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THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS'

THE BOY IN THE COUNTRY

THE PROBLEM OF THE COUNTRY BOY

REV. HERBERT A. JUMP

PASTOR BOWDON COLLEGE CHURCH, BRUNSWICK, MAINE

When the Almighty created the first man he made the world significant; when he created the first boy he made it interesting. If man was molded from the dust of the earth, the boy was compounded out of dust and electricity. The electricity in him constitutes the boyproblem, and this problem besets the village, no less than the city. The fact, moreover, that two thirds of the people of the United States is a country population, i. e., lives in communities of less than eight thousand population, attaches special importance to the problem of the rural boy.

This boy, considered as a restless perplexity in breeches, is not essentially different from his city cousin. Heredity operates beyond the municipal fire-limits, and environment exercises influence without aid from an arc light. The village tavern and the city saloon are twin devils, and foolish parents are to be found everywhere. The pueritia pagana is perhaps less flexible and alert, slower to choose and act, than the pueritia urbana, for its world is not so furiously a world of motion as that which beats upon the sensorium of the city boy. Its eye rests upon a panoramic rather than a kinetoscopic environment. Also, it is less socially adaptable, for it has rubbed elbows only with other boys like itself, and the same kind of "rubbing" having gone on now for many generations, the elbows" are instinctively familiar with one another. And it is less breathlessly ambitious, less touched with the fever for success. It is unlike the city species, in that it is more acquainted with quiet than with change. Self-reliant when lost in the woods, the country boy is awkward or terror-stricken in a crowd; the "Rube " is a stock character in current drama comedy. His monotonous environment fails to develop in

1 The papers following were read at the convention of the General Alliance of Workers with Boys. The directors of the General Alliance of Workers with Boys decided to celebrate their decennial by holding their annual convention in connection with that of the Religious Education Association. The Alliance, like the Association, is international and non-sectarian. It enrolls several hundred men and women, most of whom are salaried and volunteer leaders of many varieties of social work with boys. The organ of the Alliance is a quarterly magazine, Work with Boys, published in Fall River. In addition to the formal programme of the Alliance as a department, there were reunions of those interested in special forms of work and excursions to social institutions for boys in Boston.

him as much institutional fertility as it does manual facility. He is less an inventor and supporter of clubs than his city cousin. His vitality suffers from scarcity of boyish avenues along which to travel; and he is, in consequence, often an adult before his time. Peril comes to the city boy from the exhilaration of positive wrong-doing; to the country boy from the drifting possibilities of a nature where the physical has outstripped in development the imaginative and idealistic. The one does too many things that are bad; the other does not attempt enough things, either good or bad. You redeem the city boy by damming up the sluices into which his life-currents ought not to flow; but to save the country boy, you dig new channels into which his surging strength can be directed. Roughly speaking, the country boy corresponds to an earlier or tribal stage of social evolution, before the great city was invented; and his defects are corrected by bringing to bear upon him precisely those socializing influences of which the city boy has a surfeit.

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Let us hasten at this point to disabuse ourselves of a notion popularly accepted, the idea, viz., that contact with nature has, per se, a moral significance. Walking over grassy fields, finding song-sparrows' nests, and visiting the haunts of the retiring orchid - which are possibilities in the country boy's life ought to give him a saintward impulse, so the nature-study enthusiast says. But they do not. Even when the country boy does have toward nature that contemptuous ignorance begotten of familiarity, he receives from her little if any moral dynamic. A badly started boy goes to the bad as readily in a sequestered valley as in a turbulent metropolis. Suppose one hundred thousand children in Chicago cannot tell a daisy from a violet, as has been claimed; they are not more likely to cheat in examinations on that account. And when you have transplanted them into the country and filled them with flower-lore, you have but taught them flowers, and flowers are not ethics. In one of the prettiest villages of Maine, a hill top town commanding a view of the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. it was discovered that definite influences were corrupting the morals of the boys. At length the source of the infection was unearthed, and behold! in this quiet town a full-fledged academy of sin was holding regular sessions under the leadership of a foul-minded but masterful boy. A group of lads at the age when the gang-spirit was dominant had been organized with all the delicious accompaniments of a secret society to learn "the things a fellow ought to know to be a man." Smoking, profanity, and obscene stories were not the worst courses in the curriculum of this Fagin's school." In a community where every prospect pleased, only the boys were vile. This dark picture, however, ought not to be

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left unrelieved. The salvation of a boy consists in the right satisfaction of his interests, and when a "gang" is wisely "chaperoned" (to use a word of Dr. Forbush's), its acquisitive and competitive activities find in the world of nature a rich exploitable field. Under such circumstances, the country boy begins to enjoy his advantage of contact with nature. But, alas! how rarely does the gang find its "chaperon "!

The most alarming feature of the country boy problem is that for the most part it is as yet a problem unattacked. The city boy has long been the object of study and reforming endeavor. His psychology, physiology, sociology, and soteriology have been pretty well worked out. It really is a privilege to be a bad boy in a city nowadays. The candidate for redemptive work has so much done for him by countless philanthropic agencies, that the perplexity must be, forsooth! to decide by which particular means he will let himself be "rescued." With the country boy, on the other hand, all is different. He has neither been systematically studied nor has altruistic enthusiasm annexed him to its province. For him there are no boys' clubs, gymnasiums, game centers, free baths, juvenile libraries, social settlements, or trade schools. For him exists no wealthy patron who will outdo Providence in generosityfor the gifts of Providence are limited by wisdom. For him there is none of the proud glamour accompanying the consciousness that he is a "catalogued case." Because his needs are not as sensational as those of the city boy, the morally backward boy in the rural town has been left to feel that society never cares for him until he has broken some law, and then he experiences in the policeman or constable only her severe and punishing hand. "For many years," writes Mr. Riis, " grass has been considered sacred in New York city; only recently have boys begun to be so considered." The towns are slower than the metropolis; the majority of them neglect both grass and boys, and even the most progressive communities spend more money printing signs for the protection of the greensward than they invest in conscious ministry to their coming young men. But the inertia of even our daredevil American optimism will ere long be roused and broken; the advancing army of social progress will not dare to leave this unreduced fortress of the country boy threatening its rear; around the rural lad, as well as round the city lad, must be flung the arms of a wise and upbuilding friendliness.

The "promoter" is a newly evolved functionary in the industrial world who has quickly justified his existence. He is the individual who builds money-power into corporations, who organizes financial elements into a unified, working aggregate. Something or some person must be found capable of fulfilling the "promoter" function for the

boy-power of our country towns. There are agencies already on the field, to be sure, but they are not coping with the problem. Either new agencies must be devised, or else the now-existing agencies must be increased in efficiency.

Always the home is the mainstay of hope. But the boy who possesses the right kind of Christian home is not part of the boy problem, and the boy who makes the problem is generally one who has no " home," in the spiritual sense of the term, and often none in the material sense. What shall be done for the homeless boy, and who will do it?

Why should not the school building in our towns be generally appropriated as a boys' rendezvous? In each village, let a system of selfgoverning clubs be organized with athletic, chivalric, patriotic, parliamentary, or social interests, adapted to various ages and susceptible to the impetus of competition. Each club will be under the supervision of an adult, mature enough to hold before the boys' minds unyielding ideals of manly living, but young enough to understand and forgive recurring neglects of such ideals. These club leaders will naturally meet from time to time for conference with the general superintendent, who will be an interested citizen, a teacher, or, least desirably, a minister. In these clubs, the country boy will be first of all socialized. He will enjoy, also, the rich gains following upon supervised athletics, and meanwhile, and quietly, the companionship of noble standards is molding him into their image.

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