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CHAP.
XXXII

Wanting are the ties created by education, travel, news, common literature and central authority. But at the periodical religious feast a common emotion lifts the people to a consciousness of their oneness.

Participa

tion in

a Group Socializes

GROUP LIFE AS A SOCIALIZER

The members of a large well-ordered family are trained out of their native egoism by constant practice in adjustment to others. Hence, among those apt in winning and leading men — politicians, labor organizers, evangelists, and promoters-are found an unusual number who grew up with several brothers and sisters and so had no chance to form the solo habit.

Membership in an enduring and exclusive organization canthe Life of not but take one "out of himself." The common name, war cry, or flag, symbolizing the identity of the group, becomes in time an independent center of emotion, a charged Leyden jar. With its distinctive banner, colors, slogans, songs, festivals, and commemoration day, the group takes on personality and attracts a love which is not the same thing as love for its present members. Not only state and church gather such stimuli to feeling but, as well, colleges, guilds, political parties, and religious and fraternal orders.

Genesis of the Spirit

in Boys'

Gangs

To be hated and set upon by a common enemy generates the of Loyalty e-feeling. This is the case of the boys' gang, which can survive the persecution of other gangs only if the members are loyal to one another. In the gang, therefore, is born that spirit of loyalty which lies at the foundation of most social relations. "This gang loyalty, however, is by no means a loyalty to individuals only; it is a loyalty also to ideals. The boy refuses to 'squeal' under pressure, partly to shield his fellows, but still more because squealing is contrary to the boys' moral code. He joins the tribal wars, partly because, like the good barbarian he is, he loves his neighbor and hates his enemy, but quite as much because certain fightings are demanded by the gang's standard of honor."

Disloyalty Unforgivable

"Disloyalty is the one unforgivable offense in boyish eyes, the one crime which inevitably leads to expulsion from the gang." . . . "Among twenty-one boys who had been expelled from their gangs eleven were put out for disloyalty, three for Puffer, "The Boy and His Gang," p. 144.

fighting in bad causes, and but one each for all other reasons. There is no other institution on earth that can take its place beside the boys' gang for the cultivation of unswerving loyalty to the group."

"Close beside loyalty and fidelity come the related virtues of obedience, self-sacrifice, and cooperation. The boy who will not obey the captain cannot play with the group. Baseball and football are impossible without cooperation, and they demand constant self-sacrifice of the individual to the team. The gang fight, brutal and useless as it commonly is, also calls for the highest devotion. It is fought not for personal ends but for the honor of the gang."

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CHAP. XXXII

The Gang
Obedience

Exacts

and Self

Sacrifice

forming

The boys' club, under wise supervision, may have a magical Trans effect in socializing even the little Ishmaelites of the street the Power of Boys' newsboys and bootblacks. With a growing interest in the club clubs comes an ambition for its success, i.e., the corporate spirit. The joint ownership and management of the club and its common property is a most effective check upon the thievish propensities of its members. "When a boy has so far conquered the covetousness his hard lot of deprivation has bred into him so that he can, night after night, use tools and games which all boys desire to possesss, and at the closing hour put them in their places and leave them behind him, he has taken his first lesson, probably, in that social conduct which makes of the individual a good citizen of his community."

Nearly ninety years ago a very considerable and successful experiment in self-government was tried in the Boston House of Refuge, the second reformatory for children established in this country. A quarter of a century ago the George Junior Republic began to demonstrate that even in children the endeavor to find and apply rational rules of conduct creates a willingness to obey such rules. Then came the inmates of the Ione reformatory in California, with proof that they could make and enforce reasonable laws. More arresting, however, was the launching by Warden Osborne of the Mutual Welfare League in Auburn Prison, New York. Of late, self-government has been extended even to the inmates of military and naval prisons, so that the

Ibid., pp. 151, 152.

M. W. Law, "Our Ishmael," American Journal of Sociology, Vol VIII, p. 844.

Delinquents

May

Succeed

in Self

Govern

ment

CHAP.

Growth of the Spirit

to the

Whole
Group

School

Self-Government

delinquent soldier actually has more to do with shaping the rules he lives under than does his exemplary comrade!

The point for us is not that lawbreakers have sufficient intelliof Loyalty gence and fair play to make and administer good laws relating to their common life, but that in so doing they are socialized. As a challenging communal enterprise self-government identifies each inmate with all his fellow-inmates. The traditional fealty of the lawbreaker first to himself and then to his "pal" yields place to the new fealty to the whole body of prisoners. A man who has experienced this spiritual enlargement and self-discipline is likely to turn out a better socius on his return to society. Schoolmen have caught the significance of these autonomous societies, and in hundreds of schools they have introduced pupil self-government. In the "school state" or "school city" popularity is won not, as in the autocratic school, by slyly or defiantly breaking rules, but by loyally living up to them, for they embody the wishes and sense of right of the pupils. Then, too, the apprentice-citizen is nipped by the inexorable logic of obeying yourself the laws which you expect the others to obey. A boy elected to the presidency of the George Junior Republic by unanimous vote of his fellow citizens felt impelled to call them together the next day, confess a theft committed some months before, surrender himself to the police, and go to jail! A lad who learns the difficult art of team work and conforms willingly to restrictions growing out of the very nature of associate life is already half socialized and well on his way to becoming a good citizen in a democracy.

Feeling

Can Be

by Associ

ating It with Something

Feeling is fitful, but it can be steadied by association with Stabilized something permanent. Conjugal love is no guarantee that a union will not end in the divorce court, unless it is linked with respect founded on a judgment of esteem. There is no beauPermanent tiful filial love which does not owe something to a conviction of indebtedness. Love of country is stabilized by the persuasion that one's country is the envy of all the world.

Group
Posses-

vide an

Now, fluctuation in the we-feeling which constitutes the group sions Pro- may be overcome by the interest attaching to common group Enduring possessions. A national territory is such a prop of patriotism that the Zionists insist upon Jewish sovereignty over Palestine as a means of upholding national feeling among the Jews the world over. The guilds of the Middle Ages insured themselves long

Support

for the We-feel

ing

life when they reared their beautiful guild halls. A religious society strikes root when it builds its own church and parish house. A college fraternity is quite justified in desiring a chapter house of its own, a literary society in fitting up a hall for itself. Noble municipal buildings schools, libraries, museums, art galleries, and parks fan the fading embers of civic feeling in the people of a city. The splendid town halls of Ghent and Bruges were inspirers as well as achievements of city patriotism.

-

CHAP.

able

Home

Family

The "old homestead," the ancient roof-tree, the entailed estate The Durplay a great rôle in keeping alive family feeling. On the other owned hand, the nomadic tenant family characteristic of the modern city is likely to be loosely knit and to have no sense of oneness port for with ancestors. Always the well-to-do, who can build them- Feeling selves massive homes which last for centuries, have preserved family solidarity better than the poor, whose flimsy habitations bring them little from their forbears. Perhaps the rich would not lay such a curious emphasis on lineage did they not realize that the working class will never be able to compete with them in pointing to ancestors. Save in mating, it is not lineage that matters, but the quality of the individual himself.

SPORT AS A SOCIALIZER

A common master-enthusiasm socializes. In congested urban quarters the passion for play which springs up after the opening of a recreation center levels moldering barriers between nationalities and confessions, Americanizes the foreign-born, and creates a neighborhood consciousness. With access to wholesome pleasures the laborer no longer drinks and beats his wife in sheer reaction from his grinding existence. The community becomes humanized. Children who hurt themselves at play cease to inquire anxiously, "Will it cost much and will my mother whip me?" The young people drop their rough manners, and foreign-born mothers no longer shrink from allowing their sick to go to the hospital.

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Sports

Emphasize
Personal
Against

At American colleges in the Orient, athletic sports have been Athletic found to be arch-propagandists of the doctrine of human equality. Youths of diverse races, religions, ranks, and castes find their level on the football field, where a prince may be tackled by a peasant, and on the baseball diamond, where the son of a pasha

Value as

Inherited

Status

CHAP.

Good Sportsmanship Promotes

Coopera

tion

may be caught out at first base by the son of a licorice grower. At first the haughty, slow-moving scions of the ruling raceTurks, Druses of Lebanon, or Manchus - stand by watching the "madness" of the Americans and wondering why the strangers do not spare themselves exertion by hiring servants to play for them. But presently the pulse of youth quickens, the game "gets" them, and they forget their rank in novel excitement and pleasures.

In Porto Rico, the Philippines, China, wherever Americans have gone, they have made sport a means of winning the people and of creating good will among the natives themselves.

In a live public school in a Babel district one can see how the spread of new interests breaks down old fences which hold folks apart. A goal kick by the son of a Polish shoveler, a prize tabouret from the hands of the son of a Sicilian fruit man, a medal for dramatic recitation won by the daughter of a pedlar from the Ghetto, undermine old noxious prejudices which otherwise would pass down to the next generation.

Antagonistic team games have the further merit that they teach the players to be good losers. In the earlier football Success in matches between the teams of the mission colleges in China a team would retire from the field with great dignity when the game was going against it and it was in danger of "losing face." The lesson it gradually learned of taking a thrashing with a smile is greatly needed in some other parts of the world. The ready resort to revolution in Latin America comes from the inability of the losers of a political contest to reconcile themselves to defeat. Their excess of personal pride is an obstacle to socialization. In Peruvian universities one is struck by the dearth of associations among the students-no fraternities, no athletic teams, no social, literary, debating, press, dramatic, musical, or scientific societies such as flourish in our universities. One finds no class feeling, no university spirit, no love of Alma Mater, no heart-warming reunions of alumni, in a word, none of those corporate forms which loosen the hard soil of natural egoism and prepare it to admit later the spreading roots of public spirit and good citizenship.

The cause is not indifference. The students want societies, but fail in their endeavors to cooperate because individually they will not compromise. Again and again valuable organizations

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