Part 15

His method is to forge an order on some big business house and get certain goods. One day he got a lot of belting from a well-known firm on a forged order. He sold this later and realized $4.50 on the deal. This he spent freely in the saloon mentioned and made no bones of how he got the money. Others run out, snatch a pocketbook and make for cover. Later on they look up their cronies at the saloon and spend the money for beer and cheap whisky, and eat free lunch provided by the management.

There are numerous other such places, more especially on South Clark near Van Buren street. Some of the saloons in that section are alive with young fellows who prey upon the public for a living. They do not always beg their way, either, for they often take a run out and stick up somebody, filch a purse or break into a store. When one of them has been up to some devilment his companions can usually detect it, for he will come back and be very flush for a few hours, or a few days, all depending, of course, upon how much he was able to steal.

MODERN BOYS ARE GAMBLERS.

But it is not only in the slums that the tendencies of the modern boy may be studied. In the more respectable parts of town, in the vicinity of schools and in the neighborhood of churches may be seen evidences of what the youth of today think play.

Time was when boys were content to play marbles. Some of them, of course, had the temerity to play for keeps. Others were taught it was wicked, and even at the risk of being called "sissy" refrained from disobeying their mothers. But now marbles are a thing of the past. As soon as spring comes boys want to shoot "craps." They want to play for money. They want to gamble.

A visit to almost any school playground during recess or the noon hour will convince any person that the modern boy is a very wise youth. His conversation is not a well of English pure and undefiled by any manner of means. In the first place, his profanity is something shocking, and, in the next place, his knowledge of the world and its wickedness is thorough.

There is nothing the modern schoolboy does not know. He is conversant with all sorts of vice and crime, even if he does not take an actual part in it. If this sort of thing obtains among schoolboys and youths of that class it is little wonder, then, that the boys of the slums are what they are. And the pictures is not overdrawn. The conversation of boys of ten and a dozen years will bring the blush of shame even to a grown man.

Just how to cure all this is a question that is bothering a good many people. Societies are being organized right and left. Homes for boys are being established, schools are being started and other efforts are being made to reclaim the delinquents. It has been found that good playgrounds in the tenement districts have been beneficial. The boy is exuberant. He must let out some of his animal spirits. If he has a good place in which to play he will not be half as apt to get into mischief.

REMEDIES SUGGESTED BY SOME.

There are some who insist that moral suasion should be used at all times in an attempt to reform the juvenile. But this has been found to fall short in many instances in Chicago. Even the Juvenile Court, with all its benefits, is found to come somewhat short of doing everything for the vicious lad. It is found that boys who are herded together in penal institutions are inclined to leave such places much worse than when they entered. The bad boys dominate. The evil spreads and the good is suppressed. One bad boy is able to do much, while the influence of one good boy amounts to almost nothing.

Those who have made a study of the matter aver that the only true solution of the boy problem is individual work. The lad's characteristics must be studied, the conditions under which he has been living must be scrutinized and all the influences that have been brought to bear upon his particular case must be looked into. Under these circumstances it would take a reformer for every dozen boys, and so far the money has not been forthcoming to support so many reformers, for even a reformer must live. A good many of the delinquent youths of Chicago have been reared in squalid surroundings and have been nurtured in filth and unloveliness. They have been surrounded from babyhood by poverty, drunkenness and depravity. These boys take to crime as naturally as a duck does to water.

In order to reach boys and try to help them individually a movement is now on foot to form juvenile protective leagues in all parts of the city. One organization is now working in the vicinity of Halsted and Twenty-second streets to put a stop to race wars between school children. It is thought by some that this new movement will fill a long-needed want. It is admitted by those who have given the matter close study that something must be done.

The records of the Juvenile Court and the books of the John Worthy School emphatically bear out this contention.

FAILURE TO RULE CHILDREN MAKES CRIMINALS.

What are you doing with your child's sense of right and wrong? Are you certain that you are not training a criminal, beginning with him at two years old? What is your boy at six years of age? Is he liar, thief--perhaps of insane ego as he was when he first toddled from his mother's arms? Inferentially President Roosevelt may have complimented you on the acquisition of a large family, but rather than this, has it occurred to you that the father and mother of one child, brought up in the light of wisdom, may be deliverers of mankind against the numerical inroads of the other type of parent?

Insanity is the mental condition out of which it is impossible for the person of any age to recognize the rights of others in any form. This insanity may be due wholly to the overdevelopment of the primary ego in the child. At one year old the infant may be a potential criminal of the worst type. It lies to the mother by screaming as if in pain in order that she may be brought to its bedside. If the adult should steal personal property as this babe steals food wilfully, the penitentiary would be his end. Angered, this same babe might attempt murder in babyhood, the spirit fostered by the same selfish intolerance that is filling jails and crowding gallows traps.

RESPECT RIGHTS OF OTHERS.

Ego in the community life is the basis of all ill or all good, even to the dream of Utopia. The basis of all ill is the primary ego which is inseparable from the child until teaching has eliminated it. The basis of all good is that secondary ego which recognizes the rights of others.

Morality--good--virtue--all that is considered desirable in the best type of citizenship develop out of the community life. Even in the lower orders of animals a greater intelligence marks the creatures that live community existences than is to be seen in the isolated creatures. And this is from the development of the secondary ego which exacts rights for others.

The child has no knowledge of this secondary virtue save as it is taught it. The mother who, by responding out of a mistaken affection to every wail of the infant, encouraging all, no longer is susceptible to home influences in teaching the lesson. If this youth shall become entangled in the toils of the law and the mistaken parents intercede for him, gaining their ends in saving him from all punishment for his misdeeds, the boy receives through it only another selfish impetus toward more and greater offenses against society.

REFORMATORY AFTER FIRST CRIME.

Here in this first offense of magnitude sufficient to call for the intervention of the law the parents have their opportunity, if only they would see. The place for such a youth at this period is a reformatory in which are sufficient educational facilities and the strictest discipline, which in justice visits the full penalty of community transgressions upon the head of the offender. In this reformatory environment the offending one finds none of the intercessions that may have been made for him in his home. In sterner fashion than he ever dreamed before he discovers that as he transgresses the community laws he receives a full penalty for the offense. Young enough, he may be led to discover that his transgressions are not worth while. Too old for these teachings, he becomes the persistent lawbreaker, or, on the other hand, degenerates to the asylum for the insane.

How intimately some of the fundamentals of training are associated with everyday lives in the home, and yet not recognized, is shown in the college life of the country. "Sophomore" is a class term in schools which needs interpreting. As a word, it is from the Greek, meaning "wise fool." Its application in the higher education is to the second-year "men"--to those students who are in that period of mental and physical stress after the age of fifteen is reached. In school parlance the word associates itself with the flamboyant youth who prates, and preaches, and struts, and lays down the law of all things as he sees it. Until twenty-five years old, indeed, the "Sophomoric" period is not fully passed.

Broadly stated for all men, it may be reiterated that in the parents' failure to enforce the subjection of the selfish first nature in the child lies the seed of his destruction. Encouraging the infant to wail again when nothing ails it is already catering to this criminal ego. Later, when a parent humors its every whim, he is stunting its growth toward good citizenship. And later still, in that crisis in physical life, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five years, such a parent may awaken suddenly to a realization of the criminal which he has made.

Ego in the child mind prompts it to take instantly anything which it desires and which it can take. Unchecked by training, this primary ego grows with that upon which it feeds. At two years old the child should have had its lessons in the rights of others administered in any way in which it can be reached, but always in all justice. Justice in this lesson should be the first consideration. At six years of age these lessons are of special significance. It is an age in the development of the child when they may be taught with especial emphasis, with lasting results.

GUIDE CHILD OF FIFTEEN CAREFULLY.

At fifteen years old a new condition arises in the life of the child. At this time the race condition and the individual condition are at war. It is at the beginning of this period that an unbridled, untrained youth may take his first step toward crime, simply because the primary ego in him has not been set toward the background by the lessons of his duty toward the rights of others. Here it is that the heedless, ignorant parents may come to the first realization of what his own sins of omission have been.

If for any of the reasons suggested a youth's parents have not given him this necessary training in recognition of the rights of others, the age brings with it a condition making it impossible in ordinary cases for the parental conscience and home environment to avail.

For example, the fact that the boy becomes a thief, or burglar, indicates in any or many things that disregard for the rights of others which is destructive to all law and order. Properly handled in the home he would have been amenable to all of these conditions.

Raise the child like a plant, care for it as you do for the rarest specimen of vegetation, bring it up in an atmosphere of love. Child raising and plant development are akin.

If the child has but the smallest trace of some characteristic you desire to develop, take hold of it, care for it, surround it with proper conditions and it will change more certainly and readily than any plant quality.

CHILD LIKE A PLANT.

The child in nature and processes of growth is essentially the same as the plant, only the child has a thousand strings instead of but a few, as has the plant.

Where one can produce one change for the betterment of the plant one can produce a thousand changes for the betterment of the child.

Surround the child with the proper environment to bring out certain qualities and the result is inevitable.

Working in the same way as one does with the plant, the development of the individual is practically unlimited.

Take the common daisy and train it and cultivate it by proper selection and environment until it has been increased in size, beauty and productiveness at least four hundred fold.

Do our educational methods do as much for our children? If not, where is the weakness?

REAR CHILD IN LOVE.

Have the child reared for the first ten years of its life in the open, in close touch with nature, a barefoot boy with all that implies for physical stamina, but have him reared in love.

Take the little yellow California poppy and by selecting over and over again the qualities you wish to develop you have brought forth an orange poppy, a crimson poppy, a blue poppy. Cannot the same results be accomplished with the human being? Is not the child as responsive?

THE GREATEST REFORM MOVEMENT OF THE DAY IS THE CHICAGO JUVENILE COURT.

The statistics show conclusively that the operation of the Juvenile Court is an advance step in the treatment of the young and helpless. It shows that not only are the dependents helpless, but that the delinquents are helpless to extricate themselves from a life of idleness and crime, for most criminals are made, not born, and the sooner time is devoted to changing the environments of the young, the sooner will be solved the problem of criminology.

ILLINOIS IN THE LEAD.

Various claims have been put forth from time to time as to the State which was the first to inaugurate the Juvenile Court idea.

The Juvenile Court Law went into effect July 1, 1899, and immediately the Juvenile Court was established. The Judges of the Circuit Court assigned one of their members to preside in the Juvenile Court.

The law gave the court jurisdiction of all dependent and delinquent children who are under seventeen and eighteen years of age, and defines dependents and delinquents. The word "dependent" shall mean any child who for any reason is destitute or homeless or abandoned, or dependent upon the public for support, or has not proper parental care or guardianship, or who habitually begs or receives alms, or who is found living in any house of ill-fame or with any vicious or disreputable persons, or whose home, by reason of neglect, cruelty or depravity on the part of its parents, guardian or other persons whose care it may be, is an unfit place for said child, and any child under the age of ten years who is found begging, peddling or selling any article, or singing or playing any musical instrument upon the street, or giving any public entertainment, or who accompanies or is used in aid of any person so doing.

The word "delinquent" shall mean any boy under seventeen or any girl under eighteen years of age who violates any law of this State or any city or village ordinance, or who is incorrigible, or who knowingly associates with thieves, vicious or immoral persons, or who is growing up in idleness or crime, or who knowingly frequents a house of ill-fame, or who knowingly patronizes any policy shop or place where any gaming device is or shall be operated.

A boy of seventeen is at a period of life where he is neither a boy nor a man. In many cases he has the mind of the boy and the impulses of the savage; his ideals are force, and his ambitions that of the wild, erratic western rover. Why the wise head and steady hand of the court and probation officer should be withdrawn at this period is not explainable on any reasonable theory.

It may be contended that a boy of seventeen years is too advanced in the knowledge of crime, but it can also be contended that the boy of fifteen years is too old in crime. Just what standard can be used to find the responsibility of a boy when measured by his age and physical proportions I am unable to discover. The only just standard is mental capacity. The Judge and probation officers, who are familiar with the boy, know his parents or guardians and his environments, should be allowed to exercise their judgment as to the moral responsibility of the boy, for there are many boys at fifteen who are more responsible for their acts than others at eighteen.

In many cases where children were committed to an institution the parents were placed under the care of a probation officer and the number of failures to reform the parent are few.

In cases where the parents are responsible for the dependency of existence those parents mean well, but they are unfitted for the duties they have assumed. The father thinks he has fulfilled his whole duty to his family when he provides food, shelter and clothing; the mother thinks she has fulfilled her whole duty when she does her house work and attends to the mending and washing. The children are masters of both parents before the parents take cognizance of the actual mental state of the child.

What should be done when the boy's home is the case of his delinquency is to provide for him a place where every home impulse would be developed and where industry and economy would be practiced. He should live in this home under the jurisdiction of the court until he has reached his eighteenth year.

What is said of the boys is equally true of the girls, and, in many cases, more important. Where the father is directly responsible for the downfall of the girl, the girl should not be allowed to return to her parental home.

WILES OF FORTUNE TELLING.

FORTUNE TELLERS HAVE EXISTED SINCE RECORDS OF EVENTS BEGAN TO BE KEPT.

Some of Their Methods--Charlatans Have a Great Hold on the Poorer Classes of Big Cities, Much Alike--Schools of Crime Run Full Blast--Silly and Ignorant People Undone by Vicious and Wide-Open Fraud.

War against the swindlers, impostors and blackmailers who operate in Chicago under the guise of clairvoyants, trance mediums, astro-psychics, palmists, magicians and fortune tellers, of whom there are about 1,500 in Chicago, should be driven out of the city and never allowed to return.

There exist in Chicago a horde of these brazen frauds, who ply their trade in the most open and unblushing manner. Few of them are other than organized schools for the propagation of crime, injustice and indecencies that would make an unjailed denizen of the red light district blush to even mention. We particularly refer to the army of fortune tellers, clairvoyants, Hindoo fakers, mediums, palmists, hypnotists and other skillful artists, whose sole occupation is to rob and mislead the superstitious, foolish and ignorant. The business is a paying industry, realizing, it is said, an enormous sum of money every month in Chicago, all of which is obtained by false pretenses.

Here is a very large field for police investigation. The practices of these people are of the most demoralizing tendency. Can there be anything worse than holding out love potions to married women to compel other women's husbands to love them? Those dens of iniquity offer their services and even actually aid in the procuring of abortions, and in showing how and where a good haul can be made by robbery or burglary. They bring together the depraved of both sexes. Many of them are purveyors to our brothels and stews.

They flaunt their profession, their "spiritual mysteries," brazenly in public in our busy thoroughfares, even invading some of our hotels. They are the hotbeds of vice and crime, from the robbing of orphans to the deflowering of innocent girls. They fall into "trances" and call up spirits from the vaults of heaven, or elsewhere, to testify to their truth, and in the turn-up of an ace of spades they see a "dark lady" or a "dark gentleman" who is pining for you, and furnish the address of either.

PANDERERS TO DEPRAVITY.

Why these panderers to depravity in all its most hideous forms are permitted to continue their depredations among every rank of society without attracting the attention of "reformers" or the grand jury is something beyond the ken of human knowledge. And as a block is a small cityful in some parts of the town, the reading of palms, the casting of horoscopes and the looking into seeds of time through the backs of a greasy pack of thumb-marked, tear-stained cards is a profitable calling. Perhaps it should be explained that the tears are not shed by the prophets of the tenements, but by the patrons who go to the oracle to learn if they are to be dispossessed next month or if their ambitious children will sometime learn a little Yiddish, so that they may talk with their own parents in their own homes, are sources of information for the settlement workers and others who try to learn the hopes and fears and ambitions, the real life of such places. But the fortune tellers are the real custodians of the Ghetto's secrets. In their little back rooms, some of which are cluttered with the trash that suggests the occult to the believer, some as bare as the room of a lodger who has pawned the last stick of furniture, they hear confessions that court interpreters never have a chance to translate, and listen to tales of hard luck that are never told to the rabbis.

PROGNOSTICATIONS ARE VAGUE.

But they don't use the mails to drum up trade, and they have no barkers at the doorsteps to cajole the credulous to step inside to learn what the future has in store for them. And so, in a legal sense, they are guilty of no fraud. They are not very serious frauds in any sense, for their tricks are harmless and their prognostications are vague as the weather predictions of an almanac and as probable as the sayings of the cart-tail orators who hold forth at the street corners in campaign time.

"About this time, look for cold winds, with some snow," sagely remarks the almanac writer, stringing the ten words of his prediction down the entire column of the month.

"In a few years," says the fortune teller, solemnly, "you will have good friends and more money than you have now."

"If you vote for this man," shrieks the cart-tail orator, "rents will be lower and the street cleaner and you will get jobs. The other ticket stands for graft and greed. Vote for it if you want your children to run in the streets, because there is no room for them in the schools."

PREDICTS LIKE A SPELLBINDER.

Like the spellbinder, the oracle frequently builds on the look-on-this-picture-and-then-on-that plan.

"This is a strong line," mumbles the palmist. "You will meet a man with blue eyes who will help you, but beware of a man with dark hair."

Sometimes the helper has light hair and the man to be avoided black eyes. But invariably the good friend of the future is blond and the devil is brunette. No seer would any more think of changing that color scheme than the writer of a melodrama would dare stage a villain who didn't have hair and mustache as black as night. That prediction is one of the traditions of the art, and no future has ever been complete without the dark and the light men or the dark and the light woman, as the case might be.