followed by the newspaper reporter, to explain. He said, “Do you tinks I want to get my pictur took wid de little giek,” as he pointed to “Moochy” outside? “No,” he said, “I don’t; I got out of his class two years ago.” Then he said, as he pointed to the newspaper man, “If that guy wants to take my picture let him take it alongside of you, put both in together, and I don’t kick.”

CHILDREN, THE BIGGEST CROP.

When the Conservation Congress wanted to put the child in its work I am certain I am not going to kick, but I am here to avail myself, as best I can of this honor and this privilege. For after all this conference has needed no apologies for including in its proceedings the problem of the child, for there is not any problem that does not, in a measure, have some bearing, some relation to the home and the child in the home. These children are our best and our biggest crop. Without a proper conservation of their welfare there will never be anything else worth conserving.

There should be a bond of sympathy between the problem of the child and the conservation of our natural resources because of the rather interesting fact that the systematic work being developed for both has had most of its growth and development during the past decade, and when the history of the first ten years of the twentieth century shall be finally written the two great revivals recorded will be those concerning conservation and the child. It becomes more apparent each year that the children are the most important factors in whatever the future may hold in store for us.

Another significant fact is that the growth of popular interest in the problems of the children has been almost identical with the amazing growth of urban population for the past two decades.

CONGESTION PROBLEMS.

The cry of “Back to the soil”; the stimulus given by the conservation movement and the various activities that have grown out of it to promote the pleasures, advantages and opportunities of farm life together with all the modern inventions, telephones, electric light, rural mail delivery, the trolley, good roads and the automobile, I am sorry to say have not served to check the onward march to the cities. The proportion of our people living in rural districts declined from 63.9 per cent in 1890 to 53.7 per cent in 1910, and our experts in social economy assure us that in all probability much more than half of our population will be residents of urban communities before 1920. In many of the older states beyond the eastern center of population more than 90 per cent of all the people live in cities and towns with a population of more than 2,500. During the past decade alone, according to the census of 1910, the increase in the urban population of the entire country has been at the rate of 34.9 per cent as against only 11.1 per cent of the rural population. In six states this increase of urban population as against rural population has been over 100 per cent, and while not one state has failed to show a large increase of urban population, the increase of rural population has been negligible in many states and has actually shown a considerable decrease in seven states. Unless some new and unexpected change shall come it is reasonable to assume that the next generation will find more than half the children of this country in urban communities. There is a temptation to follow that diversity afforded by a subject like that assigned me, which may lead us more into the pleasantries that are supposed to be a part of the life of all country boys. The field, the farm, the orchard, the meadows, the babbling brooks; those recollections recalled in the rhymes of a Riley from the jam and the pies over to old Aunt Mary’s, to the joys of the old swimming hole or of these fall days when the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder’s in the shock. The pity of it is that most of these legends of the country boy are too much legend and too little reality. If it were not so we can scarcely account for the growing disposition of country boys to flock to the city. I regret to say that I believe that the call to the city that is reaching the country boys of the Nation will prove to be more effective than any call to the country or “back to the soil” movement that has so far been inaugurated. One of the chief complaints we hear on every hand among the farmers of this country is the difficulty of the problem of farm labor and the indisposition of the boys and young men in any such numbers as there should be to become interested in the farm. I remember listening to the almost pathetic story of one farmer of the Northwest, who told me that every one of his five sons had gone to the city, and he had been unable to induce one of them to remain. He said they either complained of the hardships and the lack of opportunity, or pined for the excitement, pleasure and possibilities of the city. The very advantages that we had hoped would make farm life more attractive to the youth of the Nation is also proving to be one of the factors that would seem to emphasize its monotony. The daily newspapers, the magazines, the trolley cars and automobiles and good roads are bringing the youth in such complete touch with the city that instead of promoting that satisfaction and contentment with the country as we had expected these city advantages would do, it often has just the reverse effect. I am not prepared to say that these modern conveniences upon which we depended so much in the “back to the soil” movement will not in the end increase rather than decrease the numbers of country boys. I recently visited a city of about three thousand population in one of the most rural of states. What did I find? It has its moving picture shows along its Great White Way, limited to two or three blocks, with a roller skating rink, dance hall, and other forms of excitement and amusement—almost a perfect miniature of the larger city. The fact that the youth of the farming community, through trolley cars and automobiles, had convenient access to the city, where before it would have been more difficult, I was assured only whetted the desire in the country boy for the city life. It would seem then that we are booked for disappointment in the hope that the extension of city conveniences to the farm is going to increase the rural population and therefore the number of country children.

COUNTRY AND CITY BOYS.

But except as it shall present difficulties in the growth and evolution of modern civilization, I am not sure whether this condition, if it be the condition, need be viewed with any great alarm. There is a gregarious and sheep-like tendency in mankind to flock together. The phenomenon presented by urban and rural growth must be a natural one or it would not be so. It is simply presenting in the course of its natural growth an occasional difficulty in the body politic as we have an occasional disease in the growing body of the individual. It becomes our duty then, in the one case just as much as in the other, to remedy the difficulty, to direct the growth along natural and wholesome lines, and this calls for work and coöperation among those factors that have to do with the life of the city or country boy—home, school, neighborhood, church and state.

It follows then that our difficulties, as they must develop from time to time, will be with the city rather than the country boy. This is not because the country boy is inherently any different from the city boy—don’t forget that—any better or any worse, nor in my judgment because he is capable of greater possibilities. It is rather because of the environment and condition under which a great number of our boys must in the future development of this country necessarily be reared. I once attended a powwow of some Indian chiefs in North Dakota. There was present old John Grass, the successor of Sitting Bull, and Red Tomahawk, the slayer of the same old chief. I asked these Indian chiefs about Indian children in their primitive days, in the days of the real country and the wilderness. Did they lie? Did they steal? These chiefs assured me that such things were practically unknown among Indian boys in the days of their own childhood which was before the white man came. “But,” said one of the chiefs, “when white man come Indian boy he steal, lie just like white boy.”

I asked one of these Indian chiefs why it was that in their primitive state stealing was unknown among Indian boys—and surely they were the original country boys. The old chief grunted and a smile actually lit up that otherwise stolid Indian face as he replied: “It is very simple, there wasn’t anything to steal. The child’s wants were few and he had what he wanted.” Neither was there any poverty, any crime. This virtue of the original country boy in America was acclaimed without a taint of pharisaism. For it was admitted that the honest little savage was no better than his dishonest little progeny. It was rather a problem of condition, of occasion, of environment, than one of inherent viciousness. The wants of the little savage were few and generously supplied by nature. There was no temptation, no occasion to steal.

This fact no more favors savagery than it disproves the advantages of civilization. It is the law of nature that men should multiply and populate the earth, and the instinct among the greater numbers to flock together in cities is precisely the same as it was in the days of savagery when smaller numbers flocked together in smaller groups more widely distributed. We must meet the change by doing two things:

HOW TO MEET THE CHANGES.

First. Perfect our system of education. We need to improve our methods of moral training. We must more and more develop heart and conscience that our children may be equipped for moral as well as industrial efficiency. Boys need strength, but most of all the strength that comes from within; self-control, self-restraint; a yielding of more obedience to authority and respect for law and the rights of others.

Second. The application of a system of real justice among men which means an industrial, social and economic world in which every man shall really have an opportunity to develop the best that is in him, and be assured that he shall reap the joys, rewards and profits to be derived from his own honest toil.

This means that the boy to keep pace with our modern civilization must be better supplied with certain opportunities that are now largely denied him.

New conditions necessarily create new problems. It is the law of growth and development. Since these new conditions are to be found principally in the cities, and since most of the boys who need our attention and interest are in the cities, it follows that the problem of the child is largely the problem of the city. But as the country becomes more closely in touch with the city and many of its difficulties reach into the life of the country boy, we will also in time find the difficulties of the one are the difficulties of the other.

Whatever the city does for the child is done for the community as a whole, for the child cannot profit without equal profit directly or indirectly inuring to the entire community. It is difficult to put any limit on the duty of the community to the child. It is coextensive with that of the parent, if there be no parent, or if the parent be helpless, or the child suffers from the parent’s neglect. This duty of the community, once recognized and accepted, is bound to be extended until indeed the community shall become one great family possessing some of the attributes, duties and responsibilities for the child that in original country life were limited to the particular family or family group of the child. The first general and accepted duty of the community towards the child was its education. Then came the demand for playgrounds, natatoriums, baths, trade schools, recreation centers, medical inspection, visiting nurses, dental clinics, and finally the school free restaurant. That is as sure to come within the next ten years as the playground and the recreation center has come in the past ten years. In a word, there is absolutely nothing that the child needs which the parent for any fair reason cannot furnish, which it is not the duty of the community to supply. This is so because it is simply the struggle of the state for itself. The child is the state; when the child is neglected the state is neglected; when the child suffers the state suffers; when the child is lost the state is lost. To say that the child is the chief asset of the state is undoubtedly true, but it is short of the real truth. The child is the state. It is, therefore, futile to oppose the movement going on in this country for the conservation of childhood on the ground that it is paternal. If there is anything in the scriptural injunction that “A little child shall lead them,” it is surely making itself felt at this period of our civilization. If we would conserve the real interests of the children of the Nation, we have simply got to be paternal. The state has got to be the over-parent. It cannot escape if it would; it would not escape if it could.

PALLIATIVES AND CURES.

The last decade of agitation in behalf of the boys of the city was for what is becoming more and more to be regarded as the palliatives. We first asked for playgrounds only in certain bad neighborhoods, on the theory that the children in that neighborhood were bad. We know now that the children were no different from other children, and if they need playgrounds, then all children need playgrounds, whether they be country children or city children. The play instinct needs to be wisely directed as much in one child as in another—in the country as truly as in the city.

We first asked for child labor law forbidding children to work in certain industries, and we are realizing more and more that it is not a good thing for the Nation to draw on the manhood of tomorrow by sacrificing the childhood of today. (Applause) The recent report of the National Bureau of Labor on juvenile delinquency and its relation to employment makes perfectly clear the extra hazards and dangers to which children are subjected from being too early forced into economic competition with men. It demonstrates the necessity for not only more stringent child labor laws, but the better enforcement of those we have. It explodes the idea that the working boy and girl under 16 years of age is freer from dangers of delinquency than the non-working child. It would seem indeed that the playing child in the street is much less likely to go wrong there than while engaged in those occupations in which they are mostly employed.

From what is undoubtedly a very thorough investigation and study of 4,839 cases of delinquents (of whom 561 were girls and 4,278 were boys), we have carefully worked out for us interesting tables showing 2,416 working as against 1,862 non-working delinquent boys, and 251 working as against 210 non-working delinquent girls, or a total number of 2,767 working delinquent children as against 2,072 non-working delinquent children. Added to these interesting figures is the further fact that the ratio of working delinquents is very much larger than the non-working in all these cities, varying in different cities from three to ten times as great as the non-working, with the disproportion even more striking among the girls, making it perfectly clear, as one chapter of the report concludes, “that putting children to work prematurely is not an effective method of training them for good citizenship.”

THE VALUE OF THE REPORT.

Another interesting fact brought out by the report is that the repeaters or recidivists (those apprehended for the second to the tenth offense as carefully tabulated in the report) are to be found mostly among the working children with the proportions much larger among the younger working children between 9 and 14 years of age. Up to this point the scale in this respect constantly ascends, beginning to descend as the working age approaches maturity.

The report is unusually fair in making every possible concession to a variety of details and difficulties that might discredit its conclusions; but even with all such concessions there isn’t any room to dispute its final demonstration that working children not only contribute more in actual numbers but in an alarmingly larger proportion than do the non-workers to the criminal classes, and among repeaters or recidivists the same condition is even more marked. No such interesting or reliable set of tables has ever yet been added to the literature on this subject. It forces upon us the idea that the virtues necessary to good citizenship are not so much inherited as they are to be acquired. It follows that we are doing hideous injustice to our children in unnecessarily subjecting them to temptations which their untrained, immature souls are not yet able to withstand. These temptations naturally enough are greatest among the six groups of working boys who furnish the most delinquents. They are well known to juvenile court officers. These six groups represent the six classes of occupations yielding the greatest number of delinquents out of the total number investigated. Proportionately they are, delivery and errand boys 491, or 20.3 per cent; news-boys and bootblacks 449, or 18.6 per cent; office boys 46, or 1.9 per cent; street vendors 66, or 2.7 per cent; telegraph messengers 73, or 3 per cent; employed in amusement resorts 51, or 2.1 per cent; or a total of 2,416, more than one-half of the total number of 4,278 cases of delinquent boys investigated. The greatest proportion of offenses among the boys are of course larceny. This one offense constitutes more than half of all the offenses reported. Putting these immature souls to work simply violates the supplication of the Christian’s prayer “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The temptation of dishonesty constantly besets the working child, much more than the non-working child. The results shown are rather to be expected. The next in order of popular offenses are incorrigibility and disorderly conduct, terms so indefinite as to frequently include larceny. Truancy appears only in the cases of 185, and begging in the cases of only seven. Every juvenile officer will appreciate the more than probable accuracy of these tables, for, with one or two exceptions of minor importance, they are confirmed by their common experience, for which heretofore reliable tables are rather scarce.

A FALLACY EXPLODED.