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Title: The Unadjusted Girl - with cases and standpoint for behavior analysis
Author: Thomas, William Isaac
Language: English
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THE UNADJUSTED GIRL
CRIMINAL SCIENCE MONOGRAPH No. 4
_Supplement to the Journal of_
THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINAL LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY
THE UNADJUSTED GIRL
WITH CASES AND STANDPOINT FOR BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
BY
WILLIAM I. THOMAS
FOREWORD BY
MRS. W. F. DUMMER
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1923
_Copyright, 1923_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published June, 1923
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
The rapid development of criminological research in this country since
the organization of the American Institute of Criminal Law and
Criminology, has made a place in America for this series of Criminal
Science Monographs. Their publication is authorized by the American
Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. They appear as supplements to
the Journal of the Institute. We believe the present number will satisfy
a real need in America.
ROBERT H. GAULT, }
Chairman, Editor of the }
Journal of Criminal Law }
and Criminology. }
FREDERIC B. CROSSLEY, } Committee on Publications
Northwestern University. } of the
ROBERT W. MILLAR, } American Institute
Northwestern University. } of Criminal
JOHN H. WIGMORE, } Law and Criminology.
Northwestern University. }
JOEL D. HUNTER, }
Superintendent Chicago }
United Charities. }
FOREWORD
Modern psychology is throwing so much light upon human behavior that
concerning delinquency one cannot do better than follow the teaching of
Spinoza, “Neither condemn nor ridicule but try to understand.” Such an
attitude led to the establishment of the first mental clinic in
connection with a court, where Doctor William Healy revealed astonishing
facts regarding causes and cures of delinquency; such an attitude led to
this sociological study of delinquency.
Having learned from Doctor Healy the relation between mental conflict
and misconduct and the possibility of cure by the freeing of blocked
emotion, social workers were somewhat prepared for one of the unusual
situations brought about by the war,—namely, the wholesale arrests of
girls and women on suspicion of venereal disease, with effort on the
part of the government not only to cure the physical disease but to
rehabilitate the individual. The gathering of data by the Girls’
Protective Bureau of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene
Board gave a basis for study which years of private practice or
philanthropy could not assemble. One felt about these young prostitutes
that mere suppression by force would not reach the root of the
matter,—that causes and conditions must be studied. With this in mind
certain lines of research were undertaken, primarily to gather and
interpret data which would lead to less unjust treatment than is at
present accorded so-called delinquent women, by changing public opinion
and especially altering procedure in our courts, jails and hospitals. It
was hoped that such data might also tend toward a better understanding
of human relations and indicate marriage standards based upon biology
and psychology rather than on economics.
A profound statement of Mr. Thomas’s is, “Statistics in themselves are
nothing more than the symptoms of unknown causal processes. A social
institution can be understood and modified only if we do not limit
ourselves to the study of its formal organization but analyze the way in
which it appears in the personal experience of various members of the
group and follow the influence it has on their lives.” It was just the
sudden knowledge of the effect of our custom, law and court procedure as
they influenced the lives of individual girls which brought critical
questioning of such justice as had been meted out to them. It seemed as
if society had been systematically wrecking women.
The government program acted as a searchlight flashed upon the farce of
our dual system of morality. In the case of a child suffering assault or
rape she might be detained in an old type of reform school till her
majority gave her freedom—a poor preparation for later life—while the
man, were he convicted, rarely had a long sentence. Of two parents of a
child conceived out of wedlock, for the girl abortion is classed as
crime; motherhood brings shame and condemnation; while the part of the
man passes as a biological necessity. Whereas in some hospitals fifty
per cent of the women arrested on suspicion of disease were found to be
not infected, it was suggested in one city that prophylactic stations be
established in men’s clubs and even in boys’ schools,—the futility of
fine and jail for the woman, freedom for the man.
This war measure brought hundreds of girls to our courts for whom in
some States there was no proper provision. This emergency developed
rapid establishment of correctional schools of most approved type,
showing marked success in the rehabilitation of girls, even with some
seeming psychopathic cases. Little girls unfortunate enough to have a
sex experience called to the attention of the court, who in the past
would have been confined behind bars, are now placed in the country,
given good food and opportunity for free happy activity. Formerly for
the unmarried mothers the psychological values of pregnancy were
ignored, and in the effort to save the reputation by concealing
motherhood the mind and character were often weakened.
If fear in soldiers could produce pathological symptoms both mental and
physical, curable by psychiatry, might not some of this apparent
feeble-mindedness be a hysteria resulting from shock? Most case
histories showed early sex experience treated, especially when pregnancy
resulted, with utmost scorn, contempt and condemnation. Surely the world
offers to these little unmarried mothers as menacing a front as was
faced by the soldiers in France. For girls passing through Juvenile Hall
in Los Angeles, right environment is provided where they receive
friendly care and encouragement. As a psychologist said of the soldiers,
“Morale is pumped into them.” The fact that they have shown during
pregnancy an advance in intelligence quotient amounting in some cases to
ten points demands a reconsideration of opinion till further data give
scientific basis for judgment.
In the introduction to Kammerer’s study of “The Unmarried Mother”,
Doctor Healy questions whether such a constructive act as bringing a
child into the world should ever be classed as a crime. Life, legal or
illegal, must be respected.
One grows to love the incorrigible girl. She has many fine qualities. A
protective officer was escorting to a State institution a girl thought
too bad for a House of the Good Shepherd. A train wreck occurred and she
thought, “Here is where my girl escapes me.” On the contrary, the
“incorrigible” turned to and helped as many as possible of those
injured. The biologist tells us it is just this superabundant vitality
that is necessary for the evolution of higher types.
In the autumn of 1919 at the International Conference of Women
Physicians held in New York under the auspices of the National Y. W. C.
A. for discussion of the physical, mental and social health of women,
many valuable contributions were made to our problem. The relation
between sex shock and nervous disease was plainly given by the
psychoanalysts, and their theory of retarded emotion and fixation of
infantile affection explained varied phases of behavior. Most
encouraging of all was Freud’s hypothesis of sublimation.
Those who, in Freud’s teaching of the danger of sex repression to mental
health, find merely sanction for license miss the point of his wonderful
message. This theory that life force, libido, creative energy, follows
the Law of Conservation true of Physical force—that as motion may become
heat, light or electricity, so this inner power may be transmuted from
procreative effort to creative work of hand and brain—would seem to
explain much of the modern success in the rehabilitation of the young
prostitute. This transmutation of sex force into art and religion had
been noted in the past by Jacob Boehme and James Hinton. Myers hinted it
in a line of poetry, “Forge and transform my passion into power”, but it
remained for Freud to bring it to common understanding. James Hinton,
the English surgeon, said just after our Civil War, “Prostitution will
pass as has slavery when it becomes too great a burden for humanity to
carry.” That time has come and prostitution must pass. Prostitution and
promiscuity will be eliminated not by force but through sublimation.
Further analysis of this hypothesis of sublimation shows that life
energy or libido may be manifested physically, psychically, socially,
spiritually:
Physically in motion, eating, drinking and in sex acts;
Psychically in art, science, literature, anything which uses one’s wits;
Socially in service to others;
Spiritually in meditating upon Infinite Power or seeking one’s relation
to The Whole.
Though these divisions give somewhat roughly general group types,
humanity shows infinite variety of expression, and individuals may
change from time to time according to influence and environment. Each
may be developed through her special abilities. One notes with interest
that associated with physical sex expression there is frequently great
cleverness in cookery and crochet. Each must be stabilized on her own
level.
An interesting report comes from El Retiro, the experimental school for
correctional education established by the city and county of Los Angeles
during the war. Of two hundred girls passing through this institution
during the first three years, only two have drifted to the underworld,
these being drug addicts when they came from the court. One hundred and
ninety-eight are functioning socially in the community. These girls were
all under twenty-one years. On arriving at El Retiro each girl is
studied by a group consisting of the referee of the court, the
psychologist, the superintendent, the teacher and the head of student
government. So soon as her interests and special abilities are
discovered, a project is chosen which will prepare her for constructive
living in the community. The girls are stimulated to mental expression
of energy, not set to hours of dull routine, scrubbing floors or paring
potatoes. Not punishment but responsibility develops power and leads to
higher expression and achievement. Science is teaching us that man is an
epitome of the past,—that in each human being is retained the impress of
prehuman behavior. As one analyst puts it, “Each day is an adjustment
between the higher nerve centers and the spinal column.” We must study
this conservation of life force that we may strengthen those
manifestations which show ascending effort and decrease the tendency to
revert to action patterns of earlier forms.
A dictum of the percipient mind of the biologist-sociologist, Lester
Ward, should startle us into fresh appraisal of life’s values. Shortly
before his death he said, “The day will come when society shall be as
much shocked at the crime of perpetuating the least taint of hereditary
disease, insanity or other serious defect, as it is now at the
comparatively harmless crime of incest.”
As an equation is solved more simply by algebra than arithmetic, so any
subject carried up into the next higher universe of discourse becomes
clarified, falls into proper perspective, and is more easily understood.
This thought in conjunction with the statement of Lester Ward shows the
need of extending our discussion to include women both in and out of
wedlock, and instead of differentiating the good from the bad by legal
definition, the ethics of human mating must be based upon those laws of
nature which secure the finest human values, the essential aim being an
ever better next generation.
The fundamental function of woman being motherhood, this with its
secondary manifestations explains much of her behavior. The devotion of
the young girl to the cadet who enslaves her reveals the same instinct
which holds a wife faithful through difficulties and degradation,—the
instinct from which have developed the virtues of loyalty, endurance and
self-sacrifice. The period of pregnancy should be (if the imagination be
not filled with old wives’ tales) one of health, exhilaration,
development of psychic values and social consciousness. Any woman
experiencing this wonderful functioning should be aided to as complete
psycho-biological fulfillment as her personality and the social
situation permit. Should the higher love and association of the father
of her child be lacking, so much the greater is her need of genuine help
and encouragement. Given this, she may be strengthened and stabilized
whether the man desert or become disaffected before or after a legal
ceremony.
Though mating and its resulting responsibilities have evolved our
highest virtues, marriage is now under attack. Not only are divorce and
illegitimacy evidenced as showing its failure, but intellectual women
are demanding freedom and self-expression which they find doubtful in
marriage. In Paris one woman who believed the relation of the unmarried
mother to her child more ethical under French law than that of the
married mother, lived out of wedlock for years of monogamous mating, her
daughter bearing her name. She and the father of her child were leaders
in La Ligue pour le Droit des Femmes, of which Victor Hugo was an early
president. Fundamentally this attack is encouraging, indicating effort
to bring law up to newer ideals of ethical mating. Man’s marriage law
was based upon economics, upon the idea of possession and inheritance of
possessions. In Scandinavia, where woman has for some time been voting,
there is a tendency to make the law conform to biology. In Norway all
births are registered. The father as well as the mother must be held
responsible and there are no illegitimate children. Under their law for
children born out of wedlock which went into effect in 1915, in only
nine out of the first five thousand cases was paternity contested. Here
law is conforming to biologic fact. Before science can offer a new
marriage law the psychology of mating must be further studied. Women are
classifying as prostitution a marriage in which psychical values are
ignored. They seek chastity in marriage according to the definition
given in Doctor S. Herbert’s Fundamentals in Sexual Ethics,
“Chastity—true chastity—has reference not so much to actions as to
feelings and motives. It is the quality of the emotion in relation to
sexual acts that constitutes a state of purity or impurity.”
Mr. Thomas’s study quite disproves the former theory of psychologists
and criminologists that the prostitute is a type and can live no other
way. Girls may come through a measure of prostitution, marry and make
successes of their lives. In China a girl will sometimes earn through
prostitution the money which makes marriage possible. In that country,
where the seclusion of wives necessitates the entertainment of men
guests at public places, the so-called prostitute may be called to act
as hostess at dinner, to provide music or dancing at regular stipulated
prices, according to the class to which she belongs, this not
necessarily including the barter of the body. Even dominoes are played
at so much a game. It would seem strange to our Y. W. C. A. hostesses at
the army camps that their hospitality to the soldiers would in China
have been classed as activities of the prostitute.
One of the surprises of the war work was the definite number of married
women carrying on not commercial prostitution, but clandestine
relationships. They were not vicious but immature. Their husbands being
away, they seemed unable to get on without the aid of a friendly man.
The need was not money but affectionate companionship. In some cases
women were glad to escape from conditions of marital cruelty, yet they
were so simple-minded as to accept instead most casual relationships.
Few people are able to live without some affectional alliance. An
unmarried woman may establish a permanent friendship with another woman;
one of less stable personality may pass from one “crush” to another,
leaving havoc in her wake as does the promiscuous male, yet for this she
may not be haled into court. If affection be lacking it takes a strong
purpose in life to steady either a man or woman.
To claim that a girl need not be ruined or may recover from sex conflict
expressed or repressed is not advocating promiscuity. Far from it. Nor
in this effort of women to free themselves from the blunders hidden
under the sanction of marriage should young people be encouraged to
believe that to repeat those same blunders freely is the ideal of
mating. Much nervous disease and delinquency are traceable to early
emotional shock. Each case requires special study of personality. The
results of any conflict are dependent upon previous environment,
training, characteristics, interests, ideals. Freud says that if two
little girls, one the daughter of intellectual parents, the other the
child of the janitor, should have some sex experience, the former might
later suffer neurosis while the latter would probably be unharmed. Cases
of disease and of delinquency show the persistence of the association of
idea, the strange continuance of symptoms fixed as conditioned reflexes
which hamper a human being for years. Recent study of pre-delinquent
groups has revealed children “with normal or even superior native
endowment who are prevented from showing their ability by factors acting
upon their feelings.” These illustrate the dangers of affectional
wound,—the sensitivity of personality to emotional shock. A conflict may
make or break an individual.
Just what is it which differentiates between two lives of similar
asocial behavior or suffering affectional wounds, one becoming
disorganized, the other attaining higher levels of mental and social
integration? Certain psychoanalytic biographies show struggles of
eminent men and women who passed through periods of mental strain or
moral failure, yet rose superior to and even strengthened by their
wrestling with life. Our revered Abraham Lincoln not only kept bride and
guests waiting on the first date set for his wedding, but disappeared
from family and friends for three days. Imagine the frenzy of the modern
press over such an event.
Psychiatrists are interpreting to nervous patients symptoms of strain
and sorrow, assisting them to assimilate such emotional experience and
to regain poise. It is possible to minimize sexual blunder as
unfortunate but not irreparable. One recovers from disease, from
disappointment. One lie told may bring from the parent an explanation of
the importance of truth and be a milestone on the upward path. Such
lesson, however, should never be based on condemnation but must be
linked with idealism. A wise physician said, “Nature tends toward
meliorism.” This accounts for the success of girls who pull themselves
up without aid.
That nature has brought us up from the amœba to man should give us
confidence in Life Force. Life is not so simple as to have one
“definition of the situation” solve the whole problem. This will take
further trial and error. The scientific mind observes, differentiates,
finds contrasts and resemblances. Bits of inorganic elements may be
identical, but in the study of living organisms the higher the type the
greater the possibility of variation, till in man no two are identical
in finger print, still less so in emotional reaction. Even when a new
period of socialization shall have simplified life, each individual must
still be considered separately, each personality approached with utmost
reverence, accepted for values and possibilities which when developed
displace asocial behavior. The problems of sexual disharmony, retarded
emotion, affectional distress, which send people of wealth to the
sanitarium or divorce court, lead the poor to delinquency. The future
court of domestic relations may become a clinic for all.
On the whole this period of individualization is more fortunate for
women than otherwise. Their struggle for independence is winning higher
standards of affectional association in friendships with both sexes,
higher psychic and social levels of group coöperation. Though one
deplores the necessity of divorce one watches its increase with the
feeling that consecutive marriages are an advance upon simultaneous
promiscuity. From marriage based upon possession there is evolving a
fine comradeship in which psychic fertilization becomes ever more
significant as is seen in the collaboration of man and woman in art,
science, literature and social service. While marriage within the law
may attain the highest level of human mating known today, and social
sanction is necessary for right environment for children, it is not law
which achieves this result but the ever evolving adjustments of fine
personality shown by men and women in whom emotion and intellect and
will have matured harmoniously and in whose lives sublimation begun in
childhood has given stability.
Sex has always baffled humanity. Alternately it has been considered
sacred and sinful, attached to temple worship or cast beyond the pale.
In this day of scientific synthesis we are solving some at least of the
fundamentals of this Welträtsel.
This present research of William I. Thomas with his trenchant
sociological analysis is a distinct contribution not only to the study
of delinquency but to educational and industrial problems. As his
conclusions point toward the practice of the most advanced experimental
schools and also conform to the theories of certain leading
psychiatrists, this triple concurrence of opinion indicates approach to
scientific truth. Mr. Thomas’s interpretation of today’s unrest as a
“period of individualization following and preceding periods of
socialization” emphasizes our present opportunity to reorganize the
administration of justice. Let such reorganization be based upon that
emergent truth which Dean Pound has called “the most important change of
the century,—the transference of the sense of value from property to
humanity.”
ETHEL S. DUMMER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT iii
FOREWORD. By Mrs. W. F. Dummer v
I THE WISHES 1
II THE REGULATION OF THE WISHES 41
III THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF BEHAVIOR 70
IV THE DEMORALIZATION OF GIRLS 98
V SOCIAL AGENCIES 151
VI THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE 222
INDEX 259
THE UNADJUSTED GIRL
CHAPTER I
THE WISHES
It is impossible to understand completely any human being or any single
act of his behavior, just as it is impossible to understand completely
why a particular wild rose bloomed under a particular hedge at a
particular moment. A complete understanding in either case would imply
an understanding of all cosmic processes, of their interrelations and
sequences. But it is not harder to comprehend the behavior of the
“unadjusted” or “delinquent” person, say the vagabond or the prostitute,
than that of the normally adjusted person, say the business man or the
housewife.
In either case we realize that certain influences have been at work
throughout life and that these are partly inborn, representing the
original nature of man, the so-called instincts, and partly the claims,
appeals, rewards, and punishments of society,—the influences of his
social environment. But if we attempt to determine why the call of the
wild prevails in the one case and the call of home, regular work, and
“duty” in the other, we do not have different problems but aspects of
the same general problem. It is only as we understand behavior as a
whole that we can appreciate the failure of certain individuals to
conform to the usual standards. And similarly, the unrest and
maladjustment of the girl can be treated only as specifications of the
general unrest and maladjustment.
In this connection students of psychology and education have been
particularly interested in determining what the inborn tendencies really
are. There was however no scientifically controlled work on the point
until Watson undertook his experiments on newborn babies. At the time
his work was interrupted he had found only three “instincts” present in
the child at birth:
We are inclined now to believe that the fundamental emotional
reactions can be grouped under three general divisions: those
connected with fear; those connected with rage; those connected with
what, for lack of a better term, we may call joy or love.
These at least deserve the name of major emotions. Whether or not
other types of emotional reactions are present we cannot yet
determine.... The principal situations which call out fear responses
are as follows: (1) To suddenly remove from the infant all means of
support, as when one drops it from the hand to be caught by an
assistant.... (2) By loud sounds. (3) Occasionally when an infant is
just falling asleep the sudden pulling of the blanket upon which it
is lying will produce the fear response. (4) Finally, again, when
the child has just fallen asleep or is just ready to awake a sudden
push or a slight shake is an adequate stimulus. The responses are a
sudden catching of the breath, clutching randomly with the hands
(the grasping reflex invariably appearing when the child is
dropped), blinking of the eyelids, puckering of the lips, then
crying; in older children, flight and hiding.
Observations seem to show that the hampering of the infant’s
movements is the factor which apart from all training brings out the
movements characterized as rage. If the face or head is held, crying
results, quickly followed by screaming. The body stiffens and fairly
well coördinated slashing or striking movements of the hands and
arms result; the feet and legs are drawn up and down; the breath is
held until the child’s face is flushed. In older children the
slashing movements of the arms and legs are better coördinated and
appear as kicking, slapping, biting, pushing, etc. These reactions
continue until the irritating situation is removed, and sometimes do
not cease then. Almost any child from birth can be thrown into a
rage if its arms are held tightly to its sides.... Even the
best-natured child shows rage if its nose is held for a few
seconds....
The original stimuli for bringing out the earliest manifestations of
joy or love seem to be as follows: gentle stroking and soft tickling
of the infant’s body, patting, gentle rocking, turning upon the
stomach across the attendant’s knee, etc. The response varies: if
the infant is crying, crying ceases and a smile may appear; finally
a laugh, and extension of the arms. In older children and in adults
this emotion, due both to instinctive and habit factors, has an
extremely wide range of expression.[1]
We understand of course that these expressions of emotion mean a
preparation for action which will be useful in preserving life (anger),
avoiding death (fear), and in reproducing the species (love), but even
if our knowledge of the nervous system of man were complete we could not
read out of it all the concrete varieties of human experience. The
variety of expressions of behavior is as great as the variety of
situations arising in the external world, while the nervous system
represents only a general mechanism for action. We can however approach
the problem of behavior through the study of the forces which impel to
action, namely, the wishes, and we shall see that these correspond in
general with the nervous mechanism.
The human wishes have a great variety of concrete forms but are capable
of the following general classification:
1. The desire for new experience.
2. The desire for security.
3. The desire for response.
4. The desire for recognition.
1. THE DESIRE FOR NEW EXPERIENCE. Men crave excitement, and all
experiences are exciting which have in them some resemblance to the
pursuit, flight, capture, escape, death which characterized the earlier
life of mankind. Behavior is an adaptation to environment, and the
nervous system itself is a developmental adaptation. It represents,
among other things, a hunting pattern of interest. “Adventure” is what
the young boy wants, and stories of adventure. Hunting trips are
enticing; they are the survival of natural life. All sports are of the
hunting pattern; there is a contest of skill, daring, and cunning. It is
impossible not to admire the nerve of a daring burglar or highwayman. A
fight, even a dog fight, will draw a crowd. In gambling or dice throwing
you have the thrill of success or the chagrin of defeat. The organism
craves stimulation and seeks expansion and shock even through alcohol
and drugs. “Sensations” occupy a large part of the space in newspapers.
Courtship has in it an element of “pursuit.” Novels, theaters, motion
pictures, etc., are partly an adaptation to this desire, and their
popularity is a sign of its elemental force.
1. When 11 years old Walter McDermott was brought to court in
company with three other boys, accused of breaking a padlock on a
grocery store and attempting to enter the store at four o’clock
A.M., March 3, 1909, and also of breaking a padlock on the door of a
meat-market and stealing thirty-six cents from the cash till. Put on
probation. August 19, 1910, brought to court for entering with two
other boys a store and stealing a pocket-book containing $3.00. He
admitted to the officers he and his company were going to pick
pockets down town. He is the leader of the gang....
Sent to St. Charles. Ran away March 17, 1913. By breaking a window
got into a drug store, with two other boys, and stole a quantity of
cigars and $1.61. Having taken the money, he gave one boy ten cents
and another five cents. He gave away the cigars—eight or nine
boxes—to “a lot of men and some boys.” Spent the money “on candy and
stuff.” Committed to John Worthy School ... October 27. His conduct
has improved greatly; released on probation....
December 23, 1913, accused of having broken, with an adult boy (19),
into a clothing store and filled a suit case they found in the store
with clothing and jewelry. Caught in shop. The officer said, “He
would like to imitate Webb. He would like to kill some boy.”
According to his own confession, “It was six o’clock at night. I was
going to confession. I met a boy and he said, ‘Come out with me.’
About nine o’clock we came to a clothing store, and we walked to the
back, and seen a little hole. We pulled a couple of the laths off
and as soon as we got in we got caught.” But the officer said that
previous to this they had burglarized a butcher’s store and took
from there a butcher’s steel, and bored a hole in the wall with it.
Committed to John Worthy School. Released June 26th, 1914....
July 19, shot in a back alley twice at a little boy and once hit
him. Broke with two other boys at night into Salvation Army office,
broke everything he could and “used the office as a toilet room.”
Next day broke into a saloon, broke the piano, took cigars. Before
this, July 14th, broke a side window of a saloon, stole $4.00 and a
revolver. At the hearing Walter said about shooting the boy: “That
boy was passing and I asked him for a match, and I heard this boy
holler. I took a revolver off (his companion) and fixed a shot and
hit the boy.” His mother testified that he had spent only three
nights at home since the time of his release from John Worthy
School. He was arrested after the first offense, but escaped from
the detention home. Committed to John Worthy School....
Released after March 26. Committed a burglary in a grocery store,
April 7th. Shot a man with a revolver in the left arm April 4th.
Held up, with three other boys, a man on April 11, and robbed him of
$12.00. Caught later, while the other boys caught at once. Held to
the grand jury, found “not guilty” and released June 16, 1915.[2]
Vagabondage secures a maximum of new experience by the avoidance of the
routine of organized society and the irksomeness at labor to which I
will refer presently. In the constitutional vagabond the desire for new
experience predominates over the other wishes and is rather
contemplative and sensory, while in the criminal it is motor. But the
discouraged criminal is sometimes a vagabond.
2. I have known men on the road who were tramping purely and simply
because they loved to tramp. They had no appetite for liquor or
tobacco, so far as I could find, also were quite out of touch with
criminals and their habits; but somehow or other they could not
conquer that passion for roving. In a way this type of vagabond is
the most pitiful that I have ever known; and yet is the truest type
of the genuine voluntary vagrant.... The _Wanderlust_ vagrant ... is
free from the majority of passions common among vagrants and yet he
is the most earnest vagrant of all. To reform him it is necessary to
kill his personality, to take away his ambition—and this is a task
almost superhuman. Even when he is reformed he is a most cast-down
person.[3]
3. In view of the experience at home and abroad it is now proposed
in France to place vagrants in solitary confinement. These vagrants
are free-footed and irregular, devoted to the highway and an
open-air life, and they are far less afraid of fatigue and hardship
than of a steady and regular job. Advantage must be taken of their
weak point by imposing solitary confinement; they must be subjected
to what they most dread.[4]
4. Dear Brother Joe: I have decided to trop you a feiw lines and
hope you are well and you family also. I have heart of your troubles
but could not helpet. I have left Chi. and went tru Ky. Ind. N. Y.
Pa. N. Jerrsey and bak. Mich. Ohio. Ill. Wisconsin Minnesota Iway.
Mo. Kansas. Nebr. Colo. and I have not done any work since I left. I
am hapy on the road and it is very fine, I feel like I never will
work again onless I have seen all U. S. I am on my way to Californ
but I take my time. I ant in horry, you have been traveling, but you
have not seen anything yet and you have no experience about Ho Bo
life a tall. gee it is fine to be on the Road. It is 10 weeks since
I have no home but a Box Car. If you go on the Road again look for
my Monogram in the Cars. I will not work very much this Sumer only
to bull tru the Coast. It is blenty of work around here, but I dond
feel like working yet. I wisht you vas not mareyt and could be with
me. I bet you would engoeyet. I hav enofh to eet and a diferent
place to sleep every night and feel healty.[5]
5. Girl states that she has been a tramp since she was 15 years old,
going from one place to another, usually on freight trains, part of
the time dressed as a boy.... She has a child, two years old, which
she had illegitimately. The Court had compelled the father of it to
marry her. This statement was verified at this office on its
communication with the Probate Judge at Moundsville, W. Va.
She says that both her parents died when she was a little girl, that
she lived with her grandmother, who worked out for her living,
leaving her to run the streets. She says that from earliest
childhood she has had the wanderlust. She spoke of being as far west
as Denver, and mentioned several army camps she had visited, always
riding freight trains. Says that she never works except long enough
to get what she can’t beg. She says that she has no love for her
child and that her grandmother takes care of it with money supplied
by her husband. Her husband secured a divorce from her about three
months after their marriage. The reason she asked to stay at the
Detention Home over night was because she was going past the house
in the alley and saw through the open door several young girls and
thought it would be a nice place to stay all night.
Case was reported to office immediately after her admittance to the
Detention Home. The next morning immediately after breakfast, while
the Matron’s back was turned, the girl escaped. The case was
immediately reported to the Military and local police. The girl was
picked up near camp, having had intercourse with several soldiers.
Her appearance was the least attractive of any girl handled by this
office. The little bundle of clothes she carried, tied in a bandanna
handkerchief, was the dirtiest ever seen, and was burned at the
Detention Home. At police headquarters she gave her age as 20 years
but later told that she was but 17, which was verified from
Moundsville. She was given $10.00 and thirty days and costs in the
county jail, and while being taken from the jail to the clinic, by a
policeman and Miss Ball, she, with another girl, escaped. Every
effort was made to catch her, but she was as fleet as a deer.[6]
There is also in the hunting pattern of interest an intellectual
element. Watson does not note curiosity among the instincts because it
does not manifest itself at birth, but it appears later as the watchful
and exploratory attitude which determines the character of
action,—whether, for example, it shall be attack or flight. The
invention of the bow and arrow, the construction of a trap, the
preparation of poison, indicated a scientific curiosity in early man.
Activities of this kind were interesting because they implied life or
death. The man who constructed the poisoned arrow visualized the scene
in which it was to be used, saw the hunt in anticipation. The
preparation for the chase was psychologically part of the chase. The
modern scientific man uses the same mental mechanism but with a
different application. He spends long months in his laboratory on an
invention in anticipation of his final “achievement.” The so-called
“instinct for workmanship” and the “creative impulse” are “sublimations”
of the hunting psychosis. The making of a trap was a “problem”, and any
problem is interesting, whether the construction of a wireless or the
solving of a puzzle. Modern occupations or “pursuits” are interesting or
irksome to the degree that they have or have not a problematical
element:
The convict makes bricks, digs the earth, builds, and all his
occupations have a meaning and an end. Sometimes, even the prisoner
takes an interest in what he is doing. He then wishes to work more
skillfully, more advantageously. But let him be constrained to pour
water from one vessel into another, or to transport a quantity of
earth from one place to another in order to perform the contrary
operation immediately afterwards, then I am persuaded that at the
end of a few days the prisoner would strangle himself or commit a
thousand crimes, punishable with death, rather than live in such an
abject condition and endure such torments.[7]
The following description of a scientific adventure of a creative man,
which I transcribe from an earlier paper, illustrates perfectly the
psychological identity of a scientific quest with the pursuit of game:
6. Pasteur’s first scientific success was in the study of
crystallization, and in this connection he became particularly
interested in racemic acid. But this substance, produced first by
Kestner in 1820 as an accident in the manufacture of tartaric acid,
had in 1852 ceased to appear, in spite of all efforts to obtain it.
Pasteur and his friend Mitscherlich suspected that the failure to
get it was due to the fact that the present manufacturers of
tartaric acid were using a different tartar. The problem became then
to inspect all the factories producing tartaric acid and finally to
visit the sources from which the tartars came. This was the quest,
and the impatience which Pasteur showed to begin it reminds us of a
hound tugging at the leash. He asked Biot and Dumas to obtain for
him a commission from the Ministry, or the Académie, but exasperated
by the delay he was on the point of writing directly to the
President of the Republic. “It is,” he said, “a question that France
should make it a point of honor to solve through one of her
children.” Biot counselled patience and pointed out that it was not
necessary to “set the government in motion for this.” But Pasteur
would not wait. “I shall go to the end of the world,” he said. “I
_must_ discover the source of racemic acid,” and started
independently. I will excuse you from following this quest in
detail, but in a sort of diary prepared for Mme. Pasteur he showed
the greatest eagerness to have her share the joy of it. He went to
Germany, to Vienna, to Prague, studied Hungarian tartars. “Finally,”
he said, “I shall go to Trieste, where I shall find tartars of
various countries, notably those of the Levant, and those of the
neighborhood of Trieste itself.... If I had money enough I would go
to Italy; ... I shall give ten years to it if necessary.” And after
eight months he sent the following telegram: “I transform tartaric
acid into racemic acid. Please inform MM. Dumas and Senarmont.” He
had made his kill.[8]
The craftsman, the artist, the scientist, the professional man, and to
some extent the business man make new experience the basis of organized
activity, of work, and produce thereby social values. The division of
labor which removes the problematical from the various operations of the
work makes the task totally unstimulating. The repudiation of work leads
to the vagabondage just illustrated and to the antisocial attitudes
described below:
7. We have in New York at present, and have had for some years past,
an immense army of young men, boys between fifteen and twenty-six,
who are absolutely determined that under no conditions will they do
any honest work. They sponge on women, swindle, pick pockets, commit
burglary, act as highwaymen, and, if cornered, kill, in order to get
money dishonestly. How do they dispose of the vast sums they have
already stolen? Gambling and women. They are inveterate gamblers.[9]
And similarly, among women we have the thief, the prostitute, the
blackmailer, the vamp, and the “charity girl.”
2. THE DESIRE FOR SECURITY. The desire for security is opposed to the
desire for new experience. The desire for new experience is, as we have
seen, emotionally related to anger, which tends to invite death, and
expresses itself in courage, advance, attack, pursuit. The desire for
new experience implies, therefore, motion, change, danger, instability,
social irresponsibility. The individual dominated by it shows a tendency
to disregard prevailing standards and group interests. He may be a
social failure on account of his instability, or a social success if he
converts his experiences into social values,—puts them into the form of
a poem, makes of them a contribution to science. The desire for
security, on the other hand, is based on fear, which tends to avoid
death and expresses itself in timidity, avoidance, and flight. The
individual dominated by it is cautious, conservative, and apprehensive,
tending also to regular habits, systematic work, and the accumulation of
property.
The social types known as “bohemian” and “philistine” are determined
respectively by the domination of the desire for new experience and the
desire for security. The miser represents a case where the means of
security has become an end in itself.
8. Mamie Reilly’s mother viewed with increasing regret the effect of
premature care and responsibility on her daughter. Mamie had been
working five years since, as a child of thirteen, she first insisted
on getting a job. “She’s a good girl, Mame is, but y’ never seen
anything like her. Every pay night reg’lar she’ll come in an’ sit
down at that table. ‘Now Ma,’ she’ll say like that, ‘what _are_ you
goin’ to do? How ever are y’ goin’ t’ make out in th’ rent?’ ‘Land
sakes,’ I’ll say, ‘one w’d think this whole house was right there on
your shoulders. I’ll get along somehow.’ But y’ can’t make her see
into that. ‘Now, what’ll we do, how’ll you manage, Ma?’ she’ll keep
askin’. She’s too worrisome—that’s what I tell her. An’ she don’t
care to go out. Mebbe she’ll take a walk, but like’s not she’ll say,
‘What’s th’ use?’ Night after night she jest comes home, eats ’er
supper, sits down, mebbe reads a bit, an’ then goes t’ bed.”[10]
Document 9 shows the desire for security in a person who is
temperamentally inclined to new experience, but whose hardships call out
the desire for security. The whole life, in fact, of this man shows a
wavering between the two wishes. The desire for a “secure existence”
which he expresses here finally prevails and he approaches the
philistine type:
9. I had been ten weeks on the journey without finding any work, and
I had no idea how long I should still be obliged to tramp about the
world, and where was the end toward which I was going.... I should
have been very glad of my visit to Stach had it not been for the
thought of my wandering. If I had been going immediately to work
from Mokrsko I should certainly have fallen in love with some girl,
but the thought that I must tramp again about the world destroyed my
wish for anything. Moreover I wanted to leave as soon as possible,
for I could not look with dry eyes on how he wallowed in everything
and had whatever he wanted. Everybody respected and appreciated him;
everywhere doors were open for him, and he prized lightly everything
he had, for he had never experienced any evil or misery. For if I
had only one half of what he owned, how grateful I should be to God
for his goodness. And tears flowed from my eyes when I compared his
lot with mine. Fortune, how unjust you are! You drive one man about
the world and you have no pity on him though he is whipped with wind
and snow and cold stops his breath. People treat him worse than a
dog and drive him away from their doors, without asking: “Have you
eaten? have you a place to sleep?” And when he asks for anything
they are ready to beat him, like that peasant who struck me with the
whip. And what for? Perhaps this mayor would have acted likewise if
he had met me somewhere on my journey, and today he sets tables for
this same tramp.
What a difference between us! Why, we have the same parents, the
same name! And perhaps he is better considered because he is better
instructed than I? In my opinion, not even for that. Or perhaps
because he is nobler and handsomer? No, not for that. He merits
consideration only because he has a secure existence, because he has
bread. Let him wander into an unknown country; would he be better
considered than I? No, a thousand times No. So if I want to merit
consideration and respect, I ought first to win this [secure]
existence. And how shall I win it and where? Shall I find it in
tramping about the world? No, I must work, put money together and
establish my own bakery. Then I can say boldly that I have [a secure
existence] and even a better one than a teacher.[11]
In case 10 the desire for security is very strong but is overwhelmed by
the desire for new (sexual) experience of the type which I shall term
presently the “desire for response.”
10. I am a young woman of twenty-five, married seven years. I have a
good husband and two dear children; also a fine home. I was quite
happy until an unexpected misfortune entered my life, destroying my
happiness.
I consider it important to state that as a child I conducted myself
decently; people regarded me as a blessing and my parents were very
proud of me. As a young girl I strove to marry some good young man
and live contentedly. I had no higher ambition. My dream was
realized but unfortunately this did not last long.
Three years ago, my husband’s cousin, a young man, came to us. He
obtained employment in our town and lived with us. He stayed with us
four months altogether. During the first three months he was not in
my thoughts at all ... but during the last month my heart began to
beat for him. It was a novel sensation for me and I did not know the
meaning of this attraction; I said to myself: I love my husband and
my children, why then this strange fascination for my husband’s
cousin? He surely must have done something to me to arouse this
feeling in me, I thought. Fortunately, the young man soon lost his
position and left for some distant place. I felt very happy at his
departure, though I longed for him very much.
Two years passed thus, during which I resumed my former contented
life with my husband until one day my husband informed me that his
cousin had returned and planned to live in our town. I had a
presentiment of dark clouds that would soon gather over my head, so
I requested my husband to find other quarters than our own for his
relative, on the pretext that I was not well enough to care for
another person in the family. But as my husband reproached me and
charged me with lack of interest in his relatives, I had to yield
and give my permission for the man to stay with us.
I had decided to be indifferent and act as a stranger toward the
boarder that was thrust upon me, so as to avoid trouble. I did not
wish to ignite the feeling in my heart toward him by too close
contact. I almost never spoke to him, and never came near him. God
only knows how much these efforts cost me, but with all my energy I
fought against the diabolic feeling in my heart. Unfortunately, my
husband misinterpreted my behavior as a lack of hospitality. His
resentment compelled me to assume a more friendly attitude toward
his relative, as I wished to avoid quarrelling. What followed may
easily be inferred. From amiability I passed to love until he
occupied my whole mind and everybody else was non-existent for me.
Of course no one was aware of my predicament.
One day I decided to put an end to my sufferings by confessing all
to my boarder and requesting him to go away or at least leave our
house and avert a scandal. Unfortunately, my hope of a peaceful life
was not fulfilled, following my confession to the cousin. He
remained in our home and became more friendly than ever towards me.
I began to love him so intensely that I hardly noticed his growing
intimacy with me and as a result I gave birth to a baby whose father
is my husband’s cousin....
I am unable to describe to you one hundredth part of the misery this
has caused me. I always considered an unfaithful wife the worst
creature on earth and now ... I am myself a degraded woman.... The
mere thought of it drives me insane. My husband, of course, knows
nothing about the incident. When the child was born he wanted to
name it after one of his recently deceased relatives but ... I felt
as if this would desecrate the grave of his late relative. After
oceans of tears, I finally induced him to name the child after one
of my own relatives.
But my troubles did not end here. Every day in the week is a day of
utter anguish for me and every day I feel the tortures of hell.... I
can not stand my husband’s tenderness toward the child that is mine
but not his. When he gives the baby a kiss it burns me like a hot
coal dropped in my bosom. Every time he calls it his baby I hear
some one shouting into my ear the familiar epithet thrown at low
creatures like me ... and every time he takes the child in his arms
I am tempted to tell him the terrible truth.... And so I continue to
suffer. When my husband is not at home I spend my time studying the
face of my child, and when I think it appears to resemble its father
at such a moment I become terrified at the possibility of the baby’s
growing up into a real likeness to its father. What would my husband
say and do when he noticed the similarity between my baby and his
cousin? It is this thought that is killing me.... [If I should tell
my husband I am sure he would drive me away.] I do not care for
myself so much as for the child who would be branded with the name
given all such children and this would remain a stain upon him for
the rest of his life.... It is this fear that prevents me from
revealing to my husband my crime against him. But how much longer
shall I be able to bear the pain and wretchedness?[12]
3. THE DESIRE FOR RESPONSE. Up to this point I have described the types
of mental impressionability connected with the pursuit of food and the
avoidance of death, which are closely connected with the emotions of
anger and fear. The desire for response, on the other hand, is primarily
related to the instinct of love, and shows itself in the tendency to
seek and to give signs of appreciation in connection with other
individuals.
There is first of all the devotion of the mother to the child and the
response of the child, indicated in the passage from Watson above, and
in the following passage from Thorndike.
All women possess originally, from early childhood to death, some
interest in human babies, and a responsiveness to the instinctive
looks, calls, gestures and cries of infancy and childhood, being
satisfied by childish gurglings, smiles and affectionate gestures,
and moved to instinctive comforting acts by childish signs of pain,
grief and misery. Brutal habits may destroy, or competing habits
overgrow, or the lack of exercise weaken, these tendencies, but they
are none the less as original as any fact in human nature.[13]
This relation is of course useful and necessary since the child is
helpless throughout a period of years and would not live unless the
mother were impelled to give it her devotion. This attitude is present
in the father of the child also but is weaker, less demonstrative, and
called out more gradually.
In addition, the desire for response between the two sexes in connection
with mating is very powerful. An ardent courtship is full of assurances
and appeals for reassurance. Marriage and a home involve response but
with more settled habits, more routine work, less of new experience.
Jealousy is an expression of fear that the response is directed
elsewhere. The flirt is one who seeks new experience through the
provocation of response from many quarters.
In some natures this wish, both to receive and to give response, is out
of proportion to the other wishes, “over-determined”, so to speak, and
interferes with a normal organization of life. And the fixation may be
either on a child or a member of either sex. The general situation is
the same in the two cases following.
11. I am the unhappy mother of a dear little son, eight years old.
You ask the cause of my unhappiness? I ought to be happy with such a
dear treasure? But the answer is, I love my child too much. My love
to my son is so great, so immeasurably deep, that I myself am
worthless. My own person has not a trace of worth for me. I am as it
were dead to all and everything. My thoughts by day and by night are
turned toward my child. I see nothing in the world except my beloved
child. Nothing exists for me except him. Every one of my thoughts,
every desire and wish that awakens in me, turns around the child of
my heart. I am nothing. I do not live, I do not exist. I forget
myself as I forget all and everything in the world. I go around the
whole day without eating and feel no hunger. I forget that I must
eat. I go around often a whole day in my nightclothes because I
forget that I have to dress. With soul and body, with mind and
spirit I am wrapt up in my child. I have no thought for myself at
all.
If clothes come to my mind, I am thinking of a new suit for my boy.
I am nothing. And if I think of shoes, I imagine a pair of little
shoes on the feet of my dear little boy. I myself am the same as
dead. If I go to the country in the summer, I come home on account
of my child. I myself do not exist. Every enjoyment in life, every
happiness to which I give a thought is connected in my mind with my
little boy. I myself am as if I were never at all in the world. The
child is everything—my soul and my spirit, my breath and my life. He
is the air I breathe. I am nothing. I don’t consider myself, I don’t
think of myself, just as if I had never been in the world.
And so it is when my child is not well, when he has perhaps
scratched his finger.... Oh, how I suffer then. No pen in the world
can describe the terrible despair I feel. I live then as it were in
a cloud, I cannot at all understand how my soul then remains in my
body. My pain is then indescribable, greater than any can
understand.... When my child is well again and his round, rosy
cheeks bloom like the flowers in May and he is joyous and full of
life and leaps and dances, then I myself look as if I had just
recovered from a fever sickness.
Tell me, I beg you, dear editor, what can such a mama do that her
dear child shall not become a lonely orphan. For I feel that I
cannot continue long as it is. My strength is not holding out and a
time must come when no strength to live will remain in me.[14]
12. I beg you to advise me, dear editor, how to stop loving. It is
perhaps a ridiculous question but for me it is a very sad one. It is
almost a question of life and death. It is so: I love a person who
is not in a position to return my love. It is certain that we can
never be united.... My love is hopeless but I cannot give it up. I
run after the person I love, I follow his steps, knowing that it
will do me no good. I have simply attached myself to an innocent
person and distress him. My conscience tells me that it is not
right. I suffer needlessly and I make suffering for another, but I
simply have no inclination to stop.
I cannot live without my lover. When I don’t see him at the expected
moment I am wild, and I am ready to commit the greatest crime in
order to accomplish my purpose. He runs away from me and I chase
after him. When he goes away to another city I feel sure that I
cannot live another twenty-four hours without him. I feel like
throwing myself from a roof. I feel that I am capable of doing any
evil deed on account of my love.
Do not think, dear editor, that I pride myself for having such a
feeling. No, I do not compliment myself at all. I am provoked with
myself, I am ashamed of myself and I hate myself. How can a person
be such a rag? I argue with myself, how can I permit my mind to have
no control over my heart? But my arguments with myself do me no good
at all. It is work thrown away. I can love no one except him, the
only one who has captured my heart and soul. I cannot even entertain
the thought of ceasing to love him. It is simply impossible.
By what name would you call such a person as I am, dear editor?
Perhaps I have gone out of my senses. So give me a word of advice as
to how I may become sane again. I neglect everything in the world.
Nothing remains in my thoughts except him. Without him everything is
dark.
He is also unhappy on account of me. I don’t let him breathe freely.
He might have been happy with another, but I give him no chance. I
disturb his life. I will add that this condition has gone on now for
several years and there is no prospect of its ending.
Dear editor, give me an advice before I commit a deed after which
marriage is impossible. I wait for your wise advice. Perhaps you
will be my savior.[15]
The varieties of love in women are greater than in men, for we are to
include here not only physical passion but parental feeling—that fund of
emotion which is fixed on the child. The capacity of response to the
child, mother love, is notorious and is painfully evident in document
11, p. 18, where the mother has no thought left for anything but the
child. The mother is one who does not refuse. She does not refuse the
breast to the lusty child even when she is herself ailing. And while
this feeling is developed as a quality of motherhood it is present
before motherhood and is capable of being transferred to any object
calling for sympathy,—a doll, a man, or a cause. The women of the Malay
Peninsula suckle little wild pigs when these are found motherless.
I have seen (through the kindness of Hutchins Hapgood) the life history
of a woman who has had sexual relations with numbers of men. At the same
time she has always fed men. She has kept a restaurant, partly I think
to feed men. When one of her friends committed suicide she dreamed of
him for months and always dreamed that she was feeding him. While she
was sexually passionate her concern was mainly to satisfy the sexual
hunger of others, as she satisfied their food-hunger. When two of her
lovers were jealous, unhappy, and desperate, she ran from one to the
other like a mother visiting two sick children in different hospitals.
More than once she attempted suicide. When she tried to explain herself
to me she said that without some human relationship she felt unbearably
lonely, and that she was drawn to lonely men without regard to their
social condition. Many of her friends were criminals and she would speak
to any bum on a park bench. She was never a prostitute. One of her
friends said, “Martha is a woman to whom everything has happened that
should logically break a woman’s character and spirit. She ought to be a
demoralized victim of society. She has done nearly everything that is
supposed to ruin and destroy a person, especially a woman, but she is
not a bit destroyed. She knows the so-called lowest things in life, but
she wants the best and feels it. She feels what is beautiful and fine
and loves it. She does things that sometimes mean sordidness in others
but not in her. She gets drunk, but is not drunken. She is loose
sexually in her acts, but her spirit is as simple as the flowers.”
A touching expression of response from a man, a devotion to a parent as
deep as mother love, is found in a letter of the psychologist William
James, written to his father from England when the death of the latter
was anticipated.
13. My blessed old Father: I scribble this line (which may reach
you, though I should come too late) just to tell you how full of the
tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last
few days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past, into
which the present will soon fall and go back and back, yours is
still for me the central figure. All my intellectual life I derive
from you; and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression
thereof, I’m sure there’s a harmony somewhere and that our strivings
will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of
estimating—so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the
influence.
You need be in no anxiety about your literary remains. I will see
them well taken care of, and that your words shall not suffer from
being concealed. At Paris I heard that Milsand, whose name you may
remember is in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and elsewhere, was an
admirer of the _Secret of Swedenborg_, and Hodgson told me your last
book had deeply impressed him. So will it be....
As for us, we shall live on, each in his way—feeling somewhat
unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental bosoms
as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred memory.
We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the torch
in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for being
gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe as
you.
As for myself, I know what trouble I’ve given you at various times
through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up I shall learn
more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in
superintending the development of a creature different from
yourself, for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show
how my sympathy with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather
than to fade—and not for the sake of regrets.
As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I
can’t say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if
that were true all would be solved and justified. And it comes
strangely over me in bidding you good-by how a life is but a day and
expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the act of
bidding an ordinary good-night.
Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don’t see you again—farewell!
A blessed farewell. Your William.[16]
Usually this feeling is not so profound, as shown in these examples, and
may be just sufficient to use as a tool and a play interest. But even
then the life may be so schematized that it plays the main rôle.
Document No. 14 is a single item taken from an autobiography of over
three hundred closely written pages in which practically the only type
of wish expressed is the desire for response from men, but this wish is
never very strong.
14. At Wichita I went to school till I was about sixteen. Between
ten and sixteen I had lots of little sweethearts. I have never been
able to be happy without an atmosphere of love or at least
flirtation. To such a degree is this true that I fear this story
will be little else than the record of my loves and flirtations,
happy and unhappy. I liked to kiss little boys from the start, but
never cared to kiss the girls. I have had many women pals all
through my life, but I never cared to kiss them, as many girls do. I
suppose I am what my friend the newspaper man calls a man’s woman.
Certainly I am miserable unless there is a man around, and I
generally want several. Until recently I have always been in love
with two at the same time. But somehow since I met Harry it is
different. My love for the other sex was always of an innocent kind.
I loved men as the birds love sunshine. It is not a passion, but a
necessity, like the air. I am light-hearted and buoyant by nature,
and never thought of doing wrong. And yet the ugly side of this
passion has always been forced upon me.[17]
In many girls the awakening of love and its fixation on an object is
slow or incomplete. The girl in the following example is cold as a stone
toward everything but herself. Her affection is turned inward. She is
the type called narcissistic, in love with herself, like the mythical
Narcissus. Probably the appearance of a child will extrovert her feeling
to some extent.
15. I have a sister of sixteen, very beautiful and proud of herself.
She is of the type who care only for themselves. She would drown her
parents, brothers and sisters in a spoon of water if she could only
gain something by it, and without suffering the slightest remorse.
Besides, she is very obstinate and must have her own way regardless
of anything.... But my father and mother and the rest of the family
wished her to possess the ordinary school education, so that her
ignorance might not be an impediment in her future life, so we put
our efforts together and sent her to business school, and thank God
she managed somehow to finish the course.
Well, she is now working for the past six months. She has a very
good position with a large firm and earns $20 a week. Out of this,
mother does not get even a cent, though she sleeps and boards at
home. Moreover, she borrows money from mother whenever she can but
she never repays it. As if this were not enough trouble, she acts
very improperly toward the whole family. She possesses absolutely no
sense of shame nor sense of pity and behaves like a wild person in
the house; she scolds and shouts and is especially cruel to our
younger sisters and brothers.[18]
And in certain characters, almost invariably men, the desire for
response is barely sufficient to keep them in contact with or on the
fringe of humanity.
16. Many a man leads in London a most solitary, unsociable life, who
yet would find it hard to live far away from the thronged city. Such
men are like Mr. Galton’s oxen, unsociable but gregarious; and they
illustrate the fact that sociability, although it has the gregarious
instinct at its foundation, is a more complex, more highly
developed, tendency. As an element of this more complex tendency to
sociability, the instinct largely determines the form of the
recreations of even the cultured classes, and is the root of no
small part of the pleasure we find in attendance at the theatre, at
concerts, lectures, and all such entertainments.[19]
Frequently in marriage the wife provides the main fund of response and
the husband is assimilated to the child. In No. 17 the wife has had a
love adventure, is living with another man, but is planning to visit her
husband clandestinely and look after him a bit.
17. My Own Dear Dean: So you would like to know if I am happy. Well,
dear, that is one thing that will never be in my life again. It has
gone from me forever. I don’t want you to think that Clarence is not
good to me, for he could not be better—I have a nice home that he
has bought, and chickens and a lovely garden, and if Marjorie was
his very own he could not be better to her. But he is terribly
jealous, and it makes it very hard for me, for, God knows, I never
give him cause. Oh, Dean, dear, wait until you see how I have
changed. If I could only live my life over it would be so
different....
Now, dear, please don’t feel that you have no interest in life, for
you have our dear little girl, and just as soon as she is big enough
to be a comfort to you—well, she is yours.
Dean, if you only knew how badly I want to see you. Now,
listen—Clarence leaves here August 31 for Vancouver and will be
there until September 6.... So, if you could send me my fare one
way, why, then he could not refuse to let me go.... Let me know what
you are planning, for I want to see you and cook you some good old
meals again.... Yours only, Patsy.[20]
In No. 18 a conventional woman permits herself to have a single new
experience in the field of response, as compensation for a married
relation which lacks everything but security, and then returns to her
security.
18. American woman, forty-five years old, married. Husband is a
prosperous real estate broker, a member of many clubs, a church
warden, director of several corporations, a typical business man of
the type termed “successful”, a good citizen “without one redeeming
vice.”
She is a beautiful woman, albeit tired and faded. Her hair is
prematurely white, her youthful face with deep-set brown eyes has a
wistful contradictory appearance. Has many sides to her nature, can
play ball with her boys as well as she can preside at a meeting. Is
a good companion, has many friends, and leads a busy life as head of
a prosperous household. Has five children, four boys and one girl.
One would not guess that she is an unsatisfied woman; her friends
all think her life ideal and, in a sense, she does not deny it. This
in substance is her view of married life though not literally word
for word:
“I suppose there can never be a school for marriage—how could there
be?—yet how sad it is that every one must begin at the same place to
work out the same problem. I had a good father and mother. They did
not understand me but that was probably more my fault than theirs; I
never confided in my mother overmuch. My father considered my mental
progress at all times and I owe him much for the manner in which he
made me think for myself, strengthened my views, and guided my
education. When I left finishing school I played in society for two
years and many of the men I met interested me, though none compelled
me. I had never been given any clear conception of what marriage
should be in the ideal sense. I knew vaguely that the man I married
must be in my own class, good and honorable, and rich enough to
maintain a dignified household. I had more of a vision of love at
sixteen than at twenty-six, the year I married, though I was sure I
loved my husband and I do—that is he is as much a part of my life as
my religion or my household conventions. He is wholly a product of
civilization and I discovered too late there is an element of the
savage in most women. They wish to be captured, possessed—not in the
sense the suffragists talk about; it is really a sense of
self-abasement, for it is the adoration of an ideal. They wish to
love a man in the open—a fighter, a victor—rather than the men we
know who have their hearts in money making and play at being men.
Perhaps it cannot be remedied, it is only a bit of wildness that
will never be tamed in women but it makes for unhappiness just the
same.
“My sex life had never been dominant. I had a commonplace
adolescence with physical longings and sensations which were not
explained to me and which did me no harm. My relation with my
husband was perfectly orthodox, and vaguely I longed for something
different. My husband was shocked at any demonstration on my part.
If I was impulsive and threw myself in his arms he straightened his
tie before he kissed me. Once at our cottage in the mountains I
suggested that we spend the night in the woods. I saw a possibility
of our getting nearer each other physically and spiritually if we
could get out in the wilderness away from the restraints and
niceties of our luxurious household. That was the first time I ever
felt like a traitor. He told me quite sternly to go to bed, I was
not a wild Indian and could not act like one. I went to the nursery
for the night and snuggled close to my little boy and was glad he
was young and slender and hoped he would never grow fat and
complacent. I had noticed for the first time that my husband was
growing stout, like any other church-warden.
“Since that time I have never been wholly happy. It was not the
foolish incident, it was the fundamental principle, and underlying
our civilization. Our babies came rather closely together and I was
glad that the mother element in me needed to be uppermost. My
husband was perfectly content with life, I satisfied him at dinner
parties, I could dress well and talk well, managed the household
money to advantage and was at hand—tame, quite tame, when he wished
to kiss me. I do not mean to sound sarcastic and bitter. It is not
what my husband is which troubles me, but what he is not; I think I
speak for many women. I am more mated to the vision of what my
children’s father might have been than to the good kind man whom I
teach them to love and respect.
“Perhaps you have guessed I am coming to a confession: I met the man
in England two summers ago, but he is an American and is in this
country now, a friend of ours whom we both see quite often.
Something in both of us flared the very night we met. He and
Lawrence (my husband) get along famously; they both believe in many
of the same ideals and discuss kindred subjects, but my brain and
his supplement each other in a way which is hard to explain. I did
not mean to love him. It is an upper strata of myself; I love
Lawrence; I mean I belong to him, am part of his very being and he
of mine, but I am myself when I am with this other man and I refuse
to think what a different self it might have been had I known him
before. The very morning after I faced the awful fact that I was
thinking of a man other than my husband, Lawrence put a bouquet at
my plate at the breakfast table. It was a red geranium, a tiny pink
rose, and some leaves of striped grass. Poor Lawrence.
“Our adventure in love came rapidly. He understood me perfectly and
I knew that he cared. We have never told Lawrence for we do not
intend to do anything more that is wrong. He has spent several
evenings at the house when Lawrence was away. There was no deception
about this—it just happened and we have talked and kissed and faced
life in the open. We decided quite calmly, and without passion, that
we would have each other entirely just once. I wanted the complete
vision of what my love could mean. If it is wrong I cannot think so;
at any rate I would not give up the memory of that time. It was only
once and it was a year ago. We both knew there could be no continued
sex relation. When I have an opportunity I kiss him and he me.
Lawrence never kisses my lips, so they belong to him. He has helped
me to be more patient, and understanding of my life as it has been
and must be. I have my children and must live out the life for their
sakes and for Lawrence who loves me, tamed and domesticated.
“If life could be—what it would mean to give him a child, but life
in its entirety cannot be—for me. Probably that is the creed of many
women.”[21]
It is unnecessary to particularize as to the place of response in art.
The love and sex themes are based on response, and they outweigh the
other themes altogether. Religion appeals to fear, fear of death and
extinction, and promises everlasting security, or threatens everlasting
pain, but in the New Testament the element of response, connected with
the concrete personalities of Jesus and Mary, predominates. Any hymn
book will contain many versified love letters addressed to Jesus. There
are on record, also many alleged conversations of nuns with Jesus which
are indistinguishable in form from those of human courtship.
19. Angela da Foligno says that Christ told her he loved her better
than any woman in the vale of Spoleto. The words of this passage are
fatuous almost beyond belief: “Then He began to say to me the words
that follow, to provoke me to love Him: ‘O my sweet daughter! O my
daughter, my temple! O my daughter, my delight! Love me, because
thou art much loved by me.’ And often did He say to me: ‘O my
daughter, My sweet Spouse!’ And he added in an underbreath, ‘I love
thee more than any other woman in the valley of Spoleto.’” To amuse
and to delight Gertrude of Eisleben, He sang duets with her “in a
tender and harmonious voice.” The same saint writes of their
“incredible intimacy”; and here, as in later passages of Angela da
Foligno, the reader is revolted by their sensuality.... In the diary
of Marie de l’Incarnation there is such an entry as “_entretien
familier avec J.-C._”; and during such interviews she makes use of a
sort of pious baby talk, like a saintly Tillie Slowboy.[22]
In general the desire for response is the most social of the wishes. It
contains both a sexual and a gregarious element. It makes selfish
claims, but on the other hand it is the main source of altruism. The
devotion to child and family and devotion to causes, principles, and
ideals may be the same attitude in different fields of application. It
is true that devotion and self-sacrifice may originate from any of the
other wishes also—desire for new experience, recognition, or security—or
may be connected with all of them at once. Pasteur’s devotion to science
seems to be mainly the desire for new experience,—scientific curiosity;
the campaigns of a Napoleon represent recognition (ambition) and the
self-sacrifice of such characters as Maria Spiridonova, Florence
Nightingale, Jane Addams is a sublimation of response. The women who
demanded Juvenile Courts were stirred by the same feeling as the mother
in document No. 11, whereas the usual legal procedure is based on the
wish to have security for life and property.
4. THE DESIRE FOR RECOGNITION. This wish is expressed in the general
struggle of men for position in their social group, in devices for
securing a recognized, enviable, and advantageous social status. Among
girls’ dress is now perhaps the favorite means of securing distinction
and showing class. A Bohemian immigrant girl expressed her philosophy in
a word: “After all, life is mostly what you wear.” Veblen’s volume,
“Theory of the Leisure Class”, points out that the status of men is
established partly through the show of wealth made by their wives.
Distinction is sought also in connection with skillful and hazardous
activities, as in sports, war, and exploration. Playwriters and
sculptors consciously strive for public favor and “fame.” In the
“achievement” of Pasteur (case 6) and of similar scientific work there
is not only the pleasure of the “pursuit” itself, but the pleasure of
public recognition. Boasting, bullying, cruelty, tyranny, “the will to
power” have in them a sadistic element allied to the emotion of anger
and are efforts to compel a recognition of the personality. The frailty
of women, their illness, and even feigned illness, is often used as a
power-device, as well as a device to provoke response. On the other
hand, humility, self-sacrifice, saintliness, and martyrdom may lead to
distinction. The showy motives connected with the appeal for recognition
we define as “vanity”; the creative activities we call “ambition.”
The importance of recognition and status for the individual and for
society is very great. The individual not only wants them but he needs
them for the development of his personality. The lack of them and the
fear of never obtaining them are probably the main source of those
psychopathic disturbances which the Freudians treat as sexual in origin.
On the other hand society alone is able to confer status on the
individual and in seeking to obtain it he makes himself responsible to
society and is forced to regulate the expression of his wishes. His
dependence on public opinion is perhaps the strongest factor impelling
him to conform to the highest demands which society makes upon him.
20. The chief difference between the down-and-out man and the
down-and-out girl is this. The d.-a.-o. man sleeps on a park bench
and looks like a bum. The d.-a.-o. girl sleeps in an unpaid-for
furnished room and looks very respectable. The man spends what
little change he has—if he has any—for food and sleeps on a bench.
The girl spends what little change she has—if she has any—for a room
and goes without food.
Not because she has more pride than the man has. She hasn’t. But
because cops haul in girls who would sleep on benches, and
well-meaning organizations “rescue” girls who look down and out. A
pretty face and worn-out soles are a signal for those who would save
girls from the perilous path, whereas an anæmic face in a stylish
coat and a pair of polished French heels can go far unmolested....
You will argue that any woman with an empty stomach and a fur coat
ought to sell the coat for a shabby one and spend the money for
food. That is because you have never been a lady bum. A fur coat
gets her places that a full stomach never would. It is her entrée
into hotel washrooms when she is dirty from job hunting. It gets her
into department-store rest rooms when she is sore of foot. And in
the last stages it gets her help from a certain class of people who
would be glad to help her if she had suddenly lost her purse, but
who never would if she had never had a purse.
And then, most important of all, it helps her to hang on to her last
scraps of self-respect.[23]
21. Alice ... wants to be somebody, to do great things, to be
superior. In her good moods, she is overwhelmed with dreams of
accomplishment. She pines to use good English, to be a real lady.
There is pathos in her inquiry as to what you say when a boy
introduces you to his mother and how to behave in a stylish hotel
dining room. Such questions have an importance that is almost
greater than the problem of how to keep straight sexually. Winning
of social approval is an ever-present, burning desire, but she has
no patterns, no habits, no control over the daily details of the
process whereby this is gained. When one tries to place her in a
good environment with girls of a better class, she reacts with a
deepened sense of inferiority, expressed in more open, boastful
wildness. She invents adventures with men to dazzle these virtuous,
superior maidens. The craving for pleasures and something to make
her forget increases.[24]
22. One of the most tragic lives we have ever known—now ended, and
perhaps happily, with the death of the girl at twenty years of
age—was that ensuing from unusually mixed parentage. An intelligent,
English-speaking Chinaman married an American woman of no mean
ability. One of their children was a girl, who developed splendidly
both physically and mentally. She was an exceptionally bright girl,
who at fourteen had already commenced a delinquent career which only
ended with her death.... The fact that she was different, so
obviously different, from other girls attending the public and
private schools to which she went, and that there were many little
whisperings about her, served greatly to accentuate her inner
distress. Her capabilities and ambitions were great, but how was she
to satisfy them? As a matter of fact, neither the mother nor I could
ever find out that any great social discomforts came to this girl;
the struggle was all within. She behaved most extravagantly as a
direct reaction to her own feelings, of the depth of which she had
rarely given any intimation at home. With us she essayed to remember
and to reveal all that had gone on in her mind for years back: How
could her mother have married this man? Was she really this woman’s
child? To what could she attain with this sort of stigma upon her?
Did she not properly belong to a free-living stratum of society?
This girl wandered and wavered. She tried religion, and she tried
running away from home and living with other people; she assumed a
Japanese alias and tried to make a new circle of acquaintances for
herself.[25]
In many cases, both in boys and girls, particularly at the period of
adolescence, the energy takes the form of daydreaming, that is, planning
activity, and also of “pathological lying”, or pretended activity. The
wishes are thus realized in an artistic schematization in which the
dreamer is the chief actor. The following, from the diary of a
sixteen-year-old girl is in form a consistent expression of the desire
for recognition, but very probably the form disguises a sexual longing,
and the daydream is thus an example of the sublimation of the desire for
response, as frequently in poetry and literature.
23. I am between heaven and earth. I float, as it were, on a
dream-cloud which carries me up at times into a glorious atmosphere,
and again nearer the mucky earth, but always on, always on. I see
not man, I see not the children of man, the big ME lies in my head,
in my hand, in my heart. I place myself upon the throne of Kings,
and tramp the dusty road, care-free. I sing to myself and call me
pretty names; I place myself upon the stage, and all mankind I call
upon for applause, and applause roars to me as the thunder from the
heavens. I reason that mine is not inevitable stage-madness which
comes to all females of my pitiful age; mine is a predestined
prophecy, mine is a holy design, my outcoming is a thing to be made
way for.
I bathe myself in perfumed waters, and my body becomes white and
slender. I clothe myself in loosened gowns, silks as soft as
thistledown, and I am transported to scenes of glory. The even
stretch of green, bedecked with flowers to match the color of my
pale gold gown, is mine to dance and skip upon. A lightness and a
grace comes into my limbs. What joy is mine! I leap and spring and
dart in rhythm with nature, and music leaps from my steps and
movements and before my eyes are men. Men and women and children
with heads bent forward, with eyes aglow with wonder, and with
praise and love for this essence of grace and beauty which is I.
What more, what more! I hang upon this idol of a dream, but it is
gone. The height of happiness is reached; alas, even in dreams there
is an end to happiness, the bubble bursts, and the dust and noise of
earth come back to me. I shut my eyes and ears to these and seek
consolation among the poor. In dreams I go often among them. With my
heaping purse of gold, I give them clothes and beds to sleep upon, I
give them food to nourish them and me, to nourish and refresh my
fame. But do I give my gold away, and does my purse cave inwards?
Ah, no! Come to my aid, my imagination, for thou art very real to me
today. An endless store of gold is mine in banks of state. My name
is headed on the lists of all, my money does increase even as I hand
it to these poor. The poor bless me, they kneel and kiss my hands. I
bid them rise, and the hypocrisy of my godless soul bids them pray
and in this find restoration.
I grow weary as I walk, and truth is even harder yet to bear than
ever before. I am sad, I have nothing, I am no one. But I speak
soothingly to myself, bidding me treat my hungry self to food, and I
promise that the night shall be long and the dreams and journeys
many.[26]
On the contrary, 24 is in form a desire for response, but the details
show that the girl feels keenly the lack of recognition. The response is
desired not for itself alone but as a sign and assurance of comparative
worth.
24. I am in despair, and I want to pour out my bitter heart. When I
have once talked out my heart I feel better afterwards.
Dear editor, why can I not find a boy to love me? I never make a hit
with young people. I never have any success with them. I associate
with young people, I like them, they like me, but nobody ever runs
after me. No boy is crazy about me. All my girl friends are popular
with young men. Every single one has a boy or more who is in love
with her and follows her steps. I alone have no luck. Do not think,
dear editor, that I am burning to marry; it is not yet time for
that. But the thought that I am left out makes me very wretched. It
distresses me and it hurts me to my soul’s marrow to know that no
one desires me, that people are indifferent toward me. Oh how happy
I should be if somebody would love me, if somebody would come to see
me. It must be such a sweet pleasure to feel that some one is
interested in you, that some one comes to see you, comes to you
especially, on account of yourself. Oh, why can I not have this
happiness!
When I go to a party and when I come back I feel so low and so
fallen. Young men crowded around my companions like flies around
honey. I alone was an exception. I have not a jealous nature, but no
other girl in my place would feel otherwise. Can you show me a way
to win a boy’s heart? What sort of quality must a girl possess in
order to attract a young man?
It is true I am no beauty. But what do all the girls do? They fix
themselves up. You can buy powder and paint in the drug stores. My
companions are not more beautiful than I. I am not sleepy. When I am
in the company of young people I am joyous, I make myself
attractive, I try my best to attract attention to myself. But that
is all thrown to the dogs.
Dear editor, if you only knew with how much care I make my clothes.
I go through the great stores to select out the most beautiful
materials. I annoy the dressmaker to death until she suits me
exactly. If it happens that a hook somewhere on the dress is not in
the right place, or a buttonhole has a single stitch more or less
than it should have, I have the greatest distress, and sharpest
heartache.
When I go somewhere to a dance I am full of hopes, my heart is
beating with excitement. Before leaving the house I take a last look
in the mirror. When I return home I have the blues, I feel cold. My
teeth grind together. So much exertion, so much strength lost, all
for nothing. A boy has talked to me, another boy has given me a
smile, still another boy has made me a little compliment, but I feel
that I am not near and dear to any one. I feel that my face has not
been stamped on the heart of any one.[27]
From the foregoing description it will be seen that wishes of the same
general class—those which tend to arise from the same emotional
background—may be totally different in moral quality. The moral good or
evil of a wish depends on the social meaning or value of the activity
which results from it. Thus the vagabond, the adventurer, the
spendthrift, the bohemian are dominated by the desire for new
experience, but so are the inventor and the scientist; adventures with
women and the tendency to domesticity are both expressions of the desire
for response; vain ostentation and creative artistic work both are
designed to provoke recognition; avarice and business enterprise are
actuated by the desire for security.
Moreover, when a concrete wish of any general class arises it may be
accompanied and qualified by any or all of the other classes of wishes.
Thus when Pasteur undertook the quest described above we do not know
what wish was uppermost. Certainly the love of the work was very strong,
the ardor of pursuit, the new experience; the anticipation of the
recognition of the public, the scientific fame involved in the
achievement was surely present; he invited response from his wife and
colleagues, and he possibly had the wish also to put his future
professional and material life on a secure basis. The immigrant who
comes to America may wish to see the new world (new experience), make a
fortune (security), have a higher standing on his return (recognition),
and induce a certain person to marry him (response).
The general pattern of behavior which a given individual tends to follow
is the basis of our judgment of his character. Our appreciation
(positive or negative) of the character of the individual is based on
his display of certain wishes as against others and on his modes of
seeking their realization. Whether given wishes tend to predominate in
this or that person is dependent primarily on what is called
temperament, and apparently this is a chemical matter, dependent on the
secretions of the glandular systems. Individuals are certainly
temperamentally predisposed toward certain classes of the wishes. But we
know also, and I shall illustrate presently, that the expression of the
wishes is profoundly influenced by the approval of the man’s immediate
circle and of the general public. The conversions of wild young men to
stable ways, from new experience to security, through marriage,
religion, and business responsibility, are examples of this. We may
therefore define character as an expression of the organization of the
wishes resulting from temperament and experience, understanding by
“organization” the general pattern which the wishes as a whole tend to
assume among themselves.
The significant point about the wishes as related to the study of
behavior is that they are the motor element, the starting point of
activity. Any influences which may be brought to bear must be exercised
on the wishes.
We may assume also that an individual life cannot be called normal in
which all the four types of wishes are not satisfied in some measure and
in some form.
CHAPTER II
THE REGULATION OF THE WISHES
One of the most important powers gained during the evolution of animal
life is the ability to make decisions from within instead of having them
imposed from without. Very low forms of life do not make decisions, as
we understand this term, but are pushed and pulled by chemical
substances, heat, light, etc., much as iron filings are attracted or
repelled by a magnet. They do tend to behave properly in given
conditions—a group of small crustaceans will flee as in a panic if a bit
of strychnia is placed in the basin containing them and will rush toward
a drop of beef juice like hogs crowding around swill—but they do this as
an expression of organic affinity for the one substance and repugnance
for the other, and not as an expression of choice or “free will.” There
are, so to speak, rules of behavior but these represent a sort of
fortunate mechanistic adjustment of the organism to typically recurring
situations, and the organism cannot change the rule.
On the other hand, the higher animals, and above all man, have the power
of refusing to obey a stimulation which they followed at an earlier
time. Response to the earlier stimulation may have had painful
consequences and so the rule or habit in this situation is changed. We
call this ability the power of inhibition, and it is dependent on the
fact that the nervous system carries memories or records of past
experiences. At this point the determination of action no longer comes
exclusively from outside sources but is located within the organism
itself.
Preliminary to any self-determined act of behavior there is always a
stage of examination and deliberation which we may call _the definition
of the situation_. And actually not only concrete acts are dependent on
the definition of the situation, but gradually a whole life-policy and
the personality of the individual himself follow from a series of such
definitions.
But the child is always born into a group of people among whom all the
general types of situation which may arise have already been defined and
corresponding rules of conduct developed, and where he has not the
slightest chance of making his definitions and following his wishes
without interference. Men have always lived together in groups. Whether
mankind has a true herd instinct or whether groups are held together
because this has worked out to advantage is of no importance. Certainly
the wishes in general are such that they can be satisfied only in a
society. But we have only to refer to the criminal code to appreciate
the variety of ways in which the wishes of the individual may conflict
with the wishes of society. And the criminal code takes no account of
the many unsanctioned expressions of the wishes which society attempts
to regulate by persuasion and gossip.
There is therefore always a rivalry between the spontaneous definitions
of the situation made by the member of an organized society and the
definitions which his society has provided for him. The individual tends
to a hedonistic selection of activity, pleasure first; and society to a
utilitarian selection, safety first. Society wishes its member to be
laborious, dependable, regular, sober, orderly, self-sacrificing; while
the individual wishes less of this and more of new experience. And
organized society seeks also to regulate the conflict and competition
inevitable between its members in the pursuit of their wishes. The
desire to have wealth, for example, or any other socially sanctioned
wish, may not be accomplished at the expense of another member of the
society,—by murder, theft, lying, swindling, blackmail, etc.
It is in this connection that a moral code arises, which is a set of
rules or behavior norms, regulating the expression of the wishes, and
which is built up by successive definitions of the situation. In
practice the abuse arises first and the rule is made to prevent its
recurrence. Morality is thus the generally accepted definition of the
situation, whether expressed in public opinion and the unwritten law, in
a formal legal code, or in religious commandments and prohibitions.
The family is the smallest social unit and the primary defining agency.
As soon as the child has free motion and begins to pull, tear, pry,
meddle, and prowl, the parents begin to define the situation through
speech and other signs and pressures: “Be quiet”, “Sit up straight”,
“Blow your nose”, “Wash your face”, “Mind your mother”, “Be kind to
sister”, etc. This is the real significance of Wordsworth’s phrase,
“Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing child.” His
wishes and activities begin to be inhibited, and gradually, by
definitions within the family, by playmates, in the school, in the
Sunday school, in the community, through reading, by formal instruction,
by informal signs of approval and disapproval, the growing member learns
the code of his society.
In addition to the family we have the community as a defining agency. At
present the community is so weak and vague that it gives us no idea of
the former power of the local group in regulating behavior. Originally
the community was practically the whole world of its members. It was
composed of families related by blood and marriage and was not so large
that all the members could not come together; it was a face-to-face
group. I asked a Polish peasant what was the extent of an “_okolica_” or
neighborhood—how far it reached. “It reaches,” he said, “as far as the
report of a man reaches—as far as a man is talked about.” And it was in
communities of this kind that the moral code which we now recognize as
valid originated. The customs of the community are “folkways”, and both
state and church have in their more formal codes mainly recognized and
incorporated these folkways.
The typical community is vanishing and it would be neither possible nor
desirable to restore it in its old form. It does not correspond with the
present direction of social evolution and it would now be a distressing
condition in which to live. But in the immediacy of relationships and
the participation of everybody in everything, it represents an element
which we have lost and which we shall probably have to restore in some
form of coöperation in order to secure a balanced and normal
society,—some arrangement corresponding with human nature.
Very elemental examples of the definition of the situation by the
community as a whole, corresponding to mob action as we know it and to
our trial by jury, are found among European peasants. The three
documents following, all relating to the Russian community or _mir_,
give some idea of the conditions under which a whole community, a
public, formerly defined a situation.
25. We who are unacquainted with peasant speech, manners and method
of expressing thought—mimicry—if we should be present at a division
of land or some settlement among the peasants, would never
understand anything. Hearing fragmentary, disconnected exclamations,
endless quarreling, with repetition of some single word; hearing
this racket of a seemingly senseless, noisy crowd that counts up or
measures off something, we should conclude that they would not get
together, or arrive at any result in an age.... Yet wait until the
end and you will see that the division has been made with
mathematical accuracy—that the measure, the quality of the soil, the
slope of the field, the distance from the village—everything in
short has been taken into account, that the reckoning has been
correctly done and, what is most important, that every one of those
present who were interested in the division is certain of the
correctness of the division or settlement. The cry, the noise, the
racket do not subside until every one is satisfied and no doubter is
left.
The same thing is true concerning the discussion of some question by
the _mir_. There are no speeches, no debates, no votes. They shout,
they abuse each other, they seem on the point of coming to blows.
Apparently they riot in the most senseless manner. Some one
preserves silence, silence, and then suddenly puts in a word, one
word, or an ejaculation, and by this word, this ejaculation, he
turns the whole thing upside down. In the end, you look into it and
find that an admirable decision has been formed and, what is most
important, a unanimous decision.[28]
26. As I approached the village, there hung over it such a mixed,
varied violent shouting, that no well brought-up parliament would
agree to recognize itself, even in the abstract, as analogous to
this gathering of peasant deputies. It was clearly a full meeting
today.... At other more quiet village meetings I had been able to
make out very little, but this was a real lesson to me. I felt only
a continuous, indistinguishable roaring in my ears, sometimes
pierced by a particularly violent phrase that broke out from the
general roar. I saw in front of me the “immediate” man, in all his
beauty. What struck me first of all was his remarkable frankness;
the more “immediate” he is, the less able is he to mask his thoughts
and feelings; once he is stirred up the emotion seizes him quickly
and he flares up then and there, and does not quiet down till he has
poured out before you all the substance of his soul. He does not
feel embarrassment before anybody; there are no indications here of
diplomacy. Further, he opens up his whole soul, and he will tell
everything that he may ever have known about you, and not only about
you, but about your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Here
everything is clear water, as the peasants say, and everything
stands out plainly. If any one, out of smallness of soul, or for
some ulterior motive, thinks to get out of something by keeping
silent, they force him out into clear water without pity. And there
are very few such small-souled persons at important village
meetings. I have seen the most peaceable, irresponsible peasants,
who at other times would not have thought of saying a word against
any one, absolutely changed at these meetings, at these moments of
general excitement. They believed in the saying, “On people even
death is beautiful”, and they got up so much courage that they were
able to answer back the peasants commonly recognized as audacious.
At the moment of its height the meeting becomes simply an open
mutual confessional and mutual disclosure, the display of the widest
publicity. At these moments when, it would seem, the private
interests of each reach the highest tension, public interests and
justice in turn reach the highest degree of control.[29]
27. In front of the volost administration building there stands a
crowd of some one hundred and fifty men. This means that a volost
meeting has been called to consider the verdict of the Kusmin rural
commune “regarding the handing over to the [state] authorities of
the peasant Gregori Siedov, caught red-handed and convicted of
horse-stealing.” Siedov had already been held for judicial inquiry;
the evidence against him was irrefutable and he would undoubtedly be
sentenced to the penitentiary. In view of this I endeavor to explain
that the verdict in regard to his exile is wholly superfluous and
will only cause a deal of trouble; and that at the termination of
the sentence of imprisonment of Siedov the commune will unfailingly
be asked whether it wants him back or prefers that he be exiled.
Then, I said, in any event it would be necessary to formulate a
verdict in regard to the “non-reception” of Siedov, while at this
stage all the trouble was premature and could lead to nothing. But
the meeting did not believe my words, did not trust the court and
wanted to settle the matter right then and there; the general hatred
of horse-thieves was too keen....
The decisive moment has arrived; the head-man “drives” all the
judges-elect to one side; the crowd stands with a gloomy air, trying
not to look at Siedov and his wife, who are crawling before the
_mir_ on their knees. “Old men, whoever pities Gregori, will remain
in his place, and whoever does not forgive him will step to the
right,” cries the head man. The crowd wavered and rocked, but
remained dead still on the spot; no one dared to be the first to
take the fatal step. Gregori feverishly ran over the faces of his
judges with his eyes, trying to read in these faces pity for him.
His wife wept bitterly, her face close to the ground; beside her,
finger in mouth and on the point of screaming, stood a
three-year-old youngster (at home Gregori had four more
children).... But straightway one peasant steps out of the crowd;
two years before some one had stolen a horse from him. “Why should
we pity him? Did he pity us?” says the old man, and stooping goes
over to the right side. “That is true; bad grass must be torn from
the field,” says another one from the crowd, and follows the old
man. The beginning had been made; at first individually and then in
whole groups the judges-elect proceeded to go over to the right. The
man condemned by public opinion ran his head into the ground, beat
his breast with his fists, seized those who passed him by their
coat-tails, crying: “Ivan Timofeich! Uncle Leksander! Vasinka, dear
kinsman! Wait, kinsmen, let me say a word.... Petrushenka.” But,
without stopping and with stern faces, the members of the _mir_
dodged the unfortunates, who were crawling at their feet.... At last
the wailing of Gregori stopped; around him for the space of three
_sazen_ the place was empty; there was no one to implore. All the
judges-elect, with the exception of one, an uncle of the man to be
exiled, had gone over to the right. The woman cried sorrowfully,
while Gregori stood motionless on his knees, his head lowered,
stupidly looking at the ground.[30]
The essential point in reaching a communal decision, just as in the case
of our jury system, is unanimity. In some cases the whole community
mobilizes around a stubborn individual to conform him to the general
wish.
28. It sometimes happens that all except one may agree but the
motion is never carried if that one refuses to agree to it. In such
cases all endeavor to talk over and persuade the stiff-necked one.
Often they even call to their aid his wife, his children, his
relatives, his father-in-law, and his mother, that they may prevail
upon him to say yes. Then all assail him, and say to him from time
to time: “Come now, God help you, agree with us too, that this may
take place as we wish it, that the house may not be cast into
disorder, that we may not be talked about by the people, that the
neighbors may not hear of it, that the world may not make sport of
us!” It seldom occurs in such cases that unanimity is not
attained.[31]
A less formal but not less powerful means of defining the situation
employed by the community is gossip. The Polish peasant’s statement that
a community reaches as far as a man is talked about was significant, for
the community regulates the behavior of its members largely by talking
about them. Gossip has a bad name because it is sometimes malicious and
false and designed to improve the status of the gossiper and degrade its
object, but gossip is in the main true and is an organizing force. It is
a mode of defining the situation in a given case and of attaching praise
or blame. It is one of the means by which the status of the individual
and of his family is fixed.
The community also, particularly in connection with gossip, knows how to
attach opprobrium to persons and actions by using epithets which are at
the same time brief and emotional definitions of the situation.
“Bastard”, “whore”, “traitor”, “coward”, “skunk”, “scab”, “snob”,
“kike”, etc., are such epithets. In “Faust” the community said of
Margaret, “She stinks.” The people are here employing a device known in
psychology as the “conditioned reflex.” If, for example, you place
before a child (say six months old) an agreeable object, a kitten, and
at the same time pinch the child, and if this is repeated several times,
the child will immediately cry at the sight of the kitten without being
pinched; or if a dead rat were always served beside a man’s plate of
soup he would eventually have a disgust for soup when served separately.
If the word “stinks” is associated on people’s tongues with Margaret,
Margaret will never again smell sweet. Many evil consequences, as the
psychoanalysts claim, have resulted from making the whole of sex life a
“dirty” subject, but the device has worked in a powerful, sometimes a
paralyzing way on the sexual behavior of women.
Winks, shrugs, nudges, laughter, sneers, haughtiness, coldness, “giving
the once over” are also language defining the situation and painfully
felt as unfavorable recognition. The sneer, for example, is incipient
vomiting, meaning, “you make me sick.”
And eventually the violation of the code even in an act of no intrinsic
importance, as in carrying food to the mouth with the knife, provokes
condemnation and disgust. The fork is not a better instrument for
conveying food than the knife, at least it has no moral superiority, but
the situation has been defined in favor of the fork. To smack with the
lips in eating is bad manners with us, but the Indian has more logically
defined the situation in the opposite way; with him smacking is a
compliment to the host.
In this whole connection fear is used by the group to produce the
desired attitudes in its member. Praise is used also but more sparingly.
And the whole body of habits and emotions is so much a community and
family product that disapproval or separation is almost unbearable. The
following case shows the painful situation of one who has lost her place
in a family and community.
29. I am a young woman of about twenty; I was born in America but my
parents come from Hungary. They are very religious.... When I was
fourteen I became acquainted in school with a gentile boy of German
parents. He was a very fine and decent boy. I liked his company ...
and we became close friends. Our friendship continued over a period
of several years, unknown to my parents. I did not want to tell
them, knowing quite well that they would not allow my friendship to
a gentile.
When we grew older, our friendship developed into ardent love and
one year ago we decided to marry—without my parents’ consent, of
course. I surmised that after my wedding they would forgive my
marrying a non-Jewish young man, but just the opposite turned out.
My religious parents were full of scorn when they learned of my
secret doings, and not only did they not forgive me but they chased
me out of the house and refused to have anything to do with me.
To add to my misfortune, I am now being spurned by my friend, my
lover, my everything—my husband. After our marriage he became a
different man; he drank and gambled and called me the vilest names.
He continually asked why he married a “damned Jewess”, as if it were
my fault alone. Before our marriage I was the best girl in the world
for him and now he would drown me in a spoonful of water to get rid
of me. Fortunately I have no child as yet.
My husband’s parents hate me even more than my husband and just as I
was turned out of the house for marrying a gentile, so he was shown
the door by his parents for marrying a Jewess.
Well, a few months ago my husband deserted me and I have no idea of
his whereabouts. I was confronted by a terrible situation. Spurned
by my own relatives and by my husband’s, I feel very lonely, not
having some one to tell my troubles to.
Now, I want you to advise me how to find my husband. I do not want
to live with him by compulsion, nor do I ask his support, for I earn
my living working in a shop. I merely ask his aid in somehow
obtaining a divorce, so that I may return to my people, to my God
and to my parents. I cannot stand the loneliness and do not want to
be hated, denounced and spurned by all. My loneliness will drive me
to a premature grave.
Perhaps you can tell me how to get rid of my misfortune. Believe me,
I am not to blame for what I have done—it was my ignorance. I never
believed that it was such a terrible crime to marry a non-Jew and
that my parents would under no circumstances forgive me. I am
willing to do anything, to make the greatest sacrifice, if only the
terrible ban be taken off me.[32]
In the following the writer is not the father of the girl who has just
told her story, but he might well be. His statement shows the power of
family and community customs in determining emotional attitudes.
30. [My daughter has married an Italian who is a very good man]....
My tragedy is much greater because I am a free thinker.
Theoretically, I consider a “goi” [gentile] just as much a man as a
Jew.... Indeed I ask myself these questions: “What would happen if
my daughter married a Jewish fellow who was a good-for-nothing?...
And what do I care if he is an Italian? But I can not seem to answer
these delicate questions. The fact is that I would prefer a refined
man; but I would sooner have a common Jew than an educated _goi_.
Why this is so, I do not know, but that is how it is, of that there
is no doubt. And this shows what a terrible chasm exists between
theory and practice!...”[33]
The tendency of communities and families to regulate so minutely the
behavior of all their members was justified by the fact that in case of
poverty, sickness, death, desertion, or ruin the community or family
assumed the burden, “submitted to the yoke”, as they expressed it. In
case No. 31 the former members of a community still support an abandoned
child though they are in America and the child in Europe.
31. In the year 1912 in a little [Russian] village a father
abandoned his family, a wife and three children. Of the children two
were girls and the third was a boy six months old. The mother
worried along with the children and finally in despair she changed
her religion and married a Christian from a neighboring village. The
children she simply abandoned.
Of course the community of the village where this happened took care
of the three abandoned children. They gave them out to families to
be reared, and the village paid for them by the month. My mother was
by no means a rich woman and felt the need of money, so she took the
boy, for which the community paid.
For some years everything went well, until the great World War broke
out. The village in question was impoverished by the war and was
plundered by various bands of pogromists. Great numbers of Jews were
killed and the community was destroyed.
My mother no longer received the monthly payment for the child;
there was no one to make the payment. But my mother did not have the
heart to throw the poor child into the street. They had become
attached to each other, the child to my mother whom he called
“mamma” and my mother to the child. So my mother kept the child
without pay. That is, she and the child hungered and suffered
together. Now, dear editor, I come to the point.
The family of the writer of these lines was scattered. My father
died at home. I and two sisters are now in America. My mother and
the child are still in the old home. Of course we send our mother
money for her support and this means that we support not only our
mother but also the child of strangers. But it has never occurred to
us here in America to reproach our mother because we are compelled
to send money for a strange child.
On the contrary, we understand that it is our duty not to behave
like murderers toward the innocent, helpless victim of the present
social conditions whom fate has thrown upon us. But the following is
also true:
We have heard that the child’s father is in America, somewhere
around New York, and that he is very rich. So we think that it is no
more than right that the father of the child shall take the yoke
from us who are strangers and support his own child. I will say that
I and my two sisters are simple working people. Every cent that we
earn is worked for with our ten fingers. Therefore, I appeal to the
father of our mother’s ward to take over the responsibility for his
child, which is without doubt his duty.[34]
As far as possible the family regulates its affairs within itself
without appealing to the community and thus subjecting itself to gossip.
Situations arising within the family where members are not in agreement,
where a conflict of wishes is involved, are defined through argument,
ordering and forbidding, remonstrance, reproof, entreaty, sulking,
tears, and beatings. But as a last resort a member of a family may
provoke gossip, appeal to the community. In case No. 32 the woman
defines the situation to her deserting husband publicly. She does it
very tactfully. She uses every art, reminder, and appreciation to
influence his return. She wishes to avoid a public scandal, reminds him
of the noble professions he has always made as man and father, pictures
the children as grieving and herself as ashamed to let them know, and
believes that he is fundamentally a fine man who has had a moment of
weakness or suffered a temporary madness—so she says. In addition the
powerful newspaper through which she seeks publicity will define the
situation to the erring husband. Presumably he will return.
32. I come to you with the request that you will write a few words
to my husband. He has a high opinion of the answers that you give in
_Bintel Brief_ and I hope that some words from you will have a good
effect on him so that we shall be able to avoid a public scandal. In
the meantime I am containing my troubles but if matters get worse I
shall have to turn to people for help. I will say that my husband
and I always lived a good life together. He always condemned in the
strongest terms those fathers who leave their children to God’s
mercy. “Children,” he said, “are innocent and we must take care not
to make them unhappy”—that was the way he always talked. And now he
has himself done what he always condemned and regarded as the
greatest meanness.
The last night before he went away my husband kissed our youngest
daughter so much that she is now sick from longing for him. The
older girl is continually asking, “When will father come?” I am
frightfully upset by the unexpected misfortune which has struck me.
Dear editor, I have the greatest confidence in the goodness of my
husband. Perhaps he has lost his reason for a time, but he is not
corrupt. I am almost sure that when he reads my letter he will come
back to his senses and will behave as a man and as a decent person
should behave. I beg you to print my letter as soon as possible and
help to restore a broken family.[35]
Contrary to this we have the device of public confession, a definition
of the situation in terms of self-condemnation. The following is a
public apology which gives the injured husband favorable public
recognition and seeks a reconciliation.
33. I myself drove out my good and true husband in a shameful manner
and placed the guilt at his door, and although he is angry he is
decent enough not to say anything to anybody. He takes the blame on
himself. All my friends and acquaintances think that he is really
the guilty one.
I have been married for the last eleven years and up to two years
ago I thought that somehow I should end my life peacefully, although
I have caused many a quarrel.... My tongue is sharp and burning....
My husband always forgave me. Many times he cried and a week or two
would pass by quietly. And then again I could not be quiet. Quite
often I would start to fire away at the table and he would get up,
leave the house, and go to a restaurant. When he returned he had
some more. And according to my behavior my husband began to treat me
roughly....
At this time we tried business for ourselves ... and owing to
numerous reasons my husband had everything in my name; I was the
owner of everything that we had. After that I began to rule over him
still more, and when he saw that he could do nothing with me he
stopped speaking to me.
I have tried everything to dirty his name. Oh, now my conscience
troubles me when I see three live orphans wandering about. Would it
not be better if the community had forbidden me to marry in order to
avoid such a family-tragedy.
I am a snake by nature and this is not my fault; that’s how I am. My
friends meet him and they tell me that he does not say a word about
our tragedy. He says: “I am doing the best that I can and when I am
able to give a home to my children, then I will worry about them.”
And I am afraid that some day he will take away the children from me
and then I shall be left alone like a stone.[36]
The priests in Poland say that if all the influences of the community
are active—the family, the priest, the friends, and neighbors—there are
few necessarily bad men. They say also that communities tend to be all
good or all bad, and that this is determined largely by majorities. If a
community is good the priest thunders from the chancel against any
symptom of badness; if it is already bad he praises and encourages any
little manifestation of goodness. In examining the letters between
immigrants in America and their home communities I have noticed that the
great solicitude of the family and community is that the absent member
shall not change. Absence and the resulting outside influence are
dreaded as affecting the solidarity of the group. And the typical
immigrant letter is an assurance and reminder that the writer, though
absent, is still a member of the community. I found the following letter
in the home of a peasant family in Poland. It was written from Chicago
on “Palmer House” stationery. The writer was a chambermaid in that
hotel. She was little instructed, could barely read and write. The
letter contained no capitals and no punctuation and was addressed to a
girl who could not write at all. This letter was read by all the
neighbors. No one would understand keeping a letter private. The
introduction, “Praised be Jesus Christ”, to which the reader or hearer
is expected to reply, “For centuries of centuries, Amen”, is a
traditional form expressing common membership in a religious-social
community. The greetings at the end should be complete enough to
recognize every family which ought to be noticed. The sending of money
is a practical sign of community membership. The poetry and æsthetic
writing is the absent girl’s way of participating in the social
gatherings of the community, of doing her turn in the festivities where
poems are composed and recited. She writes as prettily as she can in
order to provoke recognition. For the convenience of Polish immigrants
business enterprise even provides printed letters containing appropriate
greetings and assurances, leaving blank space for names and
informational matter.
34. I am beginning this letter with the words: “Praised be Jesus
Christus”, and I hope that you will answer: “For centuries of
centuries, Amen.”
Dearest Olejniczka: I greet you from my heart, and wish you health
and happiness. God grant that this little letter reaches you well,
and as happy as the birdies in May. This I wish you from my heart,
dear Olejniczka.
The rain is falling; it falls beneath my slipping feet.
I do not mind; the post office is near.
When I write my little letter
I will flit with it there,
And then, dearest Olejniczka
My heart will be light, from giving you a pleasure.
In no grove do the birds sing so sweetly
As my heart, dearest Olejniczka, for you.
Go, little letter, across the broad sea, for I cannot come to you.
When I arose in the morning, I looked up to the heavens and thought
to myself that to you, dearest Olejniczka, a little letter I must
send.
Dearest Olejniczka, I left papa, I left sister and brother and you
to start out in the wide world, and to-day I am yearning and fading
away like the world without the sun.
If I shall ever see you again, then like a little child, of great
joy I shall cry. To your feet I shall bow low, and your hands I
shall kiss. Then you shall know how I love you, dearest Olejniczka.
I went up on a high hill and looked in that far direction, but I see
you not, and I hear you not.
Dear Olejniczka, only a few words will I write. As many sand-grains
as there are in the field, as many drops of water in the sea, so
many sweet years of life I, Walercia, wish you for the Easter
holidays. I wish you all good, a hundred years of life, health and
happiness. And loveliness I wish you. I greet you through the white
lilies, I think of you every night, dearest Olejniczka.
Are you not in Bielice any more, or what? Answer, as I sent you a
letter and there is no answer. Is there no one to write for you?
And now I write you how I am getting along. I am getting on well,
very well. I have worked in a factory and I am now working in a
hotel. I receive 18 (in our money 36) dollars a month, and that is
very good.
If you would like it we could bring Wladzio over some day. We eat
here every day what we get only for Easter in our country. We are
bringing over Helena and brother now. I had $120 and I sent back
$90.
I have no more to write, only we greet you from our heart, dearest
Olejniczka. And the Olejniks and their children; and Wladislaw we
greet; and the Szases with their children; and the Zwolyneks with
their children; and the Grotas with their children, and the Gyrlas
with their children; and all our acquaintances we greet. My address:
North America [etc.] Good-by. For the present, sweet good-by.
The sets of habits and reactions developed socially, under family,
community, and church influence, may become almost as definite as the
mechanistic adjustments which I mentioned at the beginning of the
chapter. The “folkways” become equivalent in force to the instincts and
even displace them. In the following case the girl is completely
isolated, and in a very critical situation but resists temptation on the
basis of her memories.
35. This happened fourteen years ago. I had been in America but a
short time and was a healthy and pretty girl of nineteen.
I had worked in a place seven months and earned the gigantic sum of
$4.00 a week. But soon slack set in and I lost my job. It was summer
and in the hot days I continued to look for work. The whole day I
used to drag my tired body from place to place, only to come home in
the evening all fagged out and with no prospect of work.
I was then living with a widow who was even poorer than myself for
she had to provide for her several children. I had to sleep there
for I could not live in the street, but stopped eating there because
she simply had nothing to give me and I could not afford to pay her.
What was I to do? So twice a day I used to “feed” my stomach on
credit, that is, I would promise to repay it all the foregone
breakfasts and dinners as soon as I got a job.
What I did eat I obtained in the following manner: I went into a
grocery and waited until all the customers were gone, when I would
whisper to the grocer to let me have an old roll and a piece of
herring on the promise of paying for it when I found work. That’s
how I managed to live while starving.
It will be understood that this sort of life did not satisfy me. I
recall with horror the wild thoughts that entered my mind as I paced
the streets in the hot weather, hungry and thirsty. Temptation was
whispering to me that a pretty and healthy girl like me did not have
to wait for honest labor.... That I did not yield to the voice of
temptation was simply a miracle, despite the fact that I am not
religious and do not believe in miracles.
Once I nearly lost control of myself ... but the memory of my
parents on the other side who were very religious and respectable
people—the love for them—saved me from taking the false step. It was
this way: One afternoon of a very warm day, being tired of walking
around in search of work, hungry and thirsty, I dropped my hands in
despair, murmuring to myself: “Come what may, I can stand it no
longer.... I can’t....” And I began to look for some young man to
whom to offer my body....
My heart beat heavily, my hands and feet trembled and my teeth
chattered as I passed by many men without daring to carry out my
decision. Finally, my eyes were set upon a well-dressed young man
whom I was going to stop.... But at the very last moment the bright
faces of my parents appeared before my eyes and I desisted in terror
from my plan. I thought it was better to drop in the street than
bring disgrace upon my dear parents. I went home afterward.
The point that I want to bring out is this: One evening I went as
usual to a grocery to obtain my portion of roll and a piece of
herring. The grocer, not a friendly man, at least not a thinking
man, drove me out of the store.... This experience chased away my
hunger and I did not attempt to enter another grocery. Ashamed and
embittered, I went home. In the hall of the house I noticed a green
slip of paper on the floor. My heart leapt with joy. I picked it up,
doubting whether it was really money, for I did not believe that
such good fortune could befall me.... I examined the paper closely
and found it to be a genuine one-dollar bill! I was as overwhelmed
with joy as if I had found a whole treasure, as if I had suddenly
turned millionaire.
I began to plan a gala meal—bologna and tea ... but first I decided
to go to the candy store for some “lemon and strawberry mixed” soda
for three cents. As I walked up the flights of stairs to my room to
wash up, I heard a mother’s scolding and a child’s weeping as it was
being whipped by its mother. She was punishing him for losing the
dollar on the way to the grocery. The poor boy was crying with his
last strength and it could break anybody’s heart.
I hesitated no longer and rapped on the door of the flat from which
the commotion came. A pale and emaciated woman opened the door for
me. “Here is your dollar,” I said; “I found it in the hallway.” The
woman snatched the bill out of my hand without even looking at me,
let alone thanking me.... And to this very day I don’t know whether
she acted that way out of embittered feeling or out of ill-manners.
One thing I know: I was more hungry and thirsty that night than at
any other time—the bill had so increased my appetite that I could
have swallowed that woman and her boy together....
I think I should add that I am now married to a very dear man and
have three precious little children, and we make a fine living.[37]
The following passages picture the life of a young American girl of the
middle of the last century where the whole community is coöperating with
the family to standardize her. Her parents are dead but the influences
are complete without them. She is met at every turn with definitions of
the situation which in this case are rigid but of the most genial and
affectionate character. She does not lose her personality because that
is in her nature; she is alert and witty, like her grandmother. If there
were no disturbance of the situation she would become such an old woman
as her grandmother is. The outside world is, however, beginning to press
in. The situation has already been defined to her in terms of “woman’s
rights.”
36. _November 21, 1852._—I am ten years old today, and I will write
a journal and tell who I am and what I am doing. I have lived with
my Grandfather and Grandmother Beals ever since I was seven years
old, and Anna, too, since she was four. Our brothers, James and
John, came too, but they are at East Bloomfield at Mr. Stephen
Clark’s Academy. Miss Laura Clark of Naples is their teacher.
Anna and I go to school at District No. 11. Mr. James C. Cross is
our teacher, and some of the scholars say he is cross by name and
cross by nature, but I like him. He gave me a book by the name of
“Noble Deeds of American Women”, for reward of merit, in my reading
class.
_Friday._—Grandmother says I will have a great deal to answer for,
because Anna looks up to me so and tries to do everything that I do
and thinks whatever I say is “gospel truth.” The other day the girls
at school were disputing with her about something and she said, “It
is so, if it ain’t so, for Calline said so.” I shall have to “toe
the mark”, as Grandfather says, if she keeps watch of me all the
time and walks in my footsteps.
_April 1, 1853._—Before I go to school every morning I read three
chapters in the Bible. I read three every day and five on Sunday and
that takes me through the Bible in a year. Those I read this morning
were the first, second, and third chapters of Job. The first was
about Eliphaz reproveth Job; second, benefit of God’s correction;
third, Job justifieth his complaint. I then learned a text to say at
school. I went to school at quarter to nine and recited my text and
we had prayers and then proceeded with the business of the day. Just
before school was out, we recited in “Science of Things Familiar”,
and in Dictionary, and then we had calisthenics.
_July._—Hiram Goodrich, who lives at Mr. Myron H. Clark’s, and
George and Wirt Wheeler ran away on Sunday to seek their fortunes.
When they did not come back every one was frightened and started out
to find them. They set out right after Sunday school, taking their
pennies which had been given them for the contribution, and were
gone several days. They were finally found at Palmyra. When asked
why they had run away, one replied that he thought it was about time
they saw something of the world. We heard that Mr. Clark had a few
moments’ private conversation with Hiram in the barn and Mr. Wheeler
the same with his boys and we do not think they will go traveling on
their own hook again right off. Miss Upham lives right across the
street from them and she was telling little Morris Bates that he
must fight the good fight of faith and he asked her if that was the
fight that Wirt Wheeler fit. She probably had to make her
instructions plainer after that.
_1854, Sunday._—Mr. Daggett’s text this morning was the
twenty-second chapter of Revelation, sixteenth verse, “I am the root
and offspring of David and the bright and morning star.” Mrs. Judge
Taylor taught our Sunday-school class today and she said we ought
not to read our Sunday-school books on Sunday. I always do. Mine
today was entitled, “Cheap Repository Tracts” by Hannah More, and it
did not seem unreligious at all.
_Tuesday._—Mrs. Judge Taylor sent for me to come over to see her
today. I didn’t know what she wanted, but when I got there she said
she wanted to talk and pray with me on the subject of religion. She
took me into one of the wings. I never had been in there before and
was frightened at first, but it was nice after I got used to it.
After she prayed, she asked me to, but I couldn’t think of anything
but “Now I lay me down to sleep”, and I was afraid she would not
like that, so I didn’t say anything. When I got home and told Anna,
she said, “Caroline, I presume probably Mrs. Taylor wants you to be
a missionary, but I shan’t let you go.” I told her she needn’t worry
for I would have to stay at home and look after her. After school
tonight I went out into Abbie Clark’s garden with her and she taught
me how to play “mumble te peg.” It is fun, but rather dangerous. I
am afraid Grandmother won’t give me a knife to play with. Abbie
Clark has beautiful pansies in her garden and gave me some roots.
_Sunday._—I almost forgot that it was Sunday this morning and talked
and laughed just as I do week days. Grandmother told me to write
down this verse before I went to church so I would remember it:
“Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more
ready to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools.” I will remember
it now, sure. My feet are all right anyway with my new patten
leather shoes on, but I shall have to look out for my head. Mr.
Thomas Howell read a sermon today as Mr. Daggett is out of town.
Grandmother always comes upstairs to get the candle and tuck us in
before she goes to bed herself, and some nights we are sound asleep
and do not hear her, but last night we only pretended to be asleep.
She kneeled down by the bed and prayed aloud for us, that we might
be good children and that she might have strength given her from on
high to guide us in the straight and narrow path which leads to life
eternal. Those were her very words. After she had gone down-stairs
we sat up in bed and talked about it and promised each other to be
good, and crossed our hearts and “hoped to die”, if we broke our
promise. Then Anna was afraid we would die, but I told her I didn’t
believe we would be as good as that, so we kissed each other and
went to sleep.
_Sunday._—Rev. Mr. Tousley preached today to the children and told
us how many steps it took to be bad. I think he said lying was
first, then disobedience to parents, breaking the Sabbath, swearing,
stealing, drunkenness. I don’t remember just the order they came. It
was very interesting, for he told lots of stories and we sang a
great many times. I should think Eddy Tousley would be an awful good
boy with his father in the house with him all the while, but
probably he has to be away part of the time preaching to other
children.
_December 20, 1855._—Susan B. Anthony is in town and spoke in Bemis
Hall this afternoon. She made a special request that all the
seminary girls should come to hear her as well as all the women and
girls in town. She had a large audience and she talked very plainly
about our rights and how we ought to stand up for them, and said the
world would never go right until the women had just as much right to
vote and rule as the men. She asked us all to come up and sign our
names who would promise to do all in our power to bring about that
glad day when equal rights would be the law of the land. A whole lot
of us went up and signed the paper. When I told Grandmother about it
she said she guessed Susan B. Anthony had forgotten that St. Paul
said the women should keep silence. I told her no, she didn’t, for
she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if he had lived in
these times, instead of eighteen hundred years ago, he would have
been as anxious to have the women at the head of the government as
she was. I could not make Grandmother agree with her at all and she
said we might better all of us stayed at home. We went to prayer
meeting this evening and a woman got up and talked. Her name was
Mrs. Sands. We hurried home and told Grandmother and she said she
probably meant all right and she hoped we did not laugh.
_February 21, 1856._—We had a very nice time at Fannie Gaylord’s
party and a splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed herself almost to
pieces when she found on going home that she had worn her leggins
all the evening. We had a pleasant walk home but did not stay till
it was out. Some one asked me if I danced every set and I told them
no, I set every dance. I told Grandmother and she was very much
pleased. Some one told us that Grandfather and Grandmother first met
at a ball in the early settlement of Canandalgua. I asked her if it
was so and she said she never danced since she became a professing
Christian and that was more than fifty years ago.
_May, 1856._—We were invited to Bessie Seymour’s party last night
and Grandmother said we could go. The girls all told us at school
that they were going to wear low neck and short sleeves. We have
caps on the sleeves of our best dresses and we tried to get the
sleeves out, so we could go bare arms, but we couldn’t get them out.
We had a very nice time, though, at the party. Some of the Academy
boys were there and they asked us to dance but of course we couldn’t
do that. We promenaded around the rooms and went out to supper with
them. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy asked to go home with us but
Grandmother sent our two girls for us, Bridget Flynn and Hannah
White, so they couldn’t. We were quite disappointed, but perhaps she
won’t send for us next time.
_Thursday, 1857._—We have four sperm candles in four silver
candlesticks and when we have company we light them. Johnie
Thompson, son of the minister, Rev. M. L. R. P., has come to the
academy to school and he is very full of fun and got acquainted with
all the girls very quick. He told us this afternoon to have “the
other candle lit” for he was coming down to see us this evening.
Will Schley heard him say it and he said he was coming too.
_Later._—The boys came and we had a very pleasant evening but when
the 9 o’clock bell rang we heard Grandfather winding up the clock
and scraping up the ashes on the hearth to cover the fire so it
would last till morning and we all understood the signal and they
bade us good night. “We won’t go home till morning” is a song that
will never be sung in this house.
_August 30, 1858._—Some one told us that when Bob and Henry Antes
were small boys they thought they would like to try, just for once,
to see how it would seem to be bad, so in spite of all of Mr.
Tousley’s sermons they went out behind the barn one day and in a
whisper Bob said, “I swear”, and Henry said, “So do I.” Then they
came into the house looking guilty and quite surprised, I suppose,
that they were not struck dead just as Ananias and Sapphira were for
lying.
_1860, Sunday._—Frankie Richardson asked me to go with her to teach
a class in the colored Sunday School on Chapel Street this
afternoon. I asked Grandmother if I could go and she said she never
noticed that I was particularly interested in the colored race and
she said she thought I only wanted an excuse to get out for a walk
Sunday afternoon. However, she said I could go just this once. When
we got up as far as the Academy, Mr. Noah T. Clarke’s brother, who
is one of the teachers, came out and Frank said he led the singing
at the Sunday school and she said she would give me an introduction
to him, so he walked up with us and home again. Grandmother said
that when she saw him opening the gate for me, she understood my
zeal in missionary work. “The dear little lady”, as we often call
her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and wonderful
sagacity and loses none of it as she advances in years. Some one
asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her
faculties and Anna said, “Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree.”
Grandmother knows that we think she is a perfect angel even if she
does seem rather strict sometimes. Whether we are seven or seventeen
we are children to her just the same, and the Bible says, “Children
obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.” We are glad that
we never will seem old to her. I had the same company home from
church in the evening. His home is in Naples.
_Christmas, 1860_.—I asked Grandmother if Mr. Clarke could take
Sunday night supper with us and she said she was afraid he did not
know the catechism. I asked him Friday night and he said he would
learn it on Saturday so that he could answer every third question
anyway. So he did and got along very well. I think he deserves a
pretty good supper.[38]
At the best no society has ever succeeded in regulating the behavior of
all its members satisfactorily all the time. There are crimes of
passion, of avarice, of revenge, even in face-to-face communities where
the control is most perfect. In the Hebrew code there were ten offenses
for which the punishment was death by stoning. One of the examples cited
above from the Russian _mir_ was concerned with horse stealing. And the
sexual passions have never been completely contained within the
framework of marriage. But communities have been so powerful that all
members have acknowledged the code and have been ready to repent and be
forgiven. And forgiveness has been one of the functions of the
community, sometimes more particularly the function of the God of the
community. A dying reprobate (the anecdote is attached to Rabelais) has
been represented as saying, “_Dieu me pardonnera. C’est son métier._”
The community usually wishes to forgive and restore the offending
member. It wants no breach in its solidarity and morale. And as long as
the offender wishes to be forgiven and restored the code is working. The
code is failing only if the sinner does not recognize it and does not
repent. And when crime and prostitution appear as professions they are
the last and most radical expressions of loss of family and community
organization.
CHAPTER III
THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF BEHAVIOR
From the foregoing it appears that the face-to-face group
(family-community) is a powerful habit-forming mechanism. The group has
to provide a system of behavior for many persons at once, a code which
applies to everybody and lasts longer than any individual or generation.
Consequently the group has two interests in the individual,—to suppress
wishes and activities which are in conflict with the existing
organization, or which seem the starting point of social disharmony, and
to encourage wishes and actions which are required by the existing
social system. And if the group performs this task successfully, as it
does among savages, among Mohammedans, and as it did until recently
among European peasants, no appreciable change in the moral code or in
the state of culture is observable from generation to generation. In
small and isolated communities there is little tendency to change or
progress because the new experience of the individual is sacrificed for
the sake of the security of the group.
But by a process, an evolution, connected with mechanical inventions,
facilitated communication, the diffusion of print, the growth of cities,
business organization, the capitalistic system, specialized occupations,
scientific research, doctrines of freedom, the evolutionary view of
life, etc., the family and community influences have been weakened and
the world in general has been profoundly changed in content, ideals, and
organization.
Young people leave home for larger opportunities, to seek new
experience, and from necessity. Detachment from family and community,
wandering, travel, “vagabondage” have assumed the character of
normality. Relationships are casualized and specialized. Men meet
professionally, as promoters of enterprises, not as members of families,
communities, churches. Girls leave home to work in factories, stores,
offices, and studios. Even when families are not separated they leave
home for their work.
Every new invention, every chance acquaintanceship, every new
environment, has the possibility of redefining the situation and of
introducing change, disorganization or different type of organization
into the life of the individual or even of the whole world. Thus, the
invention of the check led to forgery; the sulphur match to arson; at
present the automobile is perhaps connected with more seductions than
happen otherwise in cities altogether; an assassination precipitated the
World War; motion pictures and the _Saturday Evening Post_ have
stabilized and unstabilized many existences, considered merely as
opportunity for new types of career. The costly and luxurious articles
of women’s wear organize the lives of many girls (as designers, artists,
and buyers) and disorganize the lives of many who crave these pretty
things.
In the small and spatially isolated communities of the past, where the
influences were strong and steady, the members became more or less
habituated to and reconciled with a life of repressed wishes. The
repression was demanded of all, the arrangement was equitable, and while
certain new experiences were prohibited, and pleasure not countenanced
as an end in itself, there remained satisfactions, not the least of
which was the suppression of the wishes of others. On the other hand the
modern world presents itself as a spectacle in which the observer is
never sufficiently participating. The modern revolt and unrest are due
to the contrast between the paucity of fulfillment of the wishes of the
individual and the fullness, or apparent fullness, of life around him.
All age levels have been affected by the feeling that much, too much, is
being missed in life. This unrest is felt most by those who have
heretofore been most excluded from general participation in life,—the
mature woman and the young girl. Sometimes it expresses itself in
despair and depression, sometimes in breaking all bounds. Immigrants
form a particular class in this respect. They sometimes repudiate the
old system completely in their haste to get into the new. There are
cases where the behavior of immigrants, expressing natural but random
and unregulated impulses, has been called insane by our courts.
Case No. 37 represents despair, case No. 38 revolt, Nos. 39 and 40
extraordinarily wild behavior.
37. There is a saying about the peacock, “When she looks at her
feathers she laughs, and when she looks at her feet she cries.” I am
in the same situation.
My husband’s career, upon which I spent the best years of my life,
is established favorably; our children are a joy to me as a mother;
nor can I complain about our material circumstances. But I am
dissatisfied with myself. My love for my children, be it ever so
great, cannot destroy myself. A human being is not created like a
bee which dies after accomplishing its only task.
Desires, long latent, have been aroused in me and become more
aggressive the more obstacles they encounter.... I now have the
desire to go about and see and hear everything. I wish to take part
in everything—to dance, skate, play the piano, sing, go to the
theatre, opera, lectures and generally mingle in society. As you
see, I am no idler whose purpose is to chase all sorts of foolish
things, as a result of loose ways. This is not the case.
My present unrest is a natural result following a long period of
hunger and thirst for non-satisfied desires in every field of human
experience. It is the dread of losing that which never can be
recovered—youth and time which do not stand still—an impulse to
catch up with the things I have missed.... If it were not for my
maternal feeling I would go away into the wide world.[39]
38. I had been looking for Margaret, for I knew she was a striking
instance of the “unadjusted” who had within a year come with a kind
of æsthetic logic to Greenwich Village. She needed something very
badly. What I heard about her which excited me was that she was
twenty years old, unmarried, had never lived with a man or had any
of that experience, had worked for a year on a socialist newspaper,
and a socialist magazine, was a heavy drinker and a frequenter of
Hell Hole, that she came from a middle class family but preferred
the society of the outcasts to any other. Greenwich Village is not
composed of outcasts, but it does not reject them, and it enables a
man or woman who desires to know the outcast to satisfy the desire
without feeling cut off from humanity. Hell Hole is a saloon in the
back room of which pickpockets, grafters, philosophers, poets,
revolutionists, stool-pigeons, and the riff-raff of humanity meet.
Margaret loves this place and the people in it—so they told me—and
there she did and said extreme things in which there was a bitter
fling at decent society.
So that night, when she came with Christine, I invited her to go
with me to Hell Hole to have a drink. She drank whiskey after
whiskey and showed no effect. As soon as we were seated in the back
room alone she started to tell me about herself. I forget what
unessential thing I said to get her started. She knew by instinct
what I desired and she told me her story with utter frankness, and
with a simple, unaggressive self-respect.
“I belong to what is called a respectable, middle-class family. My
father is a prominent newspaper man. Whenever I was ill, as a child,
he gave me whiskey instead of medicine. This began at the age of
four. One of my childish amusements was to mix cordials and water to
entertain my little friends with. We lived in the city, and I had
from four years of age the run of the streets. At six or eight I
knew everything—about sex, about hard street life. I knew it wrong,
of course, for I saw it but did not feel it. I felt wrong about it
all, and feared it, wasn’t a part of it, except as an observer. I
saw no beauty or friendliness in sex feeling. I think it was this
that kept me away later from physical intimacy with men; it couldn’t
appeal to me after my early life in the street. I know it doesn’t
always happen so, but it did with me.
“When I got to be thirteen years old my father reversed his attitude
towards me; before then, all freedom; after that, all restraint. I
was completely shut in. Soon after that I became religious and
joined the church. I had a long pious correspondence with another
girl and used to brood all the time about God and about my
transcendental duties. This lasted till I was sixteen, and then
life, ordinary external life, came back with a rush and I couldn’t
stand my exclusive inner world and the outward restraint any longer,
and I wanted to go away from home. So I worked hard in the High
School and got a $300 scholarship in Latin and Greek. With this I
went to a Western College and stayed there two years, working my own
way and paying my expenses. I read a lot at this time, and liked
revolutionary literature; read socialism, and poetry that was full
of revolt. I took to anything which expressed a reaction against the
conditions of my life at home.
“I stood well in my studies, and suppose I might have completed the
college course, except that I got into trouble with the authorities,
for very slight reasons, as it seems to me. I smoked cigarettes, a
habit I had formed as a child, and that of course was forbidden. It
was also forbidden to enter the neighboring cemetery, I don’t know
why. One day I smoked a cigarette in the graveyard—a double
offense—and then, in the playfulness of my spirit, I wrote a poem
about it and published it in the college paper. In this paper I had
already satirized the Y. W. C. A. A few other acts of that nature
made me an undesirable member of the college and my connection with
it ceased.
“After an unhappy time at home—my father and I could not get on
together; ever since my early childhood he had been trying to
‘reform’ me—I got a job on the socialist _Call_, a New York daily
newspaper, at $—— a week. It was hard work all day, but I liked it
and I didn’t drink—I didn’t want to—and lived on the money without
borrowing. Later I went on the _Masses_, and there I was well off.
[Then I went to Washington to picket for the suffragists and got a
jail sentence, and when I returned the _Masses_ had been suspended.]
It was at that time that I began to go with the Hudson Dusters [a
gang of criminals] and to drink heavily. Greenwich Village seemed to
think it was too good for me, or I too bad for it. Most of the women
were afraid to associate with me. Only the Hudson Dusters, or people
like them, seemed really human to me. I went, in a kind of despair,
to the water-front, and staid three days and nights in the back room
of a low saloon, where there were several old prostitutes. And I
liked them. They seemed human, more so than other people. And in
this place were working men. One man, with a wife and children,
noticed I was going there and didn’t seem to belong to them, and he
asked me to go home with him and live with his family; and he meant
it, and meant it decently.
“I want to know the down and outs,” said Margaret with quiet, almost
fanatical intenseness. “I find kindness in the lowest places, and
more than kindness sometimes—something, I don’t know what it is,
that I want.”[40]
39. There came a day when my wife heard that there was an Atlantic
City not far from Philadelphia. So I granted her wish and rented a
nice room for her in a hotel there and sent her with the two
children to that seashore....
The next summer I did not make out so well and could not afford to
send my wife to the country, but she absolutely demanded to be sent
even if I had to “hang and bring.” ... My protestations and
explanations were of no avail. She went to Atlantic City and hired a
room in the same hotel....
I took my wife’s behavior to heart and became ill. Some of my
friends advised me to teach her a lesson and desert her, so that she
would mend her ways in the future. They assured me that they would
take care of my family, to keep them from starving. I was persuaded
by them and left Philadelphia for a distant town.
My wife in Atlantic City, seeing that I sent her no money, returned
home. Upon learning what had happened, she promptly sold the
furniture, which had cost $800, for almost nothing and went to New
York. My friends notified me of all that had occurred in my absence,
whereupon I came back.
I advertised in the papers and found my wife. My first question was
about the children and she replied she did not know where they were.
Upon further questioning she answered that she had brought the
children with her from Philadelphia but as she could do nothing with
them in her way she simply left them in the street.
After great efforts made through my lawyer, I succeeded in obtaining
the release of my children from the Gerry Society, after paying for
their two months’ keep there....
Since this unhappy occurrence, my wife has many times wrecked our
home, selling the household goods while I was at work and leaving me
alone with the children. Whenever she feels like satisfying her
cravings, or whenever she cannot afford to buy herself enough pretty
clothes and hats, she deserts me. One time she was gone 9 months and
never saw the children during this period....
I tried to make up with her every time and give her another chance.
But her cordiality lasted only until she again took a craving for
some rag, when she would again leave home. She was even mean enough
once to leave me with a five months’ old baby who needed nursing and
the only way out seemed to be the river for me and the baby....
I assure you that everything I have written is the truth. If you do
not believe me, you may convince yourself at the Desertion Bureau
where my case has been recorded several times.[41]
40. ... She was one of the thousands of girls who are drawn to the
great city from small towns. She perished because of her thirst for
adventure.... While stopping at the Hotel Buckingham she went out
one evening and never returned. A chauffeur told the police that he
met the girl on the evening of her death and that she had been on a
tour of the cafés and cabarets with him and that at 2 o’clock in the
morning Miss Dixon became ill. She was taken to the Harlem Hospital,
where her case was diagnosed as morphine poisoning....
She came of a fine Virginia family and was educated at a fashionable
boarding school. Four years ago she was married to a Yale graduate.
[A friend] who had known her all her life said, “She had just gone
mad with love of pleasure, though at heart she was a thoroughbred
and exceedingly fine. She decided to make her own living and took a
small part in a couple of shows. The discipline and routine were too
much for her and she gave it up and went back to [her husband] from
time to time. But always the lure of New York seemed to hold her in
a spell.”[42]
The world has become large, alluring, and confusing. Social evolution
has been so rapid that no agency has been developed in the larger
community of the state for regulating behavior which would replace the
failing influence of the community and correspond completely with
present activities. There is no universally accepted body of doctrines
or practices. The churchman, for example, and the scientist, educator,
or radical leader are so far apart that they cannot talk together. They
are, as the Greeks expressed it, in different “universes of discourse.”
41. Dr. Austin O’Malley writes rather passionately about the control
of births, in the Catholic weekly, “America.” Says Dr. O’Malley:
“The most helpless idiot is as far above a non-existent child as St.
Bridget is above a committee on birth control.” Let us pause over
the idiot and the non-existent child. Must we say that all potential
children should be born? Are we to take a firm stand against
celibacy, which denies to so many possible children the right to be
baptized? And will Dr. O’Malley tell us which is the greater virtue,
to bear children that they may be baptized, or to have no children
for the glory of one’s own soul? This solicitude over the
non-existent child has certain drawbacks. How large a family, in
fact, does Dr. O’Malley desire a woman to bear? May she stop after
the fourteenth infant, or must she say to herself: “There are still
non-existent children, some of them helpless idiots; perhaps I will
bear them that they may be baptized.”[43]
Or, if we should submit any series of behavior problems to a set of men
selected as most competent to give an opinion we should find no such
unanimity as prevailed in a village community. One set of opinions would
be rigoristic and hold that conformity with the existing code is
advisable under all circumstances; another pragmatic, holding that the
code may sometimes be violated. For example, in 1919, the United States
Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board authorized the Psychological
Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University to make an investigation of
the “informational and educative effect upon the public of certain
motion-picture films”, and in this connection a questionnaire was sent
to “medical men and women who have had most to do with problems in sex
education and the actual treatment of venereal infections.” From the
manuscript of this investigation I give below some of the replies
received to question 13.
42. _Question 13_. _Do you consider that absolute continence is
always to be insisted upon? Or may it be taught that under certain
conditions intercourse in the unmarried is harmless or beneficial?_
Dr. A. I know of no harm from absolute continence. Intercourse in
the unmarried cannot be justified on any grounds of health or
morals.
Dr. B. No. For some absolute continence would be easy, for others,
impossible. It is an individual problem to be decided by the
individual, with or without advice.
Under certain conditions in the unmarried, male or female,
intercourse is harmless or beneficial; under other conditions it is
harmful and injurious (irrespective of venereal disease).
Dr. C. I think it is harmless and beneficial. But our standards are
against it. And who could possibly conscientiously teach such a
thing, no matter what he thought?
Dr. D. Certainly not. It is probably well to teach young people that
continence before marriage is in general very desirable, as
contrasted with the results of incontinence.
Dr. E. It is best to teach conformity to custom.
Dr. F. Absolute continence should always be insisted upon.
Dr. G. I know of no condition where one is justified in advising the
unmarried that intercourse is harmless or beneficial.
Dr. H. Absolute continence.
Dr. I. No. [Continence is not always to be insisted upon.]
Dr. J. The first should not be insisted on any more than the latter
should be recommended....
Dr. K. The latter may be taught.
Dr. L. Not convinced either way.
Dr. M. Absolute continence should be preached as a doctrine to the
unmarried, and let the individual adjust himself to this stern law
according to his lights.[44]
Fifty-one replies were received to this question. Twenty-four were, in
substance, “not permissible”; fifteen, “permissible”; four, “in doubt”;
eight were indefinite, as, for example: “Adults will probably decide
this for themselves.”
As another example of a general defining agency, the legal system of the
state does not pretend to be more than a partial set of negative
definitions. An English jurist has thus described the scope of the law:
“If A is drowning and if B is present, and if B by reaching out his hand
can save A, and if B does not do this, and if A drowns, then B has
committed no offense.” All that the law requires of B is that he shall
not push A into the water. The law is not only far from being a system
capable of regulating the total life of men, but it does not even
regulate the activities it is designed to regulate.
43. A misdemeanor may be much more heinous than a felony. The
adulterator of drugs or the employer of child labor may well be
regarded as vastly more reprehensible than the tramp who steals part
of the family wash. So far as that goes there is an alarming
multitude of acts and omissions not forbidden by statute or
classified as crimes which are to all intents ... fully as criminal
as those designated as such by law.... For example, to push a blind
man over the edge of the cliff so that he is killed ... is murder,
but to permit him to walk over it is no crime at all. It is a crime
to defame the character of a woman if you write on a slip of paper,
but no crime at all in the state of New York if you rise in a
crowded hall and ruin her forever by word of mouth. It is a crime to
steal a banana off a fruit stand, but no crime at all to borrow ten
thousand dollars from a man whose entire fortune it is, although you
have no expectation of returning it.... It is a crime to ruin a girl
of 17 years and 11 months, but not to ruin a girl of 18.... Lying is
not a crime, but lying under oath is a crime, provided it relates to
a _material_ matter, and what is a material matter jurists do not
agree on.... Many criminals, even guilty of homicide, are as white
as snow in comparison with others who have never transgressed the
literal wording of the penal statute. “We used to have so and so for
our lawyer,” remarked the president of a street-railway corporation.
“He was always telling us what we couldn’t do. Now we have Blank and
pay him $100,000 a year to tell us how we can do the same
things.”[45]
The definition of the situation is equivalent to the determination of
the vague. In the Russian _mir_ and the American rural community of
fifty years ago nothing was left vague, all was defined. But in the
general world movement to which I have referred, connected with free
communication in space and free communication of thought, not only
particular situations but the most general situations have become vague.
Some situations were once defined and have become vague again; some have
arisen and have never been defined. Whether this country shall
participate in world politics, whether America is a refuge for the
oppressed of other nationalities, whether the English should occupy
India or the Belgians Africa, whether there shall be Sunday amusements,
whether the history of the world is the unfolding of the will of God,
whether men may drink wine, whether evolution may be taught in schools,
whether marriage is indissoluble, whether sex life outside of marriage
is permissible, whether children should be taught the facts of sex,
whether the number of children born may be voluntarily limited,—these
questions have become vague. There are rival definitions of the
situation, and none of them is binding.
In addition to the vagueness about these general questions there is an
indeterminateness about particular acts and individual life-policies. It
appears that the behavior of the young girl is influenced partly by the
traditional code, partly by undesigned definitions of the situation
derived from those incidents in the passing show of the greater world
which suggest to her pleasure and recognition. If any standard prevails
or characterizes a distinguished social set this is in itself a
definition of the situation. Thus in a city the shop windows, the
costumes worn on the streets, the newspaper advertisements of ladies’
wear, the news items concerning objects of luxury define a proper girl
as one neatly, fashionably, beautifully, and expensively gowned, and the
behavior of the girl is an adaptation to this standard.
44. Supreme Court Justice Tierney remarked in the course of a trial
between two women over the purchase of silk lingerie and paradise
feathers yesterday, “The workings of the feminine mind are beyond
me.”...
The articles which Mrs. Small admits buying and the prices asked by
Mme. Nicole are as follows:
Six suits of silk underwear, $780; six suits linen underwear, $780;
six pairs silk stockings, $180; paradise feathers for fan, $1,480;
handle for fan, $720.[46]
45. ... My sweetheart remarked that she would like to have a great
deal of money. When I asked her what she would do with it, she
replied that she would buy herself a lot of beautiful dresses. When
I said that it was all right to have them but it ought to be all
right without them too, she protested that she loved fine clothes
and this to such extent, that—
Here she made a remark which I am ashamed to let pass my lips. I
would sooner have welcomed an open grave than to have heard those
words. She said that she would sell her body for a time in order to
procure nice clothes for herself.
And since that day I go around like a mad person. I neither eat nor
sleep. In short, I am no more a man.
She afterward excused herself, claiming that it was said in a joke,
and that as long as one talks without actually doing it there is no
harm in it. But this is not reassuring to me. I have a premonition
that she would go further than mere talk after marriage, for if she
carries such notions in her head now, what might happen after we are
married.[47]
Intermediate between the home and work (or the school) there are certain
organized influences for giving pleasure and information—the motion
picture, the newspaper, the light periodical—which define the situation
in equivocal terms. They enter the home and are dependent upon its
approval, and are therefore obliged to present life in episodes which
depict the triumph of virtue. But if they limited themselves to this
they would be dull. The spectacle therefore contains a large and
alluring element of sin over which virtue eventually triumphs. The moral
element is preserved nominally but the real interest and substance is
something else.
46. A young girl may be taught at home and church that chastity is a
virtue, but the newspapers and the movies feature women in trouble
along this line, now painting them as heroines, now sobbing over
their mystery and pathos. Apparently _they_ get all the attention
and attention is the life blood of youth. The funny papers ridicule
marriage, old maids and bashful men. The movies, magazines, street
conversation and contemporary life are filled with the description
of lapses that somehow turn out safely and even luxuriously. If the
modern young girl practises virtue she may not believe in it. The
preliminaries to wrong-doing are apparently the accepted manners of
the time. When the girl herself lapses it is frequently because of
lack of a uniform, authoritative definition of the social code.[48]
Among well-to-do girls a new type has been differentiated, characterized
by youth, seeming innocence, sexual sophistication and a relatively
complete de-pudorization.
47. The modern age of girls and young men is intensely immoral, and
immoral seemingly without the pressure of circumstances. At whose
door we may lay the fault, we cannot tell. Is it the result of what
we call “the emancipation of woman”, with its concomitant freedom
from chaperonage, increased intimacy between the sexes in
adolescence, and a more tolerant viewpoint toward all things unclean
in life? This seems the only logical forbear of the present state.
And are the girls causing it now, or the men? Each sex will lay the
blame on the heads, or passions, of the other, and perhaps both
sexes are equally at fault.
Whosesoever the fault may be (and that is not such an important
question, since both sexes are equally immoral), the whole character
of social relations among younger people is lamentable. The modern
dances are disgusting—the “toddle” and its variations and
vibrations, the “shimmy” and its brazen pandering to the animal
senses, and the worst offspring of jazz, the “camel-walk.” There is
but one idea predominant in these dances—one that we will leave
unnamed.
It is not only in dancing that this immorality appears. The modern
social bud drinks, not too much often, but enough; smokes
considerably, swears unguardedly, and tells “dirty” stories. All in
all, she is a most frivolous, passionate, sensation-seeking little
thing.[49]
48. “Flappers” usually are girls who believe personality is
physical, who consider all advice as abstract, who love continual
change, who converse in generalities and who are in many higher
institutions of learning.
To present a picture of the normal girl as she exists today is a
daring venture. She has no average, she has no group tie. She is a
stranger to herself—sometimes especially to members of her own
family—and cannot be compared with her kind of a previous age.
We are tempted to think of her as living in a spirit of masquerade,
so rapidly and completely can she assume different and difficult
rôles of accomplishment.
She tantalizes us by the simpleness of her artfulness and yet
unrealness. We find her light-hearted, which is the privilege of
youth. She believes with Stevenson that to have missed the joy is to
have missed it all. We find her harboring secrets and imbedded
emotions which are her hidden treasure in the mysterious discovery
of herself as a private individual. If we do not understand these
symptoms we call it temperament and try to dispose of the girl as
difficult or as needing discipline.[50]
Formerly the fortunes of the individual were bound up with those of his
family and to some degree with those of the community. He had his
security, recognition, response, and new experience in the main as group
member. He could not rise or fall greatly above or below the group
level. Even the drunkard and the “black sheep” had respect in proportion
to the standing of his family. And correspondingly, if a family member
lost his “honor”, the standing of the whole family was lowered.
Individualism, on the other hand, means the personal schematization of
life,—making one’s own definitions of the situation and determining
one’s own behavior norms. Actually there never has been and never will
be anything like complete individualization, because no one lives or can
live without regard to a public. Anything else would be insanity. But in
their occupational pursuits men have already a degree of
individualization, decide things alone and in their own way. They take
risks, schematize their enterprises, succeed or fail, rise higher and
fall lower. A large element of individualism has entered into the
marriage relation also. Married women are now entering the occupations
freely and from choice, and carrying on amateur interests which formerly
were not thought of as going with marriage. And this is evidently a good
thing, and stabilizes marriage. Marriage alone is not a life,
particularly since the decline of the community type of organization.
The cry of despair in document No. 37 is from a woman who limited her
life to marriage, probably by her own choice, and is now apparently too
old to have other interests. But on the other hand document No. 49 is a
definition of marriage as exclusively a device for the realization of
personal wishes and the avoidance of responsibility. This may be
compared with No. 71 (p. 122) where a girl organizes her life similarly
without marriage.
49. Girls, get married! Even if your marriage turns out badly, you
are better off than if you had stayed single. I know half a dozen
women whose first marriages were failures. They got rid of their
first husbands easily and have made much better marriages than they
could have made if they had stayed single. Their new husbands
idolize them. One of my women acquaintances who has been married
four times is the most petted wife I know.
My own marriage has turned out well. Everything seemed against it. I
was well known in my profession, and when I married I was making as
much money as my husband. We were of different religions. He drank.
But he had one big quality. He was generous. Since our marriage he
has refused to let me work. Girls, be sure the man you pick is
generous. Look out for a tightwad. If a man is liberal with his
money he is sure to be easy to get along with. Liberal men in money
matters do not annoy their wives in the other concerns of life....
But even if my marriage had turned out badly, I would have been
better off than if I had neglected the opportunity to become
married. I met new friends through my husband. If I had divorced him
at any time, I know many of his men friends would have courted me.
There is something about the magic letters “Mrs.” that gives a woman
an added attraction in the eyes of men. There is a middle-aged widow
in our apartment house that has more men taking her to theatres and
dances than all the flappers and unmarried young women....
I often wonder what men get married for. They take heavy financial
responsibilities. They mortgage their free time to one woman. What a
wife’s clothes cost them would enable them to enjoy expensive
amusements, extensive travel and better surroundings generally.
Then, too, a bachelor, no matter what his age or social position,
gets more attention socially than a married man. Children, too, give
less pleasure and service to a father than a mother.
But for women, marriage is undoubtedly a success. It raises their
position in the community. In most cases, it releases them from the
danger of daily necessary work and responsibility. It brings them
more attention from other men. Even when incompatibility intervenes,
alimony provides separate support without work. In such cases, it
also provides a more strategic position for a new and better
marriage.[51]
In the same connection, the following cases show the growing tendency
toward individualized definitions of sexual relations outside of
marriage. In case No. 50 an immigrant girl explicitly organizes her life
on the basis of prostitution instead of work. In No. 51 the girls
commercialize a series of betrothals. In No. 52 the girl has worked out
her own philosophy of love and calls herself a missionary prostitute.
50. [When I left Europe] my little sister’s last words were, “Here,
in hell, I will dream through the nights that far, far, across the
ocean, my loving brother lives happily.” And my last words were, “I
shall forget my right hand if I ever forget you.”
I suffered not a little in the golden land.... Five years passed. I
loyally served the God of gold, saved some money and sent for my
sister. For three years I believed myself the happiest of men.... My
sister bloomed like a rose in May and she was kind and motherly to
me. We were tied by a bond of the highest love and on my part that
love had until now remained the same. But listen what a terrible
thing occurred.
About a year ago I noticed a marked change in my sister—both
physically and spiritually. She grew pale, her eyes lost their fire
and her attitude toward me changed also. She began to neglect her
work (I taught her a good trade), until half a year ago she entirely
gave up the work. This angered me very much and I began to shadow
her in order to discover the mystery in her life, for she had
recently avoided talking to me, particularly of her life. I
concluded that she kept company with a boy and that caused her
trouble.
But I soon noticed that she was wearing such expensive things that a
boy could not afford to buy them. She had a couple of diamond rings
and plenty of other jewelry. I investigated until I discovered, oh,
horrible! that my sister was a prostitute....
You can understand that I want to drag her out of the mire, but ...
she tells me that I do not understand life. She cannot conceive why
it should be considered indecent to sell one’s body in this manner.
When I point out to her the end that awaits her she says in the
first place it is not more harmful than working by steam for twelve
to fourteen hours; in the second place, even if it were so, she
enjoys life more. One must take as much as possible out of life.
When I call her attention to the horrible degradation she replies
that in the shop, too, we are humiliated by the foreman, and so
on....
I know that if I could convince her that I am right, she would be
willing to emerge from the swamp, but I am unfortunately too
inadequate in words, she being a good speaker, and I am usually
defeated.[52]
51. I read in the “Bintel” the letter of a young man who complained
that his fiancée extorted presents from him and that when, as a
result of unemployment, he was unable to buy her everything she
demanded, she began to make trouble for him—that she was evidently
playing to have him desert her and leave her the property she had
extorted.
Well, I am a woman myself, and can bear testimony that there are
unfortunately such corrupted characters among my sex, who rob young
men in this disgraceful manner. With these girls it is a business to
“trim” innocent and sincere young men and then leave them. To them
it is both business and pleasure. It gives them great joy to catch a
victim in their outspread net and press as much of his hard-earned
money out of him as possible.
I know a girl who ... extracted from her naïve victim everything she
laid her eyes on. When he stopped buying her so many things she
began to treat him so shamefully that the poor boy was compelled to
run away to another town, leaving all his gifts with the girl. The
poor fellow was not aware that his so-called fiancée merely tricked
him into buying her all kinds of jewelry and finery. He was afraid
she would sue him for breach of promise and this fear caused him to
leave town.
And don’t think for a moment that that girl is ashamed of her deed.
Not at all. She even boasts of her cleverness in turning the heads
of young men and their pockets inside out. She expects to be admired
for that....
I attempted to explain to her that she is a common swindler and
thief, but she replied that not only is it not wrong but a
philanthropical act. Her argument was that there are many men who
betray innocent girls and it is therefore no more than right that
girls should betray men also.[53]
52. [After the marriage of a brilliant man who had flirted with her
but never mentioned marriage] she went on the stage, and was immoral
in an unhappy sort of way. She met a young artist whose struggles
for success aroused her pity and motherly instinct. With the memory
of her faithless lover uppermost she plunged into a passionate
realization of sex, more to drown her feelings than anything else.
She roused the best in this boy, made a man of him, and steadied
him. With her sexual tempests there came an after-calm when she
forbade any familiarity. This was not studied but an instinct. She
hated men, yet they fascinated her, and she them.
She studied stenography and worked as private secretary in a
theatrical company. She tried to face life with work as her only
outlet, but the restlessness of her grief made her crave excitement.
She made friends easily, but her sexual appeal made it difficult for
her to fit into a commonplace social atmosphere. She married the
artist to the girl he loved, after a terrible struggle to make him
realize it was not herself he loved. Later he came and thanked her.
“The quiet women make the best wives,” he said, “but my wife would
not have loved me if you had not made me into a man. She cannot,
however, give me what I get from you. I wish I could come to you
once in a while?”
She said yes, and he came. That was five years ago and that is why
she calls herself a prostitute. Her women friends have no idea she
is not the quiet, dignified woman she appears to be, and men, many
of them married men, want her for their own. She has no use for the
man about town; only the man with brains or talent fascinates her at
all. She says, “I suppose every one would think me a sinner; I am. I
deliberately let a married man stay with me for a time. It is an
art. I have learned to know their troubles. They tell me they are
unhappy with their wives, wish to go away, are desperate with the
monotony of existence. It is generally that they are not sexually
mated, or the wife has no sex attraction. Of course she loves him,
and he her. I give them what they need. It is weary for the brain to
understand men, it is harder on me mentally than physically. I
control them only because I have self-restraint. I send them away
soon. They are furious; they storm and rage and threaten they will
go to some other woman. What do I care? They know it and I send them
back to their wives. They will go to her; they would not go to any
other woman. That is where I do good. This sex business is a strange
thing. I am a missionary prostitute. I only do this once in a while,
when I think a man needs me and he is one who will come under my
influence. I know I have managed to avert the downfall of several
households. If the wives knew? Never mind; they don’t. I am not
coarse; I can be a comrade to a man and doubt if I harm him. I make
him sin in the general acceptance of the term, the common
interpretation of God’s commandments. How do we know God didn’t mean
us to use all the powers he gave us?”[54]
In the two cases following, adjustment to life is highly individualized
but moral and social. The one is a response adjustment, recognizing
freedom for new experience, particularly for creative work, and in the
other marriage is based on the inherent values of the relationship, and
on nothing else.
53. Being firmly of the opinion that nine out of ten of the
alliances I saw about me were merely sordid endurance tests,
overgrown with a fungus of familiarity and contempt, convinced that
too often the most sacred relationship wears off like a piece of
high sheen satin damask, and in a few months becomes a breakfast
cloth, stale with soft-boiled egg stains, I made certain resolutions
concerning what my marriage should not be.
First of all, I am anxious to emphasize that my marriage was neither
the result of a fad or an ism, but simply the working out of a
problem according to the highly specialized needs of two
professional people.
We decided to live separately, maintaining our individual
studio-apartments and meeting as per inclination and not duty. We
decided that seven breakfasts a week opposite one another might
prove irksome. Our average is two. We decided that the antediluvian
custom of a woman casting aside the name that had become as much a
part of her personality as the color of her eyes had neither rhyme
or reason. I was born Fannie Hurst and expect to die Fannie Hurst.
We decided that in the event of offspring the child should take the
paternal name until reaching the age of discretion, when the final
decision would lie with him.
My husband telephones me for a dinner appointment exactly the same
as scores of other friends. I have the same regard for his plans. We
decided that, since nature so often springs a trap as her means to
inveigle two people into matrimony, we would try our marriage for a
year and at the end of that period go quietly apart, should the
venture prove itself a liability instead of an asset....
On these premises, in our case at least, after a five-year acid
test, the dust is still on the butterfly wings of our adventure. The
dew is on the rose.[55]
54. I am a college graduate, 27, married five years and the mother
of a three-year-old boy. I have been married happily, and have been
faithful to my husband.
At six I had decided upon my husband. Jack was his name; he was a
beautiful boy, fair, blue eyes, delicate and poetic looking. He was
mentally my superior, he loved poetry and wrote good verses. He read
a great deal and talked well. He loved me and I loved him, yet there
was no demonstration of it in embraces. We played together
constantly, and we spoke of the time when we might marry. His great
desire was to have a colored child with light hair and blue eyes for
a daughter, and we had agreed upon it. All of our plans were spoken
about before our parents, there was no effort made to hide our
attachment. I was by nature rough and a great fighter, Jack was calm
and serious, and at times I fought his battles for him. I was
maternal towards him. His mother died during our friendship, and I
tried to take her place. It was a pure love, nothing cheap or silly.
He was killed in the Iroquois Fire and my life was dreary for a long
time. I remember the hopeless feeling I experienced when I heard the
news. I did not weep, I turned to my mother and said, “I don’t want
to live any longer.”
We had always been allowed to sit across from each other at school,
and after Jack’s death, I was granted permission to keep his seat
vacant for the rest of the year, and I kept a plant on the desk
which I tended daily as a memorial to my friend.
... In college, a coeducational school, I was not allowed to remain
ignorant long. I was young and healthy and a real _Bachfisch_ in my
enthusiastic belief in goodness. I was fortunate in having a
level-headed senior for my best friend. She saw an upper classman
[girl] falling in love with me, and she came to me with the news.
Then she saw how innocent I was and how ignorant, and my sex
education was begun. She told me of marriage, of mistresses, of
homosexuality. I was sick with so much body thrown at me at once,
and to add to the unpleasantness some one introduced me to Whitman’s
poetry. I got the idea that sex meant pain for women, and I
determined never to marry.
But the next year I felt very differently about sex. I was used to
the knowledge and I went with a crowd of girls who were wise, and I
had a crush. I had never been stirred before, but I was by her. She
told me her ambitions, and I told her mine; it was the first time I
had ever been a person to any one, and I was her loyal and loving
friend. I kissed her intimately once and thought that I had
discovered something new and original. We read Maupassant together
and she told me the way a boy had made love to her. Everything was
changed, love was fun, I was wild to taste it. I cultivated beaux, I
let them kiss me and embrace me, and when they asked me to live with
them, I was not offended but pleased. I learned my capacity, how far
I could go without losing my head, how much I could drink, smoke,
and I talked as freely as a person could. I discussed these
adventures with the other girls, and we compared notes on kisses and
phrases, and technique. We were healthy animals and we were
demanding our rights to spring’s awakening. I never felt cheapened,
nor repentant, and I played square with the men. I always told them
I was not out to pin them down to marriage, but that this intimacy
was pleasant and I wanted it as much as they did. We indulged in sex
talk, birth control, leutic infection, mistresses; we were told of
the sins of our beaux, and I met one boy’s mistress, an old
university girl. This was life. I could have had complete relations
with two of these boys if there had been no social stigma attached,
and enjoyed it for a time. But instead I consoled myself with
thinking that I still had time to give up my virginity, and that
when I did I wanted as much as I could get for it in the way of
passionate love. Perhaps the thing that saved me from falling in
love was a sense of humor. That part of me always watched the rest
of me pretend to be swooning, and I never really closed my eyes. But
there was a lot of unhealthy sex going around because of the
artificial cut off. We thought too much about it; we all tasted
homosexuality in some degree. We never found anything that could be
a full stop because there was no gratification.
During this period of stress and heat I met a man, fine, clean,
mature and not seemingly bothered with sex at all. I kissed him
intimately too, but it was very different. He had great respect for
me, and he believed in me. I respected him, admired his artistic
soul and his keen mind. There was no sex talk with him, it was music
and world-views and philosophy. He never made any rash statements,
nor false steps. He could sense a situation without touching it, and
I felt drawn to him. I knew he had never been with a woman and he
told me once that he could never express more than he felt for a
person, and could sustain. After five years of friendship we
married. There was no great flair to it; it was an inner necessity
that drove us to it; we could no longer escape each other. We tried
to figure it out, but the riddle always said marry. Sexually I had
more experience than he, I was his first mistress, his wife, his
best friend, and his mother, and no matter what our moods were, in
one of these capacities I was needed by him. Our adjustment was
difficult; he had lived alone for thirty years. I was used to having
my own way, and he was a very sensitive man, nervous, sure of his
opinion, and we quarreled for a while, but never very bitterly.
Sexually we were both afraid of offending the other and so that was
slow. But in four months we had found our heads again and were well
adjusted. He was, and is, the best friend I ever had. I love him
more as I know him longer. We can share everything, we are utterly
honest and frank with each other, we enjoy our sex life tremendously
as well as our friendship. But it was difficult for us to abandon
ourselves. To allow any one to know you better than you know
yourself is a huge and serious thing and calls for time and love and
humor.
I have never known any one as fine as my husband. He is generous,
honest, keen, artistic, big, liberal, everything that I most want in
a person. I have never been tired of him. I feel confident that he
loves me more now than ever before and that he thinks me very fine,
a good sport. We have been thrown together a great deal through
poverty, and I feel that we are alone in the world and facing it
together, a not too friendly world at that. Yet with all this love
and closeness, I don’t feel that I possess my husband, nor that he
does me. I am still the same old girl, the same personality, and my
first duty is to develop my own gifts. I have no feeling of
permanency with him because we are legally married, but at present a
separation is unthinkable. I am worth more to myself with him, and
life is infinitely sweeter and richer within the home than any other
place.
But if I had married the average American husband who plays the
business game as a religion, then I should long ago have been
unfaithful to him. I could never disclose myself and be happy with a
man who had any interest more important to him than our
relationship.
As long as our relationship continues as it is I think we will both
be faithful to each other. But I need to have freedom to move about
now with all this. And perhaps part of my happiness consists in the
fact that I do have freedom. I have had intimate friendships with
other men since I am married, kissed them, been kissed, been told
that they would like to have me with them. But none of this seems to
touch my relation with my husband. I want, and I need to be,
intimate on my own hook in my own way with other people. I don’t
honestly know whether I would take a lover or not. If my husband
gave me the assurance that he would take me back, on the old basis,
I think I would try it to see if it’s as great as it’s said to be.
But if I had to give up my husband, I would not. I need him as I
need my eyes and hands. He is the overtone in the harmony, and I am
that for him. I like to experiment, but from past experience I
believe the cost would be greater than the gain. I am free at home
as I am not anywhere else. I love it, I express myself freely and
completely emotionally, and the only reason I could have for being
unfaithful would be experimentation. And if I were unfaithful I
should have to tell my husband the whole affair; I could not enjoy
it otherwise. I have no feeling against it, and no urge towards it.
I can honestly say that I am a happy woman, that I have every
opportunity to develop my potentialities in my present relation,
that I am free as any one can be, that my husband is superior, as a
mate for me, to any one I have ever seen. I regret nothing of the
past; it could have been improved tremendously, but it was pleasant
and human.[56]
CHAPTER IV
THE DEMORALIZATION OF GIRLS
The rôle which a girl is expected to play in life is first of all
indicated to her by her family in a series of æsthetic-moral definitions
of the situation. Civilized societies, more especially, have endowed the
young girl with a character of social sacredness. She has been the
subject of a far-going idealization. “Virginity” and “purity” have
almost a magical value. This attitude has a useful side, though it has
been overdone. The girl as child does not know she has any particular
value until she learns it from others, but if she is regarded with
adoration she correspondingly respects herself and tends to become what
is expected of her. And so she has in fact a greater value. She makes a
better marriage and reflects recognition on her family.
But we must understand that this sublimation of life is an investment.
It requires that incessant attention and effort illustrated in document
No. 36 (p. 62) and goes on best when life is economically secure. And
there are families and whole strata of society where life affords no
investments. There is little to gain and little to lose. Social workers
report that sometimes overburdened mothers with large families complain
that they have no “graveyard luck”—all the children live. In cases of
great neglect the girl cannot be said to fall, because she has never
risen. She is not immoral, because this implies the loss of morality,
but a-moral—never having had a moral code.
55. Nine of the fifteen families [of the working class in Rome] are
formed on a non-legitimate basis.... In fourteen of the fifteen families
there is habitual obscenity.... The children hear and repeat the
obscenity and are laughed at. Each member lives on the average on 25
lire a month.... Criminals and prostitutes frequent the homes and have
liaisons with the girls. Mothers, going to work, leave the children with
a prostitute.... The finer sentiments are notably lacking. Brothers and
sisters quarrel and fight.... Fights are habitual in eight of the
fifteen families.... The sentiment of modesty and delicacy does not
develop in the young. The regard for the child is expressed in the
remark of a father (about children who were not fed and picked up scraps
on the street): “Let them have food when they make their own
living.”[57]
56. Any person who has dwelt among the denizens of the slums cannot fail
to have brought home to him the existence of a stratum of society of no
inconsiderable magnitude in which children part with their innocence
long before puberty, in which personal chastity is virtually unknown,
and in which “to have a baby by your father” is laughed at as a comic
mishap.[58]
57. The experiences of Commenge in Paris are instructive on this point.
“For many young girls,” he writes, “modesty has no existence; they
experience no emotion in showing themselves completely undressed, they
abandon themselves to any chance individual whom they will never see
again. They attach no importance to their virginity; they are deflowered
under the strangest conditions, without the least thought or care about
the act they are accomplishing. No sentiment, no calculation, pushes
them into a man’s arms. They let themselves go without reflexion and
without motive, in an almost animal manner, from indifference and
without pleasure.” He was acquainted with forty-five girls between the
ages of twelve and seventeen who were deflowered by chance strangers
whom they never met again; they lost their virginity, in Dumas’s phrase,
as they lost their milk-teeth, and could give no plausible account of
the loss.... A girl of fourteen, living comfortably with her parents,
sacrificed her virginity at a fair in return for a glass of beer, and
henceforth begun to associate with prostitutes. Another girl of the same
age, at a local fête, wishing to go round on the hobby horse,
spontaneously offered herself to the man directing the machinery for the
pleasure of a ride.... In the United States, Dr. W. T. Travis Gibb,
examining physician to the New York Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, bears similar testimony to the fact that in a
fairly large proportion of “rape” cases the child is the willing victim.
“It is horribly pathetic,” he says, “to learn how far a nickel or a
quarter will go towards purchasing the virtue of these children.”[59]
58. In round numbers nine tenths of the delinquent girls and three
fourths of the delinquent boys come from the homes of the poor.
Sixty-nine per cent of the girls and 38 per cent of the boys come from
the lowest class, the “very poor”, the class in which there exists not
merely destitution, but destitution accompanied by degradation, or
destitution caused by degradation....
In Table 19 it appears that 31 per cent of the delinquent boys and 47
per cent of the delinquent girls before their appearance in court had
lost one or both parents by death, desertion, imprisonment, or similar
misfortune, and that they had not had the benefit of the wholesome
discipline which normal family life affords....
These children come in many instances from homes in which they have been
accustomed from their earliest infancy to drunkenness, immorality,
obscene and vulgar language, filthy and degraded conditions of
living....
Among the 157 girls in the State Training School from Chicago, for whom
family schedules were obtained, 31 were the daughters of drunken
fathers, 10 at least had drunken mothers, 27 had fathers who were of
vicious habits, 16 had immoral, vicious, or criminal mothers, while 12
belonged to families in which other members than the parents were
vicious or criminal. In at least 21 cases the father had shirked all
responsibility and had deserted the family.
There were also among these girls 11 who were known to be illegitimate
children or children who had been abandoned, and there were 10 who had
been victims of gross cruelty. Forty-one had been in houses of
prostitution or had been promiscuously immoral, one having been “a
common street walker” at the age of eleven. Four had sisters who had
become immoral and had been committed to such institutions as the
Chicago Refuge for Girls or the house of correction, while in seven
cases two sisters had been sent to Geneva; nine had brothers who had
been in such institutions as the parental school, the John Worthy
School, the Bridewell, the state reformatory at Pontiac, or the state
penitentiary at Joliet.
The worst cases of all are those of the delinquent girls who come from
depraved homes where the mother is a delinquent woman, or from homes
still more tragic where the father has himself abused the person of the
child. As a result of the interviews with the girls in the State
Training School at Geneva, it appeared that in 47 cases the girl alleged
that she had been so violated by some member of her family. In 19 cases
the father, in 5 the uncle, in 8 the brother or older cousin had wronged
the child for whom the community demanded their special protection. In
addition to these cases discovered at Geneva, the court records show
that in at least 78 other cases the girl who was brought in as
delinquent had been wronged in this way—in 43 of these cases by her own
father. In families of this degraded type it is found, too, not only
that the girl is victimized by her father but that she is often led to
her undoing by her mother or by the woman who has undertaken to fill a
mother’s place. It was found, for example, that in 189 cases where the
girl was charged with immorality, the mother or the woman guardian—an
aunt, a grandmother, or an older sister with whom the girl lived—was
implicated in the offense if not responsible for it....
Attention should be called to the fact that degraded and drunken habits
of life are not the peculiar product of large cities. The personal
interviews with the girls at Geneva who came from the smaller cities and
rural communities of the state, together with the statements in the
school records regarding the circumstances responsible for their
commitment, show a degradation in family life which parallels that found
in the homes of many of the Chicago children. Out of 153 of these
country girls, 86 were the children of fathers with intemperate habits,
and 13 had intemperate mothers. In 31 cases the girl’s delinquency had
been caused by her father or some other relative.[60]
59. Helen comes from a large family, there being eight children. Her
father is a miner and unable to support the older girls. She was told at
the age of fourteen that she was old enough to support herself and to
get out. She came to Chillicothe because of the draftees from Western
Pennsylvania, some of whom had been her acquaintances. She came to
Chillicothe with $30.00 given her by a man in Ellsworth, but we could
never learn his name.
The girl was found living in a dirty basement room with “Mag” Strawser,
a character of local repute, and spent every evening either at the
movies or at the public dance halls with soldiers. She was taken home
from the movies and an effort was made to place her in a decent room,
but twice she ran away and back to the same environment. The Juvenile
Judge wrote to the father, asking him to send money for her return home,
but he responded by saying that he didn’t want the girl home as she must
make her own living. As he couldn’t send her money she was sent back
with money furnished by Protective Bureau. Three months later she was
picked up in the park with soldiers. At the time she was dressed like a
trapeze performer, in pink satin trimmed with eider down, grotesque in
the extreme. She escaped from the Detention Home and three days later
was picked up in the woods back of the Base Hospital with five soldiers.
Upon examination, was found to have gonorrhea.... In a few weeks she had
developed from the little red hood and mittens with the stout shoes of
the foreigner into a painted-cheeked brow-blacked prostitute. She had
her name and address written on slips of paper that she passed out to
soldiers on the streets. She was never able to give the names of
soldiers with whom she cohabited, but upon first acquaintance would lend
her bracelet or ring without hesitation.[61]
60. Evelyn claims to know absolutely nothing of her family or relations.
Was found in a room in a hotel, where she had registered as the wife of
a soldier. Seemed entirely friendless and alone. Had scarcely any
clothing, and there was no evidence of refinement to be found about her.
She is small, slight and anæmic, has an active syphilis as well as an
acute gonorrhea. At first she seemed to be entirely hardened, not caring
what any one thought of her or what became of her. Later however she
broke down and was just a poor broken-hearted child. Admits to many
dreadful experiences for her tender years. Claims for the past year has
been on the vaudeville stage and has had illicit relations with a number
of members of the company. Left the troop at Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania.
Here she picked up with a soldier who brought her to Columbus, Ohio, and
she has been picking up soldiers on the streets and going out with them
in taxis.
The only person who could be reached having an acquaintance with the
girl is Mrs. Harding at Columbus. She wrote us that her daughter Gladys
had become acquainted with her while on a visit to Wheeling where the
girl was working as a little household drudge in a private home. When
the girl came to Columbus she came to the Harding home and was treated
as one of the family until she became incorrigible, when she went to the
working girls’ home.
Evelyn believes herself to be an illegitimate child. From her earliest
recollection she was in a Catholic institution. Was placed out when she
was nine years old and from that time has been in many cities, in
private homes, in institutions and out again. Has had no supervision of
any kind. Has sought companionship and friendliness of any one that
would show her any affection. Did not seem to feel that she had done
anything very wrong. It seems to be a case of society’s neglect to an
orphan. She was taken to the Isolation Hospital for treatment for
syphilis infection and escaped within 24 hours.[62]
61. Frances was 12 years old when in July, 1912, a probation officer of
the Juvenile Court reported that she remained out late nights, sometimes
all night, refused to obey father or mother, would go into a room and
lock the door, compelling parents to force an entrance, etc. When 14
years old she was brought into court on the complaint of her mother that
she kept bad company and was known in the neighborhood as a depraved
child, being accused by one neighbor of stealing a bracelet. She had
been on probation and the reports had been fairly encouraging. Every
little while there were reports of disobedience with threats of sending
her to an institution, followed by improved conduct for a while. For a
short time Frances had tried boarding outside her home.
At the hearing in court her mother testified: “She did not want to go to
work and also stayed away from home nights, would not tell where....
When I looked for her I almost got a licken from the old man. He says I
did not have to look for her when she was no good. He licked me many
times on account of her; does not want me to go to look for her.” The
officer stated: “The father is a hard drinker and very quarrelsome. Sets
very bad example for the children. The other children [4 younger ones at
home] seem to get along and mind the mother, but this girl and an older
married sister were the wayward ones.” Frances said her father sometimes
struck her with a strap when he got drunk. Her mother drank but was
never intoxicated. She was sent to the House of Good Shepherd where she
remained a full year and “made good.” There was no complaint against her
there. Her mother then applied for her release on the ground that she
had rheumatism and a new baby 6 months old.
An investigation of the home was made. The neighbors reported the
“family are quarreling, parents continually drunk, use vile language,
and while well fed and kept, the environment is such that just as soon
as the girls become self-supporting they leave home. Mr. Sikora is
abusive to his wife, insanely jealous, charges his wife with immorality
constantly.” Probation officer was called to house to put down a
disturbance one night at 9 P.M. The mother, when questioned, admitted
that an older daughter, now 18 years old, had had a “wild” career and
then married. The next daughter left home because of complaints of her
staying out late nights. She had been in the House of the Good Shepherd,
was not 17 years old and her mother knew nothing of her whereabouts.[63]
62. Catherine was sent to the industrial class at Geneva when only nine
years old, apparently for immorality. She said her mother was a very
“nice woman” but her father was a “poor sort of father.” He drank, beat
her mother and was in jail “a lot of times.” Two years after she entered
the school her mother took sick. Catherine was allowed to return to her
until she died three months later. The father disappeared and Catherine
returned to Geneva. Catherine had an uncle in Wisconsin whom she had not
seen for 4 years and a brother, who considered Catherine “wild” and was
willing she should stay in Geneva.
The Genevan authorities reported that Catherine was hard to control at
first but after she had been made to see that the whole world was not
against her, she settled down, became very obedient and was one of their
best girls. She had nothing vicious about her, was easily influenced for
good and showed she had a great deal of good in her and much energy,
which if properly directed would make her develop into a good woman.
When Catherine was fourteen years old her brother had her released from
Geneva on parole to him. He took her to live with him in Rockford, Ill.,
where he had the reputation of being a very industrious man. He got
Catherine a job, topping stockings in a factory for $7.00 a week and
took all her earnings. Catherine worked steadily and well for six
months.
Catherine got acquainted with her brother’s sister-in-law, Jennie
Sopeka, a girl ten years older, with an exceedingly bad reputation. Ever
since she came from New York six years before she had led a
disgracefully immoral life, was known to have a venereal disease, which
was thought to be affecting her mind. Catherine said she knew nothing of
this girl when she came to see her and proposed they go to Chicago “to
have a nice time and nice clothes.” But Catherine left Rockford with
Jennie at once. They came to Chicago and registered at the Imperial
Hotel. For a week some man supported them. They then became acquainted
with two junior medical students.... These boys called on them at the
hotel and after a two weeks’ acquaintance took them and another girl to
their rooms. All lived together for about two weeks. The police then
raided the apartment, arrested the boys and Jennie and the other girl.
Catherine happened to be out when the raid was made, but the following
day she called at the police station to know what had become of her
friends and she was detained there. The boys were charged with rape, as
Catherine was under the age of consent. Jennie, who was going under one
of her many aliases, was fined $50.00 and sent to the House of
Correction. She was later accused of pandering.
Every one felt sorry for Catherine. The Court said: “It seems as if she
had never had a chance, but it would be dangerous to give her one now.”
The Probation officer also felt sympathetic, though she thought
Catherine had had a chance in Rockford and had not tried quite hard
enough. Her brother refused to take her back into his home and the Court
was in a quandary what to do with her. At first she said she would do
housework, especially taking care of children, as she was very fond of
babies and would like to be a nurse. Later, however, she decided she
would not do housework and asked to be sent back to Geneva. This the
Court would not do, and Catherine was sent to the House of Good
Shepherd.[64]
63. Carrie is a colored girl, 23 years of age at the time of her
commitment. She was sentenced to Bedford for possessing heroin. She was
born on Long Island—the illegitimate child of a notorious thief and
prostitute known only as “Jennie.” She was adopted when fifteen months
old and went to public school until she was fifteen, in spite of which
at the time of her commitment she could read and spell only with great
difficulty. Foster mother was a very poor housekeeper, went out to work,
and the rooms she occupied were unspeakably filthy. Carrie had served
five previous terms in the New York City Workhouse and 30 days in White
Plains jail. She was first sentenced to the House of The Good Shepherd,
but returned to the Court on account of her color. She was then sent to
Inwood House and returned for the same reason. She had been committed to
the Workhouse Hospital for treatment for the drug habit. She had
practiced prostitution since she was fifteen years of age, during which
time she lived for considerable periods with two consorts, by one of
whom she had a child, born in the New York City Workhouse. She had used
drugs steadily for eight years, beginning with opium and more recently
using cocaine and heroin. Her foster mother states that she was always a
difficult child and very stubborn. When she was as young as nine years
old the neighbors complained of her immoral conduct with young boys on
roofs and cellars. She seemed to have no feeling of shame.
Physical examination showed Carrie’s condition to be fair. The mental
examination showed her to be a trifle over nine years by the
Stanford-Binet tests. Her attitude was that she preferred the life of
prostitution and planned to return to it upon her release. It was felt
that she would be a bad influence in the Reformatory and that in view of
her sociological as well as her mental history she should be given
permanent custodial care.[65]
I was present in a Juvenile Court when a young girl who showed charm and
dignity was brought in for stealing from department stores an
astonishing number of pretty things—a mirror, beads, a ring, a powder
box, etc.—all on the same afternoon. And she did not forget to include a
doll for her baby sister. The inquiry brought out that she worked in a
book bindery in a suburb of the city. She had not lost a day for two
years, until laid off temporarily. Then she visited the city. She gave
all her pay, which was $9.00 a week, to her mother. Of this her mother
returned ten cents for the girl’s own use. The girl had no other blemish
and her thoughtfulness in stealing the doll for her sister created some
consternation. On the advice of the court the mother agreed to increase
the girl’s allowance to twenty-five cents a week.
On another occasion a father was asked by the court what he had to
suggest in the case of his girl who had left home and was on the
streets. He complained that she had not been bringing in all her pay.
When told he must not look at the matter in that way, that he had
obligations as a parent, he said, “Do what you please with her. She
ain’t no use to me.”
The beginning of delinquency in girls is usually an impulse to get
amusement, adventure, pretty clothes, favorable notice, distinction,
freedom in the larger world which presents so many allurements and
comparisons. The cases which I have examined (about three thousand) show
that sexual passion does not play an important rôle, for the girls have
usually become “wild” before the development of sexual desire, and their
casual sexual relations do not usually awaken sex feeling. Their sex is
used as a condition of the realization of other wishes. It is their
capital. In the cases cited below Mary (case No. 64) begins by stealing
to satisfy her desire for pretty clothes and “good times”, then has
sexual relations for the same purpose. Katie (No. 65) begins as a
vagabond and sells her body just as she does occasional work or borrows
money, in order to support herself on her vagabonding tours, sexual
intercourse being only a means by which freedom from school work is
secured. In the case of Stella (No. 66) the sexual element is part of a
joy ride, probably not the first one. Marien (No. 67) treats sexual life
as a condition of her “high life”, including restaurants, moving
pictures, hotels, and showy clothes. Helen (No. 68) said, “I always
wanted good clothes.” To the young girl of this class sexual intercourse
is something submitted to with some reluctance and embarrassment and
something she is glad to be over with. Nothing can show better the small
importance attached to it than the plain story of the many relations of
Annie (No. 69). She objects only to being used by a crowd.
64. When Mary was 14 years old she was arrested on the charge of
stealing some jewelry and a dress and waist, altogether worth $100.
While employed as domestic she had entered a neighboring flat through
the dining-room window and helped herself. When arrested she said her
father and mother were dead. But it was found they were both alive. The
mother said she was glad the police had gotten hold of Mary, who stole
and refused to work. The probation officer stated that the home was very
poor, the father would often not work and they had made Mary begin to
work when 12 years old and give all her wages to them.
Mary had obtained her present position by going to Gad’s Hill Center a
month and a half before and representing herself as an orphan. She had
tried to throw the neighbor off her track by going to her with a story
of a “big noise” she had heard in the flat, but they had searched her
and found the stolen things. Her employer also complained that Mary had
taken clothing from her and hidden it. Mary was sent to the House of the
Good Shepherd, but after her mother’s death in April, 1915, she was
given some housework to do. On Dec. 17, 1915, she took $1 from her aunt
and went away. She was sent to the Home for the Friendless. From there
she wrote the probation officer complaining that the girl friends with
whom she had been staying refused to let her have her clothes.
On Jan. 4, 1916, work was found for Mary at $7 a week. She worked one
half day and then disappeared. She was located Jan. 10 and admitted
remaining over night at a hotel four different nights with men. She
didn’t know their names.... “I was drove away from home by my aunt. How
could I stay there?”
“Q. to aunt: Did you drive Mary away from your home?
“A. Yes. She took $1 and I did not want her home.
“Officer: I found out something since then. When she came from the House
of the Good Shepherd she worked at housework and took two rings there
and silk stockings and underwear.
“Q. You hear, Mary? Why did you do that?
“A. Because I did not have no clothes.”[66]
65. Katie, 13 years old. August 22, 1913, in court. Picked up by an
officer late at night after having wandered about the streets the two
nights previous. Begged not to be taken home.... The home is poor. The
mother sometimes goes out to work, leaving the girl at home alone.
Parents are not capable of giving her the protection and supervision she
ought to have. Though the mother claimed she had proper care she wanted
her sent to an institution for a few months and then to have her home
again. Girl sent to St. Hedwig’s. She was released in October and
behaved well for a few months, helping with the new baby at home.
April 16, 1914, brought to court with another younger girl for having
stolen money and a watch from the purse of a woman in the shower-bath
room in Eckhard Park.
Katie told the court she did not know why she left home, that she often
left home and wandered around—could not control wandering impulse and
habit she had fallen into, that when she left she worked in a hat
factory half a day, for which she received 75 cents, which she used for
meals, and on Feb. 14th she secured work and remained at it until
arrested April 1st. Josephine, the younger girl, told the court that
Katie asked her to go to a show with her. On the way Katie said her hair
was falling down and suggested going into the park to arrange it. They
went to the shower-bath rooms and Katie wished to take a bath. They
looked into different bathrooms and in one room saw a purse which Katie
suggested taking, saying she wanted money for a nickel show. Josephine
took the purse and hid it under the bench, but when the owner complained
to the matron and threatened the girl with prison, Katie confessed and
gave the purse back, putting most of the blame on Josephine. As it was
proved that Josephine did not have a proper home atmosphere she was sent
to the House of the Good Shepherd, while Catherine, who was a good girl,
according to her mother, except for her wandering impulses, and who had
never before stolen, was paroled.
May 19, 1914, held at police station. Claims to have known Robert Smith,
a colored man 64 years of age, for several years. He lives in 2
rooms.... Learning that girls went there she too went and had immoral
relations with Mr. Smith at different times. On one occasion he gave her
15 cents and other occasions 25 cents.... [She said] “I went away from
home that day. My uncle [father] wanted to send me away to school, so I
ran away.... I stayed [away 3 days and spent the night] in front of our
house in the hallway.”
Katie was sent to the House of Good Shepherd and released at her
parents’ request at the end of May, 1915, and behaved until July 31, she
was arrested in a rooming house with 2 young men. She had intercourse
with one, 21 years old, whom she knew before she was sent away and whom
the officer described as a “bum.” A social worker testified: “I met the
girl at the police station ... and I suggested that she be sent to the
House of Good Shepherd, but she was very much prejudiced by her past
years there.... I told her that if she met boys on the street she
couldn’t protect herself. She was very indignant in the police station.”
At her mother’s request she was given another chance but was soon
arrested for going with another girl, a saloon keeper and a
photographer. When asked by the court what she had to say for herself
she replied, “I don’t care what you do; I deserve it.” But she requested
to be sent to Geneva instead of the House of The Good Shepherd—“they all
say it is better.” She ran away from Geneva after a few weeks but was
apprehended through an anonymous telephone message from a house on S.
Michigan Ave. After she was sent back to Geneva she again escaped.[67]
66. Stella was 15 years old when she told this story to the Juvenile
Court: “On the night of June 7, 1916, about 8 o’clock Helen Sikowska and
I were standing at the corner.... Mike and Tomczak and another Mike came
along in an automobile and Helen asked them for a ride. We went quite a
ways, and then Tomczak said he wanted to [have intercourse with] me. He
said if we did not do it he would not take us home.... They drove up in
front of a saloon and all three of the fellows went in the saloon and
stayed there about one hour. Helen and I sat in the car and waited for
them. They came out and we started back for home. We drove for a ways,
and when we came to a place where there was no houses they stopped the
machine and said it was broke. Tomczak went to sleep. Mike, the driver
of the car, got out and took me with him and walked me over the prairie.
There he knocked me down and ... did something bad to me.... Then they
took us back home.”[68]
67. Marien was arrested for acting “obstreperous” with another girl in a
railway waiting room. She had no underclothing on when arrested [in
June]. She was 16 years old, had left home before Easter and had been
going much to shows and moving picture theaters. She told a police woman
that she had been drugged on the North side and carried to a room by two
men on different nights.... Marien said she had “no fault to find” with
her home, her father and mother were kind to her.
The following letter was received from her while she was away: “Dear
Mother, I am feeling fine. Everything is all right, don’t worry about
me. I am leading high life because I am an actress. I got swell clothes
and everything, you wouldn’t know me. I had Clara down town one day I
was out with the manager. She had a nice time.... I never had such nice
times in all my life. Everybody says that I am pretty. I paid 65 dollars
for my suit and 5 dollars had [hat], 6 dollars shoe 3 gloves 2 dollar
underwar 5 dollar corest. Know I have hundred dollars in the bank but I
want you to write a letter and say youll forgive me for not telling the
truht but I will explain better when I see you and will return home for
the sake of the little ones. I will bring a hundred dollars home to you
and will come home very time I can its to expensive to liv at a hotel
now sent the letter to me this way General Devilery Miss Marion
Stephan.”
Her father testified: “After Easter got a letter from her something like
that one only more in it. She was rich and everything else, which is not
so. So she says answer me quick as you can because I to go Milwaukee
tomorrow. And I answer it right away to come home as soon as possible.
Thought maybe the letter would reach her and heard nothing more until 3
weeks ago and then this letter come and I begging her to come home and
be ... a good girl. She come home and asked if wanted to stay home now
and she feel very happy that she is home and thought maybe she would
behave.... Next day she said she was going for her clothes ... and I
says I go with you. And I could not go and left my boy and girl to go
with her Sunday. And she left them in the park and did not come home.
Then she was back again Tuesday and in the evening when I come home from
work she was not there.”[69]
68. “When I saw sweller girls than me picked up in automobiles every
night, can you blame me for falling too?”
Pretty Helen McGinnis, the convicted auto vamp of Chicago, asked the
question seriously. She has just got an order for a new trial on the
charge of luring Martin Metzler to Forest Reserve Park, where he was
beaten and robbed. The girl went on:
“I always wanted good clothes, but I never could get them, for our
family is large and money is scarce. I wanted good times like the other
girls in the office. Every girl seemed to be a boulevard vamp. I’d seen
other girls do it, and it was easy.”[70]
69. Annie was brought into the Juvenile Court when she was 15 years old.
Her story was as follows: She first had relations with a man 7 months
before. He was an usher in the Eagle Theater. She went many times to
this theater and saw him often. Once she stayed in the theater after the
show and they had relations. He later left town but she had his address.
Then she met a boy who sold papers in her neighborhood. Another fellow
introduced him as “John Johnson” and she knew him under that name,
though it was not his right one. They used to go to the park together
and had intercourse once in the hallway of her home. She was not sure
who the next man was but thought his name was “Nick.” She met him in a
theater and knew him for two weeks.
Later she met Simon Craw in an ice-cream parlor, flirted with him and
they became acquainted. He asked her to go joy riding. She said “no”,
but made a date with him to go to Lawy’s Theater. After the show they
went to the ice-cream parlor and had hot chocolate. She told him she was
afraid to go home so late—it was 12 P.M. He talked to a man and then
said a friend had offered to let them have his room in the Triangle
Hotel. She did not want to go at first, but he said if anything came up
in court he would marry her. Simon’s friend took them to his room and
went after coal. Meanwhile she and Simon had relations. The boys went to
bed and she sat up all night in a chair, none of them undressing.
A week later, on Sunday evening she met Simon in the ice-cream parlor at
7 P.M. They stayed until 8 o’clock and then went to Lawy’s Theater. They
returned to the ice-cream parlor and Simon introduced a soldier whose
name she forgot. She told them she did not want to go home as it was 11
P.M. and she had promised to be home at 8 P.M. The soldier said he knew
that the proprietor of the Ohio Hotel would let all three of them have
one room for the night. She said: “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to
be used by everybody.” Simon said: “You don’t have to,” and they
persuaded her to go.[71]
Doctor Katharine B. Davis, formerly superintendent of the New York State
Reformatory for women, at Bedford Hills, has made a careful analysis of
the life-histories of 647 prostitutes committed to that institution from
New York City which throws light on the conditions under which girls
begin their sexual delinquency. The study shows that very few
prostitutes come from homes where all the conditions are good,—good
family life, opportunity for education, economic security. The
occupations of the fathers show a low economic status. Of the 647 girls
only 15, or 2.4 per cent, had fathers belonging to the professional
classes, and this category is stretched to include a veterinary surgeon,
a colored preacher, a trained nurse, a musician, etc. Thirty-four
fathers were farmers or farmhands, 29 shopkeepers, 1 a brewer, 5 sea
captains, 1 gambler, 106 cases where there were no records, and the
remaining fathers were mainly laborers or artisans, plasterer, plumber,
peddler, miner, shoemaker, blacksmith, hod-carrier. Also janitor,
porter, cook, waiter, coachman, street sweeper, teamster, elevator man,
sandwich man, etc.[72]
As to the schooling of the girls, “fifty individuals, or 7.72 per cent,
cannot read or write any language. Of these 15 are American born.
Thirty-two can read and write a foreign language; 45.3 per cent have
never finished the primary grades, while an additional 39.72 per cent
never finished the grammar grades. Thirteen individuals had entered but
not finished high school; only four individuals had graduated from high
school; three had had one year at a normal school, and one out of 647
cases had entered college.” In addition, the average wage of the girls
who had worked was very low. This point was determined in only 162
cases. “The average minimum,” says Doctor Davis, “is $4 and the average
maximum $8. It will be noted that even the average maximum is below $9,
an amount generally conceded to be the minimum on which a girl can live
decently in New York City.”[73]
In comparison with this the girls reported relatively high wages from
prostitution. The average weekly maximum, as reported by 146 girls, was
$71.09, and the average weekly minimum, as reported by 95 girls, was
$46.02. Thirty-eight girls gave figures of $100 or more, up to $400.[74]
These statements, as Doctor Davis says, are to be taken “with
allowances”, but other statistics show that the earnings of prostitutes
are about four times as great as the same girl could make at work.
An attempt was made also in this investigation to determine the causes
leading up to prostitution from the standpoint of the girl. Two hundred
and seventy-nine girls gave 671 reasons. That is, some of them gave a
number of reasons. Among these reasons 306 were bad family life (in 166
cases no father or mother or neither); 55, bad married life; 48, desire
for pleasure (theater, food, clothes); 38, desire for money; 17, “easy
money”; 20, lazy, hated work; 13, dances; 15, love of the life; 9, stage
environment; 4, tired of drudgery; 5, idle or lonely; 4, sick, needed
the money; 10, no sex instruction; 2, white slave; 3, desertion by
lover; 10, lover put girl on street; 10, “ruined anyway”; 7, previous
use of drink or drugs; 1, ashamed to go home after first escapade; 75,
bad company; 5, couldn’t support self; 1, couldn’t support self and
children; 13, couldn’t find work.[75]
In spite of the bad economic conditions apparent here and in any report
on prostitution it is remarkable that very few girls ever allege actual
want or hunger as a reason for entering prostitution. In Doctor Davis’
list only 23 girls named something like this among the 671 reasons.
There is no doubt that economic determinism is present, that if they had
an abundance of money they would not lead the life, but they are
unstabilized as the result of a comparison between what they have and
what they want and what others have. The servant class affords the best
illustration. Between 37 and 60 per cent of professional prostitutes
have been servant girls, according to different reports from different
countries. The average is perhaps 50 per cent. Yet this class is well
fed and housed, they supply a universal demand and have no economic
anxieties. But they are treated as an inferior class, shown no
courtesies, come and go by the back door; their work is monotonous and
long, and they rebel against what they call “that hard graft”, and seek
pleasure, response, and recognition in the evening.
The cases which I have cited do not represent at all, and the report of
Doctor Davis represents only slightly, a large and equivocal class of
girls who participate in prostitution without becoming definitely
identified with it. The present tendency of irregular sex life is
definitely toward limited and occasional sexual relations on the part of
girls who have more or less regular work, and the line between the
professional and the amateur prostitute has become vague.
The usual beginning is in connection with an acquaintanceship, keeping
company, which is not necessarily regarded by either side as preliminary
to marriage but as a means of having a good time. The charm of the girl
is an asset, a lure, which she may use as a means of procuring
entertainment, affection, and perhaps gifts. Where marriage was assumed
as an object of association, marriage was also assumed as the payment
which the girl would ultimately make as her contribution to the expense
of the association, but in the more casual associations of the “great
society” there has grown up a code that the girl shall pay something as
she goes, and she does not pay in cash but in favors. Girls of the class
who have “fellows” tend to justify sexual intimacy if they are “going to
marry”, if the man says he will marry if there are “consequences”, if
the relation is with only one man, and not for money. These are called
“charity girls” by the professional prostitutes. When the girl has had
some experience in sexual life she will multiply and commercialize her
casual relationships. Girls talk of these matters, say “they all do it”,
create a more favorable opinion of it, and show the less sophisticated
girl how to make easy money.
The shop or office girl who makes sexual excursions does not usually
become a public prostitute. Her work is more attractive, her income
better, she has more class, frequently a home, and she may often find
marriage among her acquaintances. There are also girls who do not work,
who live in comfortable homes, and are yet found on the street; married
women who prostitute themselves in order to have luxuries; women who go
on the street when work is slack and return to work; others who limit
their relations to a small group of men; mistresses who are promiscuous
between periods when they are kept by one man; factory girls and other
workers who regularly supplement the work of the day by work on the
street. There is thus a general tendency to avoid identification with
the prostitute class. Illegal sexual relations are becoming more
individualized. Even regular prostitution is not and has never been so
fixed a status as we should suppose; it is rather a transitory stage
from which the girl seeks to emerge by marriage or otherwise. In his
profound work on French prostitution Parent-Duchatelet pointed out that
“prostitution is for the majority only a transitory stage; it is
abandoned usually during the first year. Very few prostitutes continue
until extinction.”[76] And this is confirmed by other reports.
Document No. 70 represents a type of organization which has arisen in
connection with occasional prostitution, and in No. 71 the girl operates
independently.
70. Mrs. X seems to take great pride in the fact that her girls are
always fresh, young and attractive. She will not have a prostitute in
her place who has ever been in houses of ill-fame.... These girls, she
said, will never do in a quiet place. They love excitement, the music,
lights and large business at small prices. They also want to have
cadets. Once she took such a girl, but she could not keep her as she
longed to return to the excitement of her former life and her cadet. The
girls who do come to her are in many instances from surrounding towns or
from other States. They stay long enough to earn a few clothes and then
return home, where they tell other girls of the easy way they earned
their clothes. She has a list of 20 or 22 girls who have been with her
at different times. They come and go.
One of the girls now in the flat is called Rosie. This girl lives in
Iowa, and was so wild at home that her mother could do nothing with her,
so she came to Chicago. Sometimes Rosie and the keeper have a quarrel
and the girl returns home. After awhile she writes and says she wants to
return to the flat, so Mrs. X sends her a ticket. Rosie is one of a
family of three or four boys and three girls. One of these sisters,
called Violet, has also been an inmate of the flat and comes
occasionally. Rosie’s mother says she realizes that Mrs. X can do more
with her daughter than she can, so she allows her to come [not knowing
what is happening]. The last time Violet was in the flat she stayed 10
days and earned $50.00, then went home again. She is 25 years old. Rosie
is younger and a good money maker. During July, Rosie earned $156.00 as
her share. During 27 days in August she earned $171.00.
The men who come to this flat are mostly married. Mrs. X says they are
“gentlemen” and do not make any trouble. They prefer a place that is
quiet and secret. Other customers are buyers from commercial houses,
bringing out of town men who are here to purchase goods. In addition to
this there are many traveling men who bring friends who gradually become
regular customer.... The business depends largely on the telephone
service. The girls are summoned to go to similar flats about town if
they are needed, and in turn Mrs. X secures girls from other flats when
her regular inmates are out when a customer calls. For instance, on
September 20th the investigator was in the flat when only one girl was
at home. In a few moments a telephone call came for the girl Helen to go
to a flat near by. On September 30th a phone call came for three girls
to go to a restaurant in Madison Street and report in the back room
where they had been the previous night.[77]
71. American girl, twenty-one years old, semi-prostitute, typical of a
certain class one grows to know. Works as salesgirl in one of the high
class shops—a pretty girl, languid manner but businesslike; popular with
business associates. Has a very clear skin, grey-blue eyes, perfect
features. Father is a contractor, mother a hard-worked woman whose
morals, personally, are beyond reproach but who regards her daughter’s
affairs as only partly her business, preferring to let surmising take
the place of knowledge.
She grew up the eldest of seven children, went through grammar school
and through one year at the high school, then to work. She was bright
and was soon promoted to position of salesgirl, where she worked in an
atmosphere of luxury and, with a cleverness very common in this type,
aped the manners and dress of the women she served. She had been a shy
child and had never confided in her parents about feelings or her
comings and goings, and they left her absolutely untaught, except that
she attended church regularly (Roman Catholic) and was expected to do as
she was told.
Sex had been a closed book to her and, as she was naturally cold and
unawakened, she was not tempted as some girls are. She did not care
about being loved, but the wish to be admired was strong within her and
love of adornment superseded all else, particularly when she realized
she was more beautiful than most girls.
The department store is sometimes a school for scandal. Many rich women
are known by sight and are talked over, servants’ gossip sometimes
reaching thus far, the intrigues between heads of departments and
managers are hinted at and the possibility of being as well dressed as
some one else becomes a prime consideration.
Freedom from household cares, independence of home obligations, and
parental weakness all began to have their effect.
When she was seventeen years old she was first approached by college
students who wanted her to go to dinners, dances, to the theatre, and
for motor rides. This was innocent enough for a time. She did not dare
do anything wrong because of the Church and her traditional standard of
virtue. Then she met an artist who asked her to pose for him, and she
consented; and after several sittings he asked her to pose in the nude.
Five dollars an hour was a temptation, for it meant almost a whole
week’s work in the store (she got seven there) so she consented, not
telling her mother. Then her knowledge of sex began. This man kissed
her, glorying in her beauty and promised her everything she wanted if
she would be his mistress. Shocked, yet tempted, she hesitated. She was
not at all passionate, but he roused in her her dominant emotion—love of
power, conquest over men—and she realized in one short week that this
was to be her life’s exciting game.
Other girls in the shop began to tell her their experiences. The career
of a clandestine prostitute seemed rather the common thing. The good
girls seemed rather pathetic and poverty struck; most of them were
homely anyway; but there was her virtue to consider, the Church, the
future. She would want to marry some one who would appreciate her
beauty, who would demand that her womanhood be unscathed. She must
compromise. She would give the man all that he wanted without losing her
virtue technically. No man would have her completely. Then she could
play the game. She had never heard of the perversions of sex, but she
soon learned them and practised her arts with no sense of shame.
She has no use for the working man—indeed, her life for the last four
years has been a mixture of shop work or posing in the day and luxury at
night. It would be impossible for her to live at home in an atmosphere
of soapsuds and babies, hard work and poverty.
When forced to think out the situation as it is, she is fair-minded.
Virtue to her has become a technicality. She is not harmed and no man is
strong enough to overcome her if she herself is frigid. She likes to be
kissed and adores to rouse men’s passions. She thinks many girls are
like her who have never given themselves wholly to men, but most of them
are more easily roused. She seldom stays all night with a man. She likes
to “keep them guessing.” Besides her mother would make trouble if she
stayed out all night. If she thinks she is at a dance, she says nothing
about her coming in late.
She admits her scorn of her own station in life but says the
luxury-loving age is responsible for that, that no girl who loves pretty
things (which most women do) is going to be content with shabby clothes
and stupid makeshifts if she can be as feminine and as lovely as other
women who do not work and yet have their hearts’ desires. She does not
think she does the men harm; in fact, she is a good companion and
coarseness of speech is repugnant to her. She smokes cigarettes but
drinks very little. She admits she has no motive in life except to
marry, some day, a man who has a good deal of money. She could easily
marry a rich man; several have already asked her but she intends to wait
a while. She knows the pleasures of the intellect are not for her. She
says excitement has been her master and that nothing else in the world
matters greatly. Cold and superficial, she admits she is not much of a
woman but denies that her conscience is dead,—says it has never been
born. The girls who are mistresses to one man have more womanly
qualities than she because they are aroused and fully developed.
She has no desire for children, does not care for them, but has no
aversion to having one. It would have to be a pretty baby and must be
brought up nicely. Clutter, pots and pans and drudgery are as remote
from her life as if she had been born a princess.
“Probably I am spoiled,” she says, “but there are hundreds of others
like me, though most of them are too human to resist sex temptation
themselves. There are three types of people responsible for a vast
number of girls like me: Mothers who spoil their daughters—anything
rather than have them household drudges like themselves; society women
who make the poor girl’s lot seem harder to her than she can bear; and
the men who are glad to use the working girl for everything in life but
marriage. Personally I am to blame, of course, but I consider myself
swept by the current—glad to drift—yes; but afraid to think where it may
end. I have never been in love. Something is still sleeping in me.
Perhaps it will come to life some day.”[78]
The last document is very significant. The girl’s schematization of life
is further from the bordel and nearer the strategic form of marriage
recommended by the wife in document No. 49 (p. 87).
In none of the documents in this chapter up to this point is an
unfortunate love affair or a betrayal with promise of marriage mentioned
as the cause of later delinquency. Girls do make these representations,
and very often, but they are always to be discounted, and for two
reasons. In the first place girlhood and womanhood have been idealized
to the degree that this explanation is expected and the girl wishes to
give it. Betrayal is the romantic way of falling, the one used in the
story books and movies. Many girls have finished stories of this kind
which they relate when asked to tell about their lives. In addition, a
seduction does usually accompany the first adventure into the world, as
we have seen in the documents (Nos. 64–69), but we saw also that sex in
these cases was used, as a coin would be used, to secure adventure and
pleasure. On the other hand, not a few girls have tragedies in
connection with courtship, promises of marriage, pregnancy, and
childbirth which demoralize them when they had no previous tendency to
demoralization. In a few cases girls yield to their own sexual desire.
72. Ellen is twenty years old. When her mother died six years ago
her father immediately remarried and she went to an aunt in
Poughkeepsie, but when her aunt found out she had broken connections
with her father, she turned her out.... The aunt is an old maid
living alone in a nice house, with one servant. She stayed with her
one year. The aunt made it evident that she disliked Ellen. She did
housework in Rochester, and then went to Poughkeepsie and later to
Albany. She has worked as a maid, and as a salesgirl in a department
store, but would not give the name nor any information regarding her
employer.
Nine months ago she attended a Knights of Columbus banquet with a
girl friend, where she was introduced to a man who began to call
upon her shortly afterward and they became intimate. She was invited
to his mother’s home, together with a great many other friends, who
were evidently people of wealth, she says. His mother did not know
that she was a working girl, because he furnished her with clothing.
She further states that his mother never knew that her son had had
immoral relations or that he even expected to marry her. She is sure
that the mother would not allow the marriage because Ellen is a
Catholic. She says his mother owns a garage which her son manages.
He often took her for long rides in the machine to road houses and
recently had intercourse with her twice during such trips. On the
first such occasion he promised to marry her, bought her a small
diamond ring for which he paid $98, and the other day when he
proposed a trip to New York, he said he
had secured a marriage license. Said they would be married here in New
York City and return to Albany to live. When they arrived with their
friends, another girl and a man, she states she asked him where they
were to be married and he said: “No, we’re young yet and don’t have to
be; let’s have a good time first.” She said that scared her and she got
out of the car near the park on Second Avenue. She hid in the bushes and
finally came out, looked around, but did not see them anywhere. She
accosted a policeman and said to him, “Arrest me; do anything you like,
but I have got to have a place to go to.” She said he laughed at her and
said she was crazy and wanted to know what was the matter. So she told
him a little of her story. He said he would look after her when off his
beat, but in the meantime she should stay in a Catholic Church nearby,
which she says she did. When the officer came off his beat he came and
took her to the police station. She says she would not marry the man now
if he could be found and if he were willing. She feels that he has
disgraced her before all her friends and consequently she does not want
to see any of them.
Her great ambition was to be a trained nurse. She has applied at
different hospitals and every one has refused her because she has not
enough education. She says that she will do anything or give up anything
to realize this ambition. She would be very happy if she could even
become a child’s nurse and would be willing to live on a very small
salary while she is training. She prefers to stay in New York as there
is less probability of her seeing the man again.... Religion means a
great deal to her and would like to see a priest in a day or two.[79]
73. I was born at Marietta, Ohio, December 22, 1902. My father at that
time was making pretty good money. He was an oil man. He was discouraged
over a loss and was working on a farm. We moved to one farm and lived
there two years when the house burned with but little saved. From there
we moved on to another farm and lived there about two years. At a
failure of crops we moved again to Tennessee.... I worked about three
months on a railroad grade, doing men and boys’ work. I made $2.50 a day
working 10 hours. I was dumping the cars, laying track, carrying
water—just anything they needed some one to do, just anything to fill
in. There was about 20 of us girls. I saved about $90 out of my wages
during those three months beside paying my board at home and buying my
clothes. Father borrowed this $90 when we got to Morgantown, saying his
money was all gone and saying that he would have to have some money to
keep the family until the household goods came. [I had planned to use my
money to pay my school expenses, but father said he couldn’t afford to
send me to school, so I went to work in a restaurant, but father wanted
me to work in a private family and I went to the home of Mrs. Jernigan.]
Most of the management of the house was left for me to do, as the woman
was away from home most of the time. She wanted to be going out all the
time; she never stayed at home. Just so long as the work was taken care
of she didn’t care. There were four children. I had to do all the work
and take care of the children. She was gone most of the time. It was the
26th of January, 1919. For the last two or three weeks before that I
noticed he was getting familiar. I didn’t seem to realize anything of it
at the time. He treated me just like one of the family until the 26th.
Mr. Jernigan was not able to go to Sunday School. He was sick so he told
his wife and that was the excuse she made to the Sunday School
superintendent and to his pupils. Before she went she asked me to see
that he got his medicine because he might doze off and not take it on
time, but to be sure he got it on time. He was sitting in the living
room before the fire, in a big lounging chair when I brought his
medicine to him first. I got him his medicine and I started to go away
and he asked me why I was in such a big hurry for. I told him that if I
was to get the work done and dinner ready on time as Mrs. Jernigan was
going out that afternoon, and if I didn’t keep busy I wouldn’t get it
accomplished. He says, “Oh, hang the work! You don’t have to be working
all the time.” I told him that that was what I was there for and that
that was what they were paying me for and it was not for him to detain
me and cause Mrs. Jernigan inconvenience as well as myself. He says,
“All right, you don’t like Daddy Joe any more.” That was what they
called him, Daddy Joe. I tried to reason with him that I cared for him
just as much as I ever did but that I must get my work done. He said I
could at least sit down on the edge of his chair awhile and I thought I
would as I would get away quicker rather than by arguing with him. He
started to caress and make over me and I tried to get away, saying that
that wouldn’t do that he was to go on asleep or amuse himself, that I
must get my work done. But he refused to let me go. He kept making over
me until he got my passions aroused and until he had no control over
himself at all, and though a sick man, he picked me up and carried me
upstairs and there he ruined me. I didn’t realize the harm he was doing
me.... I didn’t feel that I wanted to work there any more. I was ashamed
to meet the look of Mrs. Jernigan. It seemed that I couldn’t get
interested in my work and in about a week I asked for about a couple of
weeks’ vacation. I went to a friend of mine at Flemington. I stayed
there the two weeks and a few days over, but I telephoned Mrs. Jernigan
that if she could get some one for my place to do so, that I didn’t know
exactly when I would be back, I was going to stay a few days longer. But
when I got back she had not succeeded in getting any one. Mr. Jernigan
came to see me where I was at the time and promised that he wouldn’t
repeat his actions as before if I would go back. He said Mrs. Jernigan
would think of me just as my parents, and I was just as anxious to
conceal my wrong then as he. So I went back. I was there about two weeks
and he didn’t keep his promise. I told my parents that I was going to
leave there.
I started back in the restaurant life then again. I met a young man who
seemed very interested in me. I was discouraged and disgusted with the
way I was living and the restaurant life began to have its effect on me
then, and I decided that I would accept his proposal and that we would
get married. But one thing happened and then another until we had to
postpone it and it was just a plan of his, I found out later. He had
coaxed me into improper relationship with him once. Then he started
running around town with other girls. When I asked him what he meant by
that kind of action he said he had come to the conclusion that I was too
young to know what it was to get married, that I had just better drop
that idea altogether. I was discouraged and disgusted with myself that I
could be led into anything so easily.... [I married a man who was very
surly and associated with negro women, infected me with gonorrhoea, told
the workers in the mine that I had infected him, and finally
disappeared.]
I went home and my sister’s husband came to live with us and I seemed to
know him better than I did before. He had just come back from the Army
and he was the only comfort I had, so I talked with him. When a girl
gets the blues she falls harder than ever. He had a fight with those at
the mines who repeated the story that my husband told. It was about the
first of March when we had a physical relation and at that time I was
made pregnant.[80]
74. In this case a girl of American parentage was a bright and
attractive type. Her mother had been a prostitute for years and had
provided a home in which the standards were so degrading that the courts
had given the five other daughters to relatives six years previous. The
girl in question was sent to live with a widowed uncle and his two
daughters, who welcomed her to a home of many comforts and interests,
but allowed at the same time much unsupervised recreational time. During
afternoons of leisure she found many opportunities to spend hours in the
company of a married man in the neighborhood, and a few years later at
the age of 16 she gave birth to an illegitimate child.
Her father died when she was two years old. During the next few years
the home life was deplorable. The family suffered much through poverty,
and the mother was so neglectful of her children that the neighbors
brought about her arrest. At an early age this girl had witnessed many
immoral scenes, and she said that when she was only 8 years old she
remembered seeing her mother in bed with a man. It was also reported
that she had locked one of the daughters in a room with a man, receiving
payment from him for this opportunity.
When this young girl went to live with her uncle and two older cousins
in her tenth year, she found an excellent home. The family attended
church regularly, and she took an active part in the services. It was
noted that after she started an intimacy with the father of her child
she failed to speak at the prayer meeting. At school she was considered
one of the most promising girls in her class and much above the average
in her school work. She reached the sophomore year and left because of
her pregnancy. She was associated with a group of good friends and was
much enjoyed by her cousins. They had little time to give her, as one
attended college and the other held a responsible position in a business
house. After school hours she had the afternoon to herself. She was not
allowed to go out evenings except when chaperoned by older people. In
appearance she was an attractive type, with fresh coloring and a
childish, innocent expression. Her uncle stated that she had always been
a good girl, was quiet and obedient, and had never showed any tendency
to run after the boys. Her child was born at a private maternity home
and was healthy and robust and greatly beloved by the mother, who
declared that she would never give her up. Later the child was placed
out with the mother and both did extremely well.
Her sex history is as follows. She met the father by chance going home
from school, when she accidentally ran into him. After this she happened
to see him occasionally, and their casual meetings finally terminated in
an intimacy. She knew the father three years and had relationships with
him in the woods for a year and a half before the birth of her child.
The girl said, “When I was 13 there came to me an awful longing for some
one to love me and kiss me at night. I thought it was a mother’s love I
wanted, but when this man talked to me I thought that was what I wanted.
I had no wish to do wrong but longed to be loved.” For some time this
man made love to her and represented himself as her truest friend. He
told her that because she was an orphan she needed such a friendship.
For many months there was no sexual intimacy between them. Finally he
began to ask her questions concerning her menstrual periods and
afterwards generally instructed her in sex matters. Following this
conversation she frequently had relationships with him and did not learn
that he was married until some months later. She declared that she loved
and trusted the father of her child, and even after she became pregnant
said that she could not regret her sexual relations with him or feel
that she had done wrong. Meantime she had been twice assaulted by a man
of loose character.
This is her statement regarding her attitude at this time: “He was not
wholly to blame, because as soon as a man speaks to me concerning these
things I get so aroused that I do not know what I am doing.” Both men
were arrested, and the judge was unable to establish paternity. He gave
the father, so called, a suspended sentence of one year and ordered him
to support the child.... It was interesting to note the girl’s attitude
after confinement. She said, “I wonder if these men who had intercourse
with me didn’t feel beforehand that it would be an easy thing to do,
since my mother had been so bad.”[81]
75. At sixteen Patty was a dreadful flirt, a fairly good student, and an
adept at every kind of sport. About this time she made friends with a
girl whom all the girls knew, but only slightly. There were rumors about
her family which the girls heard long before their elders, but knowing
nothing of real facts they kept their surmises to themselves, gossiped
and wondered. Patty spent much time at this girl’s house and her aunt
did not interfere. Soon stories began to be whispered. Boy students went
to call on the girls and stayed very late. Patty always stayed with this
girl when her parents were away. The servants in the house knew the
facts of the case and had been bribed to keep still. All of Patty’s
friends were desperate but loyal. No one would tell on her. Patty kissed
the boys and ran after them. Olive, her friend, did worse things—but
what? Led by this wholly bad girl, Patty was living the life of a
wilful, passionate, little harlot, her heart wholly rebellious, her keen
sex instincts wholly aroused. Class protection saved her for a long
time. None of the boys quite dared to seduce her, but as time went on
there were plenty of people who believed the worst and finally she let
herself go completely. Soon after she became pregnant. Before this her
aunt had stopped her friendship with Olive, but when she became quiet,
wild-eyed, and shy, no one could believe the awful truth. The news
spread like wild-fire and Patty left the town. One of the boys was
anxious to marry her but she admitted she was not sure which of three
boys was the father of her child and said she would not marry any one.
She lived in the country with some good people and motherhood woke all
the emotions of her best self. The baby lived only a short time and she
came to her home town to visit her aunt, apparently for the purpose of
being confirmed in her old church. She was the same fascinating girl
with a sudden dignity of womanhood that amazed every one. People talked
of her bravery in facing them all and no one would have dared to be
anything but nice to her. Even the gossips realized that Patty was
something of a person, after all. She went abroad after this, studied,
and traveled. She was as talkative as ever and did every wild and
impetuous thing which struck her fancy but with a contradictory element
of reserve too elusive to explain. Her chaperone, who knew nothing of
her past, often commented on the fact that Patty could manage the
men,—no one presumed to take liberties with her.
When twenty-three she lost her heart to a man ten years her senior, a
strong character with a dominant personality. When he told Patty he
loved her, she flung herself in his arms and told the whole story
rapidly, truthfully, without thought of the consequences. He held her
close while she sobbed and quieted her as no one had ever quieted Patty
before. “Hush, dear,” he said. “Of course it was necessary to tell me;
we will never speak of it again. I know how much you need me. You have
always needed me. I think I can make you happy.”
Patty ends the story by saying that in this man she found the refuge
which was her salvation. Though intellectually her superior, her husband
is stimulated by her active mind. Their sex relation is perfect. She has
plenty of friends, both men and women, and he loves and admires her.
Their home is comfortable, secure. They have two lovely children—a boy
and a girl.
This woman realizes the faults of her nature. In looking back she thinks
she flew blindly as a bird would fly, yet never without a subconscious
realization of her folly. Her impulses were merely stronger than her
control. She thinks she is probably more dependent upon a sex life than
many women, yet intellectually she has developed wonderfully and is
really a splendid woman, albeit too nervous, oversensitive, and
frail.[82]
76. American girl, 19 years old, pregnant. Many elements of the feminine
mind are demonstrated in her sincerity and truthfulness of
understanding. Had no previous knowledge of sex life; did not know men
were like that; did not know her own nature and the awakening of passion
within herself was overwhelming.
Came to Boston a year ago. Lives with another girl, good as far as she
knows. They have never talked about men’s relation with women. It is
hard for her to talk about intimate matters, so she does not know how
her friend feels. Is a Roman Catholic, but there is no good of her going
to church now. She thinks the man would marry her, but how could she
marry a man like that? Does not want him to kiss her now. When it was
explained to her that this might be because she was pregnant, she was
again interested. Perhaps, because how was it she loved to have him kiss
her before? Motherhood is natural to her, but to face society unmarried
seems an impossibility. When she speaks of her baby, her face lights
with a look which is not sentimentalism. “Oh I could love it if I could
only let it be born.” None of her family could ever know she was like
“that.” “That” means that she could have a child when it is not right to
have one. She had not a clear memory of her temptation and actual sex
experience. “I was as much to blame as he was, for he did not make me,
but I did not realize quite what I was doing, I felt numb. I had so much
feeling I had none.”
This girl is difficult to describe. Unusual because with only a little
help she could understand herself, probably with the whole of her
nature, which few women do. Has the rare gift of seeing things as they
are when she wishes to see them differently. Never had much education,
went through grammar school, could have gone to high school but wanted
to go to work. Works in a restaurant. Earns five dollars a week with
meals and tips. Lives with another girl and together they pay $3 a week
for their room. Met this man on the street. “All the girls do that.” He
did not mean to harm her, she thinks; there was no talk of wrong doing
at first; just good friends. “He is a strong man, makes me do things,
yet asks me about everything we do. I cannot quite explain it.” (The
truthful feminine mind again, the civilized desire to be a comrade
warring against the primitive woman who wishes to be captured. Women of
this type are particularly sensitive, apparently, particularly to be
desired by the masculine mind.)
This girl is wholly natural. She came to me in an impulsive way. “I know
a girl who knows a girl who knew you. I must tell some one so I came to
you. I am in trouble.” Religion is remote to her as a personal
experience. “That is a different part of myself—the part I dream with. I
hate myself now. I do not feel like myself, but yet I feel differently.
I can never be the same again.”
Many girls of this kind, unmarried and pregnant, do not realize
motherhood. It is a misery remote from their consciousness, not a part
of their being. With this girl it is. She is 100 per cent feminine, it
seems to me, yet with a spirit which is brave and fine. If her maternal
instinct dominates, the child will be born. If consciousness to outside
influence gets the better, she will have an abortion. I should say it
was an even chance, but no one will decide it for her. She is glad of
advice, humble in the asking, and sincere, but weighs it all, and
another’s mind but shows her her own opinion more clearly. Married the
man; perfectly happy.[83]
77. Prostitute, twenty-four years old, of English parentage. Lived in
this country since she was ten years old. Typical English type, high
cheek bones, clear skin, bold grey eyes; womanly in bearing, with a
contradictory dignity and boldness of speech and manner. Went to school
through grammar grade, began to work at fifteen. Had nothing in common
with her family, had no sex training, did not talk to her mother about
things she felt deeply. She said, “I was fond of my mother, but we were
not intimate; one does not talk to one’s mother.” Worked at housework,
then restaurant work, left home and boarded alone. Was wild and
irresponsible, did not understand life, wanted fun and novelty. When
eighteen met a business man with plenty of money who was kind to her.
There was no talk of marriage. Went with him for three months before sex
relation was established. Finally became pregnant. Her family found her
and issued a complaint against her as a stubborn child. Her baby was
born in a hospital and afterwards she continued to live an irresponsible
life but without immorality. “There was only one man in the world for
me,” she said, “no one seemed to understand that.” She was misunderstood
and was ultimately sentenced to prison, her child cared for by the
State.
She is reticent about the father of her child. She swore upon the
witness stand she did not know the father of her child, to protect him.
He never knew that she was pregnant. In prison she learned much evil.
Her life with this one man had been almost innocent, a first realization
of sex. She knew nothing about prostitutes, of perverts, of “French
immorality”, all of which she learned from other girls and women in
prison. She was told a girl was a fool to work hard for nothing when she
could have everything for the price of a spirit of adventure. Her love
of her child was real and earnest. When she came from prison she went to
work in a family with her child. She became of age while here. All the
furies of her nature were aroused by her dealings with social workers
who judged her wrongly. Her antagonism was interpreted as hardness.
“They thought I was a jailbird or something like that. They took the
baby away and put it in a place where I could not see it; even the
family where I had worked did not know where it was.”
About this time she met some of her prison acquaintances. They made fun
of her attempt at virtue. “Why wouldn’t I listen to them? They were all
the companions I had had for ten months. The State drove me on the
street because I wouldn’t be meek and was saucy to them. I meant to
support my baby and they took it away. I’m not a proper person to bring
up a child. I’m not, but they (‘they’ is most of the world) made me what
I am.”
She is now a regular prostitute. She lives in a tiny apartment of one
room, bath, and kitchenette, a cheerless place with a telephone which
looks business-like. She helps in the office of the place and cares for
some other apartments, and earns enough to pay her rent and a little
more. The rest she earns immorally.
“I was innocent,” she said, “until I was 18. I went on the streets for
excitement and fun. People said and thought all sorts of things about me
which were not true,—my family, the court people, and all. My mother
would never have known about the baby if the State hadn’t blabbed. Why
do they have to tell a person’s private affairs and sins? My mother had
enough trouble without having mine thrust on her. I ought to bear my own
troubles without breaking her heart. Social workers think they’re such
saints.
“Nowadays girls go wrong younger. Today there are girls on the Common at
night, thirteen and fourteen, who know everything bad there is to know.
I am not a café girl. You would be disgusted with the café girls. If the
city really wants to stop this sort of thing why don’t they shut up the
cafés? Some of those girls are awful; some of them are desperate. On the
street few girls speak to men. It is the other way round. If a girl is
alone on the streets at night the men know what she is there for. There
is more money in New York than Boston. I’m not a real sporting girl.
They have to be bad, that is willing to do anything a man wants. They
get $25, whatever they want, if they are attractive enough, but a girl
has to be bad all through to satisfy such men. I usually get $10,
sometimes $5 if the man is nice but poor. No girl need go with men that
make it worse. It’s bad enough. I never go with a man who has been
drinking much and only with a certain kind of men.” As far as could be
learned this type bears a resemblance to the kind of man who is the
father of her child. She says she still loves him. She has seen him
sometimes on the street. It is a temptation but she keeps away. “It
makes me tremble and feel sick; besides I wouldn’t give him the
satisfaction of knowing they took the child away. Oh, how I hate them
all. It’s a fierce life. There are two kinds of prostitutes, the ones
who would get out of the life any minute if they could earn a decent
living any other way, and the ones who were born to the life. Silly
fools! they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything else. (The
feeble-minded?) Why do I live so if I hate it? What else can I do? I
have no education; any work I can get is hard work and I am not strong.
I worked for a family all summer as a second girl. My back ached all the
time. A maid goes in the back door and out of the back door. In this
life she can be comfortable, get plenty to eat, plenty of good clothes,
and she is as good as the men with whom she goes.
“I generally get home by eleven or twelve o’clock, sometimes I stay all
night. I never have visitors here; I never go with but one man in a
night. No one here knows me. What people don’t know won’t hurt them. I
generally go to a hotel. Most decent men would rather go to a hotel and
pay the extra price for a room. Such hotels are not apt to be raided. I
don’t long for the life at all. I cared for that one man. I mean to save
money and I am a little ahead. We don’t hate the men half as much as we
hate ourselves. They could stop before it was too late if any one would
really sympathize with their love of freedom and understand them. Social
workers say, “I want to help you”; they just preach. Many of them are
women of education. They expect a girl to know all that they know with
their years of experience when she is just ignorant. What can she know
of herself and men and the world? Things are all wrong between men and
women—I don’t know why. People with education ought to think about it.
More than half the men we girls meet are married men. The women get
tired of their husbands; the husbands get tired of them. Sometimes the
wives are sick, sometimes they don’t understand a man’s nature; they are
cold and unsympathetic and drive them to girls like us.
“I pretend as far as I can. One might as well do it in the same spirit
as any other distasteful work. It may wear out one’s soul but it doesn’t
wear out one’s body as much as house work or factory or store work. I
haven’t been to church in seven years. I can’t believe much in God. It’s
hard to see the justice in anything and the so-called good people think
they are so perfect.”
This woman with all her hardness and bitterness cries when she speaks of
her child. When I came away she acted the hostess very prettily, picked
up my books for me, and showed a gentle side of her nature. “No, I
haven’t minded talking of myself,” she said. “Please come again. I have
no real friends—you will always find me here alone, and sad.”[84]
Pregnancy and illegal motherhood are among the most tragic of all
situations and tend to deprive the girl of her sense of worth, to
isolate her socially, and to handicap her economically. But when the
girl is not already prepared for demoralization the recuperation in
these cases is greater than we should expect. It is a disaster like
other disasters, such as sickness and loss of fortune, and a
reconstruction of life may follow, perhaps on a lower level. The
attitude toward an otherwise orderly girl who has had a sexual
experience or borne a child is not so severe as formerly. Frequently the
girl marries, often she marries the father of the child. In his study of
five hundred unmarried mothers Kammerer says:
“It appears that 48, or 9.6 per cent, of the women in this study married
the father of their illegitimate child either before or after
confinement; 37 or 7.4 per cent married a man not the father of their
child. Figures in regard to the unmarried mother are probably
considerably lower than they would have been had it been possible to
observe the situation longer. According to the German experience over 30
per cent of the mothers of illegitimate children marry before their
child reaches the age of three years.”[85] And since it has been
calculated by Adele Schreiber[86] that 50 per cent of all German women
are unmarried between the ages of 20 and 30 it appears that the chance
to marry on the part of the unmarried mother is very good. (In Germany,
however, it is half-customary among peasants and the lower city classes
to begin sexual relations before marriage and to marry when pregnancy
follows.) At any rate it appears that prostitution is not recruited
largely from the victims of love affairs.
The most sensational aspect of the girl’s delinquency is connected with
white slavery and the character called “pimp”, “cadet”, or “souteneur.”
If a young and simple girl is abducted or captured in the most brutal
and audacious way she may nevertheless become broken and submissive, as
an animal is broken and trained. She will then be put on the street to
“hustle”, or in a house, and her earnings collected. She is held first
by fear and then acquires habits and works with the system, like a
trained animal. Frequently there is marriage or pretense of marriage and
the girl finds that the next step is to go on the street. This is the
typical procedure of the white slaver. In addition he purchases girls
who are already “broken in” and transfers girls who are already
prostitutes from place to place, as notably from Galicia or Hungary to
South America.
The other side of the matter, the relation of the girl to the pimp, is
connected with her desire for response. When for any reason a girl is
“ruined”, on the street, used as a convenience by everybody, she is in a
condition of great and unnatural isolation and loneliness and craves a
relationship which is personal and intimate. Her attachment to the pimp
is simply an underworld love affair. He is her man. She is jealous and
he is jealous. She works and brings her earnings as if she were earning
in another business. Sometimes her pimp will not allow her to enter the
room until she has put $10 under the door. If he abuses her,
particularly if he is jealous, she rather welcomes this as a sign of his
attachment. That the girl supports a pimp to protect her and keep her
out of trouble with the police is not the main element. In European
cities where girls are registered by the police and protected as far as
possible from this exploitation, they nevertheless support pimps, and in
some cities the number doing this is as much as 90 per cent of the
registered prostitutes.
It frequently happens also that a girl is drawn or drifts out of her
family and community into a bad gang, as in case No. 78, becomes
identified with them by assimilation, and cannot free herself. She may
then be kept by one of the men or sold into a house. Cases No. 79 and
No. 80 are typical of the psychology of the girl in this relation.
78. I am a girl 18 years old and am from a Polish village. Now I am an
orphan. I was two years old when my mother died. Several years later my
father left for America and left me with my grandfather. After spending
several years in America, my father brought me here to New York. I was
then 15 years old. I soon went to work and earned $5 a week. My father
took the money from me and supported me. And now my troubles begin.
After I was here several months, I became acquainted with a boy and
through him I became acquainted with several other boys. I was yet young
and did not very well understand that the boys accompanied me for their
pleasure and not out of friendship. When my father found it out, he
began to argue with me in a good way; but as he could not persuade me in
a good way, for I did not then understand that it was dear friendship of
a father to his child, he began to beat me. After my father gave me a
good beating, I became mad; left the house and entered on a wrong path.
My father remained alone and dejected and was forced to marry. I now
have a stepmother and I am staying away and I feel that I am falling. I
feel that my body is fading along with my soul. When I look at my
companions, who shun me, who do not want to know me on account of my
immoral life, I envy them. I now realize how bad and wrong my life is;
and I see my future in dark colors.
Now when I want to disengage myself from the charlatans and licentious
scoundrels in man’s image, I cannot do it. My heart is bound to them. I
am attracted to them as to a magnet. When I do not see them for a day, I
am almost crazy.
I do not know what to do. The question is; how can I wean myself from
the boys, my murderers.... Perhaps it would have been well for me to
leave New York altogether and go to some other city?[87]
79. Five pimps were playing cards in a restaurant on Seventh Avenue. The
day was very hot. During the afternoon the girl who is “hustling” for
one of them came into the restaurant wearing a heavy velvet suit. The
wife of the proprietor asked, “What are you doing, wearing a suit like
that in this kind of weather?” She replied that though she was bringing
home eight, ten, and twelve dollars every night, she could not afford a
new dress. “He needs it for gambling,” she said, pointing to her pimp.
Leaving the table in anger he deliberately slapped her in the face.
“Didn’t you pay $32 for that suit?” he said. “What more do you
want?”[88]
80. I met [a police officer] in June 1917.... I fell in love with him
right away, to tell the truth. I had been having trouble with my husband
and had tried to divorce him, but couldn’t. Anyhow, we were separated.
When I was with my husband I was a good girl, and didn’t go out with
other men.... I won’t say that he asked me to go into the life I began
to lead. That was my own choice. I wasn’t any innocent child. But he
told me he could “help” me a lot in the life. He told me, first, to keep
within the bounds of his inspection district, and to walk Broadway
between 42d Street and 109th, but never to go beyond those lines, or
else he couldn’t protect me.... After I had taken a man home, and then
the man had left the apartment, Ginton would come in and get some money.
How much? Oh—25 per cent, sometimes, or 50 per cent, or maybe even 100
per cent. He was always saying, “Honey, I need money. I have to have
$25”, or sometimes he would ask for $10 or $20—never less than $10. Oh,
I couldn’t begin to figure how much I gave him. But I didn’t mind that.
I loved him, and I always had plenty of money for myself, anyhow.... I
don’t mind the money, but I do mind his saying he doesn’t know me. I’d
have given him anything I had—I would even now, I think. See this ring?
Well, that’s worth $3000. He asked me for it once, and I was going to
give it to him, except the other girls wouldn’t let me. I’ve bought him
lots of clothes—and you might ask him about the belt with the gold
buckle I gave him for a present. Oh—he knows me, all right.
After seeing my folks and talking to them and having them treat me
nicely, I made up my mind that when I got back to New York I was going
to give up the life I had been leading and get a job and go straight. So
I got a place in a hairdresser’s shop at 85th Street and Broadway that
paid me $25 a week.
He didn’t like that, and told me so. I guess it was because he wasn’t
getting any more money from me. Anyhow, I hadn’t been at work long
before he came into the hairdresser’s and said to the boss, “You’d
better get rid of that girl; she’s a prostitute.” So I was discharged.
I made another try and got a job in a millinery shop on Broadway, near
95th Street. The same thing happened. He told the people I was working
for that I was a street woman, so they had to let me go. He had me
discharged from a third job in a store in the same neighborhood. It was
impossible for me to get any kind of straight work because of him. I had
to go back to the street.[89]
Italians and Jews have been noticeably identified with white slavery.
The Italian methods are particularly atrocious, showing the same
desperation as their black-hand operations. At the same time Italian
girls and Irish are the most intractable among the nationalities. The
Jewish operations tend to the form of business organization.
81. I come to this country when I fourteen years old with my mother and
father and brothers and sisters. My father go back to Italy three years
ago when sick. I work as operator and earn $3 a week. Then I get $6 and
for two years I make $9. I walk with my friend Florence who live in same
street and we meet Frank Marino drinking soda. He ask me if I have a
drink and I say “No”, and he say, “Come on, don’t be bashful, take a
drink.” After we take a drink he say, “I take you girls to moving
pictures.” I say, “No, I can’t.” He say, “Oh, come on; I own a moving
picture place; it do you no harm to go.” We went into a place after a
while. When we come out, he say, “You come again to-morrow; I take you
again.” I say, “No, I can’t go, my mother would not like.” He walk home
with me and I say to him, “If you want to know me, come in; here’s the
house; I live here.” He say, “No, you meet me on Wednesday and I take
you to moving pictures.” I told him “No.” He say, “Yes, you come.”
Florence say, “You go; maybe he’s your luck; you get married. He seem
like a nice fellow.” So I say, “You go with me and I go. I afraid to go
alone.” Wednesday we go again and I not tell my mother. Saturday I go
with him again and Florence too. He introduce her so she had man, called
Jim, to take her. When we come out he say, “I take you now to see my
mother and sisters on Charles Street.” I not want to go; I was afraid,
but he say, “Florence and Jim go too; my mother and sisters want to see
you.”
So we go and he want me to go upstairs and I say, “No, I afraid.” He
say, “Oh, you have a bad mind; you think bad. My mother is upstairs
waiting for you; come on.” I step into the hall and he shut the door and
Florence outside. Then he say, “Come upstairs; don’t have such a bad
mind,” and I say, “Why not Florence come too?” and he say, “Oh, Jim got
a key, he come.” We get upstairs, he push me in a room and lock the
door. He say, “Now I got you here I do what I want,” and I say “No”, and
I try to get out and I can’t. Then he takes out a pistol and hold it
right up against my ear. He know I was a good girl, and I say, “Are you
going to marry me? If you don’t, I kill myself. I will jump out the
window.”
I go home to my mother and I tell her. She faint. I most crazy and she
too. She says, “He must marry you and your brother must not know or he
kill him.” We are a respectable family and my father he has property. I
see Frank after this and tell him he must marry me now that he knows I a
good girl, and he say he would and on next Tuesday we go to City Hall.
He takes out license and we was married by some man there. Then he takes
me to a furnished room. All the time we was in this room he just bring
me things to eat like crackers, cheese and a little wine. He twice try
to make me go on the streets and the first time he beat me and pull my
hair and knock me around; he show me a pistol till I faint on the floor
and then he throw water over me and tell me not to be so foolish.
One day he take me out with his cousin Jim and his wife Rosie. She’s
bad; she goes on the streets. She say, “Why don’t you do what he wants
you? Look at me! I have good clothes,” and she showed me a diamond pin.
“I get that by doing bad business.” I say, “I go to my mother if he not
want to take care of me, or I go to work, and Frank go to work and we
have rooms. We buy a little furniture. We not need things so fine.” And
my husband, he say, “What you look like with this kind of clothes.” I
say, “My mother buy me this suit, it good enough.”
One day he comes in, he bring me a little short dress and red garters
and big red bows for my hair. He say, “You put on.” I say, “No, I not
put on. I shamed.” Then he slap me and beat me and put pistol to my face
and I go way from him and I go down to Carmine Street to Mary, who is a
good woman and some relation to him, and I tell her about it. She say,
“My God! Is he so bad?” She send for him and say, “What you mean when
you get a good girl? What for you want to put her in this bad life?” And
he say, “Oh, I don’t want to; I just crazy,” and he say, “Come home, I
not ask you any more.”
We go home and his cousin Jim is there and we have coffee to drink and
he put something in the coffee. And by and by my head go round and I
stupid and he say, “Come out in the air”, and I go out and get on the
car and we go some place on the Battery in a house and he leave me
there. Pretty soon a man come and he say, “Why you not undressed?” and I
say, “I not undress. I not bad girl. I married. I not want to be bad.”
And he say, “Then you get out of my house. I not want to get into
trouble,” and I go back. I afraid to go home because I get married
without my brother seeing the man I marry.
Then Frank say, “I got work in a barber-shop, come.” We go down to
Houston and Mott Street and there he get ticket and money and then we go
to Gran Central, and get on train. This was Wednesday of the next week
when we married. It was six o’clock and we rode and it gets to be nine
o’clock and I say, “Where we go? How long it takes?” He say, “We going
to Chicago!” Then I cry, “Now I know you put me in the bad life.” He
say, “You make noise on train, I kill you.” We get to Chicago and he
take me to a house where a man live, his name is Nino Sacco. There he
show me razors and pistols and say, “You do not do what I tell you, you
be dead.” One day I get out, but that man Sacco, he come after me and
take me back. Another time I get out of the house, but every time they
catch me and take me back. Then I get sick and cannot do business, and
they say, “She no good”, and my husband he write to my brother and say,
“You want your sister back, you be on Bleecker Street in drug store, and
I give you back your sister. You bring $100 and I give you your sister.”
Then he bring me to New York. He say to me, “You put police on me you be
dead girl. I not ’feard for myself, I can get free. I know how. I have
had other girls; but you try and I kill you.” Then we met my brother. He
gave Frank $100 and he took me home. I wait two days, then I tell
police. Frank he get arrested and then we found he had another wife. I
was only one month in Chicago, but my life is spoiled and my family
ruined and I sick and can’t work. [Marino and Sacco were sentenced to
five years in prison.][90]
82. I am a girl from Galicia. I am neither old nor young. I am working
in a shop like other girls. I have saved up several hundred dollars.
Naturally, a young man began to court me and it is indeed this that we
girls are seeking. I became acquainted with him through a Russian
[Jewish] matchmaker who for a short while boarded with a countryman of
mine. He is really handsome and, as the girls call it, “appetizing.” But
he is poor, and this is no disgrace. He became dearer to me every day.
One day he told me he was in want owing to a strike, so I helped him
out. I was never stingy with him and besides money also bought him a
suit of clothes and an overcoat.... Who else did I work for if not him?
In short we became happily engaged.
Some time after, we hired a hall in Clinton Street and we were on our
way to the bank to draw some money for the wedding expenses and also to
enter the savings in both our names. On the way we passed some of his
countrymen who were musicians, and we needed music, so we stopped in. He
introduced me as his bride. I offered to have them play at our wedding.
Incidentally, I inquired about my fiancé and they gave good opinions of
him. Only a musician’s boy pitifully gazed at me and remarked, when my
fiancé was not near us: “Are there not enough people from the old
country to ask for their opinion?” I understood the hint and asked him
for an address, which he gave me. Meanwhile, we were late for the bank,
and fortunately, too. I could hardly wait for evening when I rushed over
to his countryman and inquired about him. They were surprised at my
questions and told me he had a wife and three children in —— Street. As
I later found out she was the same woman whom he introduced me to as his
boarding mistress.... I cannot describe my feelings at that time. I
became a mere toy in the mouths of my countrymen. But what more could I
do than arrest him? But his wife and children came to court and had him
released.
I found out of the existence of a gang of wild beasts, robbers who prey
upon our lives and money. I then advertised in a Jewish newspaper,
warning my sisters against such a “fortune” as befell me. I was not
ashamed and told of my misfortune wherever I came and gave warnings. The
East Side has become full of such “grooms”, “matchmakers”, “mistresses”,
“sisters”, and “brothers.” Inquire of their countrymen. There are plenty
of their kind.
A girl from my country has also married one of the band, the one who was
my former matchmaker. To the warnings that he had a wife and child in
Europe, she replied, “Well, if she comes she will be welcome.” And good
countrymen did indeed send for her and she came with a four-year-old
boy. Her predicament is horrible to describe. She is poor and lonely and
my countrywoman did not welcome her as she boasted, and her husband
said: “Whoever sent for you may support you.”[91]
White slavery has never been a quantitatively important factor as the
beginning of delinquency and together with the cadet system it is
passing out, partly as the result of public indignation and severe
penalties, and partly as the result of the changing attitude of the
women concerned, who have become “wise” and are going more “on their
own.” Many of them scorn the pimp. The change is a part of the general
individualization.
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL AGENCIES
It is true in general that if you have a good family you do not have a
bad individual. The well-organized family, with property and standing,
is in a position both to regulate and gratify the wishes of its members.
The boy of good family has no occasion to steal or the girl to practice
prostitution. Therefore, when a member of a family shows a tendency to
demoralization, good people, benevolent institutions, and the State
naturally try to strengthen the family, to save the whole situation of
which the boy or girl is a part; and when a family is about to be
wrecked they try to strengthen it both for its own sake and for the
security of the children.
If we examine the following document, which is a specification of the
type of family situation described more generally in document No. 58 (p.
100) above, we realize the difficulty of the task of a social agency
which attempts to rehabilitate a broken family and to save the children
from demoralization by visiting, giving food or money, taking the
parents into court, and coming to the rescue in times of crisis. The
case represents the patient and heroic work of a charity organization
during nearly twenty years. The record extends from the time the oldest
child was three months old to a period following her marriage. It is a
very long record, and I am able to give only a portion of it. This is an
immigrant family, but in the largest cities as many as 80 per cent of
delinquent children are foreign born or native born of foreign
parents.[92]
83. Joseph Meyer, a German Pole born of peasant parents, came to this
country at the age of twenty-three.
Mrs. Meyer, an illiterate woman, had been in America six years at the
time of her marriage. She had for two years prior to her marriage done
housework.... The first application for assistance occurred in 1898 when
Mrs. Meyer came to the Relief and Aid Society of Chicago, asking rent.
Mr. Meyer had been out of work for three months; there was one child
[Mary] 13 months old.... [This was two years after the marriage. There
is no further report until the family applied to United Charities in
1908. Meantime other children were born, Tillie in 1899, Theodore in
1903, Bruno in 1908].
January 30, 1908, Mrs. Meyer came to office of United Charities. Husband
had not worked for four years; mentally slightly abnormal. She had
recently begged, but usually had been working very hard. Mary picking
coal from the tracks.... [Helped by United Charities and County Agent.]
January 3, 1909. Visited man at home, says he had to care for children
while wife went out to work. Told him he must get work at once as doctor
says he is able to work. Family receiving help for a year and a half.
Woman working as janitress in United Charities office.
November 1, 1910. Miss Campbell, whose mother has employed Mrs. Meyer
for years, in office to ask if man cannot be sent to Bridewell. Says
woman has come to work with arms black and blue from beatings.... Mrs.
Meyer says man has not worked for more than two months at a time in the
19 years of his married life; says he taunts her with the fact that she
must work while he stays at home.
November 3, 1910.... Man given 60 days in Bridewell.
January 13, 1911. Visitor heard ... that man had taken carbolic acid New
Year’s eve. Asked woman about this; at first she did not want to tell,
but finally acknowledged it; says he took 20 cents worth of poison while
she was at work. The children yelled when he fell and the landlord came
in.... Woman says man sleeps during the day and will not sleep at night,
annoying her considerably, thus causing her to lose considerable sleep.
Quarrels with her and uses vile language in the presence of the
children.
January 16, 1911. Man in office asking to be arrested, said he is unable
to live with woman any longer. [Jealous of unmarried man who calls.]
Also stated that woman took some clothes from office of United
Charities, where she is janitress. Mrs. Meyer acknowledged doing this
and said man told her to take anything she could lay her hands on, as
she did not receive enough salary for the amount of work she did....
While woman was away at work, man burned all the bedding, lace curtains,
new veil Mary had received at Christmas, insurance policies, all the
woman’s clothes he could get hold of and some of the children’s clothes;
also broke a clock and bit up woman’s wedding ring....
January 20, 1911. Visited a neighbor who said at the time the man was in
the Bridewell the woman had some man staying with her....
Visited. Mary ironing; does not go to school; said father has not
returned; said father has very often abused mother for many years and
mother would not tell any one; also says the man who has been coming to
the house bought her mother a comb for Christmas, worth about $1.00,
which her father also burned.
February 8, 1911. Mary in office to say her mother was sick; told same
story as mother regarding Tony R., says he is a brother of Mrs. Meyer’s
brother’s wife. [March 7, 1911. Man given a year in Bridewell. August
25, Mrs. Meyer gave birth to a boy. Mary working in the Mary Crane
Nursery at $3.00 a week.]
October 21, 1911. Miss C. ’phones to advise office about Mary. Says that
many small articles have been disappearing since Mary arrived. Finally
they deliberately put temptation in her way by leaving money in the
nursery room, which disappeared within a half hour and nobody but Mary
had entered the room. Mary steadfastly denies everything, and they feel
absolutely baffled by the mother; they had found her to be untruthful
several times which has complicated matters since she has been working
at the nursery.... Later visited and told mother.... She cried and said
that Mary did not bring anything home, and said she had warned her
before she started to work that she was not to touch anything; said she
never brought home any candy or anything which would lead her to suspect
her of wrong doing. Mother went to work; Mary stayed home.
February 8, 1912, woman in office; said man had come home the day before
at noon ... and the children let him in. When she came home he knelt
before her and kissed her hands and begged her to allow him to remain.
Because he humbled himself to kneel before her she weakened and told him
if he worked he could stay....
March 14, 1912, Mary in office first thing in the morning to say that
her father tore good overcoat into strips last night and burned it in
the stove; that early this morning when they were all asleep in the
house, he tore the curtains down and cut them, cut some of woman’s
clothing into strips, poured kerosene over feather beds, slashed the
leather seats of the four dining-room chairs and did other damage of
this sort. [Threatened to buy pistol and kill Mrs. Meyer.] ... Mrs.
Meyer frightened and nervous and broken-hearted over the loss.... [Later
Mary ’phones that her father has come home and is sitting quietly in the
kitchen.] Visited. Mr. Meyer announced that he had nothing to say for
himself except that “the woman got the best of it and had everything her
way.” He stated that he knew the patrol was coming for him that day and
wished to “fix” things for his wife, that he “had not done much but had
done something.” His attitude in the matter was one of spite and the
attitude of his wife toward him unusually fine. Despite all that had
happened she was rather gentle and almost pathetic in her statement of
the case....
March 15, 1912, case tried in court. Man had no excuse to give and did
not attempt to defend himself before Judge other than to make the
statement that “there was a God in Heaven.” Was given $100 costs; sent
to House of Correction....
May 3, 1912. Took Mary to Dr. Healy ... he could find nothing wrong with
the child.... While she is slow she is normal.... He finds no evidence
of kleptomania; he fears that too much temptation was put in the child’s
way. [Found new rooms for the family so that man might not find them
when released.]
December 12, 1912, a neighbor ’phones, saying Mr. Meyer home, and as
Mrs. Meyer wanted to put him out again he beat her unmercifully [with a
poker].
December 24, 1912, woman says man was arrested....
February 14, 1913, visited Detention Court. Man was sent to Kankakee
[insane asylum]. After sentence was pronounced woman and Mary were
hysterical; said they had never wanted him to go and they would not
leave the court unless he was released. Woman’s cousin told Mr. Moore
that Mary is not working ... and that she is making her mother’s life
miserable. Mary ... begins to show something of her father’s
temperament.... The child’s confidence has never been gained. She has
always taken her father’s side, and her mother is worried over her as
she feels she is untrustworthy, is rouging her cheeks and not coming
home directly from her work. She is a woman whose enjoyment of household
possessions is undiminished by the miseries of her domestic experience,
as is a natural coquetry which she has always possessed. We believe that
this is an innocent attribute and that all her husband’s accusations of
infidelity are the suspicions inevitably resulting from sexual obsession
in a man otherwise unoccupied for 20 years. He has, undoubtedly, a
diseased mind.
April 3, 1913, woman says that Mary did not go to work today as the
paint made her sick. Asked that we call up the firm and verify this.
Mary had been to Miss Farrell to get suit which had been promised her,
but failed to see Miss Farrell and insisted upon getting a coat for
which she agreed to pay $8 on the installment plan. An agent came to the
house to collect for this and Mary behaved so badly, screaming and
crying, that woman finally paid him $2. Mary now has the suit from Miss
Farrell and woman wishes to return the coat, but she refuses to do so.
[Mary discharged from present position because it was proved she stole
from one of the girls. Mary refused to take housework offered her.]
June 9, 1913, woman in office in great distress; says Mary has not
worked at all at the hat factory [as she had pretended].... Has been
going with a girl who worked there. The girls say the employer is an
evil man and showed them a check book and said they could draw what they
liked.... Mary [refused to let him kiss her but] stole this check book
and on the 29th forged a check for $12 which she brought her mother
saying it was her pay. On the 2nd she forged another check for $11; $6
of this she gave to her mother and $5 she spent at Riverview Park....
July 29, 1913.... Probation officer says Mary lost her job on the 25th,
that one of the girls had loaned Mary a ring and when the time came for
Mary to restore it, Mary could not find it.... [A report from Kankakee
that Meyer had escaped was followed by a letter saying] “he escaped one
evening but returned of his own free will at bedtime and has since been
residing in the Institution.”...
January 17, 1914, Mary brought home $6 on the 14th but insisted upon $4
being returned to her, and with this she bought a very elaborate hat of
black velvet and gold lace. Talked with Mary. She was very defiant and
said that she would spend her money on clothing until she had something
to wear. Was not satisfied with the coat that United Charities had given
her from second-hand store. Said she would keep her money until she
could buy a new-style coat. Told her that if she did so the United
Charities would not help with food.
January 22, 1914, Mrs. Meyer in tears. The forelady at the shop where
Mary works telephoned that Mary had gotten married in court today....
Mary gave the date of her birth as December 18, 1895 [instead of 1896]
and signed the affidavit herself....
January 30, 1914, visited. Asked Mrs. Meyer to take a position....
Suggested Mary could stay and take care of the children.... Mary was at
first very unwilling to consent to the plan. While the visitor was there
Mr. Andersen [her husband] came in. He agreed to the plan at least
temporarily.
February 4, 1914, Mrs. Meyer in office. Says the work is too hard at the
present situation and she is not earning enough to feed the children.
Mary has had to give her money and she is ashamed and sorry. She feels
too nervous to work and wants United Charities to get Mr. Meyer out of
asylum to support her. Jennie, her niece, took her to visit him and she
found him nicely dressed and sober, doing teaming work. He promised
never to drink and to support the family.
A letter written by the United Charities June 16, 1914, states “We have
found her this spring in a peculiar mental condition due, we think, to
sheer discouragement and a feeling of having been defeated in life. All
of her home furnishings are dilapidated and of long usage, because of
her inability to replace them. She has been a woman who always took a
peculiar delight in her home and longed to have it furnished daintily so
that it did not compare so poorly with the homes where she has worked.
We feel now that if we might help her replenish her linen and some of
her household supplies we might be able to tide over their period of
discouragement and help her to feel that life was again worth
living....”
August 19, 1914, Mrs. Meyer and Mary in office. [Mary very well dressed
and living in her own apartment.] Mary says she has been helping her
mother continually with food and clothing. Her husband makes $19 a week
but she has to pay $17 rent and $5 a week for her furniture. She also
has to save money because she is now several months pregnant. Her
husband wishes her to have a doctor. She is planning to have a midwife
because it is cheaper. Advised her not do this.... During a period of
unemployment for her husband she refused to seek aid at her mother’s
suggestion as she felt too proud....
November 13, 1915. Tillie still earns $4.00 a week.... Must buy new
dress [refuses to wear dresses given by charity as being
old-fashioned—same as Mary]. For lack of satisfactory dress she has not
gone to church for 3 weeks. Mrs. Meyer fears she will slip away from
church unless allowed clothes she wants. Her [Mrs. Meyer’s] ideas become
more and more erratic. She said she wishes she were dead, had only
trouble.
For the past year the church [Irish, not Polish, for the latter always
demanded money instead of giving assistance] has had a decided influence
over Mrs. Meyer. Her children attend the parochial school and the priest
has taken a very active interest in their welfare.... The family lives
in a less congested district and although Mrs. Meyer is still very
nervous and frequently complains, the whole complexion of the family has
changed. She is very interested in a mothers’ cooking class started last
winter ... and is also being taught to write by her 12–year-old son....
If the man remains in Kankakee and the children keep well we feel sure
the family will eventually become self-supporting. It is surely the
highest point as far as the standard of living is concerned.... The
present system of County relief cannot but have a debasing effect upon
the family, particularly upon the children, who frequently must
accompany the mother in order to bring home the dole of inadequate
rations.... Mary is a good housewife and a sensible mother. She is
contented and happy and her ideals are considerably higher, due directly
to her husband.[93]
In this case the social agency, the charity organization, takes the part
formerly played by the large family (kinship group) and the community.
The man in the case, the cause of the disorganization, is treated as
insane. Pretty certainly he would not have been insane in Europe, in his
original community. He would have been difficult, but the pressure of
the large family and the community would have kept him within certain
bounds. His violent behavior is also due in part to the fact that his
wife does not behave as a member of a community or family. She resorts
to American institutions, hales him into court and lands him in jail.
She must do this because she has no family and community back of her,
but she breaks the family solidarity. This and the fact that she
practices American freedom in associating with another man and receiving
presents from him make him “insane.” The wife in the European community
would not have taken such liberties; community gossip would have
restrained her.
On the other hand the woman never lost her ideal of a home, and the
coöperation of the charity organization enabled her to endure. The
removal of the man was a positive benefit. Further, the Irish Catholic
Church came into the case at a certain point and played the part of a
religious community. Its intervention gave aid, status, and recognition,
particularly to the girls. (The Polish Catholic Church in America always
exacts payment, and in general Polish organizations here interest
themselves only in those members who are worth while; the derelicts it
leaves to American institutions.)
Another saving element in the situation is that Mary was treated as a
member of a family, not as a transgressor against the State. She stole
repeatedly and forged checks, but she was never taken into court for it.
It was fortunately “overlooked”, as parents overlook such defections.
Mary was not betrayed sexually; she did not seem to be so disposed.
Perhaps she was lucky in this. Certainly she was fortunate in her
marriage, and through it became stabilized and an element of strength in
the larger family. Her sister Tillie has a better chance than Mary had.
But at the same time a review of the whole case leaves the feeling that
Mary’s future was never secure from the date of her birth to the date of
her marriage. There were not sufficient formative influences to assure a
social organization of her wishes.
The efforts of the federal government during the war to control the
behavior of girls who were either wild already or went wild during the
excitement resulted in many cases in the attempt to stabilize the girl
by improvising good family and community influences for her. The work
was in charge of the Girls’ Protective Bureau. The methods used were in
the main similar to those of a juvenile court. Families of good standing
made it a part of patriotism to take girls into their homes and made
extraordinary efforts to influence them. The workers of the Bureau acted
both as parents and as community. The result was often very good. Where
the girl was not bad but had, for example, run away from a country home
to see a boy from her neighborhood, she was eventually returned home
without demoralization. But the records show in general that the
influence of an extemporized family and community is not usually
sufficient to give a new scheme of life to a difficult girl. She does
not belong really to the new family and community, as in the case of the
girl born there. She is placed under discipline. She is not a daughter
of the family, to be married like a daughter of a family. She has not a
life-long train of memories, making her a part of the situation. She
usually appreciates her new security for a time, but presently the
desire for new experience, recognition and response return and if
possible she runs away. Case No. 84 is typical of the result when a girl
of bad habits is placed with a family of good standing which is
sentimental about her, patronizes her, treats her half as servant, half
as family-member, excludes her as far as possible from the world and
exhorts her. On the other hand this girl was not very bad. She needed
simply a situation in which she could live, with some response and
recognition.
84. Marie Morse, age 16, who first came to our notice on June 15th when
one of our protective officers found her at 11 P.M. in front of the
Northwestern Station in the company of two sailors.
Marie had then been living with her father for three weeks. It was found
that he, in his effort to be what he considered good to her, had given
her her own way until she did nothing but “run the streets” from morning
until late at night and quite refused to obey him....
Marie claims that her mother “picked up with men” in Riverview, so she
could do likewise. The mother does not deny having once spoken to a man
she did not know, but explains it by saying that Marie was teasing for a
ride in Forest Park and she could not afford to give it to her, so a
gentleman volunteered to give them both two rides. Marie stated that her
mother had a colored woman living with them, and that she (Marie) was
forced to sleep with this colored woman. The mother does not deny this,
but said that her church teaches her that color makes no difference, and
that Marie only slept once with this woman, and that was when Marie
chose to do so....
Visited Mr. Morse. He showed visitor every corner of their rooms, which
were in good order and clean. He does all the work of the home. Marie
refuses to do anything, even very personal things. Mr. Morse’s young
married niece (aged 26) came in to cook his Sunday dinner for him. She
stated, when Mr. Morse left the room, that Marie had absolutely no moral
standard at all and when she and other relatives would advise her, she
would say “That’s nothing—mother does it.” She states that Marie has
told them absolutely dreadful things and thinks nothing of it; thinks it
is all right to “pick up” with and go with any man....
Found a place for Marie with Mrs. R. M. Harriman, Winnetka. Marie will
care for two children, under three years of age, will receive $3.00 a
week, room and board. She will have her own bathroom and very pleasant
surroundings. Mrs. Harriman is a woman of quality who will be able to
give Marie personal and home standards.
Mr. Harriman ’phoned. Wants to know a little about Marie, as they
already like her but she seems so lonesome; wanted to go to movie and
they told her that there were none out there. Marie asked to let her
“beau”, a chauffeur, know where she is and Mr. Harriman told her that
his daughter of seventeen is not yet old enough to entertain, so he
surely would not let Marie have men call on her. Marie said she was a
Roman Catholic, and as the Catholic Church is but three blocks from the
house, he told Marie he expected her to go every Sunday. There is a
splendid girl working next door and he had Marie meet her, as he knows
she will not let Marie do anything she should not do. Mrs. Harriman will
be very glad to see visitor if she will ’phone first. Mrs. Harriman took
Marie out on Monday and bought her some good sensible clothes.
Marie goes to church with Julia, the Catholic maid next door. They often
spend the evenings in one another’s yards. This is Marie’s only friend
and Mrs. Harriman states that she is often quite lonesome. They are
interesting her in books and she has nearly finished one. They felt this
would keep her mind off her old friends. Mrs. Harriman states that she
often keeps her busy unnecessarily “rubbing up the silver or dusting
books” just so she won’t become so lonesome and sit looking off into
space as she did do much during her first week there.
Mrs. Harriman states that her duties are not heavy. All the washing,
including Marie’s, is sent to the laundry and Mrs. Harriman uses the
vacuum cleaner herself on the rugs once a week. When Marie was told to
put her laundry in, it was found that she had none—wore no underwear but
skirt and corset cover. They were too large, so Mrs. Harriman showed
Marie how to fix them and let her do this evenings. Mrs. Harriman told
how Marie’s eyes beamed when she heard Mr. Harriman talk of a drive they
had to Great Lakes, and later in the evening she asked Mrs. Harriman
about it.
Marie wanted to bring a chauffeur friend up to the house, but they
forbade it telling her she was too young to have company. Mrs. Harriman
feels that when her daughter returns from her summer visit with
relatives and Marie sees how she is expected to do, Marie will be better
satisfied with the program they have mapped out for her....
Mrs. Harriman took visitor in the house to talk with Marie. The girl
certainly looks well. She is somewhat stouter and tanned and her cheeks
are rosy. She has improved immensely—looks well kept, neat, clean and
happy. She showed visitor her room and bath, which are very nice, bright
and sunny, well ventilated, clean, and the furniture and carpet were
good pieces and in good condition. She stated that Mrs. Harriman was
going to put nice curtains and pictures up for her. Marie said that
Julia, the girl next door, did not have nearly so nice or large a room
and no bath at all. She showed visitor the dresses she was given and
said the yellow one which she wears on Sunday “looks fine when it is
fresh.” Marie expects to finish reading “Pollyanna” tonight, and Mr.
Harriman already has another book for her. She liked “Pollyanna” very
much. Mr. Harriman also told her there were books of travel there which
would teach her as much as if she went three years longer to school, and
Marie seems anxious to begin reading them....
August 12, went to Winnetka. Mrs. Harriman says they sent Marie to the
Kings’ to ride to Lake Geneva. Mrs. Harriman explained that there are
times when friends go on trips with them and when they cannot therefore
take Marie as they do not have room enough.
Started out with Marie. We walked down to the bank. On the way Marie
stated that she had now worked three weeks and that she had no money
except the $1.25 balance paid by Mrs. Johnson this morning and 30 cents.
Expressed surprise that she had not at least $5.00 saved. Told her we
would deposit this $1.00 in the bank, that hereafter she would deposit
$2.00 each week and buy one thrift stamp, and the remaining 75 cents was
more than enough to spend. Visitor signed bank slip so that Marie cannot
draw without visitor’s signature. Marie was going to buy thrift stamp
and visitor explained that she could wait for that until next week as we
were going to the doctor down in Chicago and she would need lunch money.
Explained also that she should not expect the Harrimans to continue to
give her carfare and R. R. fare, etc., that while they did so through
kindness, they were under no obligation to do so.... Told her she was no
longer a child now and must mold her own character and plan for her
future, to support herself, to buy her own clothing, to save something
for times of illness or possible accident.
Reached Chicago. Went to Childs for luncheon. Gave Marie bill of fare
and advised her to choose good, plain, nutritious food according to what
she could afford to spend. She chose well, her luncheon costing her 30
cents. When visitor ordered her own dessert, she ordered ice cream for
Marie and paid for same. Marie while on the street passed two Catholic
Sisters and remarked to visitor that they were from St. Patrick’s, where
she went to school when living with her mother....
At County Building and explained case. After examination, Dr. Stanton
stated that it is not possible to know if Marie has had improper
relations recently on account of [seduction seven years ago]. She
questioned Marie very closely and Marie stated that all the sailors and
soldiers had asked her to have intercourse with them, but that she
positively had not done it.
Took Marie to the Northwestern Station. While going over, Marie said, “I
wish I could see my friends.” Told her we had her up there to get her
away from the seemingly bad company she had been in; that she was not to
come to Chicago except with visitor and never, even with her father, to
be out of Mrs. Harriman’s house after 11:30; that she was no longer a
child and just must make up her mind to obey the plans of the G.P.B., or
it would make it very hard for herself; that she was old enough now to
substitute other forms of recreation for the kind she had been indulging
in. She could read, write, sew, or rest after her work. Told her visitor
would probably call once each month....
Mr. Harriman in office. Saturday Mrs. Harriman gave Marie a pair of
shoes. Monday morning, August 19th, she paid her. Marie cleared her
room, etc., and at one o’clock told Mrs. Harriman she was going to the
bank. Mrs. Harriman told her she was much pleased. Marie left and has
not been seen or heard of since.
Mr. Harriman ’phoned. Said Marie told maid next door some time last week
that when things had quieted down a little she was going back to her
mother, or to her father’s relatives, in Hammond. [Marie went to her
mother, but both disappeared and were never located.][94]
In the following case of far-going demoralization the influences are
also improvised. The girl’s mother was bad and taught her to be bad. An
interesting feature in the document is the complete transformation of
the girl under the influence of the physician. She had been dirty and
disorderly and became clean, orderly, and interested in work. It
frequently happens that some particular influence, perhaps the effect of
another personality, defines the situation to the demoralized girl,
brings a conversion, and she begins to reorganize her life
spontaneously. But in this case the life of the girl was so totally
unorganized that it is impossible to regard this transformation as
anything more than a phase of security between two periods of new
experience. Quiescent and orderly periods are in fact the rule in such
cases and social workers learn to estimate the length of their duration.
The physician himself does not hope that any permanent change of
character has been effected. We may suspect also that Helen is mentally
inferior, of the moron type, but even so we must speculate as to her
character if she had been situated from the beginning like little
Calline in document No. 36. A clean and protected moron is not far from
corresponding to the ideal woman of the Victorian age.
85. June 12, 1918. Helen Langley. Age 19. Very childlike in appearance
and this impression is exaggerated by her yellow bobbed hair, short
skirts, etc. Although she has been observed continually in places and
always with men, in scarcely any case has the same sailor or civilian
been seen with her more than two or three times. She has no fear of the
Protective Officers, with whom she is always free in her attitude—runs
to greet them, offers them candy, etc. It has been impossible to have
any serious conversation with her, as she is irresponsible and heedless.
Visited her brother Mr. Edward Hunt and his wife. They stated that Helen
was born at North Chicago, September 17th, 1899. She was irregular in
her attendance at school, did not pass the 4th grade and stopped going
altogether when she was 12 or 13 years old. She has never been known to
read a book or magazine, not even the “funny” page in the paper, and the
brother believes she is unable to write anything beyond her signature.
Although the family were known as Swedish Lutheran, Helen had no
religious training and did not attend church or Sunday School. According
to the brother she was depraved from the time she was 12 years old when
she began to “go crazy over the boys”, to attend dance halls and to go
out on motor trips with unknown men. When 14 years old she was attacked
by a neighbor in a field near her home and since that time her life has
been a series of immoral relations with sailors and civilians. Edward
Hunt believes these tendencies are inherited from his mother, who gave
birth to an illegitimate child before her marriage and whose immorality
afterwards broke up the family repeatedly and turned his father into a
drunkard and an idler.... From the time Helen was a child her mother
encouraged her in every sort of immorality and helped her in deceiving
her father or boldly defying him. Mrs. Edward Nelson stated that Helen
to her knowledge has brought on several abortions with the assistance of
her mother....
On March 23rd, after a three weeks’ acquaintance, Helen married George
Langley, a sailor rated as a first class fireman.... She was four months
pregnant at the time. She told her relatives and friends that she was
marrying Langley in order to secure the allotment and insurance. She and
her husband lived for three weeks with Mr. and Mrs. Ed. Hunt and then
took a room with Mrs. De Lacey, 147 Sheridan Road. Shortly after her
marriage Helen appealed to the Red Cross and was given $14.00 to pay her
rent. This money she spent for a pink sweater and a silk skirt....
Visited Mrs. Anna Langley. Talked with her and her son, Bill. The whole
family has been crushed over George’s marriage. Their chief concern
seems to be the allotment and insurance, which George transferred from
his mother to Helen. They want, if possible, to prevent her from
receiving the first payment, which is due July 1st. On one occasion
Helen tried to represent herself at the Post Office as Mrs. Anna Langley
in order to secure the allotment. George Langley is under treatment at
the Naval Station for disease contracted from his wife. For this reason
and because of her continued loose behavior he is trying to secure a
divorce before he is sent to sea early in July. Mrs. Langley and her son
stated that Helen has been brought before the police several times to
their knowledge and spent one night in the County Jail last January.
Bill is willing to make a sworn statement giving the names of two
Waukegan men who have admitted to him they have contracted disease from
Helen....
Visited Chaplain Moore. He sent for George Langley, who stated that he
had been in love with Helen from the moment he saw her, and had begged
her repeatedly to marry him, which she refused to do although she was
having immoral relations with him. Langley knew that she was diseased
and was going about with other men, but felt certain that she would
behave if she married him. He has tried to live with her, but she was
lazy, dirty and disorderly, went out every night with other men,
returning at two or three in the morning. He stated that Mr. Hart, with
whom they lived in North Chicago, is willing to testify that she brought
sailors to her room many times in the absence of her husband....
Telephoned Miss Judson, Superintendent of the Lake Bluff Orphanage. She
stated that a baby boy, about one week old, was found in the woods by
some school children on October 27th, 1916, and brought to the
Orphanage. The child was tagged “Baby Langley” and was in a most
advanced stage of syphilis. It was attended by Dr. Brown, city
physician. Miss Judson took all the care of the baby herself, as it
required constant attention and was so diseased that she would not
endanger the nurses. The baby died on January 1st, 1917.
Visited Helen. She told about the birth of her baby in October, 1916,
and of how she disposed of it in the Lake Forest woods. She stated that
she has never worked regularly, but has had several factory positions
and has done housework for Mrs. Watrous of Waukegan, Mrs. Gerley of
Waukegan and for Mrs. Christianson of North Chicago. She stated that she
has succeeded eight or ten times in bringing about miscarriage with the
use of an instrument which was bought by her mother at Pearce’s Drug
Store and which her sister-in-law taught her to use....
Observed Helen at the circus in company with a sailor. She went
afterwards to an ice cream parlor and a chop suey restaurant, was
followed to North Chicago and was observed in the woods at midnight.
Consulted Judge Pearsons of the County and Juvenile Courts and Assistant
States Attorney Welch. They agreed that it was imperative to detain
Helen at once and decided that an arrest should be made on a charge of
disorderly conduct. The examination will be made immediately so that she
can be placed under medical treatment for the three weeks awaiting her
trial. In the meantime her age can be verified and a decision made as to
whether she will be tried on the grounds of feeble-mindedness or
delinquency....
Interviewed Mr. Hart, with whom Helen had rooms with her husband for
about two months. Mr. Hart says Helen is a “worthless character”; says
he is “in wrong” with the neighbors for having her there. Showed me room
and bath occupied by Helen. Both rooms contained a lot of dirty clothes.
He said she had not washed while she was there. Trunk filled with
rumpled clothes, stained and soiled rags, etc., bedding which was new
when she came, was soiled and filthy.
Visited County Jail. Asked to see Helen. Was told by Mr. Griffin, the
Sheriff, that Helen was removed by Dr. Brown, County Physician, on June
21. Mr. Griffin said that Helen is not in the County Hospital. He would
make no further statement and advised that we go to Dr. Brown for
information.
Interviewed Dr. Brown in his office. He offered to accompany visitor to
place in which Helen is kept on condition that the address shall not be
made known to any one in Waukegan. He said that he expected Helen to be
cured and in condition to be discharged in a very short time as several
slides according to his own analysis have proved negative....
Drove with Dr. Brown to County Hospital. Helen is under care in one of
the tuberculosis cottages. The tuberculosis nurse, Miss Gean Crawford,
was willing to assume the care on condition that Helen’s disease should
not be known to the other nurses. Helen has gained several pounds and
looks like a new person, is content and happy, sleeps most of the day
and said she feels rested for the first time for years. She takes all
the care of her own cottage, has become very tidy in her habits, enjoys
washing her dishes, etc., and keeping things in order. Helen said that
her plan when she is discharged is to find a good place where she can do
housework. She intends to have nothing further to do with men,
particularly sailors. She loves to do sewing and handwork and showed the
most astonishing amount of embroidery which she has done for one of the
nurses. She asked for news of her family and said that she has begged to
see her mother, but the Doctor and nurse have convinced her that it is
best to have no visitors. She is out of doors most of the day, but sees
nothing of the other patients.
Helen is now employed in the kitchen at the County Hospital, lives in
the servants’ quarters and is to be paid $25.00 a month. She has proved
so quick, willing and efficient that Dr. Brown would like to employ her
permanently, but he realizes that it will be impossible to hold her
after she knows that she is well. He would like to keep her at least
through August, as she is a great help with the canning. As long as she
continues to be content he will not send the final specimen to the State
Laboratory.
Visited Dr. Brown. He refused absolutely to permit Helen to be visited
by any of the Protective Workers. Said she is doing excellent work, is
very content, and begs to remain at the hospital. Although Dr. Brown is
unwilling to undertake the responsibility of Court parole, he would like
to retain her as a permanent employee, on condition that there is no
interference from the Protective Bureau or the courts.
After talking over the matter with the State’s Attorney and Dr. G. G.
Taylor of the State Board of Health, it was decided that no better plan
can be made for Helen than to allow her to remain in the hospital with
the hope that Dr. Brown will change his policy as to visits from the
Protective Bureau.[95]
The penitentiary and reformatory, to which offenders are condemned by
courts of law, have, as is well known, never been generally successful
in reorganizing the attitudes of their inmates on a social basis. They
represent the legal concept of crime and punishment and the theological
concept of sin and atonement. Where society is not able to organize the
wishes of one of its members in a social way it may exterminate him or
banish him to a society of the bad, which corresponds to the theological
purgatory from which there is a chance to return to a society of the
good. The punishment is supposed to atone for the offense and effect the
reformation.
The following case was handled by a particularly well equipped
reformatory for girls above the juvenile court age. Its staff at the
time was large and scientifically trained. It was probably more
completely equipped for the psychological study of its inmates than any
other institution whatever, and its records are more complete than any I
have seen elsewhere. But an institution dealing with a large number of
girls sentenced by the law courts, many of them hardened and rebellious,
has quite as much as it can do barely to maintain order. The situation
is the same as in the penitentiaries for men. The present case is not
typical; the girl is far from being as demoralized as the average girl
in the same institution. I cite it here to indicate what are the
attitudes of a girl in this situation, how accessible a girl may be to
influences and how unprepared an institution of this type is to employ
any organizing influences.
Esther had no previous bad record. She may or may not have had some sex
experiences; that is not unusual with girls of this class. It was not
shown that she was sexually diseased. Probably she was not but was
frightened into thinking so by a doctor who wanted $100.00. Her offense
was slight and casual. It might have been passed over with a reprimand,
or, as in the juvenile court, with a period of probation; but she was
nineteen—above the juvenile court age. The institution recognized, in
the statement given first below, that it would not be for her welfare to
hold her there, and placed her out on parole.
86. Statement from the Laboratory of Bedford Hills Reformatory for
Women:
Esther Lorenz was committed to the institution March 23, 1914, from
Special Sessions, N. Y.
Offense: Petit Larceny. She was born in Prag, Bohemia, and educated in
Bohemian and German. She has a father and sister living in the old
country and an aunt in New Jersey to whom she came three years and a
half ago. This aunt and her family are poor and very foreign and
unprogressive. Esther worked for them faithfully and gained little
knowledge of English or training of any sort while with them. She left
them several times and took positions as waitress in private families,
still helping them out from her meager earnings. Her last position was
as waitress in a small restaurant in New York where she met Lilian Marx.
She had been there eight months when the restaurant went out of business
and the girls were thrown out of work.
It was soon after this that the girls stole from Macy’s store several
articles, two pairs of 59–cent stockings, a belt and some cheap manicure
articles, apparently on the impulse of the moment, because they saw
another girl doing it so easily. In jail they were warned by the other
girls not to tell the truth about anything and they were too frightened
to think what to tell. Esther’s story was in the main true, but Lilian
made up in obedience to the other girl’s suggestion a conflicting tale.
The probation officer felt that she was not getting the truth, and as
the two girls were so young and so without protection, she advised their
commitment to the institution in order that the institution might
investigate their case more thoroughly.
Investigation in the case of Esther revealed nothing further against the
girl than the one offense for which she was arrested. We have found her
to be intelligent, conscientious, and, far beyond other girls, sensitive
to fine distinctions of right and wrong. It was the opinion of the
Laboratory that she might get more harm from association with the girls
than good from a long term in the Reformatory and that it would be well
to parole her as soon as she had had some training and a suitable
position was in view....
She will not write to her aunt because ... the aunt said she did not
know any such girl. Will not write to her father because she does not
want him to know anything about the matter. She had heard that we
sometimes send girls back to their own country, and she would be glad to
go except that she would have to make some excuse to her father for
being sent back. When I asked her if she would tell him the truth she
said: “Tell him that I was sent home for stealing a pair of stockings?”
It seems to strike her as quite ridiculous.
[The following letters (except the last) were written by Esther to her
friend Lilian and show her general attitudes. The letters were written
mainly in Bohemian during the seven months she was on parole, and were
translated for the institution by a Bohemian woman whose rendering is
similar to the few letters written in English by Esther. I have adapted
the translations only slightly. About half the letters are printed
here.]
October 1, 1914. My dearest Friend: I received your letter with which I
was very happy. I am glad to hear that you have a nice place. Dear
friend, I apologize not to answer you right away. I have lots of work. I
have two people and little baby girl. I have so much work; I haven’t got
even time to wash my face.... In the morning I get up at 5 o’clock and I
wash porch, then I make breakfast. I had eight to the table and I was
the 9th one, so you can immagine what work I had. So then I had to wash
dishes, then wash diapers for the baby. I got to clean two ducks and I
got to make eight beds as whole first floor and I had to set the table
and cooking all alone. No one helps me and everything got to be ready 1
o’clock, so you can imagine how I was dancing in the kitchen. That’s the
way it goes, every night I go upstairs half past ten or eleven. When I
come up I’m like dead; soon as I lay down I sleep. So imagine how I look
worse every day. I have $14 month and she promises me more next
month—that what she says. I like to know if I see them [money]. She is
very snike [snake?]—every evening when she goes to bed she take me
around the neck and kiss me but who knows for what she do that. I work
very hard, Dear sweetheart, you ask me to come to see you but how can I
do that; I haven’t got no shoes and no money, I am very poor. If you can
you come over on Saturday evening and sleep with me. I got big bed. On
Sunday we can look for [an Italian friend, not a bad character] and we
go in a place where we can have a good time and lots of kissing. We
going to look for some nice man but something better, not only working
man; we shouldn’t have to go to work. I am angry with my aunt, she don’t
want to take my lawyer, so they may go on my back [“take the air”] I
take him myself when I have that money, don’t you think. She told on me
that I have different name and that I am Catholic not a Jew, so now Miss
R. will be angry with me that I told her lies but she and Miss T. and
all the rest may go on my back. I don’t worry now they know. How we
fool, them. Innocent. Friend, aint they fools, aint they fools! She
[probation officer] is a good girl. Sunday School. [Term applied
derisively by the girls of the officials, the institution and of
themselves.] My dearest Friend, I wrote to T. and the letter come back.
He isn’t there any more and may be he is in Phila. Wouldn’t be that nice
if he knows we are paroled; he be happy, don’t you think so? Dear
Friend, all the time I couldn’t come to see you before I have new shoes;
and then we go to dance together; they would not know where we were
going. If you can, come over. This is such a little country—one house
half an hour from the next. Every night when I go to bed I am thinking
how I used to have and how I have it now, but when my relatives wouldn’t
help me out, God knows what he got to do. Your lady ask you how I like
my place, so say I couldn’t have any better place. My nose is always
bleeding; I dont know what to do. My lady told me she send for doctor
but I don’t want any. So, dear Friend, dont be mad at me I didn’t answer
right away. For that I wrote you such a letter that is worth something.
And write, Esther. And sleep sweet. And sweet dreams. Love to you from
your dear friend.
My dearest Friend: ... I see that you didn’t forget me. True friend.
When you want me to answer you always right away, every letter, just the
same I expect from you that you should answer my letter like a true
friend. Don’t you think I have a right? Friend, dear, what I’m going
anyway to do if I have to suffer always so much with my sickness? I
suffer so much, you know. Dear girlie, nobody wouldn’t lend you any
money. I was asking people and they promised me and later they say again
that they havn’t got money themselves. So you see how it is, how the
people are false.
Doctor told me that if I let go that further that I wouldn’t have never
any children, and you know when we get married we would like to have
children, but where I should take $100 when I haven’t got them and for
the trial too they ask $100, so answer me if I haven’t got [am not]
right. I like to help us out but what can I do without any money. I
wrote to the lawyer if he can make trial for you and he answer me that
he like to talk to me about—he couldn’t make any answer—he said that he
wrote letter to Bedford, that they should let us free, that we was
working hard enough, that we are long enough in places, and so Miss T.
wrote me that I should wait and Miss R. wrote me a letter too, that’s
going to be everything all right, and my lady she received a letter from
Miss R. that she come to see me next month and I think that I be free.
The lawyer wrote letter to him and they are afraid from him, ha, ha.
[frightened into this, course]. The lawyer spoke to Judge and Judge he
said that we never be free, so lawyer he wrote to me that soon as
possible I should come to N. Y., and I should tell him why we want the
trial and I tell him that we’re not guilty, that we does that from
foolishness [thoughtlessness] and we was nervous, and going to tell that
we were invited to the wedding and so that happened; that we was like
out of mind, that we didn’t realize what we were doing. Don’t say that
we are guilty, otherwise we wouldn’t come out and that would be a shame.
We be put in a newspaper when our trial come on and we shouldn’t say
“guilty”, but if you wouldn’t listen to me, say anything you like. Still
I beg on you don’t say on me. If they ask you, say that you don’t know.
Do you understand me? Listen Friend, make yourself stuck up [act proud].
Don’t act like a baby—that way you never come out. What should I do next
week; I am supposed to come to N. Y. and I havn’t got fare for train;
that cost $8. I come there and like to see you but I wouldn’t have much
time. The lawyer he going to keep me about one hour and about 4 o’clock
I’m through with my work and then till I get to the station and then
take two hours till I get to N. Y. and that be about 7; and I want to be
back about ten if be possible. I don’t want my lady she should catch on
for she never would let me go there. Don’t say anything to your lady
that I come to N. Y. because you’re be such a one you never can keep
quiet, do you understand me? I’m sometimes so angry at you that I would
tear you to pieces cause you never keep your mouth shut. You got too big
mouth. I think when you got a sweetheart that your big enough to have
more sense. Once in a while you have not got your sense.... Sometimes I
have a right to tell you that, so don’t be angry on me and write me
right away, and tell you head you should have a good time, but not yet.
Wouldn’t you be glad to see me. Its six months since we didn’t see one
the other. Maybe we wouldn’t know one the other. I let you know when I
come.
November, 1914. Dear Friend: I received your letter and I was very glad
to hear from you. I am glad that you don’t forget me. I will forgive you
this time, but don’t do that again. I going to lose my patience. You
know what that means. I don’t have to wait very long for a letter. Dear
friend, I am going to moving pictures every Wednesday and every time
when I going out I see the nice young mens. How they love them, the
girls, and we can’t help that. I met one nice man and he want to go with
me for a good time but I realize maybe he some kind of detective, so I
told him. “What do you want, I can’t understand you.” “Oh, you know what
I mean,” [he said]. I told him, “You big slob, you leave me alone,” and
he left me. He was very nice, and he was a blond. That was a joke. Dear
friend, if you could come with me to moving pictures, there we would
meet nice mens. Wouldn’t that be nice? I have my hands so hard like a
man from hard work, so you can immagine how hard I am working. So the
rest of it I am going to write to you next time. I am writing for a call
for a lawyer and he get one too. My uncle he pay the lawyer so that
going to be for sure.
With such a Italians [as T.] we wouldn’t go any more. The lawyer want us
to have a witness and I told him we had [the Italian] and now I must
tell him we havn’t got any. That’s going to be hard again. I wrote to
the Frenchmans and the letter comes back. What can I do and I got to
give an answer to the lawyer right away. Good-by. Lots of kisses. Your
friend.
Dear Friend: Forgive me that I didn’t answer your right away. Dear
Friend I have such a cranky lady. If I stay here another two months with
her I think I go crazy. I was very sick the other Sunday. We had 8
people and so you can immagine what work I had. Only if you would see me
you would get frightened how I look; I am only bone and skin and pale in
face. You would say that I go by and by in grave. Everybody ask me
what’s matter with me but you know I can’t tell everybody I come from
Bedford. You know when I had these 8 people to table and I have to wait
on table and after they was through I get such a cramp like I had in the
Tombs. My lady she was so mad at me that I leave the dishes and I went
to lay down. Friend you wouldn’t know what it is when we have our home
again. When anything hurts you we can get help—but this way we are like
dogs—don’t you think I’m right? If you can only see this and how I worry
about both of us how we should come free. Friend, I didn’t understand
your letter. You want I should write to Miss R. or you do it?
Friend, dear, I am sending you a letter. Be so kind—send it from
Brooklyn or New York. You know he [doctor] ask me where I live, so I
told him I am a dressmaker from Newark but when the letter going to be
sent from Brooklyn or New York, but don’t let you lady see that because
that doctor is only for bad sickness [venereal], only for women which
are sick from men; otherwise you bring me in a trouble more than I am.
He’s known all over. So soon as you get the letter, mail it right away.
Don’t let the letter lay no place they shouldnt see it. If my lady
should know this, so I know its only your fault. My lady told me that
you show every letter you get from me to your people and they write one
another, so if you be true to me you do what I ask you. He’s the doctor
what going to cure me. Dear Friend forgive me that I write such a short
letter. I’m very tired. Answer right away will you and then I write to
you one long letter and I come to see you soon as possible. With
happiness and kisses from your true friend. Esther.
[Note by parole officer: When Esther was asked to translate the original
of the foregoing letter ... she omitted the sentence with the word
“doctor” in it.... When she had finished the letter I asked her if she
had not omitted a sentence, pointing out. She read it again and said:
“Oh, yes, he is the doctor what’s going to make me well, that is, my
head well.” I reminded her that she had previously said he was the
doctor she was keeping company with and also a doctor for women’s
sickness. She was evidently quite confused but insisted that she meant
all women’s sickness, and that he treated women only, not men.]
Dearest Friend: I am letting you know I received your letter. I was very
happy with it. Dear Friend I write to T. where is the lawyer. He went
there and told him that he met us on the street, so see how T. is false;
so lawyer ask my uncle where did we pick up the two boys, so uncle ask
me how is it with the boys—where we met them, so I have trouble yet
again.... When T. come to you so you tell him that he meets us on the
street but we are not street girls; give him good but tell him we are
innocent. Ha, ha, Dear M., Miss R. was here yesterday and ask me about
trial, I didn’t know what to say, she had so much to say [knew so much
that Esther was surprised]. Friend why did you tell your lady that we
going to have trial. I didn’t tell mine nothing. You’ve got to say
everything out before there’s any start. You know she going to let it
out to Bedford. Miss R. told me your lady wrote to Bedford—that she
write there every month, so realize how stupid you are. Excuse me that I
scold you like that but I can’t help. I am very excited and angry that
you must tell everything you know. I asked Miss R. if I can go and see
you and she told me “no.” So I ask her if you can come see me and she
told me she ask your lady if she let you go. I told Miss R. that I am
willing to give you money for train if you havn’t got it. You should
come to see me soon as possible and then we going to talk over....
December 1914. Dear Friend: I must say that I like it here, because Miss
R. asked me if I like it here. If not she will give me another place,
but I would lose my good references and that would make it very bad, as
they might say I do not know how to work—or then I could perhaps not
come out in the trial.
Tell me what to do. The lawyer always wants money, and I have none now.
My uncle gave me some or told him he would give him later, but you know
my uncle promised to give it to him right away, if he himself had money,
but he poor fellow is in debt yet on account of his business that he
had.... I cry every day and pray to God he should help me.
I also went with one young fellow to have a good time and earned $2 and
what is that? For that I bought stockings and what I needed and the $2.
were gone. I am now the same as you are, everything tires me. I would
rather not see myself.
Let me know my dear what I must buy for you for Christmas or else I
might buy something what you do not like.
[Note by parole officer: Esther herself translated this ... passage as
follows: “I was in town for a good time and I see the young man with the
$2.” She then explained: “I don’t mean that as it sounds; it means that
before in New York I met a young man when I was getting off the car. I
lost the heel from my shoe and slipped and this young man picked me up
and gave me $2. which I dropped out of my pocket-book.” Then translates:
“I was in town and I spent $2. for stockings and other things which I
needed.” Explained: “I havn’t meant that I got $2. from the man the way
you have taken it up.”]
My dearest friend: I received your letter with happiness. I read letter
about five times and I going to read it again. I laugh so much. You
wrote, I were only fooling them. Ha, dear I think you know me already,
how I know to fix things up. I want to make them jealous, Ha, ha. I go
to laugh so much, so much. If you want to marry one of the officers, you
know what they are, they are ever the other [army] men. They can’t marry
only a poor girl. If they want to marry they got to have a girl with
lots of money 20,000 Kronen, and they got to put the money down for
guarantee. If happens something to your sweetheart officer, then you get
the money back. Do you understand me, Sunday School? But dear we havn’t
got the mens yet, we have to wait for them. If we going to get mens like
that, cause we not rich. What your boys says? Did you give them the
letter to read. Ha. ha we fooled them. All right, my sweetheart, we
going to go always together. You have a right just scold him enough,
Italian T. Such a Italians! He didn’t have to say that he meet us on the
street. Listen friend, if my uncle ask you if that T. is my sweetheart,
then tell him the truth. Otherwise he wouldn’t help me out. He could be
very mad. Tell that these are merely some acquaintance. Don’t forget.
Friend come to me, I am not allowed to go to see you. You come over and
we going to have good time together. Here its lots of nice young men.
Listen dear, my lady ask me if I’m going to school and where I’m going
when I go out and I told her that I go to visit girls which I knows from
school, but I’m going to moving pictures and I have three nice young
mens, that’s always so, ha? They said, say kid, how much do you want,
one dollar? Then when he feels like to have something—and want to go
some place, then I tell him $1.00 that is too cheap. I have no time,
maybe next time, so I fool the boys there.
To us usually come one man with eggs. He brings me eggs Wednesday, in
the afternoon and Saturday. Always when he comes we kiss each other, but
he isn’t rich; that’s nothing for us but when you can get a kiss from a
man, its nice, isn’t it? Ha, ha. I have always a good time with him. I
wish you can be here with me, then you see what fun we can have ...
Sunday School.
Dear Friend: Just now I was at the P. O. and I get letter from you, so I
am very happy again. Dear Friend, would you think that T. has a factory?
You think if he is such a rich man he would not write like that. His
handwriting is like when a cat scratches. T. he don’t write to me, so I
don’t write to him either. So I wrote him today and I told him he would
go to see you. Dear, we was in newspapers. My lawyer, he put us in and
[it said] there we was innocent, that we forgot to pay it. Ha, ha, so we
are innocent, don’t you think so. That was nice newspaper. I got to
laugh so much at that. I were laughing so much that I got stomach ache
from it. So T. when he comes to see you, tell him enough and tell him
about cheap watch what you have and pocket-book they say we took.... And
don’t forget to bring me my sweethearts picture and then I am going to
put in—and I am going to show that picture to my lady to make her
jealous. Don’t forget to get receipt from the ring what I put in the
pawn shop. Friend, I want you to pay for the ring. I like you should pay
if you can do it for me. I going to send it to you but your sister
should not know anything about it. Don’t tell her nor my uncle either.
You know what I should get from him. T. is nice, isn’t he? I wrote to
the lawyer and he answered me such a nice letter and he isn’t married
yet; he is only young yet. Maybe I going to make love to him. Ha, ha,
friend, I got new sweetheart again. Ha, that egg man I don’t like him no
more. I don’t kiss him any more because he is only egg man. I want
something better, don’t you think, friend?... I go home to see uncle and
to see the lawyer. I must see him how he looks.
January 1915. My dearest friend: Your letter and present I received. I
was so happy that we are so good friends always. My dear, how do you
like that present what I sent you. You want to know something new. Today
I am twenty years old, my birthday. When you going to have your
birthday, dear,—I have big trouble about your dress; I didn’t know what
to do I should help you out with it. You know that time I put different
name, now I couldn’t remember what kind name I put and after while I
remember I put a name Reich. So they answer I should send first $4.40 so
tomorrow I go to city. So dear I helping you out much as I can.... I
send you receipt from that dress you should believe how much I paid. So
darling right away tomorrow I take $4. from my lady’s pocket bag and
when you send me $4 I going to put them back....
Dear Friend: ... I going to have a trial this month or start of next
month, so don’t say anything about the hat, only about the stockings and
about the belt. You must go through to see that you know how to speak in
the court. Let your sister speak. I don’t want to work for servant
always. That going to cost $125. I have two lawyers; one ask $78, so if
you come out would you pay half of it or don’t you want to be with me on
the trial? So let me know darling, I got to work too, but so much I take
time to write to you. I am always so happy when I get letter from you. I
got to go, for my letters to get them; to us don’t come no
letter-carrier; I got to go on the post-office. I usually go on the
evening and no one think of me and you forgotten me too because you got
fellow and you don’t want me to know something about it. I have one too
in Philadelphia. My lady told me she would not have taken me out from
the Institution but she saw I was innocent; so she took, me. Here is
nice blond man....
Dear Friend: Just today I opened letter which made me very happy. I
always can hardly wait till I can fool them. Dear Friend tell me what I
can do. I just received letter from my lawyer that I have to go to N. Y.
and he send me bill for $100. When I receive that I din’t know where I
am; I thought I faint when I saw the bill. Listen dear tell me where I
can get the money. On 30th I have to have it. They going to start the
trial. My lawyer he told it going to be bad, that we got to say the
truth, but don’t say anything about the pocket-book and the little
things.... But only the money, what I do about it. My uncle said he
hadn’t any and no one to borrow from. I can’t fool any Jew, Ha, ha. I’m
all broke down. I am afraid when the day come when I come between those
young mens [lawyers] how I going to stand there, I wouldn’t have no
money to pay, so I think the day come to take my life. Now answer me
what you going to do. I going to wait for your letter. Address, Franz
Joseph, C. K. o. f. Wein, Kaiser Palace.
Dear Friend: ... I know something new, if you want to do that. I think
you should dress yourself nice and put a veil on your face, nobody
should know you, and go to the store where we took the things—that was
on 2nd February 1914. That was on Thursday and this time is on a
Thursday again and 2nd of February. If I were in your place I would buy
one hat for spring and ask for a receipt and then I would buy two pair
stockings and belt—and I pay you for it and the stockings and the hat
would be yours. And you should keep the receipt and when its our trial
you could show the receipt of your lawyer and your sister and me too and
those receipts it is going to say second of February, second month,
Thursday. That’s the way we going to burn our people. You need hat and I
need 59 cents pair stockings. Soon as you send me the receipts, my lady
she have a machine, so I going to change it from 1915 to 1914, and then
we going to win. We wouldn’t have to be ashamed about it. You know she
didn’t see me when I took the belt, so we can say well we have receipts
for the stockings and maybe they did not see us to take one belt and
hat; and this I going to tell to the lawyer that I thought I paid
already and I put that in my pocket-book and he’s going to think that’s
how it is. Friend, do that and you going to see how we come out. I was
awfully afraid when I received letter from lawyer and he say it would be
very hard with us but I think [the foregoing story] be very good. With
that we come out very nice. I can make another excuse. I can tell that
we bought that [altogether] and when we get the receipts I was so
nervous from those detectives when they catch us that I couldn’t
remember right away what we does with these receipts and I could put the
receipts in my cuff of coat.... And I going to put the tickets in my
cuff in the toilet—you know how we put our handkerchiefs in—and I going
to forget the coat and maybe they going to examine the coat and find the
tickets. We can play then innocent. So think over darling. I would do
that if I only can have a chance to go to N. Y., like you. You get card
from me but its only for fun.
P. S. Was it 4 o’clock in afternoon or 2 o’clock when we were in the
store—Thursday, 2nd Feb., and we locked up at 5 o’clock.
Dear Friend:... I received letters from my sister and they were so
happy; they want me to come home soon as I get that letter. But you know
how can I go. I haven’t got the money and I am not free and I don’t want
to ask them about money and now its the war; they need the money
themselves. My sweetheart is not killed yet, so I going to take him when
I get home. He always asks about me if I’m angry at him. I rather take
him than American; they only want to have girl got to have money. The
poor girl they don’t want her and those which are not rich they are
nothing worth. Don’t you think so friend, I am right? Don’t be angry
friend. Love and kisses.
February, 1915: Dear Friend: Scuse me that I didn’t write so long to
you. I was so nervous and mad that I didn’t know what to do—when I can’t
help you with the money. Friend I have something new to tell you, so now
look out. Tonight lady sent me to P. O. for letters and one letter was
there from Miss R., so you know what I does? I breathed on the letter so
long till I opened it her letter. I get so frightened I didn’t know
where I am or what I am doing. Miss R. writes that if I am not ...
satisfied on parole it would be better to take me back to the
institution.... Please send me the money $4. I took them from my lady so
I should pay your dress. Otherwise I couldn’t pay them right away and
you wouldn’t have your dress, and I had only $1. and when I think on you
so you know what heart I have, and I took the money out and now I’m
ready. When you send them I put them back where they was. You know what
Miss R. have another girl for my lady but she don’t know how to cook and
she is 28. She come from the institution. She was ther 14 months. She be
more satisfied than me. See friend, Miss R. I would give her a kick if I
can—don’t you think angel. So my angel maybe we wouldn’t see one another
any more. Back again to the institution.
... Dear we going to have another girl upstairs with us. If you could
come to us that would be nice and we would enjoy it much better. Last
night I was to school and when I returned home on the train I saw very
nice young fellows. They make lots of fun with me—such nice gentlemen.
They went from some kind of parade and when I went down from the train
they took their hats off and next Wednesday I am going to see them
again. Dear Friend.... I need the money I have only a nickel and that
got to be enough for one week.—so you can imagine how I got to save and
I need new hat—so I would like to buy me a hat for my money. You look
very nice in that hat, Ha, ha. Friend, if we could only help us to run
away to the West. I ask my lady at the school—she comes from California.
She tell me if I have carfare, I should go there. Dear, if we can be
only free then we know how to use the world. I’m not so any more like
what I was in the institution—I’m now such a devil that you wouldn’t
believe it. That man promised to lend me money but if he wouldn’t lend
it I don’t know what I am going to do. I have not got even for the
doctor and you know what it is with me? Friend, I would like to have
picture from my sweetheart, but send me [back] the money, I going to
send you money some other time for him because I only wanted to make my
lady jealous. She thinks we are only so-so. Sunday School. Friend, you
write to T.? I don’t, I don’t care. Wait, I going to fix myself up and I
going to wait for him and then I going to wipe my nose and then I going
away from him. Friend, I am so happy now that we are going to go West.
We are going to take other girls with us. We go like soldiers—hurrah,
hurrah, like soldiers to the war. Friend, if you answer me right away I
going to answer too. When you don’t answer on four letters so I don’t
think you care for me. Goodnight, Sunday School. Let the bed-bugs bite
you? Friend you have fellow in the bed. You go with him to sleep? In the
night when bite me some I kill him so blood runs. Write right away.
... I am crying so much—I have such a hard work. Everything hurts me; I
am all broke down. If I can only come free I wouldn’t mind to have not
even a shirt. I would give everything if we can be free. Friend, if you
only know how I feel bad but don’t say anything to your lady. You know
what Miss R. wrote, that I always ask you to come over. You must told
something to your lady or you wrote something to Miss R. Now I don’t
care any more if no one comes to see me. Forgive me if I write such a
letter. I don’t know what to say—I want to go to bed, its 10 o’clock. I
want you to get the letter right away Monday. Answer me right away what
you think if you want to be with me. If you like your sister better, so
stick to her and I go my way and worry about myself and save my money
for trip to go home and I never will return. I stay with my sweetheart.
When you go there friend, if you give me every month a dollar for your
dress, like a friend. Answer right away.
[March, 1915] ... My lady told me everything be much better next winter.
I going to have a nice warm room. This winter I had awfully cold room. I
went to bed with my cloths. She didn’t give me no blankets, so I sleep
in my clothes and I used to take hot iron with me to warm up the bed, so
bad I have here. Friend, I got to go to school every Wednesday but next
Wednesday I wouldn’t go, I go to the dance. I have white dress under the
black skirt and long coat and she going to think that I go to school. I
leave my skirt and my books in my friends house and I go to the dance,
ha, ha, ha. Come with me ha, ha, I have there lots of nice young boys
and the man who brings me the eggs and lots of other nice young man, so
I going to have nice time. Dear, I went Sunday out and I went to the
girl, her sister have a boarding house there where nice 3 young mans,
and all ask me to go with them to the dance, so I going to have big fun.
I be very glad if you can come with me, but don’t tell on me that I’m
going to the dance. My lady she don’t know anything about it. She think
I am innocent girl, No 1. I am, don’t you think friend? When I think I
have three years, I start to cry, I don’t know what to do. But when I
think of nice mens, I start to jump in the kitchen and singing. [Writes
the song she sings.] Only if you see me you would burst from
laughing.... I ask my garbage man if he can lend me money, he said he
help me with much as he can....
So friend have a good time and maybe on Tuesday I be back to the
institution. This year I get new trial, so don’t worry and don’t cry.
You know we have one God and he see everything. He must punish Miss R.
sometime. She is old enough but she couldn’t get married. Nobody wants
her who is rich and poor man she don’t want.... I like to have the money
by Tuesday. I should be sure that nothing is missing from her. So take
care of yourself. I going to eat beans for supper, ha, ha, but I going
to be all right. Now I be so bad that everyone is afraid of me. I don’t
care if they put me in the disciplinary in the cellar—I going to have
there friends—you know what kind—red ones, bed bugs, and roaches and
mouses. Ha, ha, I’m going to have good time, I won’t cry. You friend,
when you send the money don’t say nothing to your lady and send them so
that my lady wouldn’t know nothing about it, my lady. I suppose Miss R.
wrote that I receive dress from pawn shop. See, don’t tell on me—when I
be in the institution. Tell that your J. that he put them [dress] there,
that it shouldn’t get lost. Otherwise they would laugh at us that we did
not have any money and we had to put our dress in pawn shop—that be a
shame.
Miss R. wrote that they wouldn’t let me go to you—and if I ask again she
would give me a good scolding, so write to the old fortune-teller. So
good-bye friend, have a good time. Don’t forget to answer me right away.
Don’t say to no one what happen—write right away. You know in the
institution maybe they wouldn’t give me your letter. Good night and
good-bye forever. I think if I come to the institution I take my life
there.
[June, 1915. From Esther to parole officer, Miss R.]
... I am letting you know I am back in the same place—institution. I’m
letting you know why and I wrote you letter about my head and I like to
get rid of that. Doctor told me that he [saw] no other help, that I got
to have an operate on my nose. If not then I get a inflamation thro my
nose. So I wrote that to my friend, that one what we was together locked
up, but I didn’t tell her that I got this sickness, but I wrote to her
in English that I got disease, but I didn’t know that she gave the
letter to her lady and they sent them to the institution. So they read
that I getting disease that I stole $4 and one young man gave me $2, so
they make me very dirty, but I’m not afraid of them—you know that, when
they start with such a story, so I know that I’m in heaven. They only
want have me back. I should stay here the three years, so they come and
get me on Sunday, afternoon. So how I was, I went. They didn’t give me
only chance to put on my dress, shoes and hat and put me in a auto and
so that was we took the train to the institution and there they start to
ask me questions, why they took me back and when I come down here. I got
to let them examine myself and when she examine me, she said everything
is all right. You know what a disease is—so explain to her about my head
and my nose. So she said if girl say she have a disease, they take it
that its girl bad from a man, but I didn’t know that a girl get sickness
from a man. The lady doctor told me about how the girl get sick.... But
where is the right? And on account of the $4, that this way: That girl
is a Croation and I’m a Czech, and we used to write, and sometimes we
didn’t understand the letters from each other. And so about the $2. Once
in N. Y. I went down from car, I lost heel from shoe, I dropped the hand
bag, and so real man come out and pick up my bag [and gave me $2.00].
[Letter to Superintendent of institution from parole officer; June 4,
1915, after Esther had been returned to the institution]:
... It is very difficult to tell from the letters [of Esther] whether or
not she has actually broken her parole. The worst she has done,
according to her own statement, is (1) to borrow $4 from employer’s
purse to pay for a dress with fullest intention of returning it (and
employer is sure she would have missed it had it not been returned); (2)
opened a letter addressed to employer from writer; (3) went to picture
shows sometimes when she was supposed to be in class; (4) flirted with
men on train; (5) wrote T. T. whom she knew before coming to the
Institution; (6) kissed the egg man; (7) probably had sexual relations
with a man in Philadelphia for $2 (Esther denies this).
Her letters refer also to plans to go to a dance secretly and to go to
New York secretly. There is nothing in the letters to indicate that she
ever put her plan about coming to New York into effect. Esther denies
emphatically that she has been to New York and her employer thinks it
very unlikely that she could go without her knowledge. They show also
she thought she was diseased and had been to a doctor about it before
she came to the institution. She still worries about it whether or not
there is any cause. (First blood test was S—— G——.)
Subject’s attitude expressed in these letters is far more serious to my
mind than anything she has done, but it is a question whether it is
anything for which she should be blamed or punished. She is
unquestionably abnormally sensitive, suspicious and secretive and these
traits have been unfortunately emphasized by her arrest and commitment
here. She evidently suffers bitterly and constantly because she is on
parole to the institution and that resentment poisons everything she
does and thinks. She must have been under a frightful strain during
these months while she was working with the lawyer to win her freedom,
with the constant pressure he put on her for money and to come to New
York to see him. Then too the conflict of what may be merely normal and
natural sex interests and her fear of breaking her parole by expressing
these in any way has probably been bad for her and has emphasized these
sex interests. I think all of the references in the letters to “nice
young mens” who smiled at her and tipped their hats to her on the train,
to the nice young mens she sees at picture shows, to the men who invited
her to a dance, may be explained as a boastful desire to appear bad and
to be having attention and a good time, arising from a regretful
realization of how much she is missing in these lines. Possibly she was
just beginning to have a taste of “gay life” before she came to us and
the institution may have done much to whet her curiosity. She seems to
ridicule the idea of being considered “innocent and good”—“Sunday School
girls”—and asks co-defendant to send her the picture of her (Esther’s)
Bohemian sweetheart (she has always claimed to be engaged to a man now
fighting in the Austrian army) so she can show her employer she has a
sweetheart, “make her employer jealous” as she puts it.
Certainly if she had not been determined to keep her parole, with such a
demand on her for money from the lawyer and such an interest in men, she
would have solicited long before this. I think it is to her credit that
she has worked so steadily and satisfactorily and has tried to keep, as
she understood it, the letter at least of her parole.
I feel, however, that if the interest we have taken in her in giving her
an early parole under such good conditions and her employer’s never
failing efforts to understand and help her have not won her confidence,
we can scarcely hope to break down her attitude of misunderstanding and
suspicion of us, which breeds deceit in her so readily. After what has
happened she will probably be more antagonistic than before; the strain
on her of keeping parole might easily become too great at any time. It
would seem to be a very great risk both for us and for Esther to have
her out on parole again, particularly in another state.
I hope you will be able to make her see, even if you decide she has not
actually broken her parole, that she has not even understood its spirit
when she tried to buy her freedom through a lawyer and deceived us and
her employers as to her real intentions.
I think much of subject’s suspiciousness and deceitfulness is racial and
there is small chance of her adjusting to American customs. I remember
that you considered deporting her in the first place and while I still
think it would be very bad for subject to have the stigma of deportation
added to that of arrest, I do feel that her own country is the best
place for her and that she will be far more apt to live a straight,
normal life there with the restraints of her family and their standards
to help her than she will here. Do you think it may be possible to send
her back on her own money when conditions of war permit?
From certain standpoints this girl seems to be almost ideal human
material. The institution called her “intelligent, conscientious, and,
far beyond our girls, sensitive to fine distinctions of right and
wrong.” All her wishes are strong and social. She craves pleasure,
association with “nice young mens”, dancing, pretty clothes, but is an
industrious worker. Her letters to Lilian are overflowing with the
desire for response—both to give it and to receive it. In a letter after
her return to the institution, not printed here, she refers to the child
of her former employer: “Oh, I was glad to hear about Max. How often I
think about the times he used to pull my hair, and that was a great
joke. Yes, I often think and talk about him. Give him my love and see if
any of my flowers are up. If so, put one on him for me.” And she is
always thinking of improving her position in the world. “We are,” she
says, “going to look for some nice man, but something better, not only
working men.” She is ashamed of her relation to the egg man, “because he
is only egg man.” She does not want it known that she pawned a dress. In
her reference to Austrian army officers and a sweetheart in Bohemia, she
wishes to claim before her mistress that she has some social standing.
During the whole of her parole she is working on the problem of her
life. She is working alone, and she leaves no stone unturned. She is in
a village, not allowed to visit New York. She plans her campaign for a
new trial by letter, working through a stupid friend who unintentionally
betrays her. Her lawyer is exploiting her, her doctor also; her Italian
friend is not loyal, her uncle promises help but is poor. She even
appeals to the garbage man. Like many who have sought to reconstruct a
broken life, she plans to go west.
And she is very able. She has a mind adapted to the law, and she could
write scenarios. Note how she plans in one letter to have something “up
her sleeve” for the trial—to have her friend buy duplicates of the
articles stolen on the anniversary of the theft, to change the date of
the receipt from “1914” to “1915” on her employer’s typewriter, to put
the receipt in the cuff of her wrap and leave it in the toilet room of
the court to be found. This would be indeed a dramatic vindication. She
is thoroughly cunning and she lies a great deal. But she is in a fight
with organized society. She feels that there is a disproportion between
her offense and her punishment, and that she is being wronged and
defrauded of life. Cunning is one of the forms which intelligence takes
in a fight. And in general people become cunning when they are oppressed
or do not participate on an equal footing in their society. Esther is a
Jew, and the “racial” cunning of the Jew has the same origin as the
particular cunning in this case—exclusion from recognition and
participation. Any successful scheme of education, reëducation or
reformation must recognize the wishes expressed by Esther and will
involve an active participation of the subject in the plan. Esther was
not bad enough to be committed to the institution to which she was
assigned, but once there we note her complete psychic isolation from the
officials and from the family in which she was placed. She was directed
toward no interesting and creative work, and was not included in any
form of society in which she completely participated and in which she
could have recognition and the gratification of the other wishes. And
this is characteristic both of the penitentiary and of the older type of
reformatory for adults and for children.
But some years ago the juvenile courts were established. It had become
apparent that numbers of disorderly children, mainly from broken homes,
were being brought into the criminal courts for escapades and sexual
offenses, placed in jails with hardened criminals and thereby having the
possibility of the formation of a normal scheme of life destroyed once
and forever. Certain women were the first to protest and to act, and the
result was the formation of a court for children which dispensed with
lawyers and legal technicalities, and treated the child as far as
possible as an unruly member of a family, not as a criminal. The first
of these courts was established in Chicago, and in 1908 provision was
made for the study of the child by endowing a psychological and medical
clinic,—a practice which has been followed by other juvenile courts.
During the past decade some of these courts have reached a high degree
of elaboration and perfection. Their service has been very great in
checking the beginnings of demoralization. The court is wiser than the
parents of the children and incidentally does much to influence home
life. These courts have also focused attention on the general questions
and methods of reform and have begun to influence both penal
institutions and general education. There are many successful
formulations of influence developed by women of insight and personality
connected with the juvenile courts in numerous localities. An important
review of these conditions has recently been made by Miriam van
Waters.[96] But perhaps the highest perfection of procedure has been
reached in the juvenile court of Los Angeles where Dr. van Waters is
herself the referee.
87. In the treatment of juvenile delinquency that comes before the court
and involves change in status there should be an integration of the
forces that seek to establish new social relationships.... Some
mechanism of passing the threshold from ward of the state to the
threshold of normal citizenship should be devised with sufficient
strength to endure over the period of crisis.
An attempt to meet the problem of socialization has recently been begun
in behalf of the juvenile court of Los Angeles County. For the girl
whose normal relation to the family group has been severed by reason of
the permanently broken home, parents dead, imprisoned, incurably ill, or
defective and the like—a girl whose behavior-difficulties make it
impossible for her to be absorbed in the neighborhood group—there is
usually no provision but the reformatory institution. A place of
adjustment, a link between the court, the detention home and the
community is an important phase of diagnosis and treatment. El Retiro, a
school for girls of Los Angeles County, is an experiment toward such
solution.
The method of adjustment is as follows: Preliminary tests and
examinations are made in the detention home and a more or less
homogeneous group of girls in their teens are selected for El Retiro. An
intensive program of work, study, play and expression has been provided.
Student government, that is to say, student participation in the conduct
of affairs of group life, not a formal organization based on the least
satisfactory elements of our government, the municipality and the police
court, but rather a flexible, club-like organization of team work and
community responsibility is maintained. After another period of
observation at El Retiro a conference is held concerning the girl. At
this conference all available sources of information are brought
together.
The referee of the court, the probation officer, physician,
psychologist, superintendent of El Retiro, the principal of the El
Retiro school, the recreation director (who later directs the program of
the girl and directs the accomplishment of her project), and one of the
girls chosen from the student-body to represent the student-body
knowledge and opinion—all these persons with specialized information
meet to form a many-angled diagnosis. Traits of personality and the
reaction to group life are stressed especially. In this field of
research no opinion is more competent than that of the girl who
represents the student-body point of view—a mine of information hardly
touched as yet by social research. The objective of the conference is
the formation of a project or activity-goal for the new student, a task
suited to her strength and personality and for which she will be
responsible and receive the reward of recognition. On the completion of
this project, usually from eight to ten months, the girl is ready to
leave El Retiro; that is to say, she has succeeded in some phase of
group life and important clues for the adjustment of her personality in
the larger community outside have been formed.
Since these results have been attained largely as the result of social
relationships formed within the group at El Retiro, and by the use of
the project method and student government, the girl is likely to have
developed both self-confidence and group loyalty. The next essential was
to form some social relationship for the complete passage of the girl
into the community.
A Girls’ Club was organized and a club house secured in the city for
about eighteen girls and their field secretary. The girls pay their
board and work in stores, industries, etc. The housework is done by one
girl, who is paid by the others to act as home-maker. It is called the
Los Angeles Business Girls’ Club and is sponsored by the Los Angeles
Business Women’s Club not as a charity, but as an act of coöperation on
the part of the business women with the younger and handicapped working
girls of the city. Not all the residents are wards of the court, the
chief requirement being that girls be under twenty-one years of age and
receiving the minimum wage. The club serves as meeting place for
organization of young people, business girls, college girls, etc. Thus
any element of isolation, or unlikeness, is at an end for the girl who
may be a ward of the court and she is brought into relationship with the
normal forces of the community.
The following four cases, selected because they serve to illustrate the
integrating processes at work in a socialized court procedure, may be
presented.
Evelyn is one. She is an orphan of Canadian extraction. Placed by a
children’s aid society in some six temporary homes, she readily drifted
into delinquency. For two years for her it was a succession of
institutions, tempered by probation, after she came under the court.
Then El Retiro was established. Her health was so delicate that she was
sent there for observation for anæmia. There her central ability was
discovered—leadership, and her chief interest the design and manufacture
of clothing. On graduation she became president of the alumnæ group of
girls and went to live at the club house. She began earning $22.00 per
week as designer and shortly plans to open a shop of her own. As
president of the alumnæ organization she has succeeded in doing what no
probation officer has done—the voluntary reporting of each girl’s change
of work, address, and new friends. If they are out of work through
indifference or indolence, her fluent scorn and her own stylish costume
act on them as a spur. Her activity has two major outlets, leadership
and craftsmanship.
Margaret is another: She was the oldest in a large family headed by a
dissolute factory operative and a quarrelsome, complaining mother. Her
home life was marked by coarseness and obscenity of language, and her
personality by alternate melancholy and violence. At El Retiro it became
apparently probable that her behavior was the reaction made by her
organism in seeking that which it really craved most, peace and
security. She became an El Retiro homemaker. A troublesome asthma
yielded to treatment based on quiet and contentment. She is now an
officer of the alumnæ club and she has returned to her own home, which
has largely become rehabilitated through her efforts. The club life
apparently affords her all she needs of contact with the outside world.
Geraldine is a girl of eighteen, wrecked on the moving picture industry.
She was seduced by an under-director in attempting to sell a scenario,
and was passed from hand to hand until her health broke. Her experiences
were unbelievably tragic and unbelievably common. Her health,
self-confidence, and charm were restored at El Retiro. She took to
nursing but the key to her interest in everything was affection. A
professional man understood her real and genuine capacity and married
her. She is an exceptional wife and mother. She too is a club member,
proud of her school and eager to assist.
Maggie was a rollicking, buxom girl of seventeen. Her parents were dead
and her living relatives of doubtful reputation. Indeed all the female
members of her family had “gone to the bad.” Maggie’s own escapades were
many. At El Retiro she was rough, noisy, daring, fearless, impetuous, in
short filled with the spirit of adventure. She did not graduate but was
returned to the custody of the probation officer. While on probation she
became pregnant. She refused to tell who was responsible but concocted a
story of nameless attack. The court commented on her strength, her
bravery, her resourcefulness, and gave her two weeks in which to find
the man and bring him herself, unaided to court. Surprised but not
daunted the girl succeeded. The man proved to be a soldier with a
temperament much like her own; on careful examination, physical, mental,
and social he was proved to be a fit husband and was permitted to marry
Maggie. This social rehabilitation has restored her to club life, much
to her delight. For several months she has been happy and
successful.[97]
In the meantime another important step has been taken,—the attempt to
forestall delinquency by working on the maladjusted, neurotic,
predelinquent child, or to adjust the delinquent child without resort to
the court and the consequent court record. In the larger cities
departments of child study, children’s welfare committees, bureaus of
children’s guidance, institutes for vocational guidance have been formed
in the public schools or working in connection with the schools. In this
work the object has been to work by cases, bringing the girl under the
influence of the social worker, improving the home conditions and the
attitudes of the parents, placing the girl in a better environment,
moving her from one situation to another until one is found to which she
responds, and developing in her some activity interests. The ideal is to
coördinate the girl immediately with the large society in which she
lives instead of building up a complete institutional community about
her as in the case of El Retiro.
The possibilities of this type of approach to the problem are
illustrated by the following cases reported by Doctor Jessie Taft of
Philadelphia.
88. Ruth, fourteen, Irish, pink-cheeked and blue-eyed, in her first year
of High School, the picture of attractive, innocent girlhood, had been
taken to the house of detention for stealing a diamond pin and taking
money from a teacher’s desk. When her denials were finally broken down
by proof, she confessed to a long history of petty thieving, hitherto
unpunished and for the most part undiscovered....
Ruth was an intensely egotistic person, desirous of social recognition,
approval, personal success; but due to lack of training, unfavorable
conditions and an impulsive, impatient make-up had never learned to work
for her satisfactions or make her impression on society in constructive
ways. She was quickly discouraged and resentful in the face of failure
or hardship and at once turned to some pleasure experience as a
compensation—something which could be obtained immediately and easily.
She used boastful stories and even her own misdeeds to heighten the
impression of her importance and superiority. This is a natural reaction
in childhood, where immediate gratification is obtained through crying,
tantrums, day dreams, purely subjective methods; but they are not
appropriate to a developing organism and must be abandoned for an
objective dealing with the facts of life. All of Ruth’s normal cravings
had been thwarted by her environment. She had lost her love object in
the death of her mother. Her family ideals had been shattered. Her
father had been exposed as unfaithful to her mother, and a weakling in
the battle between the stepmother and Ruth. He was a failure as a
provider and did not pay his debts. Ruth was forced to live in a home
situation which had for her none of the elements of a home, nothing to
be proud of, no loving approval and overlooking of faults, no faith, no
support and assurance of safety. She was forced not only to give up her
love object but to see it supplanted by an enemy, who also usurped her
place and influence with the father. Undoubtedly her sex ideals also met
with shock. She became convinced that her father was interested in
another woman before the death of the mother. Father and stepmother
quarreled and made up—separated and came together repeatedly. She saw
marriage as a series of endless petty conflicts. Both of them were
churchgoers, given to religious interests. Ruth’s disillusionment with
life was complete. There was nothing genuine, no real satisfaction. The
father and mother who constitute the bridges over which the emotional
life of the child may cross to a more and more social development had
blocked normal growth and thrown the child back upon subjective or
anti-social satisfactions. One of the defense reactions to such a
thwarting of fundamental needs is that taken by Ruth—a cynical,
suspicious, critical attitude toward everything and everybody. To want
and never get satisfaction is too painful a state to keep up, so the
individual criticizes every possible love object that he may make
himself and others believe he wouldn’t have it if he could. The reason
he has no love object is that none are worth having; thus he defends his
inferiority. Also he undermines any criticism from others by showing up
the inferiority of the source. He is protected by having already
discredited the other person. Moreover, there is a sense of power and
superiority in being able to criticize everything, so it offers a
natural compensation for the inferiority from which the critical or
cynical person suffers. Not having admirable loving parents one must
remember is a source of tremendous inferiority. A child of eight has no
intelligent weapons with which to combat a hostile family situation. It
has no chance against the egoism of the adults around it. All it can do
is to react blindly in ways that offer some temporary solace. Stealing
from the stepmother is a way of satisfying the needs to fight with or
injure or destroy the pain-giving stimulus. It gives the child a
tremendous sense of power and victory. Here is something which he can do
secretly and effectively. It really hurts the hateful object and it
supplies pleasure-giving stimuli, such as candy, which are otherwise
denied....
Ruth ... was so absorbed in the injuries done her by life that she
thought of nothing but pleasure compensations. She would face nothing
that demanded effort or any unpleasantness. She had a right to take
things because life owed her reparation. She saw nothing in school or
work, or the ordinary habits of daily hygiene but hardship to be
avoided. She wanted nice clothes and felt she had a right to take them,
but she saw no reason why she should take any care of them. If a garment
was torn or dirty, get a new one. She thought she ought to be placed
where there were servants so she would have no housework and no laundry
to attend to. She had no loyalty to any one. She played one person
against another and used everything to her own advantage as she saw it.
As soon as an effort was made to give her insight she reacted to protect
herself from the painful revelations by criticizing the worker and
taking the attitude that there was a game going on between her and the
worker in which each was trying to get ahead of the other. She could not
believe in disinterested effort on her behalf.
Ruth was turned over to a child-placing agency with the foregoing
interpretation of her behavior and suggestions for working on the
problem, but with great doubt as to the outcome. She was to be given as
much gratification of her pleasure wants as possible in order to reduce
the struggle to satisfy them and leave some of her energy and interest
free to be developed along other lines. She was to be placed with a
really superior person whom she might finally come to respect as genuine
and her best chance would be to find some one person, the worker or the
foster mother, who had real faith in her possibilities.
The social worker who took her over was young and enthusiastic,
undaunted by the impossible and full of faith in her own ability to get
results. She transferred this faith to Ruth. She never wavered in her
belief that Ruth could change her ways. She lived through stealing
episodes, truancy periods, every kind of discouragement and finally
found a home which did some of the things we had hoped for. Ruth’s first
experience in this home was a summer trip and a glorious good time. When
she came back there was little housework and a doctor’s important
business to help with after school. There was social prestige in this
home. The mother was a good disciplinarian and insisted on the formation
of certain daily habits of living, but she took Ruth in as a member of
the family and had, like the worker, supreme faith in her own ability to
make Ruth go to school every day, study her lessons and keep going in
the path of righteousness.
Ruth responded surprisingly and for six months all went well. Then she
began to be unhappy and ask to be removed, saying that she would make
removal necessary if something were not done. Finally she had her way.
It seemed evident that this home, while successful in many ways, lacked
the thoroughly admirable personality which we thought Ruth needed. The
woman was hard, set and self-centered. Another home was found in which
there proved to be serious marital conflicts in which Ruth was forced to
be a party. Here the stealing broke out again. Then a high school
teacher became interested in the girl and invited her to her summer home
for vacation. This was the great turning point in Ruth’s life. Here her
desires for social superiority and pleasure were satisfied, and she was
surrounded by real people for whom she felt at last the whole-souled
genuine devotion and admiration which was essential for her
socialization.
From that moment there has been no trouble with Ruth. No more stealing,
no more truancy, no shirking of lessons. She has gone to live with
another teacher for whom she keeps house. Six months have passed and
there has been no complaint. To complete this treatment and make it
permanent, Ruth ought to be given insight into her own behavior and
understand just what has happened to her. Then she would be armed
against the accident of circumstance.[98]
89. ... Mary was an alert, boyish, attractive girl of eighteen ... at
work in a department store after having reached first year in High
School and reported to have been living with her weak, immoral mother,
sharing the mother’s young paramour, a boy only a little older than
herself....
The following case history was obtained: Because of the mother’s
promiscuity, Mary’s paternity was uncertain. As a child in her mother’s
home she had known only loose living, good-natured, easy-going neglect
and poverty. Illegitimate births were common in the family. There seems
to have been complete lack of ordinary sex morality and social
standards. The family lived a roving, hand-to-mouth existence. When Mary
was ten, the Court removed her and gave her to a child-placing agency.
She was tried out unsuccessfully in several homes and finally made a
good adjustment in a country home where she had excellent school
opportunities, finishing grammar school at the head of her class. She
entered High School with a continuing interest in school, accompanied by
an increasing interest in boys. Her late hours, love for good times and
her rebellion against restraint worried the foster parents so that they
gave her up. She was accepted by a city institution where she was under
strict supervision and was sent for the first time to a city school. She
tried to enter the second year of High School with inadequate
preparation, failing quite completely in every subject. Accident entered
at this point in the shape of a new matron at the institution. The girls
were trying her out and in her effort to control the situation she
threatened to expel the next girl guilty of insubordination. Mary
happened to be the victim. She was returned to the Court and discharged
to a married and apparently respectable sister. The sister, unequal to
disciplining Mary, allowed her to go to her mother, then living in a
wretched little house in another town with a young man by whom she was
pregnant. There was only one bedroom containing a bed and a cot. Mary
shared the cot with the younger brother, a boy of fifteen. For about a
year this situation continued. Mary broke away once only to return
again. The mother finally went out to work with the new baby, leaving
Mary to keep house for her brother and the man. Finally Mary came to the
city a second time and got a job. She wandered from one position to
another and came in contact with a social agency just as she was about
to give up and go home again because she saw no work ahead and was
unable to support herself on what she was earning.
The social worker took the matter up as a vocational guidance problem
and ... with the psychologist worked out the following picture of Mary:
In earliest childhood she had known little or no restraint and had been
familiar with the freest sex life and complete absence of ordinary
social standards as regards sex. But there had been affection,
easy-going, good-natured attitudes and a great deal of personal freedom.
The loose living, the roving, unsettled existence had made it fairly
easy for Mary to accept and adjust to varying conditions so that
foster-home placement to her was not the agonizing experience that it is
to some children. Moreover, she seems to have been from the first an
objective, eager, alert, social youngster who most fortunately
compensated for her family inferiorities by a complete going over into
school life and active energetic expression in work and play....
The dismissal from her foster-home seems to have been caused by behavior
which was natural enough on the part of a developing adolescent girl.
She merely carried over too much of her superabundant energy into
parties and good times with boys.... The dark side of her life here was
her introduction to sex experience through the foster father. These
experiences, shocking at first, were finally accepted as a matter of
course and sank into the background of an existence in which objective
interests—school, companions, good times, farm work, held first place.
There seems never to have been any deep conflict nor any marked feeling
of shame or inferiority. It was taken as part of the day’s work,
something which went along with living in this foster-home which for the
most part was desirable. She wanted to keep on with her school. She was
afraid to tell the wife. She had none of the ordinary sex morality which
most of us have absorbed from infancy on. The easiest way was to keep
still and adjust. When Mary was asked how she felt about sex, she
replied characteristically and cheerfully: “Well, the world is made that
way, you just have to accept it. It isn’t any use to worry about it, you
might as well take people as they are.”
Although these years in Mary’s life apparently left no scar, they did
break down completely any sex inhibitions she might have had, aroused
sex needs and accustomed her to the habit of sex expression. It meant
that when she went to live with her mother, she experienced no
particular shock and was illy prepared to offer resistance to the
advances of her mother’s paramour who found her so much more attractive
than her mother and with whom she was thoroughly infatuated....
The really critical experience was the transfer to the city institution
and the city High School. In neither situation was she at home and for
the first time in her life she experienced failure and disgrace in her
studies. She now had a genuine inferiority, a discouragement which
undoubtedly reacted on her behavior at home. She grew indifferent and
reckless, would not respond to scolding or appeal. The objective work
and play expressions, as well as the customary sex life, were cut off.
There was nothing left but breaking rules to get a good time. Expulsion
from the institution meant the final break with school and she thinks it
was then that her ambition died. She had no technical training, she
could get only underpaid, uninteresting jobs. Where was she to find an
outlet for her young energy? The sister, less intelligent than Mary, had
no influence and was only a source of irritation. Then in her restless
seeking for something more satisfactory, she went to her mother who was
living in another city. There she was disturbed chiefly by the mother’s
jealousy and feeling she was doing her wrong; also the presence of the
younger brother. Finally the glamour wore off and she began to see the
man in his true character. He was lazy, unreliable, disloyal, weak. He
had none of the straightforward, eager, active attitude which Mary had
toward life. Gradually she turned against the kind of person he was and
after many struggles, finally broke away.
It was at this point, when her courage was giving way once more, that
she was found by the case worker.
It seemed to the psychological examiner that the problem here was not
the so obviously indicated sex situation, but the blocking of Mary’s
work and play interests and the complete quenching of her egoistic
ambitions. The psychometric tests showed her to be well up to average in
intelligence. She was as interested in taking the test as the examiner
was in giving it. Her intellectual curiosity was a delight. In the
course of the interview she brought out a slip of paper with two long
words on it which she had been treasuring, waiting for an opportunity to
look them up in a dictionary. She thought the examiner was a good
substitute. Throughout she exhibited a frank, straightforward attitude,
an honest, unsentimental facing of facts, a complete freedom from
cynicism or critical reactions. She put no blame on other people, used
no evasive mechanisms. She had a certain pride and independence. When
consoling herself for her lack of good clothes she remarked: “My clothes
aren’t much but no man is paying for them, and at least I have a
contented mind.” There seemed to be every basis for a satisfactory
adjustment to life if the environmental opportunities could be provided
so that her work and social interests would have a chance to develop and
help to organize a more socialized sex expression.
The social worker was reassured and determined by this analysis of the
problem. Mary herself was allowed to go over every detail of the
intelligence tests and was told that ability like hers had a right to a
better training. She faced what lack of education would mean in
underpaid, uninteresting work. Her faith in her own power and ability
was restored and her ambition revived. Her former failure in High School
was explained and she became convinced that it was not too late even now
to achieve success in school work.
Meantime the case worker built up the social background, finally raised
scholarship money and Mary went into the second year of the commercial
course in a good High School.
There was never any attempt to deal with the sex side by repressive
methods, never any interference with her social life, nor any form of
restraint. When she wanted to go to visit her mother, the whole
situation was talked out with her and she was given the worker’s
attitude frankly and honestly but decision was left to her. She did not
go. She has continued to associate with boys on an unusually free basis.
She will go to see a boy friend at his home exactly as she would visit a
girl. She could not be made to see why she should not accept a boy’s
invitation to go to New York City for a sightseeing excursion. She was
willing to stay home to please the worker but she was told she must
decide on another basis. Only accident in the shape of the boy’s illness
prevented the escapade. Everything she does is talked over with the
worker with the utmost freedom. Her standards are changing rapidly with
her developing tastes and interests. She has made good in her school
work consistently. She has been rash and unconventional in the extreme
but has never, apparently, overstepped the boundaries of morality on the
sex side. For a year and a half she has made steady progress and there
is no indication that she will ever again become a delinquent.[99]
The most disheartening condition which we have to face in connection
with the delinquent child is the demoralized home. It appears in one
study (document No. 58, p. 100) that nine tenths of the girls and three
fourths of the boys who reach the juvenile court come from bad homes.
Case No. 83 (p. 152) is an extended description of such a home and the
following summary of some cases may be taken as representative.
90. A family of 13 children; father a drunkard who deserted them; mother
scrubs and cleans; “a very poor, dirty, and crowded home.”
Family “very degraded”; father, a drunkard, criminally abused two little
daughters (who later became delinquent wards of the court) and then
deserted the family to avoid prosecution. Mother married again, but
stepfather also drank and was so abusive that wife and children left
him.
Father, a man of bad habits, deserted; mother drank; she said girl had
inherited unfortunate tendencies from father.
A family of fourteen children, six of whom died; father was immoral and
cruel to his wife, and very unkind to his children; he deserted, leaving
family to charity; the girl left home because of ill treatment and
became immoral.
Father, professional gambler, utterly irresponsible, deserted his
family; one boy was always “wild” and one girl went to a house of
prostitution.
Father and mother, both shiftless, begging people who will not work;
father periodically deserts family, who were all in Home for the
Friendless at one time and who are often destitute and a public charge.
Father is now in old soldiers’ home and three of the children are in a
soldiers’ orphans’ home.
A family of six children, one girl delinquent; home dirty and untidy
with two beds in parlor; mother has a bad reputation, drinks habitually
and always has the house full of men. Father deserted at one time, and
family has been helped by a charitable society constantly for two years.
A family of seven children; father, an habitual drunkard, supposed to be
a fruit peddler but really a common tramp; deserts periodically but
always comes back; very brutal to wife and children when he is at home,
and responsible for demoralization of two older girls; family a county
charge and on records of three relief societies.
A very degraded home; father drunken and immoral, abused girl’s mother
shamefully before her death; criminally abused girl when she was only
seven and then abandoned her. Girl brought to court at the age of twelve
on charge that she was “growing up in crime.”...
Lillie, a German girl, seven years of age, whose father, now dead, is
said to have been as near a brute as a human being could be, whose
mother is insane, and whose sister is abnormal, was brought in as
incorrigible and immoral.
Vera, a seventeen-year-old girl, whose father’s address is unknown, and
whose mother is insane, found employment as a barmaid in a concert hall,
and afterwards became a prostitute.
Rosie, a sixteen-year-old Russian Jewess, whose mother is in the
hospital for the insane, and whose father abandoned her, was brought
into court on the charge of immorality.
Annie, a fifteen-year-old girl, whose father was frozen to death and
whose mother is of unsound mind, has two brothers who are imbeciles. She
is herself feebleminded, and has been the mother of three illegitimate
children—probably the children of her imbecile brothers.[100]
The gradual realization of this condition through the experience of the
juvenile courts and the schools and also the desire to avoid any court
procedure in connection with a child whose morals are endangered has led
many teachers and social workers to the view that the child should be
taken in charge by society as soon as it shows any tendency to
disorganization and that the school should have this function and should
gradually displace or incorporate the juvenile court, or such functions
of the juvenile court as remained would be transferred to the court of
domestic relations. Eliot took this position as early as 1914,[101] and
the conviction has been expressed frequently in various forms. The
following is an extract from one of the most systematic proposals.
... Each city, probably each county would require an extension or
reorganization of its personnel to include a department of adjustment to
which teachers, policemen and others could refer all children who seemed
to present problems of health, of mental development, of behavior or of
social adjustment. For good work this would require the services of
doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, field investigators, recreational
specialists....
The ideal would be to have the school act as a reserve parent, an
unusually intelligent, responsible and resourceful parent, using
whatever the community had to offer, making up whatever the community
lacked....
All neglected, dependent and delinquent children, whether of school age
or not, would fall within the province of [the department of
adjustment]. For these children we would have the authority of the
school extend from infancy to adult life.... We should [thus] get
entirely away from the conception of penalizing children for their
offenses and from the stigma of courts and reform schools.... We should
establish our thinking firmly on an educational basis. The fatal
gradation of reform school, work-house, county jail and state prison
would be broken.... Wherever possible we would have dependent children
sent to public schools. Homes for “friendless” or “destitute” children
belong with scarlet letters, stocks and debtors’ prisons....
With the clearing away of old names and associations should come better
opportunity to meet the needs of girls before they reach an advanced
stage of incorrigibility.
[Arrangements should be made for] pooling the juvenile court’s probation
officers, the truancy department’s numerous officers, the school nurses,
the medical instructors, the special schools and reformatories, and all
the rest of the specialists on the physical, mental and social troubles
of school children into one department of adjustment.... Only the most
determined blindness could prevent [the school board member] from seeing
how the school truant officer and the probation officer overlap.... He
could surely see the waste of having the schools, on the one hand, build
up a staff of doctors and nurses and the juvenile court on the other
trying to duplicate this machinery—both sets to serve the same group of
children.[102]
These writers argue also that the juvenile court does not afford so good
an opportunity as the school for the study of the child and for
record-making, that the stigma placed on the child by an appearance in
court deprives him of the chance of future favorable recognition, that
the court cannot prevent delinquency, that the child is frequently
incorrigible before he reaches the court, that the courts have a very
limited range as propaganda and general educational agencies, since they
have no power over the child’s life before he comes actually before the
bar of justice, that the power of the probation officer is relatively
slight and casual, and that vocational placement should be connected
with the school.
Further than this, the depraved family conditions which I have
emphasized are due not only to bad economic conditions but to the
failure of community influence. You may have very good family life with
bad economic conditions but you cannot have good family life without
community influence. I have shown in Chapter II how strong was the
influence of the community on the family. It is not too much to say that
the community made the family good. Human nature often appears at its
worst in connection with pair marriages and small families. The records
of the societies for the prevention of cruelty to children are filled
with sickening details of the brutality of parents. An organic
connection with a larger community is necessary to the maintenance of
moral standards and fine sentiments. If we look, therefore, as we are
forced to look, for a social agency whose influence may penetrate the
family we find it in the school. The school is not a natural
organization like the family, but an artificial organization capable of
rapid changes and adjustments. In this respect it has almost the freedom
of a scientific laboratory. It receives all children early and keeps
them a relatively long time. Its function is the setting and solving of
problems and the communication of information. Its representatives are
far superior to the average parent in intelligence and understanding. If
we invented any device to replace social influence lacking at other
points it would be the school. It is probable that the school could be a
sort of community forming the background of the family and the child and
could supply the elements lacking in the home, at least to the degree of
preventing in a large measure delinquency and crime, if it exercised all
the influence it could conceivably exercise, and that it could, more
than any other agency, socialize the family. From this standpoint the
appearance of the visiting teacher in the school has the greatest
importance.
The first visiting teachers began work in the year 1906–1907 in New
York, Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. In these cities, and later in
other places, as has frequently happened in other educational
experiments, the impulse came from outside the school system. Private
organizations—in Boston, settlements and civic organizations; in New
York, settlements and the Public Education Association; in Hartford, the
director of the Psychological Laboratory—saw the need of providing a
specially equipped worker to help the schools, and developed and
privately maintained the work until the school board became convinced of
its value and incorporated it as part of the school system. In other
cities, like Rochester and Mt. Vernon, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio,
the work was introduced directly by the board of education. At present
in all but four cities the work is part of the city public school
system. The movement has grown until at present the work has been
extended to twenty-nine cities in fifteen states. In some of these
“school visitor” or a similar term is used instead of visiting
teacher....
“Through individuals to the group” is the approach of the visiting
teacher, and as the result of her knowledge, derived from case work, new
types of classes have been organized, school clubs, or other means to
make the school fit the newly discovered need. Study rooms have been
opened, school recreation centers organized; parents’ clubs, courses in
domestic training, special trade courses, school lunches and other
extensions have been started as a result of the visiting teacher’s view
of the neighborhood. In this way her work becomes of value to the school
as a whole. She acts as a scout bringing back a more definite knowledge
of the lacks in the neighborhood, educational, social and moral, and of
newer demands on the school that have arisen because of changing social
and industrial conditions. This relation accords with the ideas of
modern educators who believe that the connection between the school and
the community life cannot be too closely integrated.
On the other hand, the visiting teacher’s acquaintance with the families
and the neighborhood brings about social results. Through her work,
various communities have been stimulated to provide scholarship funds,
nurseries, community houses, homes for neglected children and other
social activities. Hidden danger spots are not infrequently brought to
her attention by parents who have not known what to do about the
situation or have been afraid to report to the proper agency or
official. In this way the work assumes an additional preventive aspect,
and results in such improvements as better policing and lighting of
parks, better provision for playgrounds, closing of improper movies,
etc., checking of traffic in drugs to minors and the removal of similar
insidious conditions.
The visiting teacher’s position as a member of the school staff makes
for certain advantages. She gets in touch with cases at an earlier stage
than would an outsider. Teachers and parents consult her about
suspicious cases which they would not feel justified in referring to a
social agency. As representative of the school, the visiting teacher is
free from the suggestion of philanthropy, and of all visitors she has,
perhaps, the most natural approach to the home, going as she does in the
interests of the child. It is a very rare thing for a visiting teacher
to experience an unpleasant reception. Further, she is in a position to
follow the child in school from year to year. Where the home carries a
serious handicap, she may anticipate the difficulties of the younger
children, help them avoid the false starts made by the older brother or
sister, and also assist the school to reinforce the children against the
inroads of the family handicap....
The following case shows how, out of a bad family situation, real
educational capital was made for a headstrong, irresponsible girl of
fourteen who hated school and thought she wished to go to work to help
her family. Knowing the reaction of the home situation on the girl’s
school life, the visiting teacher worked out a special plan with the
family agency to which she had referred the family. She advised that the
money required for the family budget be paid in the form of a weekly
scholarship to the girl. The conditions stipulated were that she attend
school regularly and keep a budget. She was transferred to a special
class and given a special course providing an unusual amount of
household training—the one school subject which seemed to her to serve
any useful purpose. The personal interest of the domestic science
teacher was enlisted in the girl’s home situation, and she not only
advised about the budget but encouraged the girl to make the most of her
scanty home furnishings. A tutor was provided to help with the academic
subjects. Through this weekly-payment plan the girl was made a partner
in the family situation, and her sense of responsibility developed. Her
budget book served as the most effective arithmetic text book she had
ever used. Incidentally, she learned much about food values and
purchasing.[103]
But while in the present condition of society there is no point at which
the prevention of delinquency and the socialization of the family can be
undertaken so successfully as in the school, the school itself has very
grave defects of character, and the question of its adaptation to the
welfare of the child involves at the same time the question of change
and reform in the school itself. Many educators will agree that if we
attempt to measure the influence of the school with reference to its
efficiency as a factor in personality development we are confronted at
once with the following conditions:
1. The average school, like the old community, works on the assumption
of uniformity of personality and presents the same materials and plans
in the same order to all. The assumption is that children react in the
same way to the same influences regardless of their personal traits or
their social past, and that it is therefore possible to provoke
identical behavior by identical means. “Nature,” says Doctor Jennings,
“has expended all her energy in making our little flock of children as
diverse as she possibly can; in concealing within it unlimited
possibilities which no one can define or predict. It sometimes seems as
if we parents in our process of educating them were attempting to root
out all of these diversities, to reduce our flock to a uniform mass....
The only way in which appreciable progress can be made in the attempt is
by cutting off, stunting, preventing the development of the special and
distinctive qualities of the individuals. Unfortunately this can be done
to a certain extent, but only by a process which may be rightly compared
with the taking of human life.”[104]
2. The creative or plan-forming interest of the child is an expression
of the phase of new experience which is based on curiosity and appears
very early in the child. The child expresses his energy and secures his
recognition, favorable or unfavorable, mainly along this line. Response
and security do not mean so much to him as yet. The fact that the school
work is detached from activity and not related to the plan-forming and
creative faculty explains its failure to interest the child. An
investigator took five hundred children out of twenty factories in
Chicago and asked them this question: “If your father had a good job and
you did not have to work, which would you rather do, go to school or
work in a factory?” Of the five hundred children, between the ages of
fourteen and sixteen, 412 said they would rather work in a factory.[105]
In 1920 the White-Williams counselors in the Junior Employment Service
of the Board of Public Education interviewed 908 of the 10,674 children
who came that year to the Board of Public Education for general working
certificates. Forty-seven per cent of these did not want to go on with
their school work. They gave as reasons: “I was ‘left down’”; “I didn’t
like arithmetic”; “I was too tall for the other girls in the room”, etc.
Many of these difficulties might have been adjusted if some one could
have made plans with the children while they were still in school.[106]
3. There is therefore a question whether as a device for plan-forming by
presenting the right material and definitions at the right moment, the
school is not inferior to the world at large, at least when its
influences are protracted. The school presents indispensable
information, a technic for handling problems, such as reading, writing,
and ciphering, and presents the solution of the innumerable problems
which are already solved and which it is unnecessary to solve again. But
the school works injuriously on personality development and creative
tendencies. By presenting the whole body of cultural values in a
planless way, planless so far as schemes of personal development are
concerned, it tends to thwart and delay the expression of the
plan-making tendency of children until physiological maturity approaches
and the energetic, plan-forming, creative period is passed. The lives of
creative men show that they began their work early and did it by hook or
by crook sometimes by evading the schools, often by being the worst
pupils. The chemist Ostwald in his interesting book “Grosse Männer” has
pointed out that the precocity of such men as Leibnitz and Sir William
Thomson would have done them no good if the schools had been “better” in
their time.
In measuring the influence of the school we must recognize two types of
success in the adaptation of the individual to life, the one based on
his assertion and realization of wide and original claims, the other on
contentment with limited claims. If he is contented with claims which
are more limited than his powers justify, his adaptation is success
through relative failure. To the degree that the school treats children
as identical it produces a maximum number of relative failures. To some
extent the genius is regarded as a prodigy because so much spontaneity
is repressed by the school.
4. Clinicists and case workers who handle successfully difficult
children taken from the schools report that the schools tend to
accentuate rather than obviate the difficult features. Some of them feel
that where unsocial and neurotic tendencies have begun to appear through
bad family conditions the school is an additional influence for evil to
be overcome.
The school reaches practically every child and does its part in
deepening or lessening the neurotic tendencies. At present we are safe
in assuming that for the most part it deepens these tendencies. It
drives the neurotic child into truancy, vagrancy, anarchy, invalidism
and every form of delinquency or hardens its emotional reactions into
permanent moods, and it does all of this without in the least being
aware of it....
If our public schools really educated, if they understood that education
involves a training of the instinctive and emotional life as well as of
the intellect, if they saw that they cannot even develop intellect as
long as they ignore desire, we should have an agency for adjusting the
neurotic girl and boy second only to the home in its power. There is
proof for this statement. Enlightenment is coming into education in
spots. There are visiting teachers who work on the problem children in a
school and get wonderful results. There are experimental schools whose
methods are based on an understanding of the new psychology as it
applies to educational theory. These schools are able to deal with the
able but neurotic child who cannot get along in the public school. Those
of us who work with difficult children are defeated constantly, not so
much by the impossibility of the cases, as by the impossibility of
finding any public school that understands or has time to act on its
understanding. I am constantly trying to straighten out the children the
public school can’t handle. Our school is not primarily educational but
is a place to observe and get acquainted with difficult, dependent, or
destitute children whom the various children’s agencies of Philadelphia
are trying to place satisfactorily in homes. They are children who do
not get along anywhere. Nobody wants them because they are so hard to
manage. The thing that constantly surprises us is how easy it is to
manage their behavior. They are not set like adults and a little
understanding, a little insight, and patience, a mere approach to real
educational methods gives immediate results that are almost like
magic.[107]
It is desirable that the school should eventually supersede the juvenile
court and replace other welfare agencies concerned with the child, but
in adapting itself to this task and to the task of general education it
will be compelled to make provision for the development of the emotional
and social life of the child as well as the informational, and in doing
this it will inevitably approach the model of El Retiro as described by
Doctor van Waters.
CHAPTER VI
THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE
In the last chapter we have seen the development of definite methods and
very positive successes, but everybody who deals with human beings
professionally—the educator, the criminologist, the statesman—feels that
he has no certain method for the control of behavior, that there are
obscure and incalculable elements, that the same procedure does not
secure the same results when applied to different individuals, that the
successes are often as unintelligible as the failures, and that such
successes as there are depend on common sense, personality, and trial
and error rather than on any known system of laws.
For example, among the social sciences criminology has a larger amount
of concrete material bearing on behavior, more printed and unprinted
cases than any of the others. Certainly there is the strongest possible
motive for understanding the criminal and reforming him, and preventing
crime in general. But a recent appeal to the public by the President of
the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology for funds to
study the effects of criminal procedure indicates how far criminology is
from being a science:
... The institute asks that special inquiry be made of the wisdom and
success of probation, parole, indeterminate sentence and the entire
handling of criminals after conviction; that present acute differences
of opinion among equally public-spirited citizens be clarified and sound
conclusions reached as to the treatment of convicted criminals, neither
in the interests of sentimentality nor of vindictive vengeance, but for
the better protection of the public and the promotion of law and order.
The public may be shocked to know that no one now has facts to answer
the above inquiries.[108]
The whole criminal procedure is based on punishment and yet we do not
even know that punishment deters from crime. Or rather, we know that it
sometimes deters and sometimes stimulates to further crime, but we do
not know the conditions under which it acts in the one way or the other.
Similarly the most successful workers with delinquent children report
that sometimes their charges reform themselves spontaneously and, so to
speak, in spite of the efforts of the institution.
In analyzing the process of our successes among the so-called delinquent
girl two types are of special interest—those who “make good” without any
special kind of treatment, who get well by themselves, that is to say,
those who would have succeeded in any case; and second, those who have
succeeded by some accident, some course of the girl’s own that ran
counter to our wishes, our routine and our expectation; in short, those
who “make good” in spite of us.
The second type, those who unexpectedly make good by their own plan,
which is not of our making, is of profound sociological significance.
“We possess only that which we set free”, said an old Chinese
philosopher. How many of us know girls whom we have not set free, but
who have taken the bit in their teeth and run away from us, later to
emerge decently clothed, resourceful, industrious, successful and
adjusted to life beyond our fondest hopes. Recently I visited some
thirty state institutions for the training of delinquent girls. Most of
the superintendents reported stories of rebellion, escape, followed by
the inexplicable “making good.” Many commented on fortunate marriages
contracted because the girl strayed in forbidden paths, dancehalls,
piers, rinks, cafés and other loafing places of Prince Charming. We are
more familiar with this type of fortuitous success in boys than in
girls, boys who flee from us to navy, army or wild west. Many a candid
probation officer will tell you that she has met with it in girls.[109]
Detective Burns, speaking of the counterfeiter Wilken, says below
(document No. 92, p. 236): “I have often wondered whether his talents
would have been smothered by convention if he had been kept in the
straight and narrow path. The most commonplace man becomes sometimes the
most startlingly original crook. The reformed crook, on the other hand,
turns to honesty and becomes duller than ditch-water.”
In the paper quoted above as document No. 88, p. 200, Jessie Taft says:
The intimate psychological or psychiatric interpretation, the
individual intensive treatment, are fundamental for solving the
problems of delinquency. No matter how ideal the social conditions,
no matter how farsighted the laws, there will always be compensatory
behavior in the lives of individuals, and some of this behavior is
bound to be unwholesome and socially undesirable. Instinctive
protective reactions on the part of society, even the more
enlightened mass treatment in institution, will bring results only
by accident.
What we need is a treatment of behavior so scientific that results
instead of being accidental will be subject to intention and
prediction. Biology studies the life-history of individual forms and
explains any particular details of their behavior in the light of
the life of the organism as a whole from birth to death. Where does
a similar case study of human beings belong? Without it there can be
no scientific solution of the problems of delinquency.
Our best efforts to reform the delinquent, or even to control the
behavior of the young child in such a way as to secure a balanced,
efficient, creative, and happy schematization of life are very
imperfect. The juvenile court and the experimental schools do not
completely realize the hopes they inspired. The most careful methods may
result in failure and the most imperfect methods and even neglect of
method may result in, or at least not prevent success. We sometimes see
a poor, obscure, and underfed boy assuming a definite life-direction,
planning to be something, and pursuing his aim with the certitude of the
homing instinct, while a boy with the choicest opportunities of
life—money, schools, tutors, and travel—remains a nonentity or becomes
demoralized.
Now the example of the physical and biological sciences shows that the
human mind has the power to work out schemes which secure an adequate
control over the material world and over animal and plant life by a
series of observations and experiments which have been sufficiently
thorough and detailed to discover series of facts and their causal
connections which lead to the establishment of general chemical,
physical, mechanical, and biological _laws_, and the same objective
methods will lead to similar results in the field of social theory and
practice.
There is, indeed, no sharp line between the common-sense method of the
average man in determining facts and causal relations and the method of
the scientist. When we have found that a certain effect is produced by a
certain cause the formulation of this causal dependence has in itself
the character of a law; we assume that whenever the cause repeats itself
the effect will necessarily follow. The agriculture of the peasant and
of the old-fashioned farmer was scientific to the degree that they had
observed a causal relation between manure, lime, moisture, seasonal
changes, varieties of soils, animal and plant pests, and the success or
failure of their crops. But science is superior to common sense in its
methods of experimentation, measurement, and comparison, in its
isolation and intensive study of problems from mere scientific
curiosity, without regard to the practical application of its results.
Science is called cold because it is objective, seeking the facts
without regard to whether they confirm or destroy existing moral and
practical systems.
But science is always eventually constructive. A large number of
specialists working in many fields, upon detached and often apparently
trivial problems—primroses, potato bugs, mosquitoes, light, sound,
electricity, heredity, radium, germs, atoms, etc.—establish a body of
facts and relationships the social meaning of which they do not
themselves suspect at the time, but which eventually find an application
in practical life,—in agriculture, medicine, mechanical invention.
Science accumulates facts and principles which could never be determined
by the common sense of the individual or community, and of so great a
variety and generality that some of them are constantly passing over
into practical life. The old farmer has learned the value of soil
analysis, though with reluctance and suspicion, and he has learned to
spray his orchards to preserve them from pests whose existence he did
not suspect. At this moment science is advising him to put a bounty on
the head of the turkey buzzard instead of imposing a fine for killing
it. His common sense had told him that the vulture was valuable as a
scavenger. Now science tells him that it is an ally of the paralysis fly
and carries cattle, hog, and other diseases over the country. “Probably
more than the income from a million dollars is spent each year in the
several marine biological institutions for the study of three lowly
forms,—the sea urchin and its progeny, the coral, and the jelly-fish.”
An American entomologist has spent many years in measuring the influence
of physical environment on potato bugs. He established colonies of these
insects in Mexico, moved them from one temperature to another, one
degree of humidity to another, one altitude to another, and recorded the
changes shown in the offspring. He then moved the new generations back
to the old environment and recorded the results,—whether the spots and
other acquired characters changed or remained. His object was to
determine certain laws of heredity,—whether and under what conditions
new species are produced, whether acquired characters are hereditary. To
common sense this procedure seems trivial, almost insane. But assuming
that a biologist determines a law of heredity, this will presumably have
a practical effect in the fields of agriculture, eugenics, crime, and
medicine.
These examples show that a science which results in a practical and
efficient technic is constituted by treating it as an end in itself, not
merely as a means to something else, and giving it time and opportunity
to develop along all the lines of investigation possible, even if we do
not know what will be the eventual applications of one or another of its
results. We can then take every one of its results and try where and in
what way they can be practically applied. We do not know what the future
science will be before it is constituted, and what may be the
applications of its discoveries before they are applied.
But, on the other hand, the scientist will naturally be influenced in
setting and solving his problems by the appreciation that if discoveries
are made in certain fields practical applications will follow. He may
know, for example, that if we can discover the scarlet fever germ we can
control this disease, and he may work on this problem, or he may suspect
that if we knew more of the chemistry of sugar we could control cancer,
and may work on that problem.
There is no question that a more rational and adequate control in the
field of human behavior is very desirable. And there are no powers of
the human mind necessary to the formation of a science in this field
which have not already been employed in the development of a science and
a corresponding practice in the material world. The chief obstacle to
the growth of a science of behavior has been our confidence that we had
an adequate system for the control of behavior in the customary and
common sense regulation of the wishes of the individual by family,
community, and church influences as outlined in Chapter II, if only we
applied the system successfully. And the old forms of control based on
the assumption of an essential stability of the whole social framework
were real so long as this stability was real.
But this stability is no longer a fact. Precisely the marvelous
development of the physical and biological sciences, as expressed in
communication in space and in the industrial system has made the world a
different place. The disharmony of the social world is in fact due to
the disproportionate rate of advance in the mechanical world. The
evolution of the material world, based on science, has been so rapid as
to disorganize the social world, based on common sense. If there had
been no development of mechanical inventions community life would have
remained stable. But even so, the life of the past was nothing we wish
to perpetuate.
Another cause of the backwardness of the science of society is our
emotional attachment to the old community standards or “norms.” I
described in Chapter II how much emotion enters into the formation of
everyday habits. It is well known that men have always objected to
change of any kind. There was strong condemnation, for example, of the
iron plow, invented late in the eighteenth century, on the ground that
it was an insult to God and therefore poisoned the ground and caused
weeds to grow. The man who first built a water-driven sawmill in England
was mobbed; the man who first used an umbrella in Philadelphia was
arrested. There was opposition to the telegraph, the telephone, the
illumination of city streets by gas, the introduction of stoves and
organs in churches, and until recent years it would be difficult to find
a single innovation that has not encountered opposition and ridicule.
This emotional prepossession for habitual ways of doing things enters
into and controls social investigations, particularly social reforms.
The Vice Commission of Chicago, for example, which undertook an
investigation of prostitution, was composed of thirty representative
men, including ministers, physicians, social workers, criminologists,
business men and university professors. In the introduction to its
report it was at pains to state that it was anxious to make no
discoveries and no recommendations which did not conform to standards
accepted by society. “[The Commission] has kept constantly in mind that
to offer a contribution of any value such an offering must be, first,
moral; second, reasonable and practical; third, possible under the
constitutional powers of our courts; fourth, that which will square with
the public conscience of the American people.” This commission made, in
fact, a very valuable report. It even included items of scientific value
concerning prostitution which led the federal authorities to exclude the
report from the mails (the decision was later reversed) but it had
determined beforehand the limitations and character of its investigation
and results, and excluded the possibility of a new determination of
behavior norms in this field.
A method of investigation which seeks to justify and enforce any given
norm of behavior ignores the fact that a social evolution is going on in
which not only activities are changing but the norms which regulate the
activities are also changing. Traditions and customs, definitions of the
situation, morality, and religion are undergoing an evolution, and a
society going on the assumption that a certain norm is valid and that
whatever does not comply with it is abnormal finds itself helpless when
it realizes that this norm has lost social significance and some other
norm has appeared in its place. Thus fifty years ago we recognized,
roughly speaking, two types of women, the one completely good and the
other completely bad,—what we now call the old-fashioned girl and the
girl who had sinned and been outlawed. At present we have several
intermediate types,—the occasional prostitute, the charity girl, the
demi-virgin, the equivocal flapper, and in addition girls with new but
social behavior norms who have adapted themselves to all kinds of work.
And some of this work is surprisingly efficient. Girls of twenty and
thereabouts are successfully competing in literature with the veteran
writers. But no one of these girls, neither the orderly nor the
disorderly, is conforming with the behavior norms of her grandmother.
All of them represent the same movement, which is a desire to realize
their wishes under the changing social conditions. The movement contains
disorganization and reorganization, but it is the same movement in both
cases. It is the release of important social energies which could not
find expression under the norms of the past. Any general movement away
from social standards implies that these standards are no longer
adequate.
A successful method of study will be wide and objective enough to
include both the individual and the norms as an evolving process, and
such a study must be made from case to case, comparatively and without
prejudice or indignation. Every new movement in society implies some
disorder, some random, exploratory movements preliminary to a different
type of organization answering to new conditions. Individualism is a
stage of transition between two types of social organization. No part of
the life of the individual should be studied as dissociated from the
whole of his life, the abnormal as separated from the normal, and
abnormal groups should be studied in comparison with the remaining
groups which we call normal. There is no break in continuity between the
normal and the abnormal in actual life that would permit the selection
of any exact bodies of corresponding materials, and the nature of the
normal and the abnormal can be understood only with the help of
comparison. When we have sufficiently determined causal relations we
shall probably find that there is no individual energy, no unrest, no
type of wish, which cannot be sublimated and made socially useful. From
this standpoint the problem is not the right of society to protect
itself from the disorderly and anti-social person, but the right of the
disorderly and anti-social person to be made orderly and socially
valuable.
But while we have prepossessions which have stood in the way of an
objective study of behavior there is no doubt that the main difficulty
at present is the lack of a concrete method of approach. This method
will have to be developed in detail in the course of many particular
investigations, as has been the case in the physical sciences, but the
approach to the problem of behavior lies in the study of the wishes of
the individual and of the conditions under which society, in view of its
power to give recognition, response, security, and new experience, can
limit and develop these wishes in socially desirable ways.
Correlated with the wishes of the individual are the values of society.
These are objects directly desired or means by which desired objects are
reached,—immediate values or instrumental values. Thus a coin, a
foodstuff, a machine, a poem, a school, a scientific principle, a trade
secret, a dress, a stick of rouge, a medal for bravery, the good will of
others, are values which the individual wishes or uses in realizing his
wishes. Money is the most generalized value; it is convertible into many
values which may be used in turn in pursuing the wishes. A value is thus
any object, real or imaginary, which has a meaning and which may be the
object of an activity. The sum total of the values of a society is its
culture. Any value may provoke in the individual a variety of tendencies
to action which we may call mental attitudes. Thus money as a value may
provoke one or another of the attitudes: work for it, save it, borrow
it, beg it, steal it, counterfeit it, get it by gambling or blackmail.
The attitude is thus the counterpart of the social value; activity, in
whatever form, is the bond between them.
The problem of society is to produce the right attitudes in its members,
so that the activity will take a socially desirable form. In Chapter II
we saw that society is more or less successful to the degree that it
makes its definitions of situations valid. If the members of a certain
group react in an identical way to certain values, it is because they
have been socially trained to react thus, because the traditional rules
of behavior predominant in the given group impose upon every member
certain ways of defining and solving the practical situations which he
meets in his life.
It is, of course, precisely in this connection that the struggle between
the individual and his society arises. Society is indispensable to the
individual because it possesses at a given moment an accumulation of
values, of plans and materials which the child could never accumulate
alone. For example, a boy can now construct a wireless plant or build an
engine, but he could never in his life accumulate the materials, devise
the principles alone. These are the results of the experience of the
entire past of a cultural society. But the individual is also
indispensable to society because by his activity and ingenuity he
creates all the material values, the whole fund of civilization. The
conflict arises from the fact that the individual introduces other
definitions of the situation and assumes other attitudes toward values
than the conventionalized ones and consequently tends to change plans of
action and introduce disorder, to derange the existing norms. A new plan
may be merely destructive of values and organization, as when a
counterfeiter imitates a bank note or a girl destroys her value and that
of her family by prostituting herself, or it may be temporarily
disorganizing but eventually organizing, as when an inventor displaces
the hand-loom by the power-loom or the biologist introduces a theory of
evolution which contradicts the theory of special creation. Society
desires stability and the individual desires new experience and
introduces change. But eventually all new values, all the new cultural
elements of a society are the result of the changes introduced by the
individual.
If now we examine the plans of action carried out by children and men
with reference to social values, whether they are good or mischievous,
we find that the general intellectual pattern of the plan, the quality
of ingenuity, is pretty much the same in any case. When, for example,
children have escapades, run away, lie, steal, plot, etc., they are
following some plan, pursuing some end, solving some problem as a result
of their own definition of the situation. The naughtiness consists in
doing something which is not allowed, or in ways which are not allowed.
The intellectual pattern is the same whether they are solving a problem
in arithmetic, catching a fish, building a dog house, or planning some
deviltry. And the psychological pattern followed is the same as that
involved in the desire for new experience which I illustrated in
Pasteur’s pursuit of a problem, document No. 6, p. 10. From the
standpoint of _interest_ the nature of the problem and the means of its
pursuit and solution make no difference. The latter are moral questions.
The celebrated _Himmelsbriefe_ (correspondence with heaven) may be taken
as an example of an immoral scheme which is intellectually beyond
reproach. These letters are a pathetic and comic expression of the
ingenuity, artistic imagination, business enterprise and desire for
recognition of a young peasant girl. It will be seen that this
“correspondence” has a remarkable resemblance to the pages of Anatole
France; it lacks only the irony and the elaboration.
91. Cölestine Wurm, aged 13, was sick, bedridden, afflicted with
boils and oppressed by the feeling that she was a burden to her
parents. A neighboring family named Korn had lost a daughter named
Ursula. Cölestine represented that she had had a letter from the
dead daughter, who was then in purgatory and needed money to get
out. A sum was provided, 1,000 marks, and committed to Cölestine for
transmission. A letter was then received from Ursula describing
paradise, the joy of the saints, and how Mary, mother of Jesus, was
overjoyed with an oven Ursula had bought for her. In later letters
it appeared that Ursula was desirous of improving her status among
the saints and she requested money to buy a fine bed, some golden
buckets, kitchen utensils, etc., which were for sale dirt cheap.
Mary herself wrote a letter of appreciation to the parents of Ursula
informing them that they had been in danger of losing two valuable
cows through the machinations of the devil, but that out of
gratitude to Ursula and themselves, she had sent twenty angels to
guard them. Jesus also sent a letter, signing himself, “Your Son of
God, Jesus Christus.” First and last Cölestine collected 8,000 marks
on her enterprise.[110]
In more mature minds the socially unregulated scheme may be admirably
elaborated and executed, corresponding in ingenuity with the most
complete business or scientific plan and yet remain dangerously immoral
because its application is in a form not sanctioned by society. In the
following astonishing case we have an anti-social pursuit of a problem
executed with all the ardor and resources of a Pasteur. I call the case
astonishing because working under such handicaps, clandestinely,
stealing the values of society, this boy yet knew how to use these
values, the materials accumulated by society—the paper mill, the
library, the printing office—so much better than we have been able to
use them in an organized system of education. Pasteur’s scheme, and his
later schemes of the same pattern, were socially organizing because they
contributed to the development of medicine, agriculture, grape culture,
etc., while Wilken’s scheme was socially disorganizing and personally
demoralizing.
92. Henry Russell Wilken is the only man who has ever successfully
counterfeited the fabrics on which we print our paper money. He did
that so well that the people who make it for the Government accepted
it as genuine. Now that I’m out of the Government service I can grin
at what happened at that paper mill. He was a clever boy and a nice
one. You’d like him.
There have been counterfeiters and counterfeiters. Some were almost
brilliant. Others were plain dubs—clumsy lowbrows, who were clowns
at work that required delicate artistry. But here you have a boy who
had never seen an engraver at work, who knew no more about the
engraving and printing industry than he did about paper making and
chemistry. I assure you his knowledge of these industries, prior, of
course, to launching upon his great enterprise, amounted to nothing
at all. In fact, he told me, and I verified it, that he had never
been in an engraving or printing plant in his life before he decided
to compete with the United States Mint....
One morning in February, 1910, he came across a small item in a
Boston newspaper wherein it was stated that a milkman out in
Dorchester had found a packet of one dollar bills. The milkman took
them to a bank. The bank informed the milkman that the bills were
counterfeit, and very obvious counterfeits at that.
And there, on that morning in February, 1910, the criminal career of
Henry Wilken was launched. As he told us afterward, he gave the
matter much thought. Here he was earning $25 or $30 a week. There
was a girl he liked and who liked him. There were certain relations
who looked upon him as something of a castoff, a misfit, a
ne’er-do-well, a drifter. And there were clubs that rich young men
belonged to—rich young men who were not particularly top-heavy with
brains, but who had money, and lots of it. There was but one thing
for him to do—make money....
The boy was ambitious for success, for wealth, for position, for
luxury. At that particular moment Boston was being pestered by a
youth who lacked everything but several million dollars, and the
city knew him as “The Millionaire Kid.” Wilken had scraped
acquaintance with the Kid and the sight of the latter’s spending
orgies merely added fuel to the fierce desire for wealth.
I have told you that Wilken knew nothing about chemistry,
paper-making, engraving, printing, dyeing, and photography—all of
them necessary arts of the counterfeiter. I assure you he knew
absolutely nothing about any one of those things. But he did the
thing that must commend itself to all successful men.
He stuck to his advertising job by day and spent his nights in the
public libraries. He read every available technical volume treating
on engraving. Then he went out and bought the tools of the engraver.
Next he practiced until he became an engraver quite as clever as any
man in the Government service. That’s likely to stagger you. There
are folks who will not believe that. But here we have the records
and the confession. In a moment I shall tell you facts that will
indicate just how clever he really was....
He read chemistry and paper making until he was something of a
magazine of information on the subject. He limited his chemistry to
that part of the science that has to do with paper making. He read
volumes on dyeing and struck up an acquaintance with a well-known
printer in Boston. This printer did the better grade of work and was
so amused by Wilken’s enthusiastic desire for knowledge on the
subject that he permitted the young man to browse about his plant of
nights watching the various processes.
I merely mention all this detail to show you how, when Wilken set
out to make his first counterfeit bill, he had mastered every phase
of the complex industry. And all this studying took time, although
not so much time as you would think. Certainly it was not more than
a year. At any rate, he devoted himself for twelve months to the
study of how to make a one-dollar bill.
There is just one firm making bank note paper for the Government.
That firm turns out this paper in one factory. Government inspectors
are there to check up the product and there is never any surplus.
The mints [Bureau of Engraving and Printing] consume it as it is
turned out; or, rather, it is turned out as the mints need it.
This mill is located in Dalton, Mass. The firm takes a certain
amount of pride in it. Visitors are quite welcome, and there are
guides to take callers through the plant. In one batch of visitors
to this plant came Wilken.
He was about 26 years old at the time. I am ready to believe that he
could see more in a given time from a given point than any man I
ever knew. He had two exceedingly sharp eyes and a retentive memory.
He told me that he could read faster than most men he knew and
collect more in his fast reading than the majority of his
acquaintances could by attentive study. I don’t think he was
boasting. His was a remarkable mind.... It seems as though he had
been built by nature for the job. I have often wondered whether his
talents would have been smothered by convention had he been kept in
the straight and narrow path. The most commonplace man becomes
sometimes the most startlingly original crook. The reformed crook,
on the other hand, turns to honesty and becomes duller than
ditch-water.
Wilken went to that paper mill in Dalton three times. On each
occasion he went as a visitor, of course, and spent inside the mills
only the comparatively few minutes it takes the visitor to be
ushered from process to process and room to room. If you have ever
been conducted through an industrial plant you will realize how
little you actually see of processes....
Wilken left the paper mill convinced that he was quite ready to
start business. He moved to New York City and set up a studio at 250
West 125th Street. To make everything appear regular he got a job
with an advertising firm. He drew pictures of soap and suspenders,
and so on, and did rather good work arranging display type for
posters. That required only a small part of his time....
First he made the necessary paper. Just how well he worked will be
apparent in a few minutes. Then he set about utilizing his
book-learned etching and engraving. Little by little he added to his
equipment. He never used a camera. In this fact alone he stands
conspicuous among counterfeiters. So far as I know, he was the only
counterfeiter of any ability at all who did not first photograph the
bank note he was about to counterfeit and work from that.... [Then
he made one-dollar bills.] I must say to begin with that not all the
Wilken bills were detected. Really relatively few of them came into
our hands. We took several of the bills to the paper mill in Dalton.
They declared the paper to be genuine! We looked back over the
production records and checked them against consumption. The two
figures balanced! In other words, the United States Mint had used
all that had been produced. There seemed to be nothing to do but
watch the factory. For six months we hung around and nothing
happened.
In a month or so Wilken, so we learned later, decided it was time to
go to work again. He did. He set up a studio in West Twenty-third
Street, New York City, and began to turn out ten dollar bills that
passed the tellers of some of the most important banks in America.
They even passed the scrutiny of experts in the Treasury Department.
I have samples of them here. They are magnificent frauds. I have
never seen finer engraving.
And to think that he learned this engraving in a public
library.[111]
And there are many cases in the records of courts and prisons showing a
high degree of imagination, ingenuity, constructive intelligence,
artistic ability, and careers as long continued in crime as legitimate
life careers in physics, engineering, or art.
93. Adrian Gorder, born in Holland, the son of a night watchman, set
about making of himself a counterfeit priest with as much
thoroughness as Wilken set about making counterfeit money. He
learned all the technique of the church service, including music and
church history, celebrated Mass perfectly, posed as member of
various religious orders, dressed richly, was poetic and plausible.
He visited, for example, Budapest, made certain representations of
himself to the clergy there, showed pictures of eminent
ecclesiastics and spoke of them as his friends. Talked intimately
about church affairs, celebrated Mass, borrowed money or cashed
worthless paper and disappeared. He was not so perfect a counterfeit
as Wilken’s bills because he had not completely mastered Latin as a
spoken tongue, but in spite of frequent incarcerations he operated
for twenty-five years over a large part of the world.[112]
All the types of wishes coexist in every person,—the vague desire for
new experience, for change, for the satisfaction of the appetites, for
pleasure; the new experience contained in a pursuit, as in the cases of
Pasteur and Wilken; the desire for response in personal relations
(“there was a girl Wilken liked and who liked him”); the desire for
recognition (Wilken was “ambitious for success, for wealth, for
position, for luxury”); and the desire for security,—the assurance of
the means and conditions for gratifying all the wishes indefinitely. And
all of these classes of wishes are general mental attitudes ready to
express themselves in schemes of action which utilize and are dependent
upon the existing social values. These values may be material, as when
Wilken used the library, the printing office, the paper mill, or they
may be the mental attitudes of others, as when a bogus nobleman imposes
on the desire for recognition of a bourgeois, or a scientist appeals to
a philanthropic person to endow an institution for medical research.
That is, the attitudes of one person are among the values of another
person.
The attitudes of a given person at a given moment are the result of his
original temperament, the definitions of situations given by society
during the course of his life, and his personal definitions of
situations derived from his experience and reflection. The character of
the individual depends on these factors.
Any mobilization of energies in a plan of action means that some
attitude (tendency to action) among the other attitudes has come to the
front and subordinated the other attitudes to itself for the moment, as
the result of a new definition of the situation. This definition may be
the counsel of a friend, an act of memory reviving a social definition
applicable to the situation, or an element of new experience defining
the situation. Thus in Wilken’s case the newspaper item stating that a
package of counterfeit money had been picked up identified itself with a
wish that was present and seeking expression; the fact that Wilken
already had some skill in drawing entered into the definition of the
situation, and the result was an attitude and a plan: get money by
counterfeiting.
The definition of the situation by Cölestine was determined by the death
of Ursula, and the scheme was made possible by the current theological
definition of heaven and the credulity of Ursula’s parents, used as
values by Ursula. In Gorder’s case we may assume that his observation of
the life of priests, and certainly some particular expression of this,
caught his attention and defined the situation for him. It may be
remarked that this whole process is similar to the steps in a mechanical
invention,—a particular datum working on a body of previous experience,
producing a new definition of the situation and a plan or theory.
The moral good or evil of a wish lies therefore not in the cleverness or
elaboration of the mental scheme through which it is expressed but in
its regard or disregard for existing social values. The same wish and
the same quality of mind may lead to totally different results. A
tendency to phantasy may make of the subject a scientist, a swindler, or
simply a liar. The urge to wandering and adventure may stop at
vagabondage, the life of a cowboy, missionary, geologist, or
ethnologist. The sporting interest may be gratified by shooting birds,
studying them with a camera, or pursuing a scientific theory. The desire
for response may be expressed in the Don Juan type of life, with many
love adventures, in stable family life, in love lyrics, or in the
relation of the prostitute to her pimp. The desire for recognition may
seek its gratification in ostentatious dress and luxury or in forms of
creative work. That is to say, a wish may have various psychologically
equivalent expressions. The problem is to define situations in such ways
as to produce attitudes which direct the action exclusively toward
fields yielding positive social values. The transfer of a wish from one
field of application to another field representing a higher level of
values is called the sublimation of the wish. This transfer is
accomplished by the fact of public recognition which attaches a feeling
of social sacredness to some schemes of action and their application in
comparison with others,—the activities of the scientist, physician, or
craftsman on the one hand and the activities of the adventurer, the
criminal, or the prostitute on the other. This feeling of sacredness
actually arises only in groups, and an individual can develop the
feeling only in association with a group which has definite standards of
sacredness. Practically, any plan which gets favorable public
recognition is morally good,—for the time being. And this is the only
practical basis of judgment of the moral quality of an act,—whether it
gets favorable or unfavorable recognition.
The problem of the desirable relation of individual wishes to social
values is thus twofold, containing (1) the problem of the dependence of
the individual upon social organization and culture, and (2) the problem
of the dependence of social organization and culture upon the
individual. In practice the first problem means: What social values and
how presented will produce the desirable mental attitudes in the members
of the social group? And the second problem means: What schematizations
of the wishes of the individual members of the group will produce the
desirable social values, promote the organization and culture of the
society?
The problem of the individual involves in its details the study of all
the social influences and institutions,—family, school, church, the law,
the newspaper, the story, the motion picture, the occupations, the
economic system, the unorganized personal relationships, the division of
life into work and leisure time, etc. But the human wish underlies all
social happenings and institutions, and human experiences constitute the
reality beneath the formal social organization and behind the
statistically formulated mass-phenomena. Taken in themselves statistics
are nothing more than symptoms of unknown causal processes. A social
institution can be understood and modified only if we do not limit
ourselves to the study of its formal organization but analyze the way in
which it appears in the personal experience of various members of the
group and follow the influence which it has on their lives. And an
individual can be understood only if we do not limit ourselves to a
cross-section of his life as revealed by a given act, a court record or
a confession, or to the determination of what type of life-organization
_exists_, but determine the means by which a certain life-organization
is _developed_.
In connection with this problem we may again refer to the natural and
biological sciences. These have obtained their results, the establishing
of laws, by the use of experiment. Having isolated a problem, say the
problem of heredity, they make conjectures as to what would happen under
changed conditions, and consciously introduce all changes which are
conceived as having a possible meaning for the problem. In these
sciences the experimenter is not hindered from introducing changes by
the consideration that he may spoil his materials. The chemist or
entomologist expects to spoil many materials in the course of his tests.
Human material is, however, so precious that the experimenter is not
justified in assuming the risk of spoiling it. The child is more
precious than the problem. The only field in which experiment on the
human being is recognized, or rather practiced without recognition, is
medicine, where the material is already threatened with destruction
through sickness, and the physician introduces an experimental change,
say the use of a serum, which gives a chance of preserving life and
restoring health.
Nevertheless, as the result of a series of experiments on the behavior
of animals, one of the psychologists assumed that similar work might be
done on the newborn child with no more discomfort than he suffers in
having his ears scrubbed and certainly no more damage than he receives
from the strains and distortions suffered in the act of being born. I
quote from the record of these experiments:
On the psychological side our knowledge of infant life is almost
nil.... A prominent professor of education once said to us, “You
will find when you have taught as many children as I have that you
can do nothing with a child until it is over five years of age.” Our
own view after studying many hundreds of infants is that one can
make or break the child so far as its personality is concerned long
before the age of five is reached. We believe that by the end of the
second year the pattern of the future individual is already laid
down. Many things which go into the making of this pattern are under
the control of the parents, but as yet they have not been made aware
of them. The question as to whether the child will possess a stable
or unstable personality, whether it is going to be timid and beset
with many fears and subject to rages and tantrums, whether it will
exhibit tendencies of general over or under emotionalism, and the
like, has been answered already by the end of the two year period.
There are several reasons why the minute psychological study of
infant life is important.... (1) There are no standards of
behavior or conduct for young infants. Our experimental work,
which even at the end of two years is just beginning, has taught
us that the study of infant activity from birth onward will enable
us to tell with some accuracy what a normal child at three months
of age can and should do and what additional complexities in
behavior should appear as the months go by. Psychological
laboratories in many institutions ought to be able to make
cross-sections of the activity of any infant at any age and tell
whether the streams of activity are running their normal course,
and whether certain ones are lagging or have not even appeared.
After sufficient work has been done to enable us to have
confidence in our standards we should be able to detect
feeble-mindedness, deficiencies in habit, and deviations in
emotional life. If a proper analysis of the activity streams can
be made at a very early age the whole care of the child may be
altered with beneficial results.... At present we simply have not
the data for the enumeration of man’s original tendencies, and it
will be impossible to obtain those data until we have followed
through the development of the activity of many infants from birth
to advanced childhood. Children of five years of age and over are
enormously sophisticated. The home environment and outside
companions have so shaped them that the original tendencies cannot
be observed. The habits put on in such an environment quickly
overlay the primitive and hereditary equipment. A workable
psychology of human instincts and emotions can thus never be
attained by merely observing the behavior of the adult.... (2) By
reason of this defect the study of vocational and business
psychology is in a backward state. The attempt to select a
vocation for a boy or girl in the light of our present knowledge
of the original nature of man is little more than a leap in the
dark. High sounding names like the constructive instinct, the
instinct of workmanship, and the like, which are now so much used
by the sociologists and the economists, will remain empty phrases
until we have increased our knowledge of infancy and childhood.
The only reasonable way, it would seem to us, of ever determining
a satisfactory knowledge of the various original vocational bents
and capacities of the human race is for psychologists to bring up
under the supervision of medical men a large group of infants
under controlled but varied and sympathetic conditions. Children
begin to reach for, select, play with and to manipulate objects
from about the 150th day on. What objects they select day by day,
what form their manipulation takes, and what early habits develop
upon such primitive instinctive activity should be recorded day by
day in black and white. There will be marked individual
differences in the material selected, in the length of time any
type of material will be utilized, and in the early constructive
habits which will arise with respect to all materials worked with
by the infant. Without instruction one infant (eighteen to twenty
months in an observed case) will build a neat wall with her
blocks, with one color always facing her. If the block is turned
while she is not looking she will quickly change it and correct
the defect. In other children such a bit of behavior can be
inculcated only with the greatest difficulty. Still another child
cannot be made to play with blocks but will work with twigs and
sticks by the hour. Variations in the selection and use of
material are the rule in infancy, but until we have followed up
the future course of such variations upon _infants whose past we
have watched day by day_ we are in no position to make
generalizations about the original tendencies which underlie the
vocations. (3) Finally, until we have obtained data upon the
emotional life of the infant and the normal curve of instinctive
and habit activity at the various ages, new methods for correcting
deviations in emotional, instinctive and habit development cannot
be worked out. Let us take a concrete example. A certain child is
afraid of animals of every type, furry objects, the dark, etc.
These fears are not hereditary. Our experiments will be convincing
upon that point. What steps can we take to remove these fears
which, unless they are removed in infancy, may become an enduring
part of the child’s personality?[113]
It will be seen that the Watsons are here studying attitudes—what ones
appear, in what order they appear, what ones are universal, and what
ones are particular to certain children. They introduce values—the
materials and influences—only as means of determining the presence of
attitudes, of calling them into action, of modifying them, and of giving
them application in different fields. They consciously introduce change
on the basis of some hypothesis and measure the effect of the new
influences on personality development. Already in this brief passage and
this unfinished experiment they indicate methods of determining (1)
occupational aptitudes, (2) defective mental efficiency, (3) the age
levels at which influences are to be presented and the order of their
presentation, and (4) the conditions of stable or neurotic
personalities. Their task is the measurement of influence under
conditions which they prepare and control. All scientific
experimentation involves the measurement of influence. The chemist
measures the influence of a material, say coal tar; the technician uses
this influence in preparing a dye or a medicine. The measurement of the
influence is the definition of the situation preliminary to action.
Now the world in which we live presents to the child influences
comparable with those artificially prepared in this experiment, and the
first task of behavior studies is to measure these influences as shown
in their effect on personality development.
There are in society organized sources of influence, institutions, and
social agencies, including the family, the school, the community, the
reformatory, the penitentiary, the newspaper, the moving picture. These
are sources of mass influence and will naturally be the main objects of
study and change. But in order to supplement and make scientific these
studies and to give them an adequate method it is necessary to prepare
at the same time more complete records of the personal evolution of
individuals. Eventually the life of the individual is the measure of the
totality of social influence, and the institution should be studied in
the light of the personality development of the individual. And as we
accumulate records of personal evolution, with indications of the means
by which the wishes seek expression and of the conditions of their
normal satisfaction, we shall be in a better position to measure the
influence of particular institutions in the formation of character and
life-organization and to determine lines of change in the institutions
themselves.
The “human document”, prepared by the subject, on the basis of the
memory is one means of measuring social influence. It is capable of
presenting life as a connected whole and of showing the interplay of
influences, the action of values on attitudes. It can reveal the
predominant wishes in different temperaments, the incidents constituting
turning points in life, the processes of sublimation or transfer of
interest from one field to another, the effect of other personalities in
defining situations and the influence of social organizations like the
family, the school, the acquaintance group, in forming the different
patterns of life-organization. By comparing the histories of
personalities as determined by social influences and expressed in
various schemes of life we can establish a measure of the given
influences. The varieties of human experience will be innumerable in
their concrete details, but by the multiplication and analysis of life
records we may expect to determine typical lines of the genesis of
character as related to types of influence. It will be found that when
certain attitudes are present the presentation of certain values may be
relied upon to produce certain results.
Human experience and schemes of personal behavior are the most
interesting of all themes, as is evidenced by fiction, the drama,
biographies, and histories. And works of this kind contain materials
which will be given a scientific value as we analyze, compare, and
interpret them. Even fictitious representations are significant when
viewed as showing the tendency at a given moment to idealize certain
schematizations of life. The autobiography has a more positive value for
the student, but usually tends to approach the model of fiction,
idealizing certain situations and experiences and repressing others
totally. Incidentally one of the largest and most important bodies of
spontaneous material for the study of the personality and the wishes
passes through the mails. The letters of the Bedford girl, for example
(document No. 86, p. 172) appeal to me as the most significant document
in this volume, in spite of the fact that they relate to one incident
and cover a relatively short time. The short life-histories of
approximately six thousand Jews printed in the New York _Forward_, and
representing the effort to find new definitions of new situations on the
part of the million and a half Jewish immigrants in New York City, and
to some extent of the three million Jews in America, are a rich
contribution to the study of the wishes. These records, hidden from the
eye of the “_goi_” behind the Hebrew alphabet, have the intimacy and
naïveté of personal confessions.
Another type of behavior record is now being prepared by those social
workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists who have to handle the
problems of maladjustment in the courts, schools, and reformatories and
in private practice. Under the pressure of practical needs they have
already assumed the standpoint I have outlined and are studying the
evolution of personal life-organization and making the record as
complete as possible. They meet the individual at the point of some
crisis, some experience or breakdown calling for readjustment, but from
this point they work backward into the history of the case and follow
its development into the future. In the beginning they over-determined
the value of the psychometric test, because this was the only method
psychology had put in their hands, but at present the measurement of
intelligence is recognized as having a limited usefulness.
“Feeble-mindedness” is partly a classificatory term for those
personalities whose behavior we have not been able to conform to the
usual standards because of lack of knowledge and method. We shall not
know what conditions to call feeble-minded until we have determined the
limits of the social influences which we can apply. Certain social
workers are taking case after case pronounced subnormal by the
clinicists and developing in them activities which enable them to live
in a society where they could not live before, while a large proportion
of those now pursuing peaceful callings would be called morons if they
were rounded up and gathered into some of the clinics. The government
records determined that 47.3 per cent of all Americans called out in the
draft for enlistment in the war were mentally deficient. They showed the
mentality of a twelve-year-old child or less.[114] A report of this kind
really loses all significance, because it makes no provision for lack of
uniformity in the social influences. There are certainly cases of
constitutional inferiority, but the clinical psychologists are now
realizing that these must be studied, like the cases of the
maladjustment of the normal, in connection with life records showing the
social influences tending to organize or disorganize the personality.
These institutional records obtained by testing, observation, and
inquiry should be supplemented by a life-record written by the subject.
In many cases it is not difficult to obtain this, and wherever the
subject of the study participates, giving the incidents of life which
have been determining factors the record gains in value.
From this standpoint the merit of the psychoanalytic school of
psychiatrists consists in the study of the personality. I do not refer
to theories or cures but to the method of studying the life-organization
by an analysis of the wishes, by enlisting the participation of the
subject, and using a special technic to revive all possible trains of
memory. The defect of this particular practice has been its lack of
objectivity. The operator has been using an interesting theory—sex as
the basis of life-organization—and his methods have been adapted to the
confirmation of the theory. More recently “recognition” has assumed a
prominent place in the theory, lack of recognition being indicated as
the source of the “inferiority complex.” But taken simply as cases the
psychoanalytic records are increasingly important for the study of
behavior. And the general method of psychoanalysis, or at least methods
inspired by it, are being used with the best results in connection with
delinquent children in the psychological clinics and by case-workers, as
in documents No. 88 and No. 89.
But we cannot rely entirely on the spontaneous production of
autobiographies nor upon the efforts of practical workers who make
records with reference to equilibrating maladjusted personalities.
Research into behavior problems through the preparation of records,
including life-histories, should be associated with every institution
and agency handling human material from the standpoint of education or
reform, but in addition specialists in behavior, psychologists, social
psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, social workers, should
isolate and study selected personalities as the biologist studies
selected organisms. Ordinary and extraordinary personalities should be
included, the dull and the criminal, the philistine and the bohemian.
Scientifically the history of dull lives is quite as significant as that
of brilliant ones. The investigator may, of course, select cases having
special significance; for example, secure the life-histories of the
girls mentioned at the beginning of this chapter who were not influenced
by the institution but made good in spite of the institution. The
analysis, comparison, and publication of the various records would
continuously influence social practice, as in the case of medical and
technological research.
We saw in the records given at the end of the last chapter that very
rapid and positive gains are being made in the treatment of delinquency,
but for a fundamental control and the prevention of anti-social behavior
a change in the general attitudes and values of society will be
necessary.
Up to the present, society has not been able to control the direction of
its own evolution or even to determine the form of life and
relationships necessary to produce a world in which it is possible and
desirable for all to live. Common sense has not been adequate to these
problems. We have evidently overdetermined certain values and
underdetermined others, and many important situations are
undefined—without policy. The most general and particular studies of the
wishes and the determination of the laws by which attitudes are
influenced by values and values by attitudes, the development of a
technic for the transfer of the wishes from one field of application to
another, and the development of schemes by which not only the wishes of
the individual may be sublimated but the attitudes and values of whole
populations controlled will be necessary before we are able consciously
to control the evolution of society and to determine an ideal
organization of culture.
Among the general problems involved in the study of attitudes and
values—the history of personality development and the measurement of
social influences—are the following:
=1.= =The problem of abnormality—crime, vagabondage, prostitution,
alcoholism, etc.= How far is abnormality the unavoidable manifestation
of inborn tendencies of the individual, and how far is it a matter of
deficient social organization,—the failure of institutional influences?
There is a quantitative difference of efficiency between individuals,
but if there is hardly a human attitude which if properly controlled and
directed could not be used in a socially useful and productive way, must
there remain a permanent qualitative difference between socially normal
and anti-social actions?
=2.= =The problem of individualization.= How far is individualism
compatible with social cohesion? What forms of individualism may be
considered socially useful or socially harmful? What forms of
individualism may be useful in an organization based on a conscious
coöperation in view of a common aim?
=3.= =The problem of nationalities and cultures.= What new schemes of
attitudes and values, or what substitute for the isolated national state
as an instrument of cultural expansion, will stop the fight of
nationalities and cultures?
=4.= =The problem of the sexes.= In the relation between the sexes how
can a maximum of reciprocal response be secured with a minimum of
interference with personal interests? How is the general social
efficiency of a group affected by the various systems of relations
between man and woman? What forms of coöperation between the family and
society are most favorable to the normal development of children?
=5.= =The economic problem.= How shall we be able to develop attitudes
which will subordinate economic success to other values? How shall we
restore stimulation to labor? The bad family life constantly evident in
these pages and the consequent delinquency of children, as well as
crime, prostitution and alcoholism, are largely due to the
overdetermination of economic interests—to the tendency to produce or
acquire the largest possible amount of economic values—because these
interests are actually so universal and predominant and because economic
success is a value convertible into new experience, recognition,
response, and security.
The modern division and organization of labor brings a continually
growing quantitative prevalence of occupations which are almost
completely devoid of stimulation and therefore present little interest
for the workman. This fact affects human behavior and happiness
profoundly, and the restoration of stimulation to labor is among the
most important problems confronting society. The present industrial
organization tends also to develop a type of human being as abnormal in
its way as the opposite type of individual who gets the full amount of
occupational stimulation by taking a line of interest destructive of
social order,—the criminal or vagabond.
The moralist complains of the materialization of men and expects a
change of the social organization to be brought about by moral or
religious preaching; the economic determinist considers the whole social
organization as conditioned fundamentally and necessarily by economic
factors and expects an improvement exclusively from a possible
historically necessary modification of the economic organization itself.
From the viewpoint of behavior the problem is much more serious and
objective than the moralist conceives it, but much less limited and
determined than it appears to the economic determinist. The economic
interests are only one class of human attitudes among others, and every
attitude can be modified by an adequate social technic. The interest in
the nature of work is frequently as strong as or stronger than the
interest in the economic results of the work, and often finds an
objective expression in spite of the fact that actual social
organization has little place for it. The protests, in fact, represented
by William Morris mean that a certain class of work has visibly passed
from the stage where it was stimulating to a stage where it is not,—that
the handicrafts formerly expressed an interest in the work itself rather
than in the economic returns from the work. Since every attitude tends
to influence social institutions, we may expect that an organization and
a division of labor based on occupational interests may gradually
replace the present organization based on demands of economic
productivity. In other words, with the appropriate change of attitudes
and values all work may become artistic work. And with the appropriate
change of attitudes and values the recognition of economic success may
be subordinated to the recognition of human values.
INDEX
Abbott, Edith, 102, 211.
Abnormality, problem of, 255.
Addams, Jane, 31.
Additon, Henrietta, 212.
Alcoholism, problem of, 255.
Anger, emotion of, 2.
Attitudes, mental, 233.
Bedford Hills Reformatory, 172.
Behavior, a science of, 228.
Bentley, Mary Ide, 86.
Bohemian, 12.
Breckenridge, S. P., 102, 211.
Cabot, Hugh, 92.
Cadet, the, 141.
Character, definition of, 241.
Charity girl, 119.
Chicago Vice Commission, 229.
Church, Irish Catholic, 159;
Polish Catholic, 159.
Code, the social, 50.
Common sense _vs._ scientific procedure, 225.
Community, 43.
Crime, problem of, 255.
Crime and punishment, 223.
Criminology, procedure of, 222.
Culbert, Jane F., 216.
Cultures, problem of, 255.
Davis, Katherine B., 116, 117, 118.
Daydreaming, 35.
Deardorff, Neva R., 212.
Delinquency, beginning of, 109.
Delinquent, proportion of foreign born, 152.
Demi-virgin, 231.
Demoralization of girls, 98, 150.
Dostoievsky, F., 10.
Economic Determination, 118.
Economic interests, overdetermination of, 256.
Economic problem, 256.
Eliot, Thomas D., 211.
Ellis, Havelock, 100.
El Retiro, 200.
Emotions, 2.
Engelgardt, A. N., 45.
Epithets, 49.
Experience, desire for new, 4.
Exploitation of girl by parents, 108.
Family, 43.
Fear, emotion of, 2.
Feeble-mindedness, 251.
Flapper, 231.
Flynn, Wm. J., 240.
Flynt, Josiah, 7.
Folkways, 44.
Gang, Influence on Girl, 142.
Girls’ Protective Bureau, 160.
Gossip, 49.
Group and individual, 70.
Hapgood, Hutchins, 21, 24.
Healy, William, 35.
Home, the demoralized, 209.
Hunting psychosis, 9.
Idealization of Girls, 125.
Individual and group, 70.
Individual and society, struggle between, 233.
Individualization, 70, 97, 255.
Influence, sources of, 249.
Immigrant, 39.
Instincts, 2.
Institutions and the family, 151.
Interest, hunting pattern of, 9.
Italians and white slavery, 145.
James, William, 22.
Jennings, H. S., 3, 217.
Jews and white slavery, 145.
Joy, emotion of, 3.
Juvenile Courts, establishment of, 194.
Kammerer, P. G., 132, 141.
Kneeland, George J., 144.
Krauss, F. S., 49.
Labor, Restoration of Stimulation to, 256.
Lashley, K. S., 80.
Legal system, 80.
Leibnitz, 219.
Love, emotion of, 2.
Lying, pathological, 35.
McAdoo, William, 11.
Marriage of illegal mothers, 141.
Mental attitudes, 233.
Meyer, A., 3.
Mir, 45.
Morris, Wm., 257.
Motherhood, illegal, 140.
Motion picture, 79, 83.
Nationalities, Problem of, 255.
Newspaper, 83.
Niceforo, A., 99.
Nightingale, Florence, 31.
Normal and abnormal, studies of, 231.
Occupations, Devoid of Stimulation, 256.
Ostwald, on great men, 219.
Pasteur, L., 10, 31, 32.
Penitentiary, 171.
Philistine, 12.
Pimp, the, 141.
Poverty and demoralization, 98.
Pratt, Anna B., 218.
Prostitute, schooling of, 116;
economic status of parents, 116;
wages of, 117;
the occasional, 119.
Prostitution, causes of, 117, 125;
problem of, 255.
Psychoanalysis as method, 253.
Punishment and crime, 223.
Rage, Emotion of, 2.
Recognition, desire for, 31.
Reflex, conditioned, 49.
Reform of child in spite of institution, 223.
Reformatory, 171.
Response, desire for, 17.
Reuter, E. B., 130.
Reynolds, James Bronson, 223.
Richards, Caroline C., 68.
Saleilles, R., 7.
Schematization of life, 225.
School, as substitute for juvenile court, 211.
School and community, 214.
School, measure of influence, 217;
as injurious to personality, 219.
Science, method of, 225;
as an end in itself, 227.
Security, desire for, 12.
Seduction of girls, 125.
Servant girls, 118.
Sexes, problem of the, 255.
Sexual desire as cause of demoralization, 109, 126.
Shop-girl, 119.
Situation, definition of, 42.
Smith, Edith L., 92, 125, 134, 136, 140.
Social agencies, 151.
Social change, rate of, 70, 78.
Social evolution, rate of, 230.
Social influence, measurement of, 222.
Social science, backwardness of, 229.
Social unrest, 72.
Social values, 232, 233.
Souteneur, the, 141.
Spiridonova, Maria, 31.
Statistics, as method, 244.
Sublimation of the wish, 243.
Success, two types of, 219.
Taft, Jessie, 34, 36, 200, 209, 221.
Temperament, 241.
Thomas, W. I., 3.
Thompson, Sir Wm., 219.
Thorndike, E. L., 17, 26.
Todd, Helen M., 218.
Train, A., 81.
True, Ruth, 13.
Unrest in Immigrants, 72.
Vagabondage, 6, 255.
Values, social, 232.
Van Waters, Miriam, 84, 195, 224.
Veblen, Thorstein, 31.
Venereal infections, 79.
Vice Commission of Chicago, 229.
Visiting teacher, 214.
Watson, J. B., 3, 9, 17, 80, 248.
Watson, Rosalie R., 248.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 99.
White slavers, methods of, 145.
White slavery, 141, 150.
Wishes, 1;
fixation of, 18;
over determination of, 18;
organization of, 39;
regulation of, 41;
transfer of, 243.
Women, types of, 230.
Wulffen, E., 236, 241.
Yerkes, Charles M., 252.
Zlatovratsky, N. N., 46.
-----
Footnote 1:
John B. Watson: “Practical and Theoretic Problems in Instinct and
Habits”, in “Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education”, by
H. S. Jennings, J. B. Watson, Adolf Meyer, W. I. Thomas, p. 63.
Footnote 2:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County (Illinois).
Footnote 3:
Josiah Flynt: “How Men Become Tramps”, _Century Magazine_, Vol. 50, p.
944 (October, 1895).
Footnote 4:
R. Saleilles: “The Individualization of Punishment”, p. 283.
Footnote 5:
Letter from “Railroad Jack” (Manuscript).
Footnote 6:
Records of the Girls’ Protective Bureau (Manuscript).
Footnote 7:
F. Dostoievsky: “The House of the Dead”, p. 25.
Footnote 8:
“Primary-Group Norms in Present-Day Society”, in “Suggestions of
Modern Science Concerning Education”, p. 162.
Footnote 9:
Chief City Magistrate William McAdoo, in _New York World_, December
18, 1920.
Footnote 10:
Ruth True: “The Neglected Girl”, p. 50.
Footnote 11:
W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki: “The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America”, in “Life Record of an Immigrant”, Vol. 3, pp. 246 and 251.
Footnote 12:
From the section entitled “A Bintel Brief” in _Forward_ (a New York
newspaper in the Yiddish language), April 12, 1920.
Footnote 13:
E. L. Thorndike: “The Original Nature of Man”, p. 81.
Footnote 14:
_Forward_, February 8, 1922.
Footnote 15:
_Forward_, March 8, 1922.
Footnote 16:
“Letters of William James”, p. 218. _The Atlantic Monthly Press._
Footnote 17:
Hutchins Hapgood: “The Marionette” (Manuscript).
Footnote 18:
_Forward_, December 17, 1920.
Footnote 19:
E. L. Thorndike: “The Original Nature of Man”, p. 87.
Footnote 20:
_Chicago American_, May 13, 1915.
Footnote 21:
Edith L. Smith, in collaboration with Hugh Cabot: “A Study in Sexual
Morality”, _Social Hygiene_, Vol. 2, p. 532.
Footnote 22:
Burr: “Religious Confession and Confessants”, p. 356.
Footnote 23:
“The Lady Bum”, by One of Them. _New York Times, Book Review and
Magazine_, January 1, 1922.
Footnote 24:
Jessie Taft: “Mental Hygiene Problems of Normal Adolescence”, _Mental
Hygiene_, Vol. 5, p. 746.
Footnote 25:
William Healy: “Mental Conflicts and Misconduct”, p. 217.
Footnote 26:
Jessie Taft: “Mental Hygiene Problems of Normal Adolescence”, _Mental
Hygiene_, Vol. 5, p. 750.
Footnote 27:
_Forward_, September 30, 1921.
Footnote 28:
A. N. Engelgardt: “Iz Derevni: 12 Pisem” (“From the Country; 12
Letters”), p. 315.
Footnote 29:
N. N. Zlatovratsky: “Ocherki Krestyanskoy Obshchiny” (“Sketches of the
Peasant Commune”), p. 127.
Footnote 30:
“V Volostnikh Pisaryakh” (“A Village Secretary”), p. 283.
Footnote 31:
F. S. Krauss: “Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven”, p. 103.
Footnote 32:
_Forward_, March 10, 1920.
Footnote 33:
_Forward_, January 22, 1921.
Footnote 34:
_Forward_, January 12, 1922.
Footnote 35:
_Forward_, July 9, 1920.
Footnote 36:
_Forward_, February 6, 1914.
Footnote 37:
_Forward_, November 26, 1920.
Footnote 38:
Caroline C. Richards: “Village Life in America”, pp. 21–138, _passim_.
New York, Henry Holt and Company. Reprinted by permission. Quoted by
R. E. Park and E. W. Burgess: “Introduction to the Science of
Sociology”, p. 305.
Footnote 39:
_Forward_, March 11, 1921.
Footnote 40:
Hutchins Hapgood: “At Christine’s” (Manuscript).
Footnote 41:
_Forward_, December 8, 1920.
Footnote 42:
Newspaper item.
Footnote 43:
Editorial in _The New Republic_, June 19, 1915.
Footnote 44:
These materials, edited by John B. Watson and K. S. Lashley, have been
printed in part in _Mental Hygiene_, Vol. 4, pp. 769–847.
Footnote 45:
A. Train: “The Prisoner at the Bar”, p. 6.
Footnote 46:
_N. Y. World_, February 4, 1922.
Footnote 47:
_Forward_, May 4, 1920.
Footnote 48:
Miriam Van Waters: “The True Value of Correctional Education.” Paper
read at the 51st American Prison Conference, November 1, 1921.
Footnote 49:
Editorial in the Brown University Daily Herald, quoted in the _New
York World_, February 3, 1921.
Footnote 50:
Mary Ide Bentley, Address at Berkeley, California. _New York Sun_,
February 7, 1922.
Footnote 51:
_New York American_, September 27, 1920.
Footnote 52:
_Forward_, January 1, 1920.
Footnote 53:
_Forward_, December 15, 1920.
Footnote 54:
Edith L. Smith, in Collaboration with Hugh Cabot: “A Study in Sexual
Morality”, _Social Hygiene_, Vol. 2, p. 537.
Footnote 55:
_New York World_, May 4, 1920.
Footnote 56:
Autobiography (Manuscript).
Footnote 57:
Résumé from A. Niceforo: “Les Classes Pauvres”, pp. 257–274.
Footnote 58:
Sidney and Beatrice Webb: “The Prevention of Destitution”, p. 306.
Footnote 59:
Havelock Ellis: “Studies in the Psychology of Sex”, Vol. 6. p. 275.
Footnote 60:
Sophonisba P. Breckenridge and Edith Abbott: “The Delinquent Child and
the Home”, pp. 74, 105.
Footnote 61:
Records of the Girls’ Protective Bureau.
Footnote 62:
Records of the Girls’ Protective Bureau.
Footnote 63:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County, Illinois.
Footnote 64:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County, Illinois.
Footnote 65:
Case Histories of 21 Women ... at Bedford Hills (Pamphlet) p. 3.
Footnote 66:
From the Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County.
Footnote 67:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County.
Footnote 68:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County.
Footnote 69:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County.
Footnote 70:
_New York American_, January 2, 1922.
Footnote 71:
Records of the Juvenile Court of Cook County.
Footnote 72:
Katharine Bement Davis: “A Study of Prostitutes Committed from New
York City.” Supplementary chapter in Kneeland’s “Commercialized
Prostitution in New York City”, p. 205.
Footnote 73:
Katharine Bement Davis: “A Study of Prostitutes Committed from New
York City.” Supplementary chapter in Kneeland’s “Commercialized
Prostitution in New York City”, p. 177.
Footnote 74:
_Ibid._, 221.
Footnote 75:
Katharine Bement Davis. _Op. cit._ pp. 145, 225.
Footnote 76:
“Histoire de la Prostitution” ... quoted by Ellis in “Studies in the
Psychology of Sex”, Vol. 6, p. 261.
Footnote 77:
“The Social Evil in Chicago” (Report of the Vice Commission of
Chicago), p. 80.
Footnote 78:
Edith L. Smith: “A Study in Sexual Morality”, “Social Hygiene”, Vol.
2, p. 541.
Footnote 79:
Records of the New York Probation Association.
Footnote 80:
From the manuscript of an autobiography and case study by Professor E.
B. Reuter.
Footnote 81:
P. G. Kammerer: “The Unmarried Mother”, p. 148.
Footnote 82:
Edith L. Smith: “A Study in Sexual Morality”, “Social Hygiene”, Vol.
2, p. 535.
Footnote 83:
Edith L. Smith: “A Study in Sexual Morality”, “Social Hygiene”, Vol.
2, p. 540.
Footnote 84:
Edith L. Smith, “A Study in Sexual Morality”, “Social Hygiene”, Vol.
2, p. 538.
Footnote 85:
P. G. Kammerer: “The Unmarried Mother”, p. 302.
Footnote 86:
“_Mutterschaft_”, p. 459.
Footnote 87:
_Forward_, November 18, 1913.
Footnote 88:
George J. Kneeland: “Commercialized Prostitution in New York City”, p.
90.
Footnote 89:
_New York World_, March 5, 1920.
Footnote 90:
Maud Miner: “The Slavery of Prostitution”, p. 105.
Footnote 91:
_Forward_, June 7, 1906.
Footnote 92:
See Breckenridge and Abbott: “The Delinquent Child and Home”, p. 59.
Footnote 93:
Records of the United Charities of Chicago.
Footnote 94:
Records of the Girls’ Protective Bureau.
Footnote 95:
Records of the Girls’ Protective Bureau.
Footnote 96:
“Where Girls Go Right”, _Survey Graphic_, June, 1922.
Footnote 97:
Miriam van Waters: “Juvenile Court Procedure as a Factor in
Diagnosis”, “Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological
Society”, Vol. 16.
Footnote 98:
Jessie Taft: “Some Problems in Delinquency—Where Do They Belong?”
“Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society”, Vol.
16.
Footnote 99:
Jessie Taft: “Some Problems in Delinquency—Where Do They Belong?”
“Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society”, Vol.
16.
Footnote 100:
Sophonisba P. Breckenridge and Edith Abbott: “The Delinquent Child and
the Home”, p. 102.
Footnote 101:
Thomas D. Eliot: “The Juvenile Court and the Community.”
Footnote 102:
Henrietta Additon and Neva R. Deardorff: “That Child”, _The Survey_,
May 3, 1919.
Footnote 103:
Jane F. Culbert: “The Visiting Teacher”, _Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science: Child Welfare_, November,
1921, pp. 85, 87, 88.
Footnote 104:
Herbert S. Jennings: “The Biology of Children in Relation to
Education”, in “Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education”,
p. 15.
Footnote 105:
Helen M. Todd: “Why Children Work”, _McClure’s Magazine_, April, 1913.
Footnote 106:
Anna Beach Pratt: “The Relation of the Teacher and the Social Worker”,
_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: Child
Welfare_, November, 1921, p. 90.
Footnote 107:
Jessie Taft: “The Neurotic Girl”, _Modern Medicine_, Vol. 2, p. 162.
Footnote 108:
James Bronson Reynolds: Communication to the _New York World_, March
6, 1922.
Footnote 109:
Miriam van Waters: “The True Value of Correctional Education.” Paper
read at the 51st American Prison Congress, November 1, 1921.
Footnote 110:
Based on E. Wulffen: “Psychologie des Verbrechens”, Vol. 1, p. 173.
Footnote 111:
William J. Flynn, Former Chief of the United States Secret Service:
“My Ten Biggest Man Hunts”, _New York Herald_, January 29, 1922.
Footnote 112:
Based on E. Wulffen: “Psychologie des Verbrechens”, Vol. 2, p. 320.
Footnote 113:
John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner Watson: “Studies in Infant
Psychology”, _Popular Science Monthly_, December, 1921, pp. 494, 515.
Footnote 114:
“Psychological Examining in the United States Army”. Report prepared
by Charles M. Yerkes, in “Memoirs of the National Academy of
Sciences”, Vol. 15.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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