The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-06-14
What Will Youth Do?

w InlS, LnOugh DuC one aspect OF Jne
present triumph of states Fighters" and the
opponents of a strong central government, is
perhaps its single most important aspect.
Millions of young folk graduate from high
school, from college, and from the grade schools
each year, ready and anxious to take their
places in the world, to carve out the economic
niche within which they might reasonably ex-
pect to do their work in the world, to build
happy home and rear children. Such is the
desire Of almost every normal youth and maid,
and upon the fulfllment of that desire the
stability of society rests
Youth is strong. 1t is so strong that it can
not be thrust aside or even checked for long
If the rules deny it it's chance, it will change
the rules.
The greatest tragedy, and the greatest human
fact. of the war and the worldwide depression,
was that under the old rules their consequences
denied youth its chance. All over the world-not
only in the United States-youth found by the
millions that it's world had fallen into chaos,
that it had no job, no chance and no opportunity
WHAT happened?
w The Fascist revolution in Italy hap
pened for one thing. The backbone of MuSSo-
lins army of blackshirtS were youths, chanceleSs
under the old order and determined to have
their chance
The Nazi revolution in Germany happened.
The backbone of Herr Hitler'S autocracy is the
upSurge of the strength of German youth, de-
termined that if the old rules prevented their
chance, the rules should be changed.
little farther back in history a movement
of which youth formed the shock troops, though
stated by elders swept the Romanoffs into
oblivion and old Russia into the dustheap
We do not like the Fascist, the Nazi or the
Soviet solution-if solutions they be. We do not
like them for America. Youth in these nations
has led or been led astray we feel. AT the best,
their way is not and can not be our way.
Tn America what has haDDened?
Nothing has happened-yet. That is if you
discount a few straws in the wind and some
isolated tragedies that have fatally affected only
few hundred thousand Of our youth.
Just a few things like boys emerging from
starved childhood into a world that could not
use them, to be thrown into the society OF burns
and criminals, to emerge at last as public enc
mics No. l, or 2, or g. to prey on society until
they fell ridded by police guns or died in the
electric chair at %.
Just some girls going on the streets because
there was no place for them to go, to become
gangsters' molls, or common prostitutes.
Just a few hundred thousand hungry boys
and girls-who took to the roads and filled the
boXcarS and learned the argot and vices OF the
Jungle and were thrown into chain gangs and
into filthy jails.
WE NAV thank God that the damage has
w been, comparatively so slight. and that
thousands upon thousands of these boys and
girls had the grit and stamina to make the
weary and useless rounds for work for which
hand and brain were aching, to go back again the
next day and the next month and the next year.
and keep their courage up and their belief IN
the nation.
Millions of them stood knocking at the door
of society which did not want them; which
turred its back and shrugged when they asked:
What are we to do?"
What confronted them?
world in which the physical frontiers had
been closed and in which there was no new
raw land to go to and tame. as their forefathers
had A world of cities, Of wage-earners, of clerks
and bookkeepers whose economic fate depended
not upon their own ability so much as upon
orders to put back so" or LAY of So from
Chicago to New York, and further upon national
and international economic movements which
frightened the head men in Chicago or New
York and which they felt powerleSS to stem.
world of economic units of nationwide
scope, in banking, in oil, in industry in COM
munications in transportation-yet with no ma
tion-wide social controls. world in which
frightened oldsters chung like grim death to their
Jobs At the last, world in panic which shook
the nerves of the strongest-a world in which
one-ffth of the nations population we're on the
grim verge of hunger itself, and local efforts
at relief had broken down.
What a world to offer our children!
THEN came Mr. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Il concerted effort to recover and to dra-
Matte recovery. concerted effort to make
Jobs to make place for men and women, to
take youth of the roads and put it to healthy
work: a concerted effort TO make world IN
which hope might replace despair and oppor-
tunity might replace helpleSSnesS. An effort
consciously to plan a nation; to provide new
and