the working boy between fourteen and twenty-one? What can the elementary school do in preparing him for that time? What can the evening club and recreation center do to further develop him so that he may meet the needs of his social environment? These questions can only be answered by a clear statement of the principles that underlie our work.

TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS: A RETROSPECT

AND A FORECAST

REV. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, PÅ. D.

NEW YORK CITY, FOUNDER OF THE ALLIANCE

It used to be customary to reckon the fundamental agencies of education as three; namely, the home, the school, and the church. We now count four. The fourth is society. Human nature, and especially child nature, ought to be educated, not only individually, but also socially, and is to be educated not only by society, but for society.

During the ten years of the life of our Alliance, this conviction has had its most rapid growth, especially as the conviction applies to boyhood; and therefore, instead of relating merely the uneventful annals of our Alliance, I will devote this brief commemorative paper to an outline of ten years' development of social work with boys.

The earliest form of social work with boys in the country, except in reformatories and orphanages, seems to have been the so-called mass clubs" for street-boys. Of these the oldest is the Salem Fraternity, opened in 1869. These clubs rapidly increased for a time under the leadership of the Alliance of Christian Workers, but when that went to pieces, they gradually fell away for lack of supervision and trained workers. During the last ten years their growth has been more gradual, but more healthy. There are now about 80 of them, enrolling probably about 25,000 street-boys. They were once little more than warm meeting-places and game-rooms, presided over by "moral policemen," but many of them now have classes, gymnasia, and small group clubs, and resemble the Y. M. C. A. in method, save that they include no direct religious teaching, and they reach a much more needy class, especially of aliens, Roman Catholics and Jews. Their fatal defect up to this time has been that, unlike the Y. M. C. A., not having any provision for young men, they have been obliged to return their members at the most critical period of life to the streets.

These street-boys' clubs are still sorely in need of fellowship and supervision. Owning, as yet, little but personal property, they are easily overthrown when their salaried leader is removed. Three possibilities seem open to them. The International Committee of the Y. M. C. A. might take them on as a special branch of their work, without obliging them to adopt all the Y. M. C. A. principles. Local clubs might be conducted under the supervision of the school authori

ties as an extension of the educational system, or, what seem just now the more likely result, a committee analogous to that which directs the Y. M. C. A. will be formed to direct these clubs.

Next in order of time to the mass clubs were clubs connected with social settlements, churches, or private philanthropy, which, because they work with smaller numbers in more intimate relations, are often called group clubs. Those in settlements are very numerous, and closely resemble each other. They are drawn entirely from the neighborhood; they usually are attempts to reproduce or to organize some sort of a natural "gang"; their occupations are more educational than those of the mass clubs; and they usually connect closely with the settlement gymnasium, classes, and camp. These clubs do not reach so needy a class as the mass clubs do, because the street-boy is wary of cultured people and small parlors, but they do a more thorough work than is possible in the other sort. These two kinds of clubs used to feel little sympathy or respect for each other, but recently the mass clubs are seeking to multiply their groups and the group clubs to secure in some large room, especially for prospective recruits, something of the esprit de corps of the larger assemblage.

The churches have recently become very much awake to the possibilities of group club work. Ten years ago the Christian Endeavor Society, a magnificient organization, profoundly religious in purpose, and predominantly feminine in membership, was the only social center for youth. But now the Boys' Brigade has had its growth and partial decline, the Knights of King Arthur is increasing in strength, and equipments for manual training, gymnastic work, and free play are multiplied, while from the Christian Endeavor Society and the Sunday school as direct offshoots little social groups of varying methods are being organized in great numbers, whose life and soul is that most precious power, the affection and patient care of some devoted adult leader. The settlement clubs usually have a local athletic league. The church clubs are beginning to follow their example.

The boys' work in the Y. M. C. A. is the most finely organized. Its growth is entirely recent. Some 300 associations report a work for boys, and they reach over 100,000 individuals. The Association has both the mass and the group happily united, a great variety of methods of approach, usually a good equipment and a trained leader, contact with boys both indoors and out, winter and summer, and all united by a holy purpose for character. The Association leaders have been so prompt to see the dignity and importance of this work that

it has already outgrown its immaturities and many of its faults. It has, as has no other organization, employed the unselfish moral endeavors of boys for each other's good. It has also begun a wise effort to affiliate with itself organizations outside its own buildings, such as church clubs, athletic clubs, and even street gangs. This endeavor is most praiseworthy and hopeful, for economizing instrumentalities and covering the local field. There is much to be accomplished in this direction. In small cities I believe the Association is still often the active rival of the churches, depleting many churches of groups of boys who could be more thoroughly and intimately governed by pastors or church workers and offering some opportunities, especially religious, which the churches should be forced to maintain. In such communities the function of the Association is, I insist, to supplement the churches, not to displace them, in work with boys. On the other hand, in the work of formal religious instruction in classes, by manual and other modern methods, the Association is already setting a stimulating and provocative example in Bible-study for boys to the church schools.

The two special types of boys which our programme to-day discusses are touched but not entirely reached by any methods yet described. The problem of the city boy is yet unsolved. The Y. M. C. A. hardly touches any class below that of the schoolboy and the working-boy. There is danger that the mass club is, by its very increasing worth, drawing apart from the street arab and the alien. The municipal boys' clubs and play centers, connected with our schools in our largest cities, are the new, most hopeful, and most inclusive agency. The slight tendencies which they already show to feel political influence and to stand for low athletic ideas, we are sanguine to believe, are local and temporary. Other agencies are also at work. The glorious playground movement, newsboys' leagues, and brass bands, the crusades against child labor and the tenement, school examination and care of defectives and degenerates, and the placing-out agencies for sending boys to the country, are all preventive means of untold value. The juvenile court and the probation system, the state school and the state farm in place of the reformatory and jail, these are excellent agencies for reform after the first downward step has been taken. But so much remains to be done. Knowledge is coming to us of the actual conditions of newsboys' lives in our great cities and of a few unselfish endeavors that have been made to get down into "the gang" and win it, not into a settlement or church, whither it would not go, but by humanizing it and lifting it up even in its own haunts. These

facts indicate a kind of work demanding sacrificing energy such as neither settlement nor church can often command.

The problem of the country boy is equally urgent. Unless he is helped, the springs of the nation's life will be fouled. To summarize a wise personal letter from Prof. D. C. Wells of Dartmouth, who has studied and wrought at this problem: there are not enough such boys together to generate any heat; they are so well known that they shrink from entering any club that has a recognized moralizing purpose; they do not care much for skilled craftsmanship, preferring to "chance it" in life; and the number of institutions that can reach them or of individuals who want to is small. The school cannot. The church might, but will it? Some kind of a "village house," with a hearty social life and a workshop linked to some local industry, seems to be indicated as a need in every small community in America.

One other class of boys remains to be mentioned, and that one which is increasing in numbers. I refer to sons of wealthy parents. I suppose it would be sufficient to arouse sympathy in any crusade in their behalf, and yet no one who has any genuine Americanism can deny that one is needed. The tendencies of the rich boy's life are all towards isolation, contempt for poverty and toil, and a conception of himself as the depositary of a fortune and of an unhampered chance to know the world, the flesh, and the devil. The only cure for this, as for every sort of boy, is to catch him young. Some of this class are in Sunday schools and can be brought to know other classes of boys before they get to be snobs. Some of them are getting a pretty good idea of fellowship in schools like Groton and St. Mark's, and at the school camps in New Hampshire. A few of them succeed in learning the joy of helping the other fellow when they get to manhood.