Year: 1875

Boys.


| From the Hartford Courant.


Some illogical persons profess to find
consolation in the adage that "boys will
be boys" 1t is an old time tradition
and is accepted by multitude of people,
but fortunately it is without foundation
in reason or fact. The proposition ante
dates the promulgation of the Darwinian
theory and is at once subverted by it.
There is no development in the declara-
tion that boys will be boys, and little that
is cheerful; natural history and human
hope alike demand that they shall grow
into something better. Boys will be
men is the cheerful and consolatory fact;
boys are boys is gloomy truth that
shades the present. The morbid Byron
to be sure inquired "who would not be a
boy" with the implied wish that he might
be, and this itself has probably preju-
| diced the cause of boyhOOd in mature
opinion. If Byron sighed for it it must
be wrong. Certainly its opportunities
for wrong are vast, and the amount of
damage that the idle boys do in a year
probably exceeds considerably the
amount of useful labor that industrious
boys perform in the same period. This
condition of affairs, if it extended to
manhood, would involve the world in
ruin in a short time, and the consoling
fact is that as bOyhOod expands into
manhood exertion turns from destruction
to production.


Allowing for all who during the last
four years have been blown up by gun
powder, drowned while swimming and
skating, accidentally killed by other boys
while shooting, run over, run away with,
and the like, and for those that have died
natural deaths, there are probably more
than five and quarter million boys in
the United States, between the ages of
eight and eighteen. Not million in all
these are engaged in work; by an exag-
gerated estimate three million may be
put down as attending school and after
that we have one and quarter million
boys doing absolutely nothing. Most of
these are in cities and their idleness is
productive Of utter decentralization. How
much of it is due to the action of trades
unions in respect of apprenticeships can
only be guessed at, but it is fair to Law
there vast amount of the blame.


AS for those who are busy outside of
school, the last census shows that nearly
four-fifths are engaged in agriculture,
where there is no trade to learn, and that
of the $4,000 under fifteen years in "pro-
fessional or personal service" more than
81 900 are domestic servants or common
laborers, occupations in which no skilled
knowledge is to be required, and so over
which no union holds control. Thus it
comes that the boy who wants to work
must take up with that which is merely
manual and not progressive or likely to
elevate him. Stated here hastily is one
of the great problems of the day. Boys
outnumber the facilities for education,
Outnumber the opportunities afforded for
learning trades, and each year this excess
of boys is increasing, and the result is a
lawless element unframed, unoccupied,
and actually dangerous, which is growing
up in all our cities, and ought to be
eradicated before gaining any more
strength. Out of this class, as naturally
as weeds out of dirt, grow the professional
criminals. Their number is rapidly in
creasing, too.


In every city where there is police
force there are persons who pass in court
reports as well known pickpockets, ac-
complished burglars, whom the police
have long known, professional thieves of
established character, and other such
designations showing that they are a rec
Ognized class and yet are allowed their
liberty. Every city Of any size has to
have police force, the expense of which
is alwaysheavy, and the police of various
cities vie with each other in the exhi-
bitiOn of reports of arrests made and
work done every quarter. And yet in
point of fact the ideal police system
should make no arrests whatever, but
should so secure the observance of good
order rs to allow no disturbances to oc-
cur and consequently no reason for an
arrest to arise. What the police have
chiefly to struggle against is the perni-
cious character that grows up with boy
hood. As a boy the idler is mischief
maker and a persistent annoyance, as a
man he is q soto rascal, or both.


The necessity of selfsupport forces
most boys as they grow to men to take
up some work. Society demands it and
they have to yield. The large class of in
cipient rascals dwindles to few actual
ones and the great majority try to be-
have. Thus it is that there is hope amid
boyish follies and cheer i'm the thought
that they will not be boys forever.
Their troublesomeness grows out of the
idleness of their unprOductive, prelimi-
nary life. See to it that with all of them
some tendency to preparation fer useful
ness is instilled in their way of spending
time and no great harm will come OF
their pranks, but let these utter do-noth-
ings increase in number, the result will
be exceedingly disastrous and expensive
| for society.