YOUR BOY AND 
 HIS TRAINING 
 
YOUR BOY AND 
 HIS TRAINING 
 
 A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON BOY-TRAINING 
 
 BY 
 EDWIN PULLER 
 
 FORMES PRESIDENT, SCOUTMASTERS' ASSOCIATION OF ST. LOUIS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO 
 THE MEN OF TOMORROW, WITH THE HOPE THAT THE 
 THOUGHTS EXPRESSED IN THESE PAGES WILL AID 
 THEIR PARENTS AND TEACHERS, IN SOME DEGREE, TO 
 A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF BOY -NATURE AND 
 BOY-TRAINING. 
 
 335054 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE average boy is not understood by the average 
 parent. This misunderstanding produces not only in- 
 different training of the boy but also soul stress for the 
 parent and his son. Intelligent training will improve 
 the quality of the man into whom your son will de- 
 velop. To be able to give such training, the parent 
 must first know how. The education of the parent 
 in the subject of boy-training is the pretentious pur- 
 pose of this volume, which I approach with full con- 
 sciousness of my own limitations. 
 
 This book is the result of my association with and 
 study of large numbers of boys from ten to twenty 
 years of age, and in it have been embodied, consciously 
 or unconsciously, some ideas of other writers on this 
 subject. 
 
 I have endeavored to present in elementary form a 
 brief, practical study in adolescent psychology and its 
 application to boy-training, written in language which 
 the average parent, guardian or teacher can readily 
 understand. With this end in view, there has been 
 an elimination of technical terms, as far as may be 
 even at possible risk of scientific inaccuracy of state- 
 ment. It will not be necessary for the average reader 
 to peruse these pages with a dictionary at hand. They 
 
 vii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 were written not for psychologists, but for parents, in 
 the hope that a work both readable and comprehensible 
 will acquaint the average reader with the laws govern- 
 ing boy life and their application to his training with 
 greater clarity than a work abounding in abstruse 
 phraseology and scientific nomenclature. 
 
 The pages which follow will be devoted to a dis- 
 cussion of the problems of the normal boy the same 
 red-blooded, harum-scarum youngster who occupies 
 such a large place in your life and not especially 
 to the delinquent boy. I indulge the hope that this 
 volume may aid you, in some degree, to a better 
 understanding of your boy, his problems and their 
 solution. 
 
 EDWIN PULLER. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM ... 1 
 
 Boy-problems are as universal as boys 
 Boys too often regarded as necessary evils 
 Necessity for training How to study 
 the boy Tendencies in present-day edu- 
 cation of children Character-culture 
 should come first The home is the place 
 and the parent the agency Boys more 
 difficult to train than girls The boy's 
 viewpoint Parental indifference to boy 
 training Each boy is an individual 
 problem. 
 
 II. PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY . . . 15 
 
 Causes of waywardness Wrong training 
 and bad environment Parental ignorance 
 concerning boy training An instance 
 Heredity -Accountability of the parent 
 Spending money Laxity of discipline 
 Average parent not fully equipped for 
 his job. 
 
 ix 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 III. CHILD PSYCHOLOGY .... 30 
 
 Table of psychic characteristics at several 
 ages Infancy and imagination Early 
 boyhood and individualism Early adoles- 
 cence and hero worship Later adoles- 
 cence and thoughtful mental attitude 
 Age when puberty occurs Period of 
 motor activity. 
 
 IV. ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY ... 52 
 
 Adolescence the period of storm and stress 
 Change from childhood to manhood 
 Puberty Physical indicia Mental in- 
 dicia Psychic disturbances Truancy 
 and wanderlust Lack of continuity of 
 purpose and action Proximity to the sav- 
 age state Humor Sex consciousness 
 
 o 
 
 and its manifestations Love affairs 
 Plasticity of mind Will power appears 
 Age of discretion Cycles of suscepti- 
 bility to religious influences Age of ex- 
 perimentation Hero worship and its 
 manifestations Object of hero worship 
 Gratitude lacking Reflective period 
 Introspection Sense of perspective is 
 distorted Visionary ambitions Dislike 
 of older boy for younger Will power, 
 mental and moral stature attained. 
 X 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 V. THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT . . , .80 
 
 Difference of viewpoint at differing 
 psychic ages Youth and age contrasted 
 The boy's desire for physical expres- 
 sion Inability for sustained mental or 
 physical effort Adult must put himself 
 in boy's place to understand him The 
 natural adult leader of boys Boy lives in 
 the present Parent must do child's 
 thinking for him Injustice to boy from 
 failure to consider his standards. 
 
 VI. OBEDIENCE 92 
 
 The cornerstone of child training Chil- 
 dren's attitude toward parents Its causes 
 and effects Character is predicated on 
 obedience Parental prohibitions which 
 cause disobedience Habit of obedience 
 formed most easily in early childhood 
 How obedience may be cultivated Com- 
 mands must be founded on justice and 
 reason Disobedience results from pa- 
 rental caprice or injustice Illustrations 
 The rational quality in the boy Im- 
 portance of paternal example. 
 
 VII. THE REPRESSIVE METHOD OF TRAINING lO^ 
 
 Age when training should begin Re- 
 pressive method is negative Illustrations 
 
 xi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 of repressive commands Their effect on 
 the boy The play spirit in the young 
 A factor in mental and moral growth 
 The passive system of training Evils of 
 lavish supply of money Effects of re- 
 pression are depressing Acts should not 
 be prohibited without suggestion of other 
 acts to fill the void created Mental in- 
 spiration of praise. 
 
 VIII. THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD OF TRAINING 117 
 
 Necessity for formulating definite plan 
 of training Impossible to state a simple 
 rule American habit of drifting out of 
 touch with offspring Duty of fathers to 
 continue intimacy with sons through ado- 
 lescence American children not general- 
 ly well bred English, German, French 
 and Japanese methods contrasted Sug- 
 gestion is informative and inspirational 
 Negative commands produce mental 
 hostility and will combat Illustrations 
 of effect of suggestion A father's plan 
 The big brother comradeship of father 
 and son. 
 
 IX. THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD . . .132 
 
 Imagination a characteristic of childhood 
 Fantasy as real to childhood as reality 
 
 xii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 The cause of lies Illustrations The 
 fisherman's lie Clarity of mental proc- 
 esses largely determines whether a state- 
 ment is a lie or an untruth The lie of 
 the older boy Desire to avoid punish- 
 ment the chief cause of falsehood The 
 remedy for falsehood Moral suasion, its 
 definition and application. 
 
 X. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT .... 143 
 
 The place occupied by corporal punish- 
 ment as a corrective measure Reasons 
 advanced for its use Illustration from a 
 banker's experience Average child does 
 not rebel against authority But only 
 against authority unjustly or harshly ex- 
 ercised The boy's view of corporal pun- 
 ishment Breaking the boy's will Un- 
 just or excessive punishments conduce to 
 lying Effect of nagging on children 
 Mental versus physical punishment Ef- 
 fective substitutes for corporal punish- 
 ment. 
 
 XI. THE CIGARETTE HABIT . . . .157 
 
 Effect of nicotine on human organism A 
 physician's opinion Tobacco and the 
 adult Age when boys acquire the habit 
 
 xiii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Effects of tobacco on adolescents 
 Opinion of Dr. Seaver based on physical 
 measurements of smokers and nonsmok- 
 ers Cigarette most pernicious form of 
 tobacco Influences which actuate boys to 
 acquire the habit Poisons in the cigar- 
 ette Acrolein and carbonic oxide 
 Moral effects Juvenile criminals are gen- 
 erally cigarette fiends Methods used to 
 dissuade boys from beginning Sugges- 
 tion of a remedy for those who have con- 
 tracted the habit. 
 
 XII. BOY GANGS 173 
 
 Gregarious instinct in boys Craving for 
 association with their own kind Two 
 kinds of boy gangs The supervised 
 gang The unsupervised gang Illustra- 
 tions of each The gang leader and his 
 qualifications The necessity for a meet- 
 ing place Morals of unsupervised gang 
 always lower than morals of its individual 
 constituents Motives for gang activities 
 -Their code of honor Street gangs are 
 training schools for delinquents Gang 
 spirit inherent in all boy nature Super- 
 vised gangs and their influence on char- 
 acter development-Necessity for urging 
 boy to join good gang. 
 
 xiv 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 XIII. THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE . . 183 
 
 The magic of the name Scout The Boy 
 Scouts of America What the movement 
 is Ranks and requirements Good turns 
 and illustrations Appeal of uniform and 
 hikes to boy before joining Purpose of 
 organization is character building A 
 former method of teaching ethics Scout 
 camps and hikes The camp-fire tale as 
 a means of training The qualities which 
 Scout associations develop Boy Scout 
 organization founded on sound psychol- 
 ogy A denatured gang Opinions of 
 sociologists The universality of its ap- 
 peal to boyhood An efficient method of 
 training boys in mass It keeps the boy 
 busy The busy boy is the best boy A 
 field of social service for the adult. 
 
 XIV. JUVENILE READING .... 206 
 
 Potent influence of books on the boy 
 Next to environment and companions 
 Two-fold value of literature Desire of 
 boy for something to read He reads 
 for entertainment; studies because com- 
 pelled to Reading must be suited to men- 
 tal and psychological requirements 
 Fairy tales Adventure tales Informa- 
 tive books Dime novel and nickel library 
 XV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Their effect on morals and literary taste 
 The bad book in the outward dress of 
 good fiction The psychological require- 
 ment for thrilling adventure tales Comic 
 Sunday supplements Ideal companions 
 for boys found in best books Doses of 
 literature as remedies for diseases of 
 character Stories of animal life The 
 juvenile magazine A list of books useful 
 for outlining a course of juvenile reading. 
 
 XV. AGENCIES FOR SEX-INSTRUCTION . .227 
 
 Importance of accurate sex knowledge 
 Misinformation acquired at a very early 
 age Necessity for scientific instruction 
 Former antipathy to discussion Par- 
 ent is natural teacher of sex Neglect of 
 parental duty Necessity for other agen- 
 cies of instruction Grammar schools, 
 high schools, colleges, etc. Danger of 
 premature sex excitation Individuals 
 who are best adapted to teach Teacher, 
 physician, biologist, special lecturer 
 Opinions for and against the school as 
 agency for sex instruction. 
 
 XVI. ON OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION . .238 
 
 Periods in child's life when instruction 
 should be given Instruction should be 
 suited to his psychological requirements 
 
 xvi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Mother should begin instruction Method 
 known as the biological approach Na- 
 ture and amount of instruction necessary 
 Father should assume instruction at 
 puberty Necessary admonitions Influ- 
 ence of theatrical productions with a sex 
 appeal Musical comedies, burlesque and 
 vaudeville shows Sex hygiene societies 
 A list of pamphlets published A list of 
 books recommended. 
 
 XVII. CHILDREN'S COURTS .... 254* 
 
 An instrumentality for reclaiming the 
 wayward boy The state formerly re- 
 garded delinquent boy as a criminal 
 New attitude toward dependent and de- 
 linquent children Their mental and 
 moral concepts not matured Infractions 
 of law are manifestations of moral dis- 
 ease which it is the state's business to 
 cure Child under sixteen cannot be a 
 criminal Delinquent child is a ward of 
 the state The Juvenile Court Methods 
 of dealing with boys The probation of- 
 ficer Laws for control of delinquent par- 
 ents. 
 
 XVIII. CONCLUSIONS 270 
 
 Every boy has inalienable right to be well 
 
 trained Basis of boy training is parent 
 
 xvii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 training Insight, tact and patience 
 necessary Boy's need of father's com- 
 panionship Certain physical abnormali- 
 ties affect intellect and character Effects 
 of heredity contrasted with environment 
 All boys possess a common nature 
 Summary of rules bearing on boy train- 
 ing. 
 
YOUR BOY AND 
 HIS TRAINING 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS 
 TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 He who helps a child helps humanity with a dis- 
 tinctness, with an immediateness, which no other 
 help given to human creatures in any other stage 
 of their human life can possibly give again. 
 
 BISHOP PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 BOY-PROBLEMS, like boys, are al- 
 ways with us. Wherever there is a 
 boy there are problems to be solved. The 
 perfect boy may live somewhere but not in 
 my immediate neighborhood. Even though 
 he possesses many of the attributes of per- 
 fection, he will be found wanting in indus- 
 try, or thrift, or orderliness, or courtesy, or 
 studiousness. He may even show such 
 
 1 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 traits as disobedience, untruthfulness, self- 
 ishness, truancy, thievery, or immorality. 
 The complete boy does not just grow he 
 is builded and the parent is both architect 
 and builder. 
 
 All parents at some time, and some par- 
 ents at all times, regard boys as necessary 
 evils, to be endured with varying degrees 
 of patience. We formerly believed that 
 boys should be seldom seen and less fre- 
 quently heard. The young barbarian was 
 and is now tolerated for the time being be- 
 cause of our hope that he will outgrow his 
 rowdyism. We are disposed to let nature 
 take its course with the juvenile savage in- 
 stead of bothering our heads with the effort 
 to understand him or to solve his problems. 
 But to train the boy intelligently we must 
 first train ourselves so that we can under- 
 stand him and guide him through the vari- 
 ous stages of his development. 
 
 2 
 
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 Intelligent training is the birthright of \ 
 every child. If he has not received it, he 
 has been cheated. The training of the child 
 up to perfect maturity is the highest duty as 
 well as the most difficult task which devolves 
 upon parents. The performance of this 
 duty is, fortunately, lightened by the pleas- 
 ure of association with the joyousness of 
 childhood, but the real reward of the parent 
 for years of patient, watchful, intelligent su- 
 pervision is not only the consciousness of 
 duty well done but the profound joy expe- 
 rienced in aiding the unfoldment of an im- 
 mortal soul. 
 
 The study of childhood possesses a fasci- 
 nation for the student commensurate with 
 its importance to humanity. It is both eas- 
 ier and pleasanter to study the child in the 
 concrete than children in the abstract. But 
 it is obvious that no comprehensive conclu- 
 sions on the subject of child- training can be 
 
 3 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 deduced from the study of a single child. 
 The varying manifestations of different na- 
 tures and temperaments require wide ob- 
 servation, covering many subjects, before 
 correct conclusions as to cause and effect 
 can be drawn or a systematic philosophy can 
 be evolved. We must study the concrete 
 boy in large numbers to be able to formu- 
 late abstract principles of boy-training. 
 "The proper study of mankind is man," may 
 be paraphrased into "the proper study of 
 boykind is boy." Today we know the boy 
 better than ever before. He has been stud- 
 ied, watched, weighed, analyzed, synthe- 
 tized, tested, classified and labeled in all his 
 varied aspects. We have transformed our 
 personal knowledge of him into scientific 
 knowledge; and various manifestations of 
 his activities which were formerly called 
 "pure cussedness" are now recognized as 
 ebullitions of superabundant vitality which 
 
 4 
 
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 have been denied a natural outlet and 
 therefore find expression in prohibited 
 forms. 
 
 The present-day tendency in the educa- 
 tion of American children is to emphasize 
 the importance of knowledge, health, and 
 character in the order in which they are here 
 set down. To confine the term "education" 
 solely or chiefly to the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge is to limit its meaning to its usual syn- 
 onym of instruction or teaching. In its 
 truer and broader sense it implies the disci- 
 pline and development of the moral, physi- 
 cal, and spiritual faculties, as well as the 
 purely intellectual faculty, for it is only 
 through such comprehensive development 
 that ideal maturity can be approached. 
 Sheer intellectual power, resulting from the 
 systematic acquisition of knowledge and 
 training of the mind, produces a one-sided 
 individual who lacks the restraints and guid- 
 
 5 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 ance imposed by moral and ethical concepts. 
 He is like an ocean liner of tremendous 
 speed and power but without chart, com- 
 pass, or rudder. It is obvious that the 
 intellectually brilliant crook, devoting his 
 mental gifts to the accomplishment of his 
 criminal purposes, is a less worthy and less 
 useful citizen than the laborer of high char- 
 acter but limited knowledge. 
 
 The entire trend of our present sys- 
 tem of education is to overemphasize the 
 importance of the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge and to underemphasize the necessity 
 for the building of character. And this is 
 the chief fault with our otherwise excellent 
 public-school system of education, which, 
 circumscribed by public prejudices ground- 
 ed in widely differing religious beliefs, 
 steers clear of comprehensive moral training 
 because of its intimate coherence with relig- 
 ious and spiritual training. The meager 
 
 6 
 
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 moral training which the public school af- 
 fords is merely incidental to its primary 
 function of imparting knowledge. This de- 
 ficiency must be supplied primarily by the 
 home, and secondarily by the Sunday school 
 and the church in laying the foundations of 
 character strong and deep before the child 
 reaches the school age and by continuing 
 the work on the moral and spiritual super- 
 structure until maturity beholds the building 
 completed on all sides. When we come to 
 realize that the true function of education is 
 first of all to build strong character, second 
 to develop a virile physique, and last of all 
 to impart knowledge and discipline the men- 
 tal faculties, we then will have evolved an 
 educational system which will be effective 
 in accomplishing its real purpose the evo- 
 lution of the child into the symmetrically; 
 equipped adult. This is the eternal boy- 
 problem. 
 
 7 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 The home is the place and the parent is 
 the agency for character culture. Every fa- 
 ther of boys ought to be a boy-expert. And 
 he can be, by devoting to this most impor- 
 tant of all subjects a tithe of the study which 
 he devotes to his business or to his profes- 
 sion. Many parents rely entirely upon in- 
 stinct or natural inclinations which are in- 
 fluenced largely by mental and temperamen- 
 tal conditions as their guide in boy train- 
 ing. An inactive liver too frequently de- 
 termines our attitude toward our offspring. 
 Is it fair to the son that the parent blindly 
 and blunderingly pursues his natural incli- 
 nations in training his son, instead of avail- 
 ing himself of the results of the research and 
 the thought which have already been given 
 
 this subject? 
 
 i 
 
 More boys go wrong than girls, of which 
 fact the records of juvenile courts, reforma- 
 tories, and houses of detention bear ample 
 
 8 
 
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 evidence ; and they are more difficult to train, 
 develop, and discipline than girls. This is 
 due to the differences in their psychological 
 processes. Girlhood finds ample oppor- 
 tunity for its development in the seclusion 
 of the home. The future function of the 
 woman child is to be the home-maker and the 
 bearer of children, and her training for this 
 divine responsibility can be accomplished 
 best amid the refining influences and pro- 
 tecting care which the home affords. The 
 future of the man child is to be the bread- 
 winner of the family and the burden-bearer 
 of civilization. The training necessary to 
 produce such diverse results must be as dif- 
 ferent as the respective life-works of man 
 and woman. Boyhood requires, among 
 other things, adventure, rough sports and 
 out-of-door activities for its development. 
 Boys are less obedient, less tractable, and 
 less amenable to discipline than girls, there- 
 
 9 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 fore their training is correspondingly diffi- 
 cult and involved. We should not expect to 
 understand the heart and soul of the boy 
 more easily than his anatomy and physiol- 
 ogy- 
 
 The boy sees things from a point of view 
 different from that of the adult, based on 
 psychological differences. The mature in- 
 dividual cannot obtain the boy's viewpoint 
 unless he is able to put himself in his place. 
 To do this he must know the child's chang- 
 ing mental processes and the evolution of 
 his moral perceptions which are manifested 
 in the four periods of his development, in 
 each of which he exhibits a personality as 
 far apart as those of four individuals of 
 widely differing natures. The boy at six, 
 ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age is 
 four different personalities, and he requires 
 four different methods of treatment. These 
 psychological prescriptions are as dissimilar 
 10 
 
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 as the medical prescriptions for boils, 
 measles, influenza, and typhoid. The meth- 
 ods and plans suited for one period are un- 
 suited for another. The realization of this 
 basic truth is the first step toward the solu- 
 tion of your boy's problems. 
 
 No parent who stops with provision for 
 the physical and intellectual demands of his 
 child has done his full duty. It may appear 
 trite to say that he should go further and 
 train the character and the soul; but failure 
 in this essential is a standing indictment 
 against many Christian homes today. Par- 
 ental indifference to and ignorance of boy- 
 psychology are the causes which have 
 produced untold thousands of delinquent or 
 semi-delinquent boys. Your boy may, and 
 thousands of boys do, weather the storm of 
 adolescence, guided only by the blundering 
 but loving heart which has neither accurate 
 knowledge nor understanding of his nature; 
 
 11 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 but such results are fortuitous rather than 
 certain. 
 
 More parents have mastered the rules of 
 bridge than have mastered the principles 
 of child culture. The training of the boy, 
 despite its tremendous personal signifi- 
 cance to him and to our homes, is less fre- 
 quently and less seriously discussed than 
 politics, the weather, or the latest style 
 of dress. Too many boys are reared 
 like their colored sister, Topsy, who "jest 
 V^growed." 
 
 Deep down in our hearts we feel that we 
 know much more than our neighbors about 
 the upbringing of a son, because of our su- 
 perior intuition and better judgment, even 
 though we have never qualified for the job 
 by study, research, or thought. Too many 
 of us believe we are "natural-born" boy 
 trainers. When our boy goes wrong, it is 
 our profound conviction that it is due wholly 
 12 
 
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM 
 
 to the influence of the bad boys with whom 
 he associates. As a matter of fact, it is just 
 as likely that our Johnny has corrupted his 
 associates as that they are the cause of his 
 moral infractions. Never, under any cir- 
 cumstances, do we blame ourselves either for 
 the poor quality of his training or for per- 
 mitting his evil associations. His delin- 
 quencies reflect on us and hurt our pride, 
 but we palliate the hurt by attributing them 
 to causes which do not involve us. We are 
 too ready to prove an alibi when called to 
 the court of conscience and charged with 
 responsibility. 
 
 The average parent bitterly resents per- 
 sonal advice relating to the upbringing of 
 his children, but this resentment probably 
 has less relevancy to reading a book on boy 
 training because it is impersonal in its ap- 
 plication and affords the reader the election 
 of taking as much or as little of it to himself 
 13 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 as his reason, judgment, vanity, or egotism 
 may dictate. 
 
 All boys have a common nature whose de- 
 velopment proceeds according to fixed laws ; 
 but diversities of temperament and charac- 
 ter differentiate individuals and thus make 
 each boy an individual problem. The solu- 
 tion of that problem is your job. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 THE wayward boy is often the son of 
 a wayward parent. 
 
 Waywardness results not so much from 4 
 the effects of heredity as from lack of train- \ 
 ing. Wrong training, lack of training, and 
 bad environment are the great, compelling 
 influences toward delinquency, which over- 
 shadow all other causes of juvenile way- 
 wardness; and for such causes parents are 
 directly and primarily responsible. 
 
 This is a severe indictment of parents, but 
 not more severe than the consequences of 
 their neglect of duty warrant. Many par- 
 ents act on the presumption that their obli- 
 gation is fulfilled by supplying the child 
 15 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 with food, clothing, shelter, and school, for- 
 getting the equally important duty of de- 
 veloping his moral and spiritual nature. 
 Such conditions are usually the result of in- 
 difference, a sin of omission, and only rarely 
 do they result from bad precept and exam- 
 ple. 
 
 In the larger number of cases, the way- 
 ward parent is such because of ignorance of 
 the scope of his duty, or because of his dele- 
 gation of moral and religious training to the 
 school or some other agency not fully 
 equipped for the task. It is seldom that a 
 parent does not earnestly desire high moral 
 character in his offspring. He hopes in a 
 blind, inchoate way that his son will become 
 a well-rounded man physically, mentally, 
 morally, socially, spiritually. By what 
 means that hope is to fructify he does not 
 know. He is groping in the dark, hoping 
 against hope that the miracle of evolution 
 16 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY V 
 
 will result in perfection, without the em- 
 ployment of the methods and agencies at / 
 his command which will assist to that end. J 
 
 The first step, then, in the training of the^ 
 boy is the training of the parent. And what 
 applies to the father usually applies, with 
 less force, to the mother. 
 
 When we reclaim wayward parents, we 
 shall reclaim wayward boys. The first step 
 toward reclamation is the awakening of 
 their sense of responsibility the driving 
 home of the consciousness of stewardship. 
 "Am I my brother's keeper?" has still 
 stronger application to the father and the 
 mother of a son. Yours is the responsibility 
 for the child's presence in the world ; yours 
 is the responsibility for supplying the con- 
 ventional comforts on which physical life 
 depends; but still more emphatically yours 
 is the responsibility of furnishing the guid- 
 ing hand which will pilot the frail bark of 
 17 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 youth through the storm and stress of ado- 
 lescence. During infancy he is anchored in 
 the harbor of home, surrounded by love and 
 physical comfort; during early boyhood his 
 bark is drifting on the current toward the 
 sea; while the dawn of adolescence plunges 
 him into an unknown and uncharted ocean, 
 without rudder or compass by which to 
 avoid the sunken reefs of danger and the 
 rocks which wreck the development of char- 
 acter. The morally obligatory duty of 
 child culture must be encouraged, revived, 
 trained, and put into operation. 
 
 Eugene , age 13, was reared by an 
 
 indulgent father, after his mother's death. 
 A stepmother entered the home when the lad 
 was nine. He was a robust boy, athletic and 
 active, handsome, lovable, but mentally lazy, 
 backward in school, without continuity of 
 purpose or action, inclined to falsehood and 
 evasion, willful, disobedient, extravagant 
 18 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 and spoiled. He remarked one day to a 
 companion, in my hearing, "Dad's a stingy 
 guy. He only gives me five dollars a week 
 spending money." 
 
 This boy's problem was a serious one, but 
 not hopeless by any means. The delinquent 
 parent was responsible for the delinquency 
 of his son. Engrossed in the cares of mani- 
 fold business interests, he "had no time" for 
 the training of his boy. He failed to realize 
 that making a son is more important than 
 making money. If he had given his busi- 
 ness no more thought and judgment than 
 he gave his son, he would be a financial 
 bankrupt. As it is, the son probably will be a 
 character bankrupt. At the present time his 
 moral liabilities exceed his assets a poor be- 
 ginning for the business of building a human 
 life. His affairs should be in the hands of a 
 receiver a boy-expert who will rehabilitate 
 the boy or, better still, who will arouse the 
 
 19 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 parent to recognize his duty and do it. The 
 intelligent parent is the natural and best 
 teacher of his own child. 
 
 Up-to-date horticulturists and agricultur- 
 ists avail themselves of the sum total of scien- 
 tific knowledge concerning their respective 
 professions. Unscientific, misdirected, and 
 indifferent methods produce failure; in- 
 ferior fruits and grains of limited yield do 
 not pay. The importance of many things is 
 measured by a financial standard. When 
 reduced to a monetary basis, production is 
 of sufficient importance to call forth the best 
 research, skill, and thought of the individual. 
 Child-culture is more important than horti- 
 culture, even though its benefits cannot be 
 measured in dollars and cents. The De- 
 partment of Agriculture spends millions of 
 dollars every year, largely in the perfection 
 of cattle and hogs. The improvement of the 
 breed of hogs is not more important than the 
 20 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 improvement of the breed of boys. Person- 
 ally, I prefer the boy to the hog. He is just 
 as great a necessity in the human economy 
 and, besides, he is much more companion- 
 able. The best crop we raise is children. 
 Why not improve their breed? The vanity 
 of the parent may answer that they already 
 are splendidly endowed by heredity with all 
 the virtues of mind, morals, and body pos- 
 sessed by their progenitors. But heredity 
 is no such miracle worker. If heredity has 
 equipped the child with a perfect physical 
 machine it still remains necessary to teach 
 him not only how to run it, but how to keep 
 it in good condition. The perfect body will 
 not, unaided, stay perfect, nor will it develop 
 the strong mind and character. All of these 
 and more are required to make the per- 
 fect man. 
 
 "Better boys" should be our slogan. The 
 accountability of the parent for his sacred 
 
 21 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 trust cannot be evaded. It is the one great, 
 upstanding, overshadowing duty concurrent 
 with parenthood. The failure to appreciate 
 its importance is due to many causes. 
 Among them may be mentioned the com- 
 plexity of our present-day civilization with 
 its incessant demands upon the time and 
 strength of parental In some instances the 
 stress and struggle incident to earning a 
 living leave little time for the development 
 of the child. This is especially true in those 
 homes where squalid poverty abides. The 
 husband, exhausted by the grinding toil 
 which he has exchanged for a scant wage, 
 returns home at night and finds a wife worn 
 in mind and body by her task of maintaining 
 a home on less than is requisite for livable 
 conditions. Neither is fit to perform the 
 larger duties of parenthood. Add to this, 
 sickness, accident, unemployment, intemper- 
 ance, and child labor, and the cup is full. 
 22 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 The toll of toil is wretched childhood. The \ 
 children are neglected in everything except 
 a bare physical existence. The son of such 
 a home naturally takes to the street where 
 he pursues his play, unguided and untaught. 
 The result is a street gamin with all his in- 
 herent potentialities for good submerged be- 
 neath the delinquency and vice which are 
 bred in the street. A continuous procession 
 of such children passes through our juvenile 
 courts every day. Such pitiable cases and 
 they are many are partly grounded in the 
 maladjustment of economic conditions. The 
 remedy lies in a change of environment in 
 which society as a whole must take part; in 
 vocational training; a more equitable ad- 
 justment of wage to labor; workmen's 
 compensation laws; health and accident 
 insurance; inculcation of ideas of tem- 
 perance; training along moral, domestic, 
 sanitary, and hygienic lines; and general 
 
 23 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 education, including a knowledge of child 
 training. 
 
 Conditions are different, however, in the 
 better homes of our citizens. There the de- 
 basing consequences of sordid poverty are 
 absent. But still the two homes are, in many 
 instances, identical in their lack of moral 
 training, although the causes are different. 
 In the one home, knowledge and capacity 
 are wanting. In the other, knowledge and 
 capacity are present but neglected. It is 
 these latter cases of parental neglect of duty 
 which warrant the appellation, "wayward 
 parent." It sometimes requires the alarm 
 clock of filial delinquency to awaken the 
 parent from his somnolence of indifference. 
 The^ damage has then been done. They 
 hasten to lock the stable afterTKehorse is 
 stolen, instead of taking precautionary 
 measures at the needful time. "The diffi- 
 cult cases to deal with," remarks Judge Ju- 
 24 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 lius N. Mayer of the Court of Special Ses- 
 sions (Children's Court) of New York City, 
 "are the cases of children whose parents are 
 industrious and reputable, but who seem to 
 have no conception at all of their duties 
 toward their children. They fail to make a 
 study of the child. They fail to understand 
 him. Frequently the father, who could well 
 afford to give his child recreation, or a little 
 spending money, will hold his son by so tight 
 a rein that the child is bound to break away. 
 It may seem a little thing, but I firmly be- 
 lieve that many a child would be saved from 
 his initial wrong step if the parent would 
 make him a small allowance. In the cases 
 where such a course is pursued the child usu- 
 ally becomes a sort of a little business man, 
 husbanding his resources and willing to 
 spend no more than his allowance ; but where 
 the child has nothing it is not strange that 
 he should fall into temptation." The state 
 25 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 of Colorado, in an important addition to the 
 juvenile law, recognizes the existence of the 
 wayward parent by declaring that all par- 
 ents, guardians, and other persons, who in 
 any manner cause or contribute to the de- 
 linquency of any child, shall be guilty of a 
 misdemeanor. Judge Lindsey of the Juve- 
 nile Court of Denver has this excoriation for 
 such parents: "Careless and incompetent 
 parents are by no means confined to the 
 poor. In fact, in my experience, the most 
 blameworthy of such parents are among the 
 so-called business men and prominent citi- 
 zens. They seem to think their duty is end- 
 ed when they have debauched the boy with 
 luxury and the free use of money. They 
 permit him to fill his life with a round of 
 pleasure, and let him satiate his appetite 
 without knowing what he is doing or 
 whither he is drifting. They are too busy 
 to become his chum or companion, and so 
 26 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 he soon develops a secret and private life, 
 which is often filled with corruption, and 
 because of his standing or influence and 
 money he may be kept out of the courts or 
 the jails, but nevertheless is eventually add- 
 ed to society as a more dangerous citizen 
 than many men who have been subjected to 
 both. A financially well-to-do father once 
 said to me that he was too busy to look after 
 his boys, to be companionable, or take an in- 
 terest in them. We have no more dangerous 
 citizens than such men. In the end, I be- 
 lieve such a man would profit more by less 
 business and better boys." 
 
 Parental laxness in the enforcement of 
 discipline may be due to indifference, ob- 
 tuseness, or a false sense of affection which 
 rebels at stern correctional measures. 
 Whatever may be the motive of the parent, 
 the effect on the child is the same. Obedi- 
 ence is largely a matter of habit which be- 
 27 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 comes fixed, as do other habits, by contin- 
 ued repetition. Dr. William Byron For- 
 bush stated the thought in this language: 
 "In the American home, especially where 
 there is not sore poverty, the cause of delin- 
 quency in children is, without question, the 
 flabbiness and slovenliness of parents in 
 training their children to obedience and to 
 orderly habits." 
 
 Too often the training of the boy is 
 shunted back and forth from father to 
 mother like a shuttlecock which is finally 
 knocked out of bounds. The father more 
 frequently than the mother succeeds in 
 evading the obligation and thereafter he 
 rarely attempts to interfere unless we con- 
 sider an occasional walloping of his son in 
 anger the accomplishment of his duty. 
 
 The average parent is not fully equipped 
 for his job. He is either unskilled or un- 
 derskilled in boy-training. He needs edu- 
 28 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 cation, insight, and understanding to cope 
 with the problems of his son. If the parents 
 default in the training of the boy even 
 through ignorance need we wonder that 
 the boy defaults in the making of the man? 
 Numerous boys attain the average perfec- 
 tion of manhood in spite of poor training 
 but none of them because of it. Many a 
 father, because his son has turned out well, 
 is wearing a self-imposed halo when he is 
 only lucky. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 A SYSTEMATIC knowledge of the 
 powers and limitations of the human 
 mind and soul before maturity and the char- 
 acteristic changes which they undergo at 
 puberty will throw a flood of light on the 
 boy-problem. Juvenile psychology may be 
 divided into child psychology, covering the 
 period from birth to puberty, and adolescent 
 psychology, covering the period from pu- 
 berty to maturity. Boyhood is the interval 
 between birth and physical maturity, the 
 latter being reached at the age of twenty- 
 four or twenty-five, when the bones, mus- 
 cles, and organs of the body have attained 
 their complete development. Legal ma- 
 30 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 turity, or majority, comes at the end of the 
 twenty-first year, when the disabilities of in- 
 fancy are removed and the boy is presumed 
 by law to have acquired sufficient intelli- 
 gence, judgment, and moral discernment to 
 take his place in the community as a citizen, 
 and is then vested with all the rights, duties, 
 and obligations of an adult, even though 
 mental maturity (reckoned at the time the 
 brain cells cease to grow and judgment and 
 reason have fully ripened) is deferred until 
 he is approximately fifty years of age. We 
 may roughly divide the boy's life into four 
 periods of psychic unfolding in accordance 
 with the table on page 32. 
 
 During the imaginative period covering 
 infancy, from birth to eight years, the child 
 lives in a land of air castles, daydreams and 
 mental inventions, interspersed with period- 
 ic pangs of hunger which assail him at in- 
 tervals of great frequency. His world is 
 31 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 PERIOD 
 
 AGE 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 IMAGINATIVE 
 
 Birth to 8 
 Infancy 
 
 Imaginative faculty is 
 dominant; acquisition of 
 locomotion, speech and ele- 
 mentary knowledge; birth 
 of moral concepts. 
 
 INDIVIDUALISTIC 
 
 8 to 12 
 
 Early 
 Boyhood 
 
 Individualism; selfish pro- 
 pensities; want of regard 
 for rights of others; imita- 
 tive faculty is ascendant. 
 
 HEROIC 
 
 1 
 
 12 to 16 
 
 Early 
 Adolescence 
 
 Hero-worship; gang affili- 
 ations; puberty and early 
 adolescence; fundamental 
 organic changes; sex-con- 
 sciousness; age of experi- 
 mentation; character- 
 building period; psychic 
 disturbances; exceptional 
 plasticity of mind; high 
 degree of emotionalism; 
 susceptibility to religious 
 influences; development of 
 will power. 
 
 REFLECTIVE 
 
 16 to 24 
 
 Later 
 Adolescence 
 
 Thoughtful mental 
 attitude; habit of intro- 
 spection; evolution of 
 sociological consciousness; 
 development of altruism; 
 growth of ethical concepts; 
 perfection of will power. 
 
 peopled with fairies, gnomes, nymphs, dry- 
 ads, goblins, and hobgoblins. Elfin images 
 are his daily playmates. Imagination runs 
 riot and dominates his viewpoint. It is the 
 32 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 period in which make-believe is as real as 
 reality, and this furnishes the explanation 
 of many of the so-called falsehoods of this 
 age. But the development of the imagina- 
 tion should be guarded, not suppressed. 
 Through imagination we visualize the fu- 
 ture and effect world progress. All the 
 great inventions which have advanced civ- 
 ilization, the political reforms which have 
 contributed to our liberties and happiness, 
 and the monumental works of literature, 
 music, art, and science, would have been im- 
 possible without the exercise of the imagina- 
 tive faculty. 
 
 Imagination is not only of great value in 
 educating the intellect and morals, but it 
 is a desirable mental attribute which pro- 
 motes sympathy, discloses latent possibili- 
 ties of things and situations, and broadens 
 one's appreciation of life. It is needed by 
 the laborer, ditch-digger and sewer-cleaner 
 33 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 as well as by the musician, artist, and author. 
 In this period the child learns more than 
 in all his subsequent life. He learns to talk, 
 to walk, to feed himself and to play; he 
 learns the rudiments of written and printed 
 language, and the names and uses of the 
 various objects he sees about him; he com- 
 prehends form, color, perspective, and har- 
 mony; his imagination, so useful in later 
 life, blossoms forth; his moral sense buds 
 and the capacity to distinguish between 
 right and wrong unfolds ; the intense desire 
 to learn and to know is born evidenced by 
 his rapid-fire and continuous questions; he 
 is possessed by a voracious appetite for 
 knowledge which must be fed by a harvest 
 of information; and the habit of obedience 
 and the recognition of parental authority 
 become fixed. His horizon is bounded by 
 physical growth and the acquisition of 
 knowledge. All subsequent knowledge is 
 34 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 either a variant of or a supplement to 
 the basic knowledge acquired during in- 
 fancy. 
 
 The ascendant trait of the imaginative 
 period is the faculty of make-believe. It is 
 the ability of the mind to create mental im- 
 ages of objects previously perceived by the 
 senses. It involves the power to reconstruct 
 and recombine materials, already known, 
 into others of like symbolic purport. It is 
 exhibited when Johnny mounts a broom- 
 stick, shouting, "Get up, horsie!" and 
 "Whoa!" The imagination builds up a 
 mental image of a real horse, which he has 
 seen, out of the stick-and-string substitute. 
 Through fancy, he endows the counterfeit 
 with all the attributes of the original and for 
 the time being the broomstick is a real, liv- 
 ing, bucking horse. Such make-believe is 
 an important factor in the development and 
 coordination of ideas and the acquisition of 
 35 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 knowledge. And so in the innumerable in- 
 stances of make-believe plays, whether he 
 pretends in fancy to be papa, a ravenous 
 bear, a soldier, a policeman, or what not, he 
 temporarily lives the part he is playing and 
 merges his personality into the assumed 
 character with an abandon which should ex- 
 cite the envy of an actor. 
 
 Witness also the imagination displayed 
 by Mary when she builds a house with a line 
 of chairs, and peoples it with imaginary 
 friends with whom she carries on extended 
 conversations, and takes the several parts 
 in the dialogue when the absence of play- 
 mates renders such expedient necessary. 
 Impersonation is grounded in imagination. 
 Every little girl impersonates her mother, 
 with a doll as her make-believe self, and 
 spends many hours in pretending to care for 
 its physical needs, teaching it mentally, and 
 even correcting its morals with some form 
 36 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 of punishment with which she herself is ac- 
 quainted, whether corporal or otherwise. 
 
 The stolid, dull child exhibits less of fancy 
 and imagination than his keen bright com- 
 panion and therefore is less frequently en- 
 gaged in the numberless activities prompted 
 by imagination, which require supervision. 
 His very stolidity keeps him out of many 
 acts termed "mischief" and therefore he is 
 more easily "managed" in the sense that he 
 does not require such continuous oversight 
 and direction. The stolid one must be set 
 going by being told how, what, and when to 
 play, while the imaginative one, without aid, 
 conjures up many fanciful dramas in which 
 he plays the leading role and thus occupies 
 the years of infancy. These figments of the 
 brain give rise to stories and fanciful tales 
 which are called "lies" by adults whg^faiJrter^ 
 understand their psychology. /These are of 
 sufficient importance to warrant their dis- 
 37 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 cussion in a separate chapter of this volume. 
 
 It is during this period that the mother, 
 with her Heaven-sent gift of love, sympa- 
 thy, tenderness, and insight into the soul of 
 childhood, is the effective teacher. Coming 
 home one evening, I found a neighbor's son 
 of six years sitting on his front steps await- 
 ing his mother's return. He was sobbing 
 to himself. I approached him and inquired, 
 "Well, Robbie! What's the matter?" 
 
 He replied, through a mist of tears, "I 
 fell down and bumped my head." 
 
 "Does it hurt you?" I continued, in my 
 helpless way, unable to fathom the soul- 
 depths of his disaster. "No," was the re- 
 sponse, "it don't hurt, but I want muwer 
 so I can cry in her arms, an' it will be 
 well." 
 
 He needed first aid to his feelings not to 
 his body and only mother with her infinite 
 love, sympathy, and understanding could 
 38 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 apply it. With a deep consciousness of the 
 limitations of his sex, the author withdrew to 
 await the balm of mother-love that unfail- 
 ing remedy for the physical and mental 
 hurts of childhood. 
 
 Blest hour of childhood! then, and then alone, 
 Dance we the revels close round pleasure's throne, 
 Quaff the bright nectar from her fountain-springs, 
 And laugh beneath the rainbow of her wings. 
 Oh ! time of promise, hope and innocence, 
 Of trust, and love, and happy ignorance! 
 Whose every dream is heaven, in whose fair joy, 
 Experience has thrown no black alloy. 
 
 THOUGHTS OF A RECLUSE. 
 
 At the age of eight or nine, when the \ 
 child emerges from infancy into early boy- 
 hood, he begins gradually and imperfectly 
 to leave behind the characteristics of child- 
 hood and, with the development of his men- 
 tal and physical processes, he acquires the 
 distinguishing traits of the individualistic 
 period. 
 
 39 
 
 ic/ 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 It should be borne in mind that the char- 
 acteristic changes from one period to an- 
 other are not abrupt transitions, but easy 
 gradations; a gradual dropping of the dis- 
 tinctive features of the period left behind for 
 the essentials of the period just attained. 
 The progression is by easy, continuous 
 stages, effected unconsciously and unobtru- 
 sively. This growth may be compared to 
 the four periods of the development of a 
 plant; first, the bursting of the seed into 
 life and the tender stalk forcing its way up- 
 ward into the light the infantile period ; 
 then the formation of branches and leaves 
 and the growth of stalk the early boyhood 
 period; then the putting forth of the bud 
 which is the precursor of the flower, and the 
 formation and development of petals, sta- 
 men, pistils, and pollen the adolescent pe- 
 ;* )d; and finally the blossoming forth of the 
 11-blown flower, the fertilization of the pis- 
 40 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 til by the pollen of the anther, the whole 
 marvelous process of reproduction culmi- 
 nating in the formation of the embryonic 
 plant contained in the seed the period of 
 maturity. All of these stages are charac- 
 terized by an evolution which is as gradual / 
 as it is silent. / 
 
 In like manner it should be understood 
 that the ages delimiting the four periods of 
 boyhood are somewhat arbitrary and are 
 subject to the controlling factors of race, 
 climate, health, and individual temperament. 
 The Latin races mature earlier than the An- 
 glo-Saxon; the boy in the tropics reaches 
 puberty more quickly than one in a colder 
 zone; certain abnormalities of physical con- 
 dition, as well as environment and heredity, 
 conduce to early maturity; and tempera- 
 mental characteristics contribute, in some 
 degree, to a difference in the time required 
 to traverse the various periods of boyhood. 
 41 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 I have known boys of ten who were still in- 
 fants, and I have in mind a boy friend of 
 sixteen years, with the normal mental devel- 
 opment of one of that age, in whom ado- 
 lescence has not begun. Physically and 
 psychologically he is eleven years old, 
 although chronologically he is sixteen. He 
 is, therefore, in the individualistic period 
 of his existence and, in a large degree, he 
 should be judged, governed, and trained by 
 the rules applicable to that period. In so 
 far as his moral concepts are influenced by 
 mentality, his responsibility for deflection is 
 that of one of his chronological age ; but in 
 that class of cases in which his moral view- 
 point is controlled by his undeveloped 
 physical or psychic state, his responsibility 
 belongs to the individualistic period to 
 which these qualities are attributable. 
 
 The individualistic period between eight 
 and twelve is the era in which the boy re- 
 42 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 gards himself as an individual not corelated 
 to other individuals of society. He is essen- 
 tially selfish, and individualism is his domi- 
 nant characteristic. He has an excessive 
 and exclusive regard for his personal inter- 
 ests. The great world of men forming so- 
 ciety is beyond his perceptions. His 
 thoughts chiefly concern 'himself and seldom 
 embrace others, except when they cause him 
 pleasure, annoyance, or pain. He recog- 
 nizes them only as they contribute to his 
 emotions. This tendency manifests itself in 
 the selfishness exhibited in play and his un- 
 willingness to perform the trifling services 
 required of him by his elders, if they in any 
 way interfere with his present enjoyment. 
 Sociological consciousness, with its recogni- 
 tion of the duties and obligations of the in- 
 dividual toward the mass of individuals 
 termed society, is still dormant. Its first 
 awakening is seen in his recognition of duty 
 43 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 toward his family, and later toward his play- 
 mates and friends, and last of all toward 
 society which is reached in the reflective 
 period. His mental horizon is bounded en- 
 tirely by his own activities and interests in 
 which he is the central figure. 
 
 Carelessness, forgetfulness, and thought- 
 lessness of others are incidents common to 
 childhood which gradually wane and disap- 
 pear at the age when he enters the reflective 
 period. As he lives in the immediate pres- 
 ent, he does not plan for the future not 
 even for the morrow. (Johnny comes home 
 tosupper from the playground, whirling 
 through the house with cyclonic energy and 
 leaving a trail of gloves, hat, overcoat, and 
 superfluous garments in his wake, intent on 
 the only thing which is of absorbing interest 
 to him at that moment his immediate pres- 
 ence at table to alleviate the excruciating 
 pangs of hunger which are gnawing at his 
 44 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 vitals. Everything else is forgotten in his 
 efforts to satisfy the desires of the present. 
 The next morning, when preparations for 
 school are begun, all remembrance of the 
 places where his wearing apparel was depos- 
 ited is forgotten. Then ensues the daily 
 hunt for the missing garments, interspersed 
 with vociferous requests to all members of 
 the household for assistance. The interrog- 
 atory, "Where's my hat?" is as common as 
 oatmeal for breakfast. Order and system 
 have little place in a routine which is regu- 
 lated by present necessity. 
 
 A strong sense of proprietorship in per- 
 sonal possessions is now manifest, and is 
 closely allied to the acquisitive faculty. 
 About the ninth year he begins to make col- 
 lections of various sorts of junk. This is 
 the beginning of the collection craze which 
 lasts throughout the individualistic period. 
 Its initial manifestation is usually the col- 
 45 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 lection of foreign and domestic postage 
 stamps, which lasts from three to five years 
 and furnishes one of the best methods for 
 elementary scientific training. The term 
 science implies knowledge systematized and 
 reduced to an orderly and logical arrange- 
 ment, with classification as its basis. Such 
 collections teach him to group and classify 
 their component parts according to some 
 definite plan. The intellectual training af- 
 forded by the grouping and classifying nec- 
 essary to preserve his collection possesses 
 educational value of the highest quality. 
 Geography now has a new and personal 
 meaning as "the places where his stamps 
 came from." Other phases of this tendency 
 may be seen in collections of marbles, agates, 
 tops, buttons, bird eggs, leaves, minerals, 
 monograms, crest impressions, cigarette pic- 
 tures, and cigar bands. 
 
 One boy proved his industry and trend 
 46 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 toward personal acquisition by collecting 
 and classifying several hundred tin cans 
 which were formerly receptacles for fruit, 
 beans, and meats, and the odors emanating 
 from the mass in no wise diminished his 
 pride in the collection, which he regarded in 
 the same light as the connoisseur views his 
 art treasures. 
 
 A wise provision of nature has made the 
 acquisition of knowledge pleasant and 
 agreeable. It prompts the boy to fire con- 
 tinuous volleys of questions and has caused 
 him to be described as the human interroga- 
 tion mark. He looks on every adult as a 
 wellspring of knowledge whose stream of 
 information can be started flowing by tap- 
 ping it with a question. The knowledge re- 
 ceived and digested from the answers to his 
 questions supplies him with food by which 
 he grows intellectually. This inquisitiveness 
 exhibits itself, before puberty, in frank, 
 47 
 
[YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 \ 
 
 naive questions even of the most personal 
 
 nature. On one occasion the author ap- 
 peared in evening dress at a meeting of his 
 [troop of Boy Scouts preparatory to a later 
 attendance upon a social function. He was 
 immediately surrounded by that part of the 
 troop of preadolescent age who subjected 
 his wearing apparel to minute examination, 
 during which they felt the cloth, inquired its 
 cost, and commented freely, frankly, and 
 unreservedly on matters pertaining to ma- 
 terial, cut, style, price, and workmanship, 
 with never a thought of giving offense. 
 While one who is the object of such atten- 
 tion would ordinarily feel a degree of em- 
 barrassment at such familiarity, the author 
 recognized it as a manifestation of the curi- 
 osity inherent in the preadolescent age, as 
 well as evidence of a complete confidence 
 and rapport which could be possible only 
 toward one with whom they were on terms 
 48 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 of sympathetic and understandable compan- 
 ionship. 
 
 The sages say. Dame Truth delights to dwell, 
 Strange mansion ! in the bottom of a well. 
 Questions are, then, the windlass and the rope 
 That pull the grave old gentlewoman up. 
 
 Dr. Walcot's PETER PINDAR. 
 
 During this age the imitative faculty is 
 born, reaches its development, and is car- 
 ried over into the heroic period. He fol- 
 lows companions in the kind of games and 
 the seasons when they are played. If a 
 playmate is the possessor of a sled, a bicycle, 
 or a pair of skates, he must needs have their 
 duplicates. He begins to follow closely the 
 opinions, pastimes, games, and even the 
 style of dress affected by others of his own 
 class. If it is the fashion of his set, he will, 
 with a persistency worthy of a better cause, 
 wear the brim of his hat turned down and 
 decorated with a multicolored hat band. / 
 49 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 He revels in a riot of color because aesthetics 
 is an unexplored and unsuspected world. 
 His proximity to the savage state is reflect- 
 ed in his love of the garish colors which are 
 affected by savage peoples. 
 
 His faculty for imitation renders him 
 highly susceptible to the influences of his 
 environment. He imitates what he sees and 
 hears. Therefore the influence of compan- 
 ions for good or evil, as well as the persua- 
 sive control of his parents by example, is 
 potent. To a somewhat lesser degree is he 
 affected by the class of literature which he 
 reads. In the absence of stories suited to 
 sychological needs, he acquires a taste 
 for the dime novel, nickel library, and other 
 blood-and-thunder stories, the reading of 
 which, if continued through the heroic pe- 
 riod, frequently results in truancy and leav- 
 ing home to "see the world." 
 
 Concurrent with all the psychic develop- 
 50 
 
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 ment of this period he shows himself to be 
 a human dynamo of physical energy which 
 manifests itself in ceaseless action. This pe- 
 riod of motor activity should find its outlet, 
 as well as its control, in play, athletics, and 
 manual training. He is a bundle of twist, 
 squirm, and wiggle which only time can con- 
 vert into useful and productive activity. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 THE period of adolescence is truly one 
 of storm and stress, caused by the 
 wrecking of boy-nature to rebuild it into 
 man-nature; it is a cataclysmic bursting of 
 the bonds of infancy in preparation for the 
 larger stature of manhood. In early ado- 
 lescence the boy is neither child nor man. 
 He is in the chrysalis stage of metamorpho- 
 sis, which is shedding the characteristics of 
 childhood and putting on the maturity of 
 the adult. Neither one nor the other, he is 
 a part of both. Adolescence covers the pe- 
 riod of the boy's life between puberty and 
 maturity. Puberty is the earliest age at 
 which the individual is capable of reproduc- 
 52 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 ing the species and it usually begins at the 
 age of thirteen or fourteen, subject to the 
 influence of the factors stated in the preced- 
 ing chapter. The growth and development 
 of the sex organs during adolescence pro- 
 duce changes which are revolutionary rather 
 than evolutionary in their nature. Marked 
 physical alterations are always attended 
 by still more marked psychic disturb- 
 ances. 
 
 The physical indicia of puberty are the 
 lengthening of the vocal cords, which causes 
 the voice to change from the treble of boy- 
 hood to the base of manhood and manifests 
 itself in sudden and uncontrollable breaks 
 in the voice in speaking and singing; the 
 growth of the organs of reproduction and 
 the filling of the seminal glands ; the growth 
 of hair on the pubes and face ; the coarsening 
 of the skin; broadening of the shoulders, 
 deepening of the chest, and general change 
 53 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 from the slenderness of childhood to the 
 compactness of maturity. 
 
 This is the period of rapid physical 
 growth wherein he shoots upwards like a 
 cornstalk under the impulse of a July sun. 
 Elongated arms and legs are now as con- 
 spicuous as they are unwieldy, and efforts to 
 discipline them are futile. The demand for 
 "long pants," heretofore quiescent or erupt- 
 ing intermittently, now becomes insistent 
 and finally bursts forth with a fury pro- 
 duced by accumulated repression and forti- 
 fied by the assertion that "Johnny Jones 
 wears 'em and I'm bigger'n him" the last 
 word in argumentative collusiveness. 
 Physical awkwardness and ungainliness, il- 
 lustrated in his inability to manage his hands 
 and feet easily or gracefully, is due both to 
 the extraordinary and rapid growth of the 
 body and nervous system which takes place 
 at this time, and to his instability of mind, 
 54 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 wholly apart from his knowledge of social 
 usages. 
 
 The psychic disturbances produced by ad- 
 olescence are still more pronounced. The 
 adolescent is in the throes of discarding the 
 mental concepts of the child and adopting 
 those of the adult. His viewpoint is lifted 
 until his mental and moral horizon broadens 
 to distances heretofore undreamed of and 
 discloses new and strange moral and ethical 
 problems. Old concepts melt away in the 
 light of a newer and stronger vision. Sex 
 consciousness overwhelms him with its com- 
 plexity and unrecognized import. The 
 mental concepts of maturity clash with those 
 of childhood. His barque is sailing on un- 
 charted waters, without compass or rudder, 
 while a fierce storm of uncertainty and in-! 
 stability beats about him as he experiences 
 the travail of the birth of a new soul. It is 
 truly the age "when a feller needs a friend 
 55 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 one who can pilot him safely through the 
 storm of adolescence to the calm of man- 
 hood. 
 
 Truancy reaches its flood tide during ado- 
 lescence. The instinct of wanderlust ap- 
 pears in response to the promptings of his 
 savage nature, his unease of mind, and his 
 desire to know the unknown in the world 
 about him, and culminates in runaways as a 
 revolt against the exercise of parental au- 
 thority which he believes to be unnecessarily 
 restrictive or severe. He is now in the 
 formative, fermenting period when he is 
 reaching out to find himself, with indifferent 
 success. 
 
 There is at this time a noticeable want of 
 continuity of purpose or action. He jumps 
 from one interest to another, evincing little 
 stability of mind. There is want of psycho- 
 physical coordination. The transmission 
 between mind and body is faulty; and 
 
 56 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 the imperfect gear of intellect and will 
 frequently fails to engage the cogwheels 
 of morals. The machine works poorly 
 because it is neither complete nor fully 
 equipped. Workmen are still engaged on 
 the unfinished job. 
 
 William now evinces a disposition to 
 find fault with his home, his clothing, his 
 food, and restrictions on his conduct and 
 routine. He betrays a mental uneasiness 
 unknown to prepubertal days, and a will- 
 ingness to argue with his parents in a self- 
 assertive or combative mood quite unlike his 
 former self. Incongruities of character are 
 shown in petulance, irritability, disobedi- 
 ence, stubbornness, and rebellion, sometimes 
 even taking the form of cruelty to persons 
 or animals. This latter manifestation has 
 been ascribed to atavism which manifests it- 
 self in the recurrence of the savage traits of 
 his primeval ancestors. Dr. G. Stanley 
 57 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 Hall thus comments on this tendency in his 
 exhaustive work on adolescence: "Assum- 
 ing the bionomic law, infant growth means 
 being loaded with paleoatavistic qualities in 
 a manner more conformable to Weismann- 
 ism, embryonic growth being yet purer, 
 while the pubescent increment is relatively 
 neoatavistic." 
 
 His proximity to the savage state is 
 shown in his appreciation of primitive hu- 
 mor. The unexpected which causes discom- 
 fiture or pain is excruciatingly ludicrous. It 
 is the crude, slap-stick comedy which excites 
 his disposition to risibility. The knockabout 
 comedian who falls down stairs or beats his 
 partner over the head with an inflated blad- 
 der produces the same degree of laughter in 
 a boy as the felling of one savage by another 
 with a war club produces in the onlooking 
 members of their tribe. The rapier wit of 
 keen intellectuality and the subtle humor of 
 58 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 fine distinctions observed in a play on words 
 all pass over his unscathed head. 
 
 He is a living paradox who displays at 
 times the gallantry, courtesy and chivalry 
 of the knight-errant with the thoughtless- 
 ness, rudeness, and boisterousness of the 
 harum-scarum rowdy. 
 
 Sex-consciousness now asserts itself in an 
 increased but diffident interest in the oppo- 
 site sex, accompanied by blushes, embarrass- 
 ment, and self-consciousness when in their 
 presence. The desire to appear attractive 
 in the eyes of his girl friends prompts mi- 
 nute and painstaking attention to dress, and 
 the brilliant plumage of the male bird is re- 
 flected in the bright colors of his attire. For- 
 merly he regarded girl playmates from the 
 same viewpoint from which he regarded 
 boys and they were placed on the same plane 
 and received the same consideration as that 
 accorded to those of his own sex, except 
 59 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 where the teaching of the sex-conscious par- 
 ent required him to display a gentleness 
 toward them which his own lack of sex-con- 
 sciousness failed to prompt. Now, gentle- 
 ness, courtesy, and gallantry are inspired by 
 adolescence from within. The companion- 
 ship of the adolescent with pure, high-mind- 
 ed girls of his own age is beneficial to both 
 in the greatest degree. Such associations 
 are of educational value in that they project 
 high ideals of the feminine traits of gentle- 
 ness, sweetness, and purity whose influence 
 is reflected in his improved manners, dress, 
 and conduct. It fosters the idealistic and 
 spiritual phase of love and removes it from 
 the coarseness and baseness engendered by 
 the purely sexual appeal. These love affairs 
 are numerous but transitory their duration 
 being dependent upon the time required to 
 satisfy his idealism; and at the first sugges- 
 tion that his idol has feet of clay his affec- 
 60 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 tion is transferred to another pretty face and 
 sweet nature. Not infrequently he bestows 
 his affection upon a girl several years older 
 than himself, to which he is actuated by two 
 impulses the half-formed sex-impulse of 
 the man to seek a mate, and his adolescent 
 need of "mothering," both of which are 
 measurably gratified by the reciprocal love 
 of an older girl. 
 
 He begins his love-making slyly and 
 shamefacedly. George waits after school, 
 occupied with an ostensible engagement 
 which will consume the time until Mary shall 
 appear. His meeting with her, after all 
 these elaborate plans, appears to be quite 
 unexpected. A diffident greeting is fol- 
 lowed by an inquiry as to whether she is go- 
 ing home. Her affirmative answer is seized 
 upon as his excuse for walking in her di- 
 rection. Then follows his request to be per- 
 mitted to carry her books. They discuss 
 
 61 
 
YOUR BQY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 matters of mutual interest in school or social 
 life, while he, with furtive glances, notes the 
 beauty of her face, the wealth of her hair, 
 and the velvet of her cheek. Sunlight is 
 playing hide-and-seek in her eyes, while the 
 roses in her cheeks blush a deeper red, 
 matching the ribbon which adorns her pig- 
 tails as she feels the flood of his unexpressed 
 admiration surging over her. Never was 
 there such a wondrous being in all the world ! 
 He idealizes her every attribute until she 
 surmounts a pedestal far removed from 
 things earthy. A smile of approval from 
 this young goddess is treasured in his heart 
 of hearts, sacred from the misunderstand- 
 ings of a profane world. He is assailed by 
 daydreams of knight-errantry in which he 
 is performing some chivalrous act of hero- 
 ism to which the maiden shall be a witness. 
 Or better still, he imagines himself playing 
 the part of a cavalier rescuing her own sweet 
 62 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 self from distress or danger and then re- 
 ceiving as his reward her avowal of affec- 
 tion, while he protests that his heroism is 
 nothing and that he would do a thousand 
 times more for her. 
 
 Evidences of his tender regard for the 
 girl of his choice are given in secret, as too 
 holy for an unappreciative world to compre- 
 hend, and the twittings of his elders on the 
 subject of puppy love (cruel in their un- 
 sound psychology) are met with prompt 
 and positive denials. Such manifestations 
 of incipient aff ection should be recognized 
 as the intermediary elaboration of a high 
 and spiritual love whose ultimate fruition 
 will be matrimony. All the world loves a 
 lover provided he is not a boy. The adult 
 who cannot see the psychology in such inci- 
 dents must be blind indeed. 
 
 The exceptional plasticity of mind char- \ 
 
 acteristic of this age renders him highly sus-y 
 
 63 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 ceptible to influences for good or evil. It 
 is the great character-building period of his 
 life in which are crystallized his moral and 
 ethical concepts which attain their latter per- 
 fection in the succeeding period. Your boy 
 is putty in your hands. He is a superlative 
 impressionist. His impressionistic mind is 
 molded as deeply by evil as by good. For 
 this reason, it is necessary that his environ- 
 ment which is the cumulative influence of 
 the precept, example, and conditions which 
 surround him should be good and whole- 
 some. As the drip-drip-drip of water wears 
 away the stone, so the constant drip of en- 
 vironing influences wears its way into char- 
 > acter. 
 
 The foundations of will-power are now 
 laid in his efforts to propel himself into a 
 choice between the good and the bad, be- 
 tween right and wrong. Judgment and dis- 
 cretion appear in embryonic form and 
 64 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 slowly and laboriously develop into cautious 
 discernment and the faculty of deciding 
 justly and wisely, which reach their ap- 
 proximate maturity late in the reflective 
 period. 
 
 It may be interesting to note that the law 
 presumes that every person at the age of 
 fourteen has common discretion and under- 
 standing, until the contrary is made out; 
 but under that age there is no such pre- 
 sumption. It therefore follows that when a 
 child under fourteen years of age is offered 
 as a witness in a court of law, a preliminary 
 examination conducted by the judge must 
 be made to ascertain whether he has suffi- 
 cient intelligence to relate the facts as they 
 occurred and sufficient moral sense to com- 
 prehend the nature and obligation of an 
 oath. But the law is conservative in its pre- 
 sumption, as such intelligence and moral 
 comprehension are, in most instances, de- 
 65 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 veloped in the child at a much earlier age 
 and numerous cases are cited in the law re- 
 ports in which children as young as seven or 
 eight have qualified, after examination, as 
 witnesses competent to testify. 
 
 During this period occur three cycles of 
 particular susceptibility to religious influ- 
 ence. The first appears about the age of 
 twelve under the stimulus of witnessing the 
 conversion or affiliation with the church of 
 some adult whom he looks up to, and is 
 chiefly due to the faculty of imitation one 
 of the characteristics carried over from the 
 individualistic period; the next occurs at 
 age of fourteen, when his emotionalism is 
 dominant, under the excitement of a pow- 
 erful emotional experience; the third cycle 
 of religious conversion appears at sixteen 
 when he is leaving the heroic period and en- 
 tering the thoughtful or reflective stage of 
 his adolescence and such a conversion is 
 66 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 grounded in the thoughtful promptings of 
 the intellect, rather than the emotions. 
 
 This is also the age of experimentation in 
 which his longing to know the unknown 
 leads him to make short excursions into the 
 fields of mechanics, physics, electricity, hy- 
 draulics, magic, and others which hide their 
 secrets from the casual observer. This trend 
 of his activities may be directed by sugges- 
 tion, supplemented with the necessary equip- 
 ment, toward manual training and handi- 
 craft ideal employments for the early 
 adolescent. 
 
 This is the age of hero-worship and every 
 boy in this period, without exception, has a 
 personal hero. He may not take the world 
 into his confidence by divulging his secret, 
 but whether admitted or not, he possesses 
 a hero whom he looks up to, admires, and 
 copies. I know a thirteen-year-old lad 
 whose hero is his eighteen-year-old cousin 
 67 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 for whom his admiration manifests itself 
 to the extent of trying to imitate his tone 
 of voice, his walk, his gestures, and personal 
 appearance, including the wearing of the 
 same kind of ties which his cousin affects. 
 He never ceases praising the football prow- 
 ess of his relative and continually quotes 
 him as an authority on athletics. 
 
 The boy of this age worships a physical 
 hero. Power, strength, and authority make 
 a powerful appeal. His hero may be the 
 policeman on his beat who is the emblem of 
 physical strength and vested with the au- 
 thority of law to make arrests; the fireman 
 who displays wonderful courage in the res- 
 cue of imperiled persons from burning 
 buildings ; the engineer who guides the loco- 
 motive dashing like a meteor through the 
 blackness of night; the prize fighter who 
 has won a championship in the squared ring; 
 or the baseball or football athlete whose 
 68 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 name is on every tongue. His hero must 
 be a mighty man of action, for he worships 
 at the shrine of athletic prowess. To test 
 the truth of this statement, ask any boy you 
 may meet, between the ages of twelve and 
 sixteen, whether he would rather be the win- 
 ner of the Nobel prize for scientific achieve- 
 ment or Ty Cobb (with a batting average 
 of approximately .370), and the unanimous 
 verdict will be in favor of the ballplayer. 
 So strongly is hero worship implanted in 
 his nature and so completely does it domi- 
 nate his viewpoint that it remains, with grad- 
 ually diminishing intensity, for many years 
 thereafter. Happy the boy whose father 
 is his hero and happy the father who is a 
 
 hero to his son! 
 
 %* 
 The objective of hero-worship is always 
 
 an older male never a female. No instance 
 
 of normal heroine-worship has ever been 
 
 noted. The wealth of love which he may 
 
 69 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 manifest toward his mother, female friend 
 or teacher is entirely disassociated from 
 hero-worship. It lacks the sex-element nec- 
 essary to inspire emulation. He wants to 
 be a man not a woman. For this reason, 
 it is desirable that he should have oppor- 
 tunity for association, during adolescence, 
 with men of strong character and person- 
 ality. The differences between the psycho- 
 logic processes of the male and the female 
 adult are too well known to require discus- 
 sion here. Widows who keenly appreciate 
 the absence of the father's guiding hand 
 frequently attempt to be both father and 
 mother to their sons, and in so doing the 
 apron strings are knotted doubly hard and 
 fast. Then ensues a conflict between the 
 feminine and maternal policy and the ado- 
 lescent longing and reaching out for ulti- 
 mate masculinity. The mother is the last 
 person to recognize adolescence in her son; 
 70 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 she wants him to remain the infant she has 
 always regarded him. His beginnings to 
 emulate masculinity clash with her desire 
 to keep him a child. I have in mind a 
 mother who is rearing the most lady-like 
 boy in my acquaintance. Her inherent del- 
 icacy and refinement of nature prompt her 
 to develop these same qualities in her son 
 as the ultimate end to be attained. With 
 no qualifications for boy-training except 
 mother-love, feminine ideals, and an ambi- 
 tion to rear her son to beautiful manhood, 
 she refuses him participation in rough and 
 tumble sports and games because they are 
 "rude and ungentlemanly" and besides, they 
 would soil his clothes. Many mothers of 
 the neighborhood hold him up to their own 
 unregenerate offspring as a model of neat- 
 ness and a paragon of propriety, but the 
 boys call him "Sissy." The author has wit- 
 nessed many examples of apron-string pol- 
 71 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 icy whose unpsychological and repressive 
 tendencies cannot fail to be detrimental to 
 the ideal development of adolescence. 
 
 Gratitude is a virtue displayed by few 
 boys prior to the reflective period, because 
 they fail to appreciate the motives which in- 
 spire the act which should call forth expres- 
 sions of gratitude, especially if the act or 
 service is of an altruistic nature. Of course, 
 he will thank you for a gift of candy or a 
 toy; but never for the time and thought ex- 
 pended in giving him instruction or moral 
 training, or taking him in the woods for a 
 day, or pointing out to him the constella- 
 tions at night. He is not ungrateful. He 
 merely accepts these things as a matter of 
 course until he reaches the age which recog- 
 nizes and appreciates the sacrifices incurred 
 by the giver of altruistic service. 
 T The beginning of the reflective period 
 / witnesses the subsidence of the fierce storms 
 \ 72 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 of earlier adolescence and is followed by com- 
 parative physical and emotional calm, al- 
 though attended by intellectual agitations 
 of lesser import. The boy now enters an 
 era of mental development characterized by 
 a thoughtful, reflective attitude toward the 
 great problems of life. A serious viewpoint 
 is developed which changes the previous 
 aspect of the world. He devotes much 
 thought to his life-work; to making choice 
 of an occupation or profession and prepar- 
 ing for it. His future career looms large 
 in the foreground of his problems, and 
 prompts a close analysis of his inclinations, 
 aptitudes, and qualifications for special lines 
 of work. The realization that he must soon 
 take his place among the men who are do- 
 ing the world's work overwhelms him, at 
 times, with the immensity of his job. Intro- 
 spection, as a part of his self -analysis, be- 
 comes a habit which induces him to make 
 73 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 continual comparisons between his own nat- 
 ural endowments and those of others of his 
 own age. He seeks, with all the faculties 
 at his command, to find that niche in the 
 business, professional, or industrial world 
 which he can best fill and it is at this time 
 that he needs the vocational guidance of 
 his father. 
 
 Early in this period a morbid self-con- 
 sciousness frequently appears as the result 
 of a too minute introspection with eyes 
 whose views of life are not correlated. He 
 discovers defects in his personal appearance, 
 faults of character and deficiencies of in- 
 tellect which are magnified out of their true 
 proportions. His sense of perspective is in 
 its formative stage and this causes many- 
 molehills to loom high as mountains. He 
 is now his own most severe critic and imag- 
 ines that his immature conclusions as to his 
 personality are shared by all others ; and 
 74 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 many hours of humility and mental depres- 
 sion ensue from this condition. Egotism 
 and an exalted appreciation of his own worth 
 are also manifest, due to the same unco- 
 ordinated sense of values. He often ex- 
 hibits alternate states of exaltation and de- 
 pression produced by a trifling remark or 
 a trivial incident which is given an impor- 
 tance it does not deserve. As he advances 
 through this period, his perspective finds 
 truer adjustment, his sense of values be- 
 comes settled, his judgment ripens and these 
 anomalies disappear. But he may be saved 
 many hours of soul-stress by the father who 
 is able to diagnose his condition, or who is 
 on sufficiently intimate terms of confidence 
 with his son to inspire a frank avowal of his 
 troubles. Here is the opportunity for the 
 father to apply his common sense, ripe judg- 
 ment and experience to the solution of these 
 problems of the later adolescent. 
 75 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 Attention has already been called to his 
 impressionability to religious influences dur- 
 ing the early part of this period through an 
 appeal based in intellectualism (as distin- 
 guished from the emotionalism of the pre- 
 ceding period) , to which the ethical concepts 
 now being formed are closely related. 
 
 ;\ Another distinguishing trait is the evolu- 
 ion of his sociological consciousness through 
 vhich he recognizes himself as a unit in the 
 jocial economy, with all its attendant rights 
 and duties. He discards the selfishness and 
 individualism of an earlier era and adopts 
 the obligations of altruism. His desire to 
 be of genuine service to his fellow man seeks 
 expression first in visionary plans to reform 
 the world, followed afterward by practical 
 work in help for others, such as leadership 
 in boys' clubs, secretarial duties or teach- 
 ing in Sunday schools, or similar employ- 
 ments of altruistic purport. Government 
 76 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 under processes of law takes on a newer, 
 clearer and more personal meaning. And 
 with it comes recognition of civic respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 Intellectual storms gather when vague, 
 unassorted, inchoate, and impossible theories 
 of social and political reform long since 
 tried and discarded loom big on his horizon 
 and are eagerly seized upon and advocated 
 as original discoveries. His opinions are ex- 
 pressed with a dogmatism which character- 
 izes the cocksureness of youth. Verbal limi- 
 tations inspired by sound judgment and 
 broad experience, as well as the cautious 
 phraseology of scientific conservatism have 
 no place in his vocabulary. His theories are 
 all promulgated with an arrogant assertive- 
 ness born of the optimism of inexperience. 
 He is now fairly bursting with self-impor- 
 tance. But all these manifestations are im- 
 portant only as indicating his desire to solve 
 77 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 Vthe great problems of life and are the pre- 
 cursors of a sounder judgment which will 
 come with maturity of intellect and experi- 
 ence. 
 
 It is at or near the beginning of this peri- 
 od that the youth looks down on the younger 
 boy, whom he characterizes as a "kid." The 
 dislike and even positive aversion of the 
 older boy for companionship with the 
 younger has its basis not so much in their 
 differing physical and mental attainments 
 as in their differing viewpoints caused 
 by their unequal psychological development. 
 Illustration of this may be observed in two 
 boys, both of whom are sixteen years of age 
 and of equal mentality and physique, one 
 of whom has and the other has not entered 
 the reflective period. Such boys are out of 
 harmony with each other in every taste, de- 
 sire, and predilection which is actuated by 
 psychological impulse, and find a common 
 78 
 
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 ground of companionship only in athletics 
 and classroom studies. 
 
 Will power, bom during the heroic periA 
 od, is now stimulated to rapid growth which \ 
 culminates during the latter part of the re- 
 flective period. No longer is he a straw 
 borne on every passing wind of influence, 
 but a human being capable of exercising a 
 moral choice between two courses of action. 
 
 His mental and moral stature has been 
 reached by gradual and almost unnoticed 
 gradations; and such growth, which had its 
 beginning in blank chaos, has been even 
 greater and more marvelous than his phys- 
 ical growth between birth and maturity. 
 
 Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope, 
 When young, with sanguine cheer and streamers 
 
 We cut our cable, launch into the world 
 And fondly dream each wind and star our friend. 
 Young's NIGHT THOUGHTS. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 A CORRECT understanding of boy- 
 nature is conditioned on one's ability 
 to obtain his point of view, which differs 
 widely from that of the adult. It has been 
 stated in a previous chapter that the view- 
 points of a boy at six, ten, fourteen, and 
 eighteen years of age differ as widely from 
 each other as those of four adults of remotely 
 differing natures and temperaments. We 
 frequently make the mistake of assuming 
 that the boy is a small edition of a man, pos- 
 sessing faculties, emotions, desires, and un- 
 derstanding the same as in the adult but 
 developed in a lesser degree. On the con- 
 trary, his mental and psychological proc- 
 
 80 
 
THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 esses differ fundamentally from those of 
 maturity. Boys are not little men and 
 should not be judged by men's stand- 
 ards. 
 
 The ignorant peasant who views the mas- 
 terpieces of the Louvre sees them through 
 dull, uncomprehending eyes. He sees but 
 does not perceive^ because his appreciation 
 of artistic beauty is limited by a circum- 
 scribed capacity. Just so, the boy, circum- 
 scribed by the limitations of his mind and 
 soul, views life and its complex manifesta- 
 tions with such capacities as he possesses. 
 If your mental and psychological limits 
 were those of a boy in the hero-worship peri- 
 od, your tastes, desires, judgments, opinions, 
 and actions would conform exactly to that 
 boy-standard. Your standards of ambition 
 and achievement would be purely physical 
 and therefore you would prefer the prize 
 fighter to the scientist. 
 81 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 The physical and mental requirements for 
 youth and age are as wide apart as the two 
 poles. As reminiscence characterizes old age, 
 so enjoyment of the present typifies young 
 age. The Bard of Avon has thus compared 
 their physical and mental characteristics: 
 
 Crabbed age and youth, 
 
 Cannot live together; 
 
 Youth is full of pleasure, 
 
 Age is full of care: 
 
 Youth like summer morn, 
 
 Age like winter weather; 
 
 Youth like summer brave, 
 
 Age like winter bare; 
 
 Youth is full of sport, 
 
 Age's breath is short; 
 
 Youth is nimble, age is lame; 
 
 Youth is hot and bold, 
 
 Age is weak and cold; 
 
 Youth is wild and age is tame. 
 
 Age I do abhor thee; 
 
 O, my love, my love is young: 
 
 Age I do defy thee; 
 
 O sweet shepherd hie thee, 
 
 For methinks thou stay'st too long. 
 
 82 
 
THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 An elderly maiden sat one sunny after- 
 noon in May engrossed with her knitting, 
 while a crowd of boys were engaged in the 
 great American game of baseball on the lot 
 beneath her window. It would be super- 
 fluous to say they were noisy. From her 
 viewpoint both noise and violent physical 
 activity were unnecessary, disagreeable, and 
 trying to one's nerves. The nuisance must 
 be suppressed. Accordingly she poked her 
 head out of the window and directed a shrill 
 scream at the disturbers of her peace, "Go 
 away from here, you bad boys, and stop mak- 
 ing that noise !" In a flash came back the 
 retort, "G'wan away yourself!" while a boy 
 grumbled to his companion, "She don't know 
 nothin' 'bout having fun." Both were right, 
 judging from their respective points of view, 
 and both were wrong when considered from 
 the other's viewpoint. Neither understood 
 the other. Old age requires peace, silence, 
 83 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 and cessation from physical activity. Youth 
 requires noise, bustle, and violent exercise 
 for its growth. Activity symbolizes success. 
 Passivity spells failure. 
 
 The boy in athletics, like the adult laborer 
 in his daily toil, uses the primary muscles 
 of his arms, legs, and torso. With the de- 
 velopment of his mentality, he develops and 
 employs his secondary muscles. Psychology 
 is intimately related to athletics. For this 
 reason, the gymnastic apparatus which is 
 suited to adults is wholly unsuited to boys, 
 and this is quite apart from differences due 
 to the unequal size and strength of the users. 
 Witness the aversion of the boy to the use 
 of Indian clubs whose intricate manipula- 
 tions require the employment of the second- 
 ary muscles of the wrist and arm, while he 
 willingly uses dumb bells which call into 
 play his primary muscles. 
 
 His inability for sustained mental effort 
 84 
 
THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 is coordinated with his disability for sus- 
 tained physical effort. Hence he passes by, 
 with a curiosity-Satisfying trial, the chest 
 weights and rowing machines of the adult 
 which require the continuous expenditure of 
 energy. So also the competitive spirit of 
 boyhood must be gratified by the use of such 
 gymnastic apparatus and games as develop 
 competition. The boy will not exercise for 
 exercise's sake. He will not even do it to 
 achieve the altruistic result of a strong 
 physique. But he will exercise and play 
 games to excel the other fellow. The boy 
 who is alone in a gymnasium has as stupid 
 a time as the boy who is compelled by neces- 
 sity to play baseball with himself. 
 
 It would be interesting to learn the boy's 
 opinion of certain adults if he were able to 
 accurately analyze and express his conclu- 
 sions. The crabbed demeanor of the pes- 
 simist out of touch with boy-life is as of- 
 85 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING ' 
 
 fensive to the boy as the latter's noise and 
 giddiness are objectionable to the former. 
 Observe the mental rheumatics of the mis- 
 anthrope in these grouchy grumblings from 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wit Without 
 Money": 
 
 What benefit can children be but charges and 
 disobedience? What's the love they render at 
 one and twenty years? I pray die, father: when 
 they are young, they are like bells rung back- 
 wards, nothing but noise and giddiness. 
 
 And from what a different vision-vantage 
 were penned these lines, overflowing with 
 love and understanding of childhood, which 
 are a model of sympathetic comprehension 
 of the child's needs: 
 
 Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, 
 To teach the young idea how to shoot, 
 To pour fresh instruction o'er the mind, 
 To breathe the enlivening spirit and to fix 
 The generous purpose in the glowing breast ! 
 Thomson's SEASONS. 
 
 86 
 
THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 To understand the boy's viewpoint we 
 must be able to put ourselves in his place. 
 We must renew our youth. The trouble 
 with so many of us is that we never acquire 
 juvenescence until second-childhood. We 
 should be able to assign the boy to the 
 psychological period to which he belongs by 
 reason of his development, and thus knowing 
 the mental and moral status of an inhabitant 
 of that period, we are able to see things 
 through his glasses. The mental myopia 
 and moral astigmatism of youth will then 
 be recognized as a defect of immaturity 
 which training and years will cure. Juvenil- 
 ity may be reacquired in maturity if we 
 string-halted adults would only seek rejuv- 
 enation at the fountain of youthful under- 
 standing where we may obtain a flood of 
 knowledge concerning boy-life. The jour- 
 ney is apparently too long and too difficult 
 for the lazy or indifferent grown-up. The 
 87 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 heart of a boy is not worn on his sleeve. He 
 reveals it only to those who command his 
 perfect confidence and such confidence is 
 given to those, and to those only, who un- 
 derstand him. The aloofness of children to- 
 ward certain adults is because they have 
 nothing in common. Each misunderstands 
 the other. As it is obviously impossible for 
 the child to understand and attune himself 
 to adult mental processes, it becomes neces- 
 sary for the adult to comprehend child- 
 nature and to put himself in harmony with it. 
 Happy the man who can make himself a 
 boy again! He retains a thousand joys 
 which other adults have irretrievably lost. 
 Such an one is a natural leader and teacher 
 of boys. They delight to make him their 
 hero. His influence with boys is commen- 
 surate with his understanding of life in Boy- 
 ville. You must go to this juvenile city and 
 live there, learn its laws, customs, and man- 
 88 
 
THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 ners, and if possible place yourself in a sym- 
 pathetic attitude of understanding without 
 which you can never hope to be initiated into 
 the mysteries of adolescence. The honor of 
 being admitted to the confidence and fellow- 
 ship of boys is not permitted to all men 
 only to those who have retained or who are 
 able to acquire the boy's viewpoint. "There 
 is a wall around the town of Boyville," says 
 William Allen White, "which is impene- 
 trable when its gates have once shut upon 
 youth. An adult may peer over the wall 
 and try to ape the games inside, but finds 
 it all a mockery and himself banished among 
 purblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville 
 was old when Nineveh was a hamlet; it is 
 ruled by ancient laws ; has its own rules and 
 idols ; and only the dim, unreal noises of the 
 adult world about it have changed." 
 
 The boy lives in the present, with little \ 
 thought of the future; he is concerned with 
 89 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 today, not the next decade. His mental 
 processes do not prompt him to speculate 
 as to the effect of present acts on future 
 character. He has neither the mental nor 
 moral equipment for such foresight or de- 
 duction; it is a task beyond his capabilities. 
 This burden must be shouldered by the par- 
 ent who should not only do the child's think- 
 ing for him until the latter is able to do it 
 for himself, but should also drill, train, and 
 educate the boy until he is able to make nice 
 distinctions between right and wrong, and 
 should cultivate his will power until he can 
 school himself into an acceptance of the good 
 as against the bad. Until the child's mind, 
 will, and moral sense have reached this stage 
 of growth, the parent must substitute his 
 own mind, will, and moral sense. In de- 
 termining the degree of capability of a 
 child's offense, w r e should ask ourselves the 
 question: "What is the developmental stage 
 90 
 
THE BOY'S VIEWPOINT 
 
 of his faculties which made the offense pos- 
 sible?" Harsh and stern estimates of child- 
 ish frailties usually result from the applica- 
 tion of the adult viewpoint and the adult 
 standard. The failure to consider the view- 
 point and standards of the adolescent causes 
 much injustice to the boy and results in 
 many mistakes in his training. 
 
 The brightness, joyousness, and optimism 
 of youth suffuses life with an iridescent 
 glow. All the world is bathed in roseate 
 hues when seen through the rose-colored 
 glasses of youth. When we get so old that 
 we delight in sitting by the fire, toasting our 
 slippered feet, and prefer to listen to our 
 arteries harden rather than to hear the noise 
 and laughter of boyhood, we are out of tune 
 with the harmonies of boy-life. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 OBEDIENCE 
 
 THERE hangs in the bedroom of the 
 children of a certain devout mother 
 a large frame which contains, in illuminated 
 letters, the twentieth verse of the third chap- 
 ter of Paul's "Epistle to the Colossians": 
 "Children, obey your parents in all things; 
 for this is well pleasing to the Lord." In 
 commenting on this visual injunction she 
 said: "Obedience is the chief corner stone 
 of child-training and I have thus endeavored 
 to fix it in the memories of my children for 
 all time." The commandment "Honor thy 
 father and thy mother" is just as real and 
 vital today as it was in the time of 
 Moses, although present-day home condi- 
 92 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 tions are not always conducive to its observ- 
 ance. 
 
 Too many children of the present, espe- 
 cially during adolescence, regard their par- 
 ents with an attitude of tolerant sufferance 
 as necessary evils to be endured by them 
 but exhibiting little patience in their tolera- 
 tion. They consider them old-fogy, behind 
 the times, uncomprehending and unsympa- 
 thetic with their interests, plans, and aspira- 
 tions. Father is esteemed largely in propor- 
 tion to his success as a producer; while 
 mother is valued in accordance with her con- 
 tributions to their physical comfort; and this 
 imperfect recognition of parental aid com- 
 prises the sum. total of their gratitude; for 
 no acknowledgment is ever made of their ob- 
 ligation for the years of watchfulness of 
 health or solicitude for morals or cultivation 
 of the spiritual life. This attitude is due 
 partly to the psychological unbalance of the 
 93 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 adolescent and partly to the slovenly, incon- 
 sistent, and wishy-washy methods of govern- 
 ment used by the parent, which inspire in the 
 youth not only disobedience but contempt 
 for parental authority which is as vacillating 
 as a weather cock. Without obedience the 
 child drifts aimlessly and develops a char- 
 acter as unstable as the parental system of 
 training is fluctuating. Confirmed cases of 
 juvenile disobedience can be traced, almost 
 without exception, to the jellyfish methods 
 of spineless parents. An increase in rigidity 
 of parental backbone will result in a cor- 
 responding increase in filial obedience. 
 
 Obedience is the fundamental law of child- 
 training and upon it the development of fu- 
 ture character is predicated. Obedience in 
 children is too frequently regarded by par- 
 ents as the chief end of training, and not 
 as the means to the end, which is character. 
 The young child has neither code of morals 
 94 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 nor a standard of ethics, but is a rule unto 
 himself, propelled only by impulses of selfish 
 interest. The chief objective of child-train- 
 ing is the cultivation and fixation of a high 
 moral code which produces character. The 
 secondary objectives are the conservation of 
 health and discipline of the intellectual fac- 
 ulties, the latter including the communica- 
 tion of knowledge. 
 
 Parental prohibitions of undesirable acts, 
 as well as suggestions of wished- for conduct, 
 should be so uniform, constant, and consist- 
 ent that the child will be able to deduce from 
 them what his course of conduct should be 
 when confronted in the future with the de- 
 sire to do or not to do an act of similar 
 nature. It is thus that he builds up his 
 standard of conduct and formulates his code 
 of morals. Trivial objections to acts or con- 
 duct, not grounded in reason and justice, 
 inspire disrespect for parents and disobedi- 
 95 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 ence to their authority, and befog the moral 
 vision of childhood. If the child is to respect 
 parental authority, he must have been so 
 habituated to obedience by the parental sys- 
 tem of government that he will obey easily 
 and involuntarily from force of habit. Habit 
 is the tendency to do naturally, easily, and 
 with growing certainty those things which 
 we are accustomed by constant repetition to 
 do. The habit of obedience is formed most 
 easily in early childhood and when obedience 
 becomes crystallized into habit, a strong 
 foundation has been laid for the building of 
 strong character. 
 
 Obedience is cultivated by consistency in 
 parental commands which invariably must 
 be founded on reason and justice and en- 
 forced with a firmness of will which cannot 
 be swayed by sentimental considerations 
 of leniency. Consistency is a jewel which 
 shines nowhere so brightly as in the 
 96 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 crown of child-training, but it must be 
 mounted in resolute adherence to fixed 
 
 ideals of character-culture. Obedience 
 should be distinguished from unwilling 
 submission to a superior force. The former 
 implies subjection of the will and actions to 
 rightful restraint and not servile submission 
 to authority which is exercised unjustly. The 
 founders of our republic were obedient to 
 the highest promptings of liberty and justice 
 when they revolted against the many acts 
 of injustice imposed by the mother country. 
 Likewise the obedience of a child can be en- 
 forced only through parental commands 
 which are founded on* justice and reason; 
 and we should even go a step farther and 
 convince him that they are-just andjreasoii^ 
 able. Here is a typical case: A boy re- 
 quested permission of his mother to go 
 swimming as boys are wont to do. 
 She replied, "No! you may not go!" 
 97 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 "But why not, mother?" was the natural 
 and reasonable inquiry of her son. 
 
 "Just because I don't want you to go," 
 was the unconvincing answer. 
 
 "Ah ! that's no reason, mother. Why can't 
 I go?" 
 
 "Because I have said no! Now, that set- 
 tles it!" And with this answer she con- 
 cluded the colloquy. 
 
 Defeated and depressed, but unconvinced, 
 the boy shuffled sullenly around the corner 
 of the house and out behind the barn where 
 he raged and rebelled at the autocratic exer- 
 cise of the authority of which he had been 
 the victim, until present desire overcame the 
 fear of future punishment and soon the old 
 swimming hole resounded with the splash 
 of another lithe, young body. His disobedi- 
 ence was the logical sequence of an attitude 
 which violated both the principles of psy- 
 chology and the dictates of reason and jus- 
 98 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 tice. If the mother had assigned any reason- 
 able excuse for withholding her permission 
 she would have measurably satisfied her 
 son's sense of fairness and justice, however 
 reluctantly his acquiescence, prompted by 
 the denial of personal pleasure, may have 
 been given. Instead, she unconsciously chose 
 a course which planted the seed of disobedi- 
 ence and evasion whose ultimate fruition 
 might even be rebellion against all maternal 
 authority, and following that delinquency. 
 The boy is a rational human being, how- 
 ever much we may ignore his capacity for 
 reason, and the continued violation of his 
 standards of right and justice will ultimately 
 destroy those standards and compel him to 
 adopt a code based on expediency instead 
 of morals. Laws are obeyed by adults in 
 the proportion that they are supported by 
 public opinion as being just and reasonable; 
 and, conversely, they are disobeyed when 
 99 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 deemed unjustly restrictive or violative of 
 personal rights. Witness the disregard for 
 sumptuary laws in certain local communities 
 which entertain convictions against the 
 abridgment of their so-called personal liber- 
 ties, where such laws have been imposed by 
 the legislative enactment of a state the ma- 
 jority of whose voters favor prohibition. 
 Some of our reputedly good citizens evade 
 the payment of a large part of the taxes im- 
 posed on them by law for the reason that 
 they believe the tax laws to be inequitable 
 and unjust in placing too great a burden on 
 one class, with a corresponding exemption 
 to another class. 
 
 From general observation, as well as from 
 the records of our penal courts, we may de- 
 duce the proposition that obedience to stat- 
 ute by normal men rests largely on their 
 belief in the justice of law and the reason- 
 ableness of the exercise of the authority 
 100 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 which is predicated on such layv, JJ&TAT, in the 
 domain of childhood, is parental comnwd ; 
 and even though the child's sense of justice 
 may not be as discriminating as that of the 
 parent, nevertheless it is strong enough and 
 deep enough to impel him to resist, by eva- 
 sion, subterfuge, deceit, or other means at 
 hand, those parental laws which he believes 
 to be founded on mere caprice or positive in- 
 justice. We must promulgate reasonable 
 commands if we are to expect reasonable 
 compliance with them, and we shall suffer 
 no loss of dignity by frankly explaining to 
 our children the reasons which underlie our 
 mandates. Although the child may be un- 
 able at all times to follow our line of reason- 
 ing, or to agree wholly with our conclusions, 
 he will, at any rate, be convinced that o 
 orders do not emanate from capricious fancy, 
 but have a semblance of justice as their basis. 
 Even paternal example is not without its 
 101 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 influence on the keenly observing mind of 
 youth. The seventeen-year-old son of a 
 neighbor was detected smoking a cigarette 
 the day following the direct injunction of 
 his father that he should not do so. % When 
 reproved by his father for disobedience, the 
 son retorted: "Well, dad, why don't you 
 obey the law? You shot ducks out of sea- 
 
 son." 
 
 The delinquent children who flow in a 
 steady stream through our juvenile courts 
 are undisciplined, self-willed, and rebellious 
 against authority and are governed only by 
 impulse which is as spasmodic as their con- 
 duct is abnormal. Obedience has never found 
 a place in the poor moral equipment with 
 which they are endowed. Practically every 
 moral derelict stranded on the human scrap- 
 pile can trace his failure in life to his dis- 
 obedience in childhood; and the fault is not 
 wholly his own but rests largely on the 
 102 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 shoulders of parents who failed to compel 
 obedience in the early years when compul- 
 sion was possible through firm and just regu- 
 lation. 
 
 The boy who is early indoctrinated in 
 obedience becomes plastic material ready to 
 be shaped, through training, in the stature 
 of a man of fine moral quality. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE REPRESSIVE METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 THE training of the child should begin 
 as soon as it is able to comprehend 
 spoken language. A venerable mother who 
 had reared eleven children and had seen them 
 attain successful and honorable positions in 
 life was asked the question: "At what time 
 should the training of a child begin?" Her 
 answer was: "In the cradle." And, it is 
 needless to add, it should be continued to 
 maturity. There are, broadly speaking, two 
 general plans of training which may be 
 termed respectively the repressive method 
 I and the suggestive method. 
 
 The repressive method of training is 
 founded on the principle of negation. It 
 104 
 
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD 
 
 seeks to make the boy do right by constant 
 admonition not to do wrong. It proceeds 
 on the theory that elimination of the bad will/ 
 leave the good. It is indirect in its methods 
 as well as its results. 
 
 The negative system of training manifests 
 itself in such commands as, "Don't make 
 that noise;" "Don't bother me, I'm busy;" 
 "Don't slide down the cellar door;" "Don't 
 talk so loud;" "Don't play in the house;" 
 "Don't tease sister;" "Don't eat so much;" 
 "Don't soil your clothes;" "Don't bring 
 those boys into the house;" "Don't scuff out 
 your shoes;" "Don't get your hands dirty;" 
 "Don't be tardy at school;" "Don't wear 
 out the seat of your pants ;" and so on with- 
 out' end. 
 
 No boy ever thrived on an indigestible diet 
 of don'ts. 
 
 Jacob Riis, writing in the Outlook, says : 
 "Write the one word 'Don't' there, and only 
 105 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 that, and the boy if he has any spirit will 
 take to the jungle. Every father knows it; 
 every teacher has learned it, if he has learned 
 anything." 
 
 While this system has a modicum of worth 
 in certain of its applications, it lacks the com- 
 prehensiveness and directness necessary to 
 accomplish the best results. 
 
 The prohibition of reading dime novels, 
 nickel libraries and other blood-and-thunder 
 tales, without the suggestion of adventure 
 stories of definite ethical and moral value to 
 fill the vacuum thus created in his emotional 
 life, is another conspicuous example of the 
 repressive method of training which does 
 not repress but impels the boy to continue 
 his lurid reading in secret. 
 
 [The error of the system lies in taking 
 something essential away from the boy with- 
 out giving him an adequate substitute. It 
 is damming up the stream without provid- 
 106 
 
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD 
 
 ing a spillway, and is as ineffective as it is 
 unpsychological. The current of his activi- 
 ties will find a channel as surely as water will 
 find its level. Instead of attempting to check 
 the flow, we should direct it into channels for 
 good. This repression, if persistent, will 
 dwarf the child's initiative and compel him 
 to grope in the dark to find out what is per- 
 missible. It is as fallacious in practice as a 
 system of teaching, if such could be con- 
 ceived, which would give the boy a hundred 
 guesses to learn a fact, instead of the teach- 
 er's direct statement of the fact. It is the 
 maze of a labyrinth which envelops the trav- 
 eler in hopeless confusion and its effect can 
 only be depressing and disheartening to the 
 child. We frequently make the mistake of 
 underestimating the reasoning powers of our 
 children, which prompts us with autocratic 
 dogmatism to forbid their acts without an 
 explanation of the reasons why or the sug- 
 107 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 gestion of a substitute to fill the void caused 
 by the prohibition. 
 
 "Stop making that noise!" is a command 
 hurled at the playful boy with such fre- 
 quency that it no longer excites comment. 
 It is natural for boys to play, yell, make 
 a noise, and wear out clothes. They are the 
 exuberant manifestations of his physical and 
 emotional nature ; the expression of the ata- 
 vistic tendencies of man; the safety valve 
 which relieves the pressure of superabundant 
 vitality. As he is in the savage period of 
 his life he yells like a savage. You may as 
 well tell a pup not to bark as to tell a boy 
 not to yell. It is the nature of the animal. 
 We should recognize this fact by conforming 
 to nature not opposing it because it is the 
 normal condition of the normal boy. I have 
 a profound pity for the boy who prefers to 
 sit by his mother's knee and read a book on 
 his holiday, instead of joining the gang in 
 108 
 
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD 
 
 playing tag or getting up a scrub game of 
 baseball. Such a boy is abnormal; he is 
 not "all boy"; he is either sick or mentally 
 deficient and either condition should inspire 
 the gravest solicitude of his parents as to 
 his future. We do not want to rear a race 
 of anemic runts. 
 
 The young of all mammals manifest the 
 play spirit as a means of growth. Colt, calf, 
 lamb, kitten, pup, and boy all exhibit this 
 tendency of nature. These things are the 
 cause of growth, not only physical, but men- 
 tal and moral as well. The educational value 
 of play is one of the most important factors 
 in the boy's evolution. It is the expression 
 of his being, his growth, his aspirations and 
 his future. By play, he trains his eye, his 
 hand, his mind and his muscles; his moral 
 conceptions are formed; he learns to distin- 
 guish between right and wrong, and the 
 recognition of individual and property rights 
 109 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 begins to emerge from his nascent moral con- 
 sciousness. Games with companions develop 
 the social instincts. Through them he first 
 realizes that he is a social unit a thread in 
 the social fabric of humanity. Action, con- 
 stant action, is the keynote to his present and 
 the hope of his future. He aches for action. 
 If the boy's play and noise disturb you, do 
 not squelch him, but rather provide him with 
 a place in which he may exercise these mani- 
 festations of his nature without causing you 
 annoyance. A playroom in the house or 
 barn, a tent, the lawn, the park, the great 
 woods of the country are all ideal play- 
 grounds for boys which satisfy the savage 
 spirit of his nature. There ought to be ample 
 room in this great world of ours for the 
 growth and development of our future men. 
 Objection is sometimes made that sports 
 are a non-productive form of energy a 
 waste of time and strength which might be 
 110 
 
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD 
 
 employed in manual training or in work of 
 economic value capable of being measured in 
 terms of money. It is true that the athletics 
 and games of boys have no money value, nor 
 are they designed for such purpose, but the 
 energy expended is not wasted. On the con- 
 trary, it is highly productive of both physical 
 and moral growth. It is productive of 
 strong bodies, clear eyes, speed, agility, 
 strength, quick thinking, sound judgment, a 
 sense of fair play, self-confidence, control 
 of temper, coordination of brain and muscle, 
 and respect for the rights of others. Their 
 value is educational and cultural a means 
 to an end and not the end itself. The boy 
 who by reason of financial necessity is re- 
 quired to become a breadwinner is deprived 
 not only of a large part of the joys of boy- 
 hood which should be his as a matter of right, 
 but of many physical activities, educational 
 in their effect, which would otherwise train 
 111 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 and equip him both mentally and physically 
 for service in adult vocations and good citi- 
 zenship. The repression of play and its at- 
 tendant noise is always inspired by motives 
 of consideration for the convenience of the 
 adult and never by a thought of its effect 
 on the boy himself. 
 
 The repressive method of training, alone, 
 is ineffective at any age, but if it is used 
 sparingly in early childhood and then only 
 when combined with suggestions and direc- 
 tions for activities to replace those prohibited 
 it produces good results. As the child grows 
 in years the positive, constructive, suggestive 
 method of training should be employed ex- 
 adusively. 
 
 Quite as pernicious as the repressive meth- 
 od is the passive system of training in ef- 
 fect no training at all which permits the 
 boy to have his own way in everything. It 
 is the resource of the indulgent and lazy 
 112 
 
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD 
 
 parent who seeks the line of least resistance. 
 When combined with a lavish supply of 
 money, its effects are usually ruinous. I 
 know a boy now fifteen years of age, a typi- 
 cal spoiled son of a wealthy father. At our 
 first meeting, a year ago, the sartorial dis- 
 play on his stunted physique was loud and 
 elaborate and was the work, he volunteered, 
 of his father's tailor. He was decorated with 
 a gold watch and chain, an elaborate scarf 
 pin and two finger rings conspicuous for 
 their size. He immediately began to boast 
 to the little group of boys who surrounded 
 him of the cost and superiority of his clothes, 
 his rifle, his canoe and his pony. At first, 
 the group looked on in mingled awe and ad- 
 miration. Then their keen insight and sense 
 of humor were betrayed in the knowing 
 winks and nods which they exchanged, fol- 
 lowed by a volley of questions designed to 
 hold him up to ridicule, until the poor little 
 113 
 
"YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 sham of a boy, unable to bear their raillery 
 longer, finally blurted out in an attempt to 
 silence his inquisitors, "My father's got more 
 money than all of your fathers put together." 
 I have long held the belief that the boy 
 is the mirror of his home. A subsequent 
 acquaintance with the lad's father and his 
 home life confirmed my impression that the 
 sum total of this boy's training consisted in 
 gratifying his every wish. For the boy to 
 ask was to receive. While the father ex- 
 pended a wealth of money, he did not expend 
 a single thought concerning its effect on his 
 son. Only pity can be evoked at the plight 
 of such a boy handicapped as he is by these 
 false ideals and standards of life. It is doubt- 
 ful whether even the unsympathetic, stern 
 and harsh discipline of the brutalist is more 
 conducive to crippled character than the 
 methods of the lavish, coddling and cosseting 
 parent. 
 
 114 
 
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD 
 
 Parents have the choice of two plans in 
 correcting faults and developing character 
 in the boy. One consists in the prohibition 
 of acts and the application of censure for 
 wrongdoing, and proceeds on the theory that 
 the consequences of wrongdoing will be 
 made so unpleasant that he will abandon the 
 acts complained of to avoid the resulting 
 censure. The other plan is to suggest the 
 desired course of conduct and to praise the 
 boy for his good acts and qualities to the 
 extent that he will continually seek to earn 
 approval by doing the things which call forth 
 approbation. The boy, like the adult, is 
 keenly susceptible to praise. The exaltation 
 of spirit which follows the word of approval 
 given as a reward for good deeds is a con- 
 tinued inspiration to future goodness. The 
 effects of blame are depressing; of praise, ^ 
 stimulating. 
 
 A certain boy has hanging on the wall of 
 115 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 his bedroom an honor shield on which silver 
 "merit stars" are placed for conspicuous 
 good deeds, deportment, and scholarship. As 
 each unworthy act or failure of duty causes 
 the removal of a star, the owner is keenly 
 alive to keeping his escutcheon bright with 
 evidences of merit. 
 
 The boy is intensely human, although we 
 may not at all times treat him like a human 
 being. As our own best efforts are inspired 
 by commendation or reward, so the boy is 
 quickened to highest endeavor by praise and 
 not by blame. Rewards are more effective 
 incentives to excellence than demerits or pun- 
 ishments. The constant repression of a 
 child's actions by prohibition is a cruel form 
 of punishment which drives him farther and 
 farther out of the range of the parent's in- 
 fluence for suggestive helpfulness. 
 
 "Do this!" is more effective than "Don't 
 do that!" 
 v 116 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 EVERY parent of a son should formu- 
 late some definite, determinate plan 
 for his training, and this can be done even 
 though original research and the formation 
 of plans deduced therefrom are not always 
 possible to the parent whose life is bulging 
 with other activities necessitated by our hur- 
 rying civilization. Any definite plan of 
 training is better than no plan, inasmuch as 
 it will cause us to think and to use our best 
 judgment on this important topic and so 
 tend to a clarification of preformed vague 
 or inchoate opinions. 
 
 Would it were possible to state a simple 
 golden rule for boy-training! Unfortunate- 
 117 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 ly such a complex subject cannot be reduced 
 to fixed rules or mechanical formulas. The 
 complexity of the problem is grounded in 
 the complexity of life; its solution is found 
 in methods as variant as the diverse needs 
 of mind, soul, and body. The author has 
 stressed parental responsibility and the need 
 of parental training as a basic preliminary 
 to solving the boy-problem. The far-flung 
 necessity for parental instruction is made im- 
 perative by the racial habit, of Americans 
 especially, of drifting out of touch with their 
 children during adolescence. In the pre- 
 adolescent period when our children are 
 childish we preserve the closest intimacy 
 and companionship by unbending our ma- 
 ture dignity, at least in the privacy of home, 
 to a degree which puts us in perfect accord 
 with their natures. Under such conditions 
 we are the recipients of their confidences and 
 intimacies which they give freely, naively 
 118 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 and trustfully. In return for the gift of our 
 love, our own lives are rejuvenated by asso- 
 ciation with the light, joy, and laughter of 
 youth. 
 
 But the arrival of puberty marks a change 
 in our attitude toward our children of which 
 we are not wholly conscious. At this age the 
 boy is neither man nor child, but part of both, 
 and we become impatient with the idiosyn- 
 crasies of his nature and conduct which con- 
 stantly assert themselves at this period of 
 life. Our annoyance at the manifestations 
 of his psychic changes, which is caused by 
 our failure to understand them, arouses in 
 him the suspicion that he is neither loved nor 
 appreciated and he drifts farther and farther 
 out of the range of our influence until he 
 reaches the hinterland from which little tid- 
 ings of his inner self ever reach us. The 
 realization of this fact comes to the boy much 
 earlier and with more poignant force than 
 119 
 
.YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 to the parent. The consciousness of his isola- 
 tion is evidenced by his secretiveness, his 
 opinion that he is not understood and his be- 
 lief in parental lack of sympathy. The 
 former relationship of chum and comrade 
 has been superseded by an attitude of un- 
 responsiveness or even hostility. The secret- 
 iveness of the boy toward those who do not 
 have his confidence is only equalled by his 
 frankness toward the adult with whom he 
 is on terms of intimate companionship. 
 
 How many fathers take the time to tell 
 a story to their sons after puberty? Or to 
 explain the phenomena of the business, bank- 
 ing, industrial, or mechanical world? The 
 busy parent usually esteems himself for- 
 tunate if he can escape the importunate in- 
 quiries of his offspring concerning the facts 
 of the man's world; and the boy, seeking the 
 companionship of men for which he yearns 
 during adolescence, is led to the society of 
 120 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 the drunken hostler who is ever ready to 
 regale him with a collection of stories re- 
 plete with profanity and obscenity. 
 
 American children, during adolescence, 
 are reputed to be the most ill-bred children 
 in the world. The apparently lax methods 
 of the French and the Japanese as well as 
 the severe discipline of English and German 
 parents are both attended by a greater de- 
 gree of filial respect, obedience, and rever- 
 ence for their elders than is exhibited by our 
 own children. Americans have been char- 
 acterized as bringing up their children by a 
 series of fits and starts, which accounts for 
 much of the disrespect shown them by their 
 children. At any rate, it must be admitted 
 that we have no settled, definite philosophy 
 to guide us in this important function, and 
 the lack of a determinate system may justly 
 be assigned as a cause for such indeterminate 
 results. The delightful camaraderie between 
 121 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 the French youth and his father is conspicu- 
 ous in this country by its relatively infre- 
 quent occurrence. Our slap-bang, haphaz- 
 ard plans of boy-culture produce results in 
 conformity with the methods employed. But 
 whatever may be the system used, any defi- 
 nite, thoughtful, continuous policy is better 
 than no policy at all. The author is of the 
 opinion that intimate companionship con- 
 tinued through adolescence, combined with 
 a median course between French laxity and 
 English strictness, will conduce to virile 
 character and manhood, and love and respect 
 for parents. 
 
 Happy is the man for whom time has not 
 rung down the curtain of oblivion on the 
 scenes of youth ; for only in this state of men- 
 tal attunement is he able to retain the boy's 
 point of view which is an indispensable 
 requisite to chumship and comradeship with 
 his son. A delightful state of intimacy and 
 122 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 confidence with his son makes it possible for 
 the father to guide his conduct by suggestion 
 and counsel which carry a weight and 
 potency unattainable under other conditions ; 
 and that counsel is most productive of re- 
 sults, which is positive not negative for 
 the reason that it is founded on sound psy- 
 chology. The evils of the repressive methocN 
 of training find their antithesis in the happy \ 
 results of the suggestive method which is 
 constructive in principle. Suggestion is in- 
 formative, optimistic, and inspirational, and \ 
 finds quick lodgment in the inquiring and 1 
 acquisitive mind. As negative commands 
 are unwelcome because they produce mental 1 
 hostility and will combat, so constructive 
 suggestions are welcomed because of their 
 
 friendly helpfulness. * 
 
 Witness how enthusiastically a group of 
 boys will accept the suggestion of an adult 
 who proposes a new game, sport, manual 
 123 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 activity, or work along the lines of social or 
 civil service ! A patrol of Boy Scouts, under 
 the suggestion of their Master, provided 
 food, fuel, and clothing for three destitute 
 families during a winter of unusual severity, 
 until the heads of these families had recov- 
 ered from sickness and resumed their places 
 as breadwinners. The intensity of their boy- 
 ish enthusiasm for this work of charity drove 
 from their minds all thought of the pecca- 
 dillos which, to a greater or lesser degree, 
 occupy the minds of idle youths. The idle 
 brain is still the devil's workshop* 
 
 The boy hails as a friend and companion 
 the adult who understands his needs and 
 who points out to him the clean activities 
 which he loves and for which he is blindly 
 groping. No one is more "open to sugges- 
 tion" than the boy. 
 
 One winter's day a gentleman encountered 
 a lot gang who had captured a stray cur, 
 124 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 bound him to a post, and were bombarding 
 him with snow balls and chunks of ice as 
 an expression of their desire for mental and 
 physical excitement. The yelps of pain 
 which told that the missiles had found their 
 mark were greeted with shouts of exulta- 
 tion. Instead of reproving them for their 
 cruelty, he incited their curiosity by tactfully 
 inquiring if they had a mascot. On receiv- 
 ing a negative answer, he suggested that 
 every crowd of boys ought to have a mascot 
 and then began to discuss the fine points of 
 the cur more or less hidden from the non- 
 expert eye and finally suggested that the 
 dog would make an ideal mascot, provided 
 the boys knew how to take proper care of 
 an animal occupying such an exalted station. 
 Spontaneous yells of assent elected the dog 
 to this honor and then the crowd, at the sug- 
 gestion of the adult, spent the remainder of 
 the day bringing him food and building a 
 125 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 kennel which was copiously furnished with 
 discarded bed coverings, after which, on their 
 own initiative, they combed his hair and man- 
 icured his claws until he presented the 
 well-groomed appearance of a lady of fash- 
 ion. Many subsequent hours were spent in 
 earning pennies with which they purchased 
 a license and a collar on which was a plate 
 engraved with the name "Rags" which had 
 been unanimously conferred on him. The 
 quarrels and disputes which arose over their 
 respective rights to the possession of the 
 dog were settled, at the suggestion of this 
 same gentleman, by the organization of the 
 gang into a club which elected officers and 
 adopted by-laws, the president of which 
 awarded the custody of the dog daily in turn 
 to each member beginning with himself. 
 The necessity for more pets to occupy their 
 attention resulted in the addition of a rab- 
 bit, two chickens, a guinea pig and a goat 
 126 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 to their embryonic menagerie. Their next 
 step was the giving of a "show" (admission 
 one cent) in which the menagerie was the 
 chief attraction, closely followed in popular 
 favor by "Rags" doing tricks which the gang 
 had taught him. Then they added more 
 fowls to their collection which proved to be 
 the forerunner of a successful poultry yard 
 from which they made a profit by selling 
 eggs and chickens. 
 
 A boy in an Iowa city, rejoicing in a 
 superior physique but lacking the brains to 
 use it wisely, had bullied, beaten, and ter- 
 rorized the smaller boys of his acquaintance 
 in spite of parental commands, reproof, and 
 repeated chastisements. A continuation of 
 his brutality finally landed him in the Juve- 
 nile Court, the judge of which was sufficient- 
 ly versed in boy-psychology to attempt the 
 experiment of making him a "boy-police- 
 man" decorated with a tin star, authorizing 
 127 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 him to preserve order among the boys of his 
 neighborhood and especially charging him 
 with the duty of protecting the smaller boys 
 from the assaults of the larger. From that 
 time forward, the bully was prepared to 
 "punch the head off'n any feller wot licked 
 a kid/' It is needless to say that there were 
 no more assaults on small boys in that local- 
 ity. Suggestion had diverted the exercise 
 of his physical prowess from unlawful into 
 lawful channels. 
 
 James , age 15, was changed from 
 
 a prodigal to a thrifty boy through a plan 
 for saving suggested and encouraged by 
 his father who opened a bank account 
 in his son's name and offered to add a dollar 
 for every dollar earned by his son. It proved 
 to be a tremendous incentive to industry as 
 well as to thrift. 
 
 The foregoing incidents furnish typical 
 illustrations of the application of the sug- 
 128 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 gestive method of training as distinguished 
 from the repressive method; and it may be 
 applied either to the individual or to the 
 group with equally good results. The men- 
 tal and physical energy ordinarily expended 
 in various forms of lawlessness can be di- 
 rected, unconsciously, into fields of economic 
 and ethical value by the application of suit- 
 able suggestions. 
 
 Negation arouses the spirit of combat; and 
 obedience under these conditions tends to 
 inspire a feeling of surrender and defeat 
 whose influence on character is obviously 
 prejudicial. 
 
 A father once said, "I have never com- 
 manded my son not to do a thing. Instead, 
 I have suggested that I would prefer him 
 to do the other." In this way, conflict of 
 wills was avoided and the youth was re- 
 quired to make a voluntary choice between 
 two courses in which the father's preference 
 129 
 
\ 
 
 YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 invariably turned the balance in the desired 
 direction. On one such occasion the boy re- 
 plied, "Dad, I wish you would tell me I 
 cannot do it and then I would go and do it 
 to show you I can; but when you tell me 
 that it would hurt you, I just can't do it." 
 
 The prohibition of a proposed action 
 arouses all the resentment of thwarted desire 
 and unfulfilled attainment. Such conse- 
 quences may be avoided by the suggestion of 
 better plans, methods, or acts, concurrent 
 with the reasons why such change is desir- 
 able or necessary. The substitution of other 
 activities or another course of conduct fills 
 the void made by denial and satisfies his 
 psychological requirement of being kept 
 busy. Every normal boy is a safety-valve- 
 less steam boiler, stored full of dynamic en- 
 ergy which expends itself in constant action 
 usually physical and failure to provide 
 for the utilization and consumption of this 
 130 
 
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD 
 
 energy will result in an explosion in some 
 form of delinquency. 
 
 Cheerful, helpful, informative, intelligent, 
 and inspirational suggestion is the boy's 
 greatest need and he will accept it willingly 
 from a father who is joined to him by ties 
 of sympathetic comradeship which are long 
 enough to encompass his needs within their 
 bonds. 
 
 If a father's influence is to count for much, 
 he should be both a chum and a big brother 
 to his son. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD 
 
 THE continued reiteration of a fantasy 
 produces an impression on the brain 
 cells akin to the impression produced by a 
 fact. The fantasy of imagination roams 
 without check or hindrance by childhood un- 
 til it reaches a land which is believed to be 
 reality. The borderland between fiction and 
 fact is not always clearly defined and the 
 immature mind of youth generally fails to 
 distinguish the line where the one ends and 
 the other begins. Fantasy is as real to child- 
 hood as reality. 
 
 Who cannot recall in his own childhood 
 an event which illustrates the point? I was 
 once the happy owner of a snare drum which 
 132 
 
THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD 
 
 filled a large place in my life. But I re- 
 peatedly and proudly claimed the ownership 
 of two drums a bass as well as a snare 
 drum. My claim to the possession of a bass 
 drum was founded on the discovery of a 
 board in the wall of the barn, which, when 
 struck with the fist, gave forth a sound which 
 my childish fancy decided could be only the 
 boom of a bass drum. While a companion 
 beat this sounding board with his fist, I 
 played the snare drum in unison. I never 
 realized that I was lying when I said I owned 
 two drums. I was not. The sounding board 
 was as real a drum to the mind of my child- 
 hood as it is unreal to the mind of my ma- 
 turity. 
 
 A little lad rushed into his mother's room 
 exclaiming, "Mamma, a hundred big Indians 
 tried to catch me. I shot 'em. I killed two 
 or free." He was arrayed in an Indian suit, 
 with a toy bow and arrows. The back yard 
 133 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 was the battle field which his imagination 
 filled with blood-thirsty warriors seeking his 
 scalp. His vivid imagination was running 
 riot. It made every bush and tree an 
 aboriginal. Shooting an arrow into a bush 
 he shouted, "I gotcha, you bad Indian! I 
 killed ye dead!" until his victory was com- 
 plete and he ran to share his conquest with 
 his mother. 
 
 Painters, while at work on a residence, 
 climbed up and down a tall ladder extend- 
 ing to the roof. When the owner of the house 
 returned home from business he was met by 
 his five-year-old son who, pointing to the 
 ladder, said proudly, "Papa, I climbed to 
 the top of that ladder today." It was phys- 
 ically impossible for a child of such tender 
 years to accomplish this feat. His statement 
 was not true but the child had not lied. With 
 intense admiration he had watched the paint- 
 ers climb the ladder until in boyish fancy 
 134 
 
THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD 
 
 he himself was playing this heroic and dan- 
 gerous role. All day long he had marveled 
 at the feat in which he pictured himself play- 
 ing the principal part, until his obsession 
 became a conviction. The actual facts pho- 
 tographed themselves in a blur on the poor 
 film of his brain, already impressed with 
 the clear-cut picture of his imagination, un- 
 til the composite result was a mental image 
 in which fancy predominated. If a lie is 
 the voluntary and conscious perversion of 
 the truth, he did not lie. An untruth is a 
 misstatement of fact due to ignorance or 
 misconception. He was not conscious of a 
 misstatement of fact because he stated the 
 facts as his mental processes recalled them. 
 His inability to distinguish between the real 
 and the unreal resulted in an error for which 
 he was not morally responsible. He related 
 the incident as a fact because his brain, pow- 
 erfully impressed by the fancy, believed it 
 135 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 to be a fact; therefore the boy told it as a 
 fact. 
 
 Fancy is a fairy, that can hear, 
 Ever, the melody of nature's voice, 
 And see all lovely visions that she will. 
 
 FRANCES S. OSGOOD. 
 
 When his mental development advances 
 to a stage where he can differentiate clearly 
 between fact and fancy; when the maturity 
 of his mind enables him to draw clearer dis- 
 tinction between the real and the unreal, 
 when, in a word, imagination is superseded 
 by reason, then such errors will be impossible. 
 His mistake was mental not moral. There- 
 fore, he was not culpable. I knew a loving 
 mother who washed out her child's mouth 
 with soap as punishment for a similar "lie." 
 No graver injustice can be perpetrated by 
 a parent than punishment for such an al- 
 leged offense. It should be recognized and 
 accepted as an incident which is natural to 
 136 
 
THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD 
 
 mental immaturity. The thought is ex- 
 pressed by Dr. G. Stanley Hall in these 
 words: "Sometimes their fancy is almost a 
 visualization and develops a kind of mythopic 
 faculty which spins clever yarns and sug- 
 gests a sense, quite as pregnant as Frosch- 
 mer asserts of all mental activity and of all 
 universe itself, that all their life is imagina- 
 tion." But I hear a mother, holding up her 
 hands in horror, exclaiming, "I cannot let 
 my child prevaricate! I must punish him 
 or the habit will become fixed." 
 
 Her solicitude for the child's moral wel- 
 fare is as commendable as it is necessary and 
 her desire to prevent such incidents from 
 becoming a habit is praiseworthy. Her 
 methods, only, are wrong. Instead of pun- 
 ishment the child is entitled to instruction 
 which will develop his mentality until he can 
 distinguish between fact and fancy. With 
 growth in mental stature comes coordination 
 137 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 of ideas and a clearer discernment of the line 
 of demarcation between the real and the un- 
 real, and when the child becomes mentally 
 able to distinguish between the two, such 
 misstatements of fact will be at an end. 
 Falsehood in young children has been char- 
 acterized by Dr. Hall as "a new mental 
 combination independent of experience." 
 
 In rare cases this mental fog continues, 
 with diminishing intensity, through matur- 
 ity. Everyone knows of the man who told 
 a story so often that he himself finally be- 
 lieved it. It chiefly manifests itself in adults 
 in exaggeration of the qualities, abilities, or 
 prowess of the teller. Witness the fisher- 
 man of your acquaintance whose account of 
 the weight and size of his biggest fish grows 
 with each succeeding recital. He does not 
 mean to lie. He thinks he is telling the truth. 
 In the beginning he justified his exaggera- 
 tion of weight and size by doubting the ac- 
 138 
 
THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD 
 
 curacy of the scale and rule by which he 
 weighed and measured the fish. The con- 
 tinued repetition of his yarn produced an 
 impression on his brain closely resembling 
 actuality. He deceived himself. Pride in 
 his piscatorial prowess made deception easy. 
 His error was partly mental, partly moral, 
 the latter being in direct ratio to the clarity 
 of his mental processes. It is a tremendous 
 tribute to the mental stability and moral dis- 
 cernment of a fisherman to be able to re- 
 frain, in after years, from overstating the 
 weight of his biggest fish. 
 
 We now consider another phase of mis- 
 statement of fact the falsehood of the older 
 boy. At the age of six or seven the mental 
 fog begins to clear. He sees things in a 
 truer, brighter light. The relationship of 
 facts to each other becomes more and more 
 cognizable. His moral faculties are emerg- 
 ing from a chaos of mental impressions. 
 139 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 This age, approximately, marks the birth of 
 moral consciousness. His conception of right 
 and wrong takes form and begins its process 
 of development. At this period he begins 
 to distinguish between fact and fancy and 
 as his mental processes become clarified by 
 increasing maturity, so in a corresponding 
 degree his confusion of the unreal with the 
 real disappears. Mentality begins to domi- 
 nate imagination. 
 
 What of the boy, under these conditions, 
 who tells a lie? An inquiry into the motives 
 which prompt his falsehoods may clarify the 
 problem and afford a solution. The study 
 of a large number of untruthful boys has de- 
 veloped the fact that their motives for men- 
 dacity are few and are usually comprehended 
 under one class the desire to escape punish- 
 ment for an offense. Other and lesser in- 
 centives to lying are envy, boasting, revenge, 
 jealousy, and imitation, but none of these is 
 140 
 
THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD 
 
 as potent as the fear of a reprimand, a scold- 
 ing, or corporal punishment. 
 
 A scolding and a whipping are both pain- 
 ful one in mind, the other in body. It is 
 natural for one to seek to avoid pain and 
 suffering. It is equally certain that punish- 
 ment must inevitably follow the violation of 
 law whether parental law, physical law, or 
 the law of the land. Loading the stomach 
 with indigestible food brings its own punish- 
 ment in the disturbance of the bodily 
 functions. The commission of a felony 
 necessitates a term of imprisonment after 
 conviction; and with equal certainty 
 punishment should follow the violation of 
 parental law. But if that punishment is 
 unnecessarily severe or if it violates the 
 boy's sense of fairness and justice, he 
 will seek to avoid it by the most effective 
 weapon of defense at hand falsehood. 
 Nothing is more conducive to deceit than 
 141 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 frequent scoldings or floggings for trivial 
 offenses, and the elimination of corporal 
 and unduly severe mental punishments 
 will remove the chief incentive to falsehood. 
 The remedy for the falsehoods which have 
 their origin in the lesser provocatives re- 
 ferred to above is moral suasion, a hackneyed 
 phrase often used and little understood. 
 Literally it implies the persuasive influence 
 of moral teaching. In its broader aspect 
 and as a cure for lying, it comprehends the 
 culture of moral consciousness; training of 
 tHe will; fixation of the habit of obedience; 
 teaching the evil results which always follow 
 falsehood; the development of mentality 
 (without which there can be no comprehen- 
 sion of moral concepts) ; and the influence 
 of parental example in the exact and scrup- 
 ulous adherence to truth. All these combined 
 produce the composite result called moral 
 suasion, which is generally effective. 
 142 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 AMONG the corrective measures used 
 in child training since time im- 
 memorial, corporal punishment occupies a 
 large and conspicuous place. While such 
 punishment is, at present, on the decline, 
 still it is sufficiently widespread and frequent 
 in its application to warrant a discussion of 
 its effectiveness in accomplishng the ends 
 desired, as well as a word concerning its 
 
 moral effect on the child. 
 
 \- 
 
 plies tne inability oi tne parent to govern 
 the child without it. It must be predicated 
 on the belief of the parent in its superior 
 merits, which causes him to submerge its 
 
 143 
 
 t 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 humanitarian aspects beneath its supposedly 
 utilitarian effectiveness, or because he is un- 
 acquainted with other methods. It would 
 be difficult to conceive a parent who would 
 beat a child from personal choice when there 
 were other corrective methods at hand which 
 
 \ he believed to be of equal efficiency. 
 
 The author recalls a man of high stand- 
 ing in the financial world successful in busi- 
 ness, but cold, stern, austere and puritanical 
 in his personal code, who thrashed his son, 
 from his tenth to his fifteenth year, frequent- 
 ly as often as once a week. Then the boy 
 ran away from home to escape the tyranny 
 and is now a wanderer over the earth, his 
 
 'heart filled with bitter hatred toward his 
 father, while the latter deems himself a much 
 abused parent and his son an ungrateful and 
 wayward boy. At no time during the many 
 hundred beatings which he administered did 
 it occur to him that bodily punishment was 
 144 
 
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 not a salutary corrective; he failed to realize 
 the futility of a means which did not accom- 
 plish the desired results. Had an analogous 
 problem arisen in his business, he would 
 quickly have discarded any plan which so 
 thoroughly demonstrated its uselessness. 
 This man had a profound and earnest desire 
 to rear his son to perfect manhood. He 
 adopted the method which seemed to him best 
 designed to accomplish that result. Today 
 he is a broken-hearted man grieving over his 
 lost son. Again we hark back to the way- 
 ward parent. "Fathers, provoke not your 
 children to anger lest they be discouraged." 
 Col. 3:21. 
 
 The average child does not rebel againsFX 
 authority but only against authority which 
 he thinks is unjustly or harshly exercised. 
 He invariably revolts against corporal pun- 
 ishment because he believes any degree of 
 it to be excessive. From the boy's point of 
 145 
 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 view he is a Lilliputian whom the Gargan- 
 tuan parent abuses because of greater brute 
 strength. A fourteen-year-old boy who was 
 being beaten by his father for failure to per- 
 form some chore shouted in his face, "You 
 wouldn't dare do that if I was as big as 
 you." And the boy spoke the truth. The 
 father who is addicted to the corporal form 
 of punishment is deterred, when his son 
 approaches maturity, as much by fear of 
 being vanquished in the contest as by a reali- 
 zation of its futility as a corrective of the 
 later adolescent. 
 
 :This form of punishment is commonly 
 adopted to "break the will" of the disobedi- 
 ent and rebellious boy. If breaking the will 
 of the boy means making it conform to that 
 of the physically stronger father, the at- 
 tempt is as ineffective as it is brutal, for 
 acquiescence under such circumstances never 
 is evidence of mental consent. Servile sub- 
 146 
 
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 jection of will is out of harmony with that 
 growth of will-power which is necessary to 
 the ideal development of the adolescent. 
 
 Persistent, unjust, or excessive punish- 
 ments, either of body or mind, furnish a 
 powerful incentive for the boy to invoke his 
 chief means of defense against superior force 
 evasion and prevarication. Such conduct 
 is guaranteed to produce a youthful Mun- 
 chausen. 
 
 What are a boy's means of defense against 
 a beating which he regards, either rightly or 
 wrongly, as excessive or brutal? He has 
 only two flight and falsehod. He knows 
 that he is incapable of matching physical 
 strength with his parent. This knowledge, 
 combined with whatever love for the parent 
 has not been extinguished, prevents a con- 
 test of strength which the child realizes 
 would be futile. Flight is frequently out of 
 the question because of the boy's dependency 
 147 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 and his inability to earn his own living. His 
 last means of defense is falsehood, the use 
 of which he justifies as his only method of 
 escape from unwarranted or excessive pun- 
 ishment. Fully conscious of the wrong of 
 lying he considers it the lesser of the two 
 evils. 
 
 : Similar in its effect is the nagging of chil- 
 dren, in which mothers are more prone to in- 
 dulge than fathers. Exhibitions of constant 
 scolding, faultfinding, and querulous tem- 
 per, interpersed with boxing of ears, smact- 
 ing of cheeks, and slapping of hands, all tend 
 to thwart the child's mental and moral 
 growth and contribute to the making of a 
 wayward son. Such punishment is largely 
 mental but none the less reprehensible be- 
 cause it lacks the element of physical pain. 
 To slap a child's hand as a correctional meas- 
 ure, with the sharp word of reproof which 
 accompanies it, gives the child a mental in- 
 148 
 
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 stead of a physical shock ; a slap of the same 
 degree given in a playful mood will cause 
 him to laugh. When a boy, especially in 
 the adolescent period, begins to complain 
 of the injustice of constant nagging, scold- 
 ing, and corporal punishment, it is a danger 
 signal which should cause the parent to stop, 
 look, and listen. Such conduct on the part 
 of the parent alienates the love and sympathy 
 of the child, conduces to lying, secretiveness 
 and evasion, and is productive of truancy 
 and the development of the wanderlust. Its 
 psychological effect on the parent is the loss] 
 of self-respect which is the inevitable ac-f 
 companiment of punitive injustice. 
 
 The punitive theory of the correction of > 
 youthful offenses is archaic and should be 
 relegated to the Paleolithic era from whence 
 it sprang. To mete out punishment as such 
 is vengeance pure and simple; an eye- 
 for-an-eye-and-a-tooth-for-a-tooth policy 
 149 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 r-which has no place in modern child-culture. 
 With our present-day scientific knowledge 
 of the boy, as distinguished from our per- 
 sonal knowledge of him in the past, we 
 recognize the trend of tendencies and under- 
 stand the portent of symptoms which for- 
 merly were either unnoticed or disregarded. 
 We have brought minute investigation, 
 analysis, and cold logic into the solution of 
 his problems over which we were wont to 
 blunder. We have made no greater blun- 
 ders in the past than those we have com- 
 mitted in connection with the corrective 
 measures which it has been the custom of 
 certain parents to employ. The necessity 
 for physical punishment has been superseded 
 by persuasive methods based on a more ac- 
 curate understanding of the boy's mental 
 and moral processes and his impulses for 
 good and bad. 
 
 \ Love, sympathy, and justice beget loyalty 
 
 150 
 
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 where fear fails. Moral suasion, mental de- \ 
 velopment, the cultivation of will power, the 
 appeal to reason, the deprivation of liber- 
 ties and privileges, rewards for merit, the 
 exhibition of love, insight and sympathy, 
 the use of tact and the honor system, all 
 are effective substitutes for physical chas- 
 tisement. 
 
 The preponderating weight of authority 
 among sociologists and penologists supports 
 the view that the attitude of the parent to- 
 ward his filial offender and of the state to- 
 ward the adult misdemeanant should be on 
 the one hand formatory and on the other 
 reformatory but never punitory. 
 
 The desire to avoid punishment which the 
 prospective recipient regards as unjust, 
 whether rightly or wrongly does not mat- 
 ter, results in the concoction of many in- 
 genious stories and schemes. Again the 
 author draws on his own boyhood experience 
 151 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 for an illustration. At the age of nine 
 I was threatened by my mother with a severe 
 switching for an offense the nature of which 
 has long since been forgotten. The timely 
 arrival of callers postponed the dreaded 
 event and afforded me ample time for re- 
 flection. The anticipatory torture which I 
 suffered during the hour preceding their de- 
 parture was greater punishment than the 
 actuality. 
 
 My mental processes during that hour 
 were these: "I didn't do anything very 
 bad. I don't deserve a whipping for it. I 
 am sorry for what I have done and won't do 
 it again. It's unfair to whip me for such 
 a little thing. How can I escape this un- 
 just licking?" At last, after long and la- 
 bored mental effort, I evolved a scheme 
 which to my youthful mind seemed the last 
 word in ingenuity and effectiveness ; it would 
 appeal to her pity and give her an object 
 152 
 
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 lesson she would never forget. My plan 
 was to obtain some oatmeal from the pantry, 
 chew it until my mouth was filled with froth 
 and saliva and at the first blow of punish- 
 ment I would fall to the floor in simulation 
 of unconsciousness, frothing at the mouth. 
 
 These alarming physical symptoms were 
 designed to touch the wellsprings of pity in 
 my mother's heart and I would thus escape 
 this threatened chastisement, as well as fu- 
 ture ones. At last the callers departed and 
 the hour of my doom arrived. She cut two 
 switches from a peach tree and entered the 
 spareroom that chamber of horrors and I 
 followed reluctantly with halting steps. 
 
 When the first blow fell, my instinctive 
 and unconscious activity in endeavoring to 
 avoid it caused it to strike my ear instead 
 of my back at which it was aimed. "The 
 best laid plans of mice and men gang aft 
 agley." The lusty yell of pain which fol- 
 153 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 lowed the contact of the switch with my 
 ear caused me to eject the oatmeal; and with 
 succeeding yells vanished all recollection of 
 my carefully laid plans for pseudo-fainting. 
 
 Boys frequently show great power of in- 
 vention in minimizing or evading punish- 
 ment about to be inflicted. One boy pads 
 the seat of his trousers to mitigate the or- 
 deal, where the anticipated weapon is the 
 slipper; another puts on three undershirts 
 where the customary instrument of torture 
 is the switch or rod. Still another, suffering 
 the indignity of being compelled to cut his 
 own switches, has been known to exceed his 
 instructions and cut the castigatory branch 
 half way through in many places. 
 
 The spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child pol- 
 icy has lost its significance in these latter 
 days. The rod is the emblem of parental 
 ignorance and incapacity. To beat a de- 
 fenseless child is proof of lack of ability 
 154 
 
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 to govern it through moral forces. It is a 
 humiliating admission that one is not quali- 
 fied for his job as parent. The confirmed 
 user of the rod is either the parent whose 
 neglect of training or wrong methods of 
 training have already produced delinquency 
 in his offspring, or the parent who believes 
 that a liberal application of the birch will 
 atone for his ignorance on the subject of 
 boy-training. To all other parents the re- 
 sort to the rod is as unnecessary as it is ab- 
 horrent. 
 
 The final question remains: Should the 
 rod ever be used, and, if so, under what cir- 
 cumstances? When lack of training or poor 
 training has produced delinquency in the 
 boy and all other corrective measures have 
 failed as they usually will fail when ap- 
 plied too late then corporal punishment, 
 if not carried to the degree of brutality, may 
 be attempted as a last resort before confine- 
 155 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 / ment in the reform school or house of de- 
 
 V tention. 
 
 I have profound pity for the fathers who 
 expend less gray matter in the training of 
 their sons than they do in the training of 
 their hunting dogs. Give each the same 
 thoughtful, intelligent, patient training and 
 the boy will surpass the dog in docility, 
 obedience, and understanding. With better 
 knowledge of the boy and his psychology, 
 and with better trained parents, the neces- 
 sity for the use of the rod has disappeared. 
 
 "Train up a child in the way he should 
 go and when he is old he will not depart 
 from it." Prov. 22:6. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 THE widespread use of tobacco has 
 given rise to an equally wide discus- 
 sion as to its effects on the human organism. 
 Medical men are divided into hostile camps 
 by their diversity of opinion as to the effects 
 of nicotine on the adult. The subject has 
 engaged the attention of reformers, edu- 
 cators, physical directors, scientists and 
 physicians for many generations. Without 
 attempting an exhaustive discussion of the 
 subject, the author quotes the following from 
 Dr. Clouston, an eminent English physician, 
 as to the effect of tobacco upon the adult 
 male: 
 
 "The use of tobacco has become the rule 
 157 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 rather than the exception among the grown 
 men of Europe and America and of some 
 parts of Asia. If its use is restricted to 
 full-grown men, if only good tobacco is used, 
 not of too great strength, and if it is not 
 used to excess, then there are no scientific 
 proofs that it has any injurious effects, if 
 there is no idiosyncrasy against it. Speak- 
 ing generally, it exercises a soothing influ- 
 ence when the nervous system is in any way 
 irritable. It tends to calm and continuous 
 thinking, and in many men promotes the 
 digestion of food. To those good results 
 there are, however, exceptions. It some- 
 times sets up a very strong desire for its ex- 
 cessive use ; this often passing into a morbid 
 craving which leads to excess and hurt. Used 
 in such excessive quantity tobacco acts in- 
 juriously on the heart, weakens digestion, 
 and causes congestion of the throat as well 
 as hindering mental action. In many people 
 158 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 its use tends towards a desire for alcohol 
 as well. I have repeatedly seen persons of a 
 nervous temperament where the two excesses 
 in tobacco and alcohol were linked together. 
 Tobacco, properly used, may, in some cases, 
 undoubtedly be made a mental hygienic." 
 Notwithstanding the insufficient scientific 
 data available as to the results of nicotine 
 on mature men, there is a strong belief on 
 the part of numerous physicians and others 
 that its effect is deleterious. There is no 
 diversity of opinion, however, as to the in- 
 jury wrought by nicotine on the morals, 
 mind, and body of the adolescent boy. Au- 
 thorities who have given the subject ex- 
 haustive investigation and careful thought 
 are unanimous in their conclusions that the 
 use of tobacco in any form before maturity 
 is injurious. Physical deterioration as a re- 
 sult of tobacco and especially of cigarettes 
 has been conclusively demonstrated by meas- 
 159 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 urements and tests of large numbers of 
 young men in colleges, which show beyond 
 question that physical growth is stunted; 
 lung capacity, without which an athlete can- 
 not achieve distinction, is lessened; the ner- 
 vous system is irritated and the heart ac- 
 tion is depressed. The lungs are rendered 
 susceptible to pulmonary and tubercular in- 
 fection and the mental development of the 
 boy receives a serious check. Such physical 
 and mental influences cannot fail in produc- 
 ing moral defects as well. 
 
 Dr. George L. Meylan of Columbia Uni- 
 versity has compiled some interesting data 
 from his observations of a large number of 
 college students covering the three and one- 
 half or four years of their undergraduate 
 life at age approximately of seventeen to 
 twenty at entrance and twenty-one to 
 twenty-four at graduation. The follow- 
 ing instructive table prepared by him 
 160 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 shows the age when smokers acquired the 
 habit : 
 
 Age | 7 | 8 | 9 |10|11|12|18|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21 
 
 Number |l|0|0|g|0|2|0 [11|11|18|80|23|16| | 
 
 It will be observed that the largest num- 
 ber of boys contracted the habit at age seven- 
 teen, with ages sixteen and eighteen next in 
 point of numbers. Few boys of the one 
 hundred and fifteen observed in the above 
 table began the habit before the fourteenth 
 year, the age near which adolescence begins. 
 Dr. Meylan reached the following conclu- 
 sions based on many years of medical ex- 
 amination of boys and young men and his 
 experience in teaching hygiene: 
 
 "1. All scientists are agreed that the use 
 of tobacco by adolescents is injurious; 
 parents, teachers, and physicians should 
 strive earnestly to warn youths against its 
 use. 
 
 "2. There is no scientific evidence that the 
 161 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 moderate use of tobacco by healthy mature 
 men produces any beneficial or injurious 
 physical effects that can be measured. 
 
 "3. There is an abundance of evidence 
 that tobacco produces injurious effects on 
 (a) certain individuals suffering from vari- 
 ous nervous affections; (b) persons with an 
 idiosyncrasy against tobacco; (c) all per- 
 sons who use it excessively. 
 
 "4. It has been shown conclusively in this 
 study and also by Mr. Clarke that the use 
 of tobacco by college students is closely as- 
 sociated with idleness, lack of ambition, lack 
 of application and low scholarship." 
 
 Dr. Jay W. Seaver of Yale University 
 has expressed the following opinion as the 
 result of his examination of thousands of 
 university students : 
 
 "The effect of nicotine on the growth is 
 very measurable, and the following figures 
 are presented as a fairly satisfactory demon- 
 162 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 stration of the extent of the interference with 
 growth that may be expected in boys from 
 sixteen to twenty-five years of age, when 
 they are believed to have reached full ma- 
 turity. For purposes of comparison the men 
 composing a class in Yale have been divided 
 into three groups. The first is made up of 
 those who do not use tobacco in any form; 
 the second consists of those who have used 
 tobacco for at least a year of the college 
 course; the third group includes the irregu- 
 lar users. A compilation of the anthropo- 
 metric data on this basis shows that during 
 the period of undergraduate life, which is 
 essentially three and a half years, the first 
 group grows in weight 10.4 per cent, more 
 than the second, and 6.6 per cent, more than 
 the third; in girth of chest the first group 
 grows 26.7 per cent, more than the second, 
 and 23 per cent, more than the third ; in ca- 
 pacity of lungs the first group gains 77.5 
 163 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 per cent, more than the second, and 49.5 per 
 cent, more than the third." 
 
 The figures quoted above furnish a power- 
 ful and convincing argument against the 
 use of tobacco in any form by the person 
 who has not attained maturity. The cigar- 
 ette is generally considered the most per- 
 nicious form in which tobacco can be used 
 and this is the form in which boys generally 
 begin its use. Both before and after puberty 
 the boy is imitative of his elders. "The boy 
 apes the man" and the desire to appear 
 "manly" in the eyes of his companions is one 
 of the strongest incentives to acquire the 
 habit. As smoking is common among men, 
 he seeks to acquire this evidence of mascu- 
 linity by adopting its semblance. It pos- 
 sesses an insidious attraction in its daintiness 
 and apparent harmlessness. The phenome- 
 non of combustion, the ascending ribbon of 
 smoke which vanishes to nothingness, the co- 
 164 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 hesiveness of the ash, the experiment of 
 blowing smoke rings in the air and the curi- 
 osity to learn the effect of smoking on the 
 individual, all are powerful incitements to 
 the inquisitive mind of a boy. The cigarette 
 habit is usually contracted during the period 
 of adolescence, or even earlier, when the 
 organs, glands, tissues, and muscles of his 
 body are in a formative stage of develop- 
 ment. It requires no corroboration from 
 medical experts to convince the man of aver- 
 age intelligence that such a powerful nar- 
 cotic as nicotine cannot be beneficial to 
 growth under these conditions. Common 
 sense as well as expert opinion join in con- 
 demning the nicotine drug habit of children. 
 You will find nicotine classified in phar- 
 macopoeias as a drug whose effects are some- 
 what similar to those of opium and morphine. 
 From 3 to 8 per cent, of tobacco is com- 
 posed of nicotine, of which 50 to 60 per cent. 
 165 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 is inhaled in smoking, the remainder being 
 consumed in combustion. 
 
 The use of tobacco in the cigar or the pipe 
 is less objectionable than in the cigarette for 
 many reasons. It is the almost universal 
 custom of those addicted to the cigarette to 
 inhale the smoke, which is the exception with 
 the pipe and cigar smoker. But nicotine is 
 not the only poison generated in the cigarette 
 even where tobacco is not combined with 
 opium or other drugs used to contribute to 
 its flavor and aroma; the combustion of to- 
 bacco with the rice paper in which it is rolled 
 makes a compound which is neither tobacco 
 smoke nor paper smoke, but an alkaloid 
 known as acrolein, "the name of which is 
 known to all scientists and the smell of which 
 is known to everyone." Another injurious 
 product of cigarette combustion is carbonic 
 oxide. These two products of the cigarette 
 are far more virulent than tobacco smoke. 
 166 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 They enter the blood through the mucous 
 membranes of the mouth, throat, bronchial 
 tubes, and lungs and act as powerful de- 
 pressives on the heart. Cigarette poisoning 
 manifests itself in lung and throat irritation, 
 restlessness, nervousness, petulance, inabil- 
 ity to concentrate thought, and depression 
 of the nervous system. 
 
 The effect is not only physical but moral. 
 The keen sense of discrimination between 
 right and wrong is blunted and the finer 
 moral conceptions become obtused. The 
 highest scholarship in our colleges and uni- 
 versities is attained by men who are non- 
 smokers. The famous college athletes have 
 a smaller proportion of smokers than those 
 who have not achieved distinction in athletics. 
 If these facts are true of college men ap- 
 proaching maturity, they will be still more 
 apparent in younger boys. Unfortunately, 
 there has been no scientific investigation 
 167 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 along these lines among boys in our second- 
 ary schools. But the head of one of our 
 leading preparatory schools is authority for 
 the statement that tobacco is the bane of his 
 school and that more boys break down in 
 health and are sent home from its influence 
 than from any other. A recognition of the 
 evil results of cigarette smoking by minors 
 is crystallized in the enactment of laws in 
 more than a dozen states against selling 
 cigarettes to minors, as well as making it 
 an offense for adolescents under specified 
 ages to smoke cigarettes on the streets. 
 
 The records of juvenile and criminal 
 courts disclose the fact that the cigarette 
 fiends furnish 90 per cent, of their young 
 criminals. Dr. George F. Butler of Chi- 
 cago gives this testimony as to the moral 
 weakening of the boy from the cigarette 
 habit: "In my work some years ago at the 
 Chicago police stations and later as county 
 168 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 physician in the detention hospital I found 
 that almost without exception the young 
 criminal, dement or delinquent, was a cigar- 
 ette 'fiend. I am forced to believe that this 
 habit has largely to do with these mental and 
 moral infirmities." 
 
 The boy at the rear end of a lighted cigar- 
 ette has little chance of obtaining a position 
 from a business man. Even the telltale yel- 
 lowish discoloration of the fingers and the 
 cigarette stench of his breath give sufficient 
 warning for the employer to inform the ap- 
 plicant that he is not wanted. It takes a 
 strong body and a clear mind to succeed in 
 competitive business. The boy handicapped 
 in the race of life by the cigarette habit is in 
 the same condition as the sprinter who is 
 hopelessly handicapped in a hundred-yard 
 dash; neither has any chance of winning. 
 John V. Farwell, the Chicago merchant, is 
 quoted as saying: "I would as lief employ a 
 169 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 boy who steals sheep as one who smokes cig- 
 arettes. One is no more to be trusted than 
 the other." To the same effect is this warn- 
 ing of a well-known English physician: "A 
 boy who early smokes is rarely known to 
 make a man of much energy and character 
 and he generally lacks physical and mental 
 as well as moral energy." 
 
 This subject is big with importance for 
 the boy's future. It is one of the great boy- 
 problems and it should be discussed frankly 
 by father and son before puberty, soon after 
 which period so many boys acquire the habit- 
 It may be difficult for the father, with a 
 cigar in his mouth, to persuade his son that 
 tobacco is injurious, but whether the father 
 is a smoker or not, a thorough discussion of 
 the subject in all its aspects is sure to prove 
 beneficial. As the boy at this age is in the 
 hero-worship period and as his heroes in 
 early adolescence are always athletes, an ap- 
 170 
 
THE CIGARETTE HABIT 
 
 peal to his innate longing to attain physical 
 perfection and athletic distinction will be 
 found more potent than the appeal for men- 
 tal or moral perfection, although the latter 
 should not be neglected. The additional 
 grounds of abstinence from motives of per- 
 sonal purity and self-respect have their ef- 
 fect, although the argument that he should 
 not needlessly cause annoyance or discom- 
 fort to others has little weight with a boy 
 prior to the reflective period. If such warn- 
 ing is given to the boy before he contracts 
 the habit it will usually prove effective. 
 Some parents conclude their instruction with 
 the statement that the son, on attaining his 
 physical maturity at approximately twenty- 
 four years of age when the danger of nico- 
 tine poisoning on the growing boy has 
 passed may then make his own decision as 
 to whether he will or will not smoke. 
 
 In conclusion a word of suggestion is of- 
 171 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 fered as to the means which should be em- 
 ployed with boys who have already con- 
 tracted the habit. Dr. H. Krebs of Chicago, 
 Secretary of the Anti-Cigarette League, has 
 used in his practice a simple remedy for the 
 cigarette habit which is reputed to be of great 
 effectiveness. Its base is the chemical reac- 
 tion of a weak solution of silver nitrate with 
 nicotine, which creates an intensely disagree- 
 able taste in the mouth. After the smoker 
 has rinsed his mouth with this solution and 
 draws in a whiff of cigarette smoke, the 
 chemical effect of the nicotine in combina- 
 tion with the solution produces such a 
 nauseating taste that further smoking for 
 that day is impossible. The treatment 
 should be protracted until desire has waned 
 and will power has become reestablished. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 BOY GANGS 
 
 BOYS are as gregarious as sheep. Their 
 desire to herd together and have a 
 leader is one of the requisites of play, a most 
 important factor in their educational devel- 
 opment. The call of the wild to you is not 
 half so loud as the call of the lot to your 
 boy. It is as natural for boys to run in 
 gangs as it is for minnows to run in schools; 
 youth calls to youth. There they find others 
 possessing the same viewpoint, tastes, de- 
 sires, ambitions, and occupations as their 
 own. To the active boy the gang is a democ- 
 racy made up of those of his own kind in 
 which he is a free citizen without gaternal or 
 maternal restraint. In his new world there 
 173 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 is no querulous nor uncomprehending adult 
 to shout repressive commands directed at 
 conduct or action. All is as wild and free 
 as his own wild nature. 
 
 There are two classes of organization to 
 which boys belong those formed by them- 
 selves without supervision; and those formed 
 and supervised by adults for them. In the 
 former class are the street and alley gangs, 
 the "Dirty Dozen," the "Noisy Nine," the 
 "Pirates' Crew," the scrub baseball team, 
 the "Swipers" (organized for petty depre- 
 dations), the lot loafers, school fraternities, 
 school "crowds," "bunches" or cliques, and 
 other loose organizations whose only bond 
 of cohesion is some common interest. The 
 latter class comprises boys' clubs; Boy Scout 
 patrols ; Sunday-school classes ; nature-study 
 clubs; baseball, football, and basketball 
 teams under the direction of a coach; and 
 numerous other boy organizations having a 
 174 
 
BOY GANGS 
 
 common interest, which are controlled by an 
 adult. 
 
 The gang spirit is strongest between the 
 tenth and fifteenth years and it is at this 
 period that boys spontaneously form them- 
 selves into a gang. The leader of the gang 
 is the member who is best equipped for the 
 position by reason of age, courage, physical 
 prowess, and inherent qualities of leadership 
 and the selection is never made by formal 
 vote but by tacit recognition of the leader's 
 superiority and by willing obedience to his 
 commands. 
 
 A place of meeting or "hang out" is es- 
 sential to every gang. It may be a room 
 behind a shop, an attic, a stable loft, a dug- 
 out, or a shack built of old boards, scrap tin, 
 and paper. Such shelter supplies the place 
 for their meetings, houses their communal 
 property, and satisfies their atavistic desire 
 for cover, privacy, and security. They ex- 
 175 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 hibit a strong sense of proprietorship in such 
 a retreat. It is all their own and is guarded 
 from intrusion by other boys with all the 
 physical force necessary to accomplish this 
 result. 
 
 The morale of an unsupervised gang (just 
 as of a mob) is never so high as the indi- 
 vidual morale of its constituents while in 
 the supervised gang it is higher. The gang 
 will steal milk bottles from a back door- 
 step, loot a fruit stand, or smash a window, 
 when no individual in it would commit the 
 same acts. 
 
 The love of excitement and adventure and 
 the desire to be "doing something" includ- 
 ing the joy of being chased by the police 
 without capture are the motives which 
 prompted a certain gang to grease street car 
 rails and to derail cars by placing spikes in 
 the switches; none of which depredations 
 would have been committed had the interest 
 176 
 
BOY GANGS 
 
 of the members been directed to legitimate 
 activities and sports which would occupy 
 their leisure time and satisfy their need of 
 physical activity and mental occupation. 
 Such offenses are unnatural manifestations 
 of natural tendencies exuberance run wild, 
 because unrestrained. The contest of match- 
 ing wits with the police is thrilling in its 
 possibilities for adventure. Hours of time 
 are occupied in planning depredations and 
 much ingenuity is afterwards shown in evad- 
 ing detection and capture. Their common 
 danger is the bond which knits them to- 
 gether. They have a code of honor ex- 
 hibited principally in their dealings with one 
 another the first and chief rule of which 
 is that no member shall "snitch" on any other 
 member of the gang. And woe betide the 
 gangster who violates this cardinal principle ! 
 He may confess as to himself, but under no 
 circumstances may he include the others, un- 
 177 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 der the certain penalty of a beating or 
 worse still, in the eyes of the boy ostracism 
 by the gang. Psychologically considered, 
 this trait is a manifestation of loyalty gone 
 wrong. It is as unwise as it is useless to 
 attempt to stamp it out, when it can and 
 should be directed into its proper channel of 
 manifestation in which it becomes one of 
 the highly prized virtues. 
 
 The great mass of male offenders haled 
 to our juvenile courts are members of un- 
 controlled gangs and only rarely is there 
 seen a member of a controlled gang. Street 
 and alley gangs are the training schools for 
 delinquent boys and from them is graduated 
 the juvenile criminal. The arrest, convic- 
 tion, and imprisonment of such offenders 
 will not work their reformation. It can be 
 accomplished only through the parent on 
 whom the duty naturally devolves, or, in 
 the event of parental default, through the 
 178 
 
BOY GANGS 
 
 Judge of the Juvenile Court, by patiently 
 pointing out the evil results of such lawless- 
 ness to themselves as well as to others, by 
 the stimulation of their pride and honor, 
 and most of all through diverting the gang's 
 activities, by parent or probation officer, to 
 lawful channels such as the school, office, 
 workshop, athletic field, and supervised so- 
 ciety. 
 
 Here may be seen the beneficent results 
 flowing from the application of positive sug- 
 gestions for employments which will super- 
 sede those of harmful import. The inhibi- 
 tion of a lawless activity without the substi- 
 tution of a lawful one to fill the void thus 
 created has always proven resultless. The 
 gang spirit is inherent in boy nature and 
 can never be suppressed. No one who under- 
 stands the boy would attempt to suppress it. 
 Objection should not be made that your boy 
 belongs to a gang and he does belong to 
 179 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 one of some sort but only to the kind of 
 gang with which he is associated. It is your 
 concern whether he belongs to a Boy Scout 
 gang or a Dirty Dozen gang. The good 
 gang should be encouraged; it is good be- 
 cause it is supervised; and the bad gang 
 should be converted into a good one by adult 
 direction. The recognition of the psycho- 
 logic necessity for gangdom has changed 
 the former prohibition against gang associa- 
 tion to the encouragement of the boy to join 
 a clean crowd engaged in clean activities. 
 This innate tendency to gangdom furnishes 
 the cue for his reclamation. Supervised 
 gangs are the tongs by which many boys 
 have been pulled from the fires of de- 
 linquency. They furnish the means for his 
 reformation as well as for his formation. 
 It is an everlasting stigma on the parent 
 that his son needs reformation. If the boy's 
 formation has been properly nurtured there 
 180 
 
BOY GANGS 
 
 will be no need for his reformation. The 
 supervised gang forms the normal boy and 
 reforms the delinquent boy, while the un- 
 supervised gang unforms both. 
 
 Recognizing this intuitive tendency of 
 boys to organize and maintain gangs, in 
 whatever multifarious forms it may take, 
 and the pernicious influence of unguided and 
 unrestrained organizations on his moral and 
 physical life, it is incumbent on parents and 
 those standing in loco parentis to supply him 
 with an organization which will satisfy the 
 gang spirit in his nature. A failure in this 
 regard will drive the boy to assocation with 
 the unsupervised gang which is frequently 
 the school for dishonesty, untruthfulness, 
 bullying, profanity, unclean speech, disre- 
 gard of the personal and property rights of 
 others, cigarette smoking, and social impur- 
 ity. The unclean gang exerts a powerful 
 pull toward criminality, while the clean gang 
 181 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 stands as a barrier between the boy and de- 
 linquency. 
 
 Your boy is a natural gangster, therefore 
 encourage him to join a clean gang. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 WHAT magic there is in the name of 
 Scout ! It calls up before the mind's 
 eye the vision of a buckskin-clad pioneer, 
 inured to the hardships of the trail and en- 
 dowed with the virtues of strength, forti- 
 tude, clear thinking, and courage which boys 
 admire so much ; one whose everyday life is 
 made up of a series of thrilling adventures 
 and hairbreadth escapes. Is it to be won- 
 dered at that the hero-worshiping boy, still 
 in the semi-savage state, should desire to 
 emulate such a romantic figure in our na- 
 tional life? 
 
 The organization known as the Boy 
 Scouts of America is a national movement, 
 183 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 rather than an organization, whose primary- 
 object is character building. It is non- 
 sectarian and non-military. It furnishes the 
 adolescent boy with facilities for the expres- 
 sion of his growing body, mind, and soul and 
 inspires the virtues of patriotism, chivalry, 
 honor, courtesy, loyalty, self-respect, faith- 
 fulness, cheerfulness, thoughtfulness, and 
 obedience. 
 
 There are three classes of Scouts ; the ten- 
 derfoot, the second-class Scout and the 
 First-class Scout, advancement being made 
 according to the proficiency shown by ex- 
 amination. Suitable badges awarded for 
 each class are prized as great honors and 
 furnish the incentive to further progress in 
 Scoutcraft. The reader is referred to the 
 official handbook of the organization for a 
 detailed statement of the many subjects in- 
 cluded in their curriculum. These subjects 
 cover practically the entire range of an 
 184 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 adolescent's interests and activities apart 
 from the home, the school, and the church. 
 
 Not the least important among the many 
 requirements of the scout is the good turn 
 or kindness which he must do for someone 
 every day without financial reward. The 
 performance of the daily good turn develops 
 courtesy, gallantry and social consciousness 
 and fixes in his mind a realization of the fact 
 that he is one of the threads in the social 
 fabric of humanity. The boy-training of to- 
 day, whether parental or organizational, 
 should emphasize the importance of service 
 to others, and the boy in whom this altruistic 
 idea is grounded will not give his parents 
 great cause for worry. If this organization 
 had no requirement other than the daily good 
 turn, that fact alone would be sufficient ex- 
 cuse for its existence. These samples of 
 good turns, taken from the records of a 
 Scout troop, are as varied as the natures and 
 185 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 opportunities of the boys themselves and 
 afford an interesting study in adolescent 
 psychology: 
 
 1. I helped a blind man 'cross the street. 
 
 2. A steam roller was passing and fright- 
 ened a horse, I held the horse until the roller 
 went by. 
 
 3. Fed a starving cat. 
 
 4. I gave a dime to a orfun asilam. 
 
 5. Picked up a broken bottle from the 
 road so it wouldn't cut a horse's foot or an 
 automobile tire. 
 
 6. Gave a lady my seat in a street car. 
 
 7. I helped my mother clean out the gar- 
 ret. 
 
 8. I gave a nickel to a poor lame hobo. 
 
 9. I loaned your chauffeur a dime when 
 he was broke. 
 
 10. I picked up a girl's slate in school 
 when she dropped it and sharpened her 
 pencil. 
 
 186 
 
THE BOY- SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 11. Helped an old lady with a lot of bun- 
 dles get on a street car. 
 
 12. Put out a fire in the weeds in a lot. 
 
 13. Ran after a girl's hat which blew off 
 and brought it back to her. 
 
 14. A team hitched to an ice wagon was 
 walking down the street and I climbed in 
 the back way and stopped them and drove 
 them to the police station. Just then the 
 driver came running up for his team and 
 cussed me for driving them off, when I was 
 only doing him a good turn. 
 
 15. I found a horde in the street 
 with a nail stickken up and I threw it in 
 a vacunt lot and pushed the nail in the 
 ground. 
 
 16. I uncanned a dog (L e., removed 
 can from dog's tail). 
 
 17. I build a bird house in my back yard. 
 
 18. I licked a big boy for licking a little 
 boy. 
 
 187 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 19. I run errands for my mother when I 
 ot to have bin playin ball. 
 
 20. Took some pervisions to a pore fam- 
 bly near the gas wurks. 
 
 21. Helped a boy with his arithmetic les- 
 sons. 
 
 22. Showed a man where Washington 
 street was. 
 
 23. I stopped two kids from fighting. 
 
 24. When my mother was sick, I worked 
 all day helping her on Sattiday. 
 
 25. I went and staid with a sick boy and 
 cheered him up. 
 
 26. I found a dog which was lost and I 
 ast Scotty who belonged to the dog and he 
 sed he thot Mr. Edwards up the street, so 
 I took the dog back to Mr. Edwards and 
 he sed thank you and offured me a quarter 
 and I sed Boy Scouts do not take tips. 
 
 27. I swore off smokin cigerets. 
 
 28. I turned in my wages to my mother. 
 
 188 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 29. I cleaned up the alley back of the 
 house. 
 
 30. I helped a little girl pick up a bag of 
 potatoes when the bag busted and made an- 
 other kid quit laffing at her. 
 
 31. I went for a can of beer for Mrs. 
 Schwartzberger. 
 
 It is evident that the last good turn was 
 performed by a slum boy who had recently 
 joined the troop. 
 
 It requires no student of psychology to 
 recognize the different developments of 
 moral concepts shown in these replies. Some 
 betray the first signs of the dawning of moral 
 consciousness, while others show a keen ap- 
 preciation of altruistic ideals, the result of 
 ennobling home influence and proper train- 
 ing. 
 
 The performance of the daily good turn 
 develops the faculty for the formulation of 
 ideals. A new relationship to duty is thus 
 189 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 fixed and the boy's moral nature is builded, 
 slowly but surely, until one can visualize the 
 completed character of the future. Of all 
 this, the boy himself is wholly unconscious. 
 
 The boy knows little, if anything, of the 
 principles or purposes of the Boy Scouts 
 before he becomes a member. For that mat- 
 ter, the average parent has made no great 
 effort to inform himself on the objects, scope 
 and workings of the organization, as too fre- 
 quently he assumes it to be a method devised 
 for his son's amusement, which will relieve 
 the parent of the duty of personal super- 
 vision while the boy is so occupied. He re- 
 gards it as a species of boy entertainment, 
 wholly disassociated from its educational and 
 ethical import. 
 
 The youth knows only two things about 
 Boy Scouts, which he has learned from ob- 
 servation that they wear uniforms and go 
 on hikes. Both of these make a powerful 
 190 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 appeal to his imagination and interest. The 
 uniform and the parade satisfy the spec- 
 tacular and dramatic needs of his nature and 
 the hikes gratify his savage and atavistic 
 tendencies which prompt him to seek the 
 wilds and live temporarily as did his remote 
 ancestor the primeval man. He joins the 
 organization to satisfy these primitive de- 
 sires and thus effects a return to the simple 
 life, which furnishes, to the city youth espe- 
 cially, an antidote for the injury wrought 
 by our increasingly complex civilization and 
 hurried methods of living. 
 
 He does not dream nor care that the 
 fundamental purpose of the organization is 
 character building; indeed, if he were in- 
 formed of this fact, his interest would prob- 
 ably wane. He dislikes character building 
 in the abstract, but is intensely interested in 
 concrete scout activities which silently and 
 inevitably produce character. 
 191 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 The system of teaching a boy ethics and 
 morals by lecturing him or by feeding him 
 with tracts which hold up to view the ab- 
 stract beauties of morality has long since 
 been thrown into the discard as archaic and 
 useless. It is one of the relics of unscientific 
 training Puritanical, wasteful, inefficient. 
 The keen discernment of the boy's mind sees 
 the dry bones of such methods. The boy 
 is red-blooded and alive and wants live meth- 
 ods. Some of our forefathers truly believed 
 they had found the secret of boy-training in 
 the cultivation in him of a sense of self- 
 abasement, personal unworthiness, and 
 insignificance which they fostered by 
 requiring the boy to sing hymns which 
 likened him to a poor worm groveling 
 in the dust. I have never yet met a 
 boy who admitted his relationship to the 
 worm apart from his compulsory expres- 
 sion of the sentiment in song. 
 192 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 The Scout idea is to get back to elemental 
 things by contact with the earth, the ozone 
 of the open, the wild life of the forest and 
 stream. These things not only make him a 
 strong, healthy animal, but teach him the 
 joy of living and how to live. They train 
 the boy to "Be Prepared" for all the various 
 contingencies of life and thus exemplify the 
 motto of the organization. 
 
 Scout camps and hikes are a school for 
 training the imagination in the legends of 
 the woods and of animal life, which are in- 
 spired by the mystery of the camp fire and 
 the glorious solitude of the starry night, 
 faintly stirred by the wind in the tree tops. 
 The gleam of wavering lights from the camp 
 fire transforms the faces of the circling 
 scouts into animated sprites. Ascending 
 flames split the darkness into dancing shad- 
 ows which people the surrounding woods 
 with living myths and fables. A kaleido- 
 193 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 scopic riot of color mounts upward, paint- 
 ing luminous images on the retina as it 
 sketches in chromatic outline the heroes of 
 fantasy. It is such things which inspire the 
 poetry of life. Nothing furnishes such 
 stimulus to the imagination as the camp fire. 
 It calls into play all the mystery and mysti- 
 cism of the human mind; it discovers the hid- 
 den wellsprings of romance, legend and 
 adventure; it inspires the art of the story- 
 teller as nothing else can do and furnishes a 
 perfect stage setting for the dramatic tale 
 which unobtrusively carries its own moral. 
 It is here that the raconteur can weave his 
 tale from the warp of adventure and the 
 woof of romance until the resulting mantle 
 of heroism fits every boyish auditor. Deeds 
 of daylight loom large with valor against the 
 background of night. The potent influence 
 of such surroundings for driving home last- 
 ing impressions on the imaginative and 
 194 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 sensitive mind of youth has never been 
 equaled. 
 
 Around the nightly camp-fire "council" 
 are recounted the events of the day; awards 
 for merit are given; songs breathing the 
 martial spirit which boys love so well are 
 sung; the Scout Master's story of heroism 
 and adventure is heard with eager ears and 
 is followed invariably by frank comments in- 
 dicating the manner of its reception; finally 
 a drowsy song like "My Old Kentucky 
 Home," reflecting the somnolent spirit of 
 the lengthening hours, brings the "council" 
 to a close ; soon the soft tones of "taps" are 
 heard droning from the bugle and, rolled in 
 their blankets, the little tourists quickly 
 journey to slumberland. 
 
 Scout associations foster esprit de corps 
 
 and team work, as well as a recognition of 
 
 relative rights and duties which is in the 
 
 highest degree cultural. The appreciation 
 
 195 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 of property rights is cultivated to such an 
 extent that a scout will not willfully damage 
 the property of another. Not the least 
 beneficent influence exerted by the organi- 
 zation is its inculcation of obedience, disci- 
 pline, loyalty, truthfulness, chivalry, courte- 
 sy, respect for women, helpfulness to others, 
 patriotism, and manliness. These qual- 
 ities are unconsciously and unobtrusively 
 impressed on his plastic character during the 
 formative age until they become a com- 
 ponent part of it. A scout is taught that 
 he is always "on honor," and that his word 
 is accepted unreservedly, as the truth. The 
 youth feels more needs than the home, school, 
 and church can supply the need for com- 
 panionship, play, sports, adventure, and ro- 
 mance. His gregarious and social instincts 
 must be fed by association with those of his 
 own age ; his love of adventure and physical 
 expression must be gratified by the clean 
 196 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 activities of the forest, the stream, the ball 
 field ; his love of romance needs find expres- 
 sion in the extraordinary experiences of 
 woodcraft, pathfinding and cave explora- 
 tion; and his love of play must be sati- 
 ated by rough sports, games, and athletics 
 through which he attains his physical, men- 
 tal, and ethical development. It is an ap- 
 plication of Froebel's epoch-making theory 
 of training and developing boys by means 
 of play. It is the utilization of his "wild 
 period" by systematic direction and over- 
 sight for the up-building of character and 
 manhood. 
 
 The Scout movement is playing a huge 
 joke on the boy in supplying him, under the 
 guise of fun, play, sport, and adventure with 
 work, study, and developmental activities 
 whose real import is the upbuilding of char- 
 acter, mind, and body; but this ulterior mo- 
 tive is never suspected by the boy until after 
 197 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 these results have been accomplished. If 
 the instinctive tendencies to companionship 
 with those of his own age are not normally 
 gratified by membership in a supervised 
 gang they will find expression in his associa- 
 tion with an unsupervised gang with the 
 evil results which inevitably flow from such 
 association. The Boy Scout organization 
 is the ideal gang because it satisfies his nat- 
 ural desires for gangdom while it is silently 
 and surely building both body and character. 
 "Of all present-day organizations for the 
 improvement and happiness of normal boy- 
 hood," Dr. G. S. Hall has written, "the 
 institution of the Boy Scouts is built at once 
 on the soundest psychology and the shrewd- 
 est insight into boy nature. The Scout 
 Patrol is simply a boy's gang, systematized, 
 overseen, affiliated with other like bodies, 
 made efficient and interesting, as boys alone 
 could never make it, and yet everywhere, 
 198 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 from top to bottom, essentially a gang. Oth- 
 er organizations have adopted gang fea- 
 tures. Others have built themselves around 
 various gang elements. The Boy Scout 
 Patrol alone is the gang. The whole Boy 
 Scout movement is a shrewd and highly suc- 
 cessful attempt to take the natural, in- 
 stinctive, spontaneous boys' society, to add 
 nothing to what is already there, but delib- 
 erately to guide the boy into getting com- 
 pletely just that for which he blindly gropes. 
 The obvious answer to the whole gang prob- 
 lem, therefore, is this : Turn your gang into 
 a Boy Scout Patrol." A troop of Scouts 
 is only a denatured gang whose activities 
 have been changed from vicious to character- 
 building tendencies, a result which is ac- 
 complished by the systematic, helpful, and 
 inspirational guidance of the Scout Master 
 along the lines of the Scout curriculum. The 
 potent influence of activities disguised as 
 199 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 play, which produce physical and moral bet- 
 terment, is nowhere more apparent than in 
 this organization. The things for which the 
 unsupervised gang was blindly seeking have 
 been completely furnished by the supervised 
 Scout Patrol. Judge Edward Porterfield 
 of the Kansas City Juvenile Court paid this 
 tremendous tribute to the influence of the 
 Boy Scouts : "If every boy in the city would 
 join, the gangs would disappear, the juve- 
 nile court would soon be a stranger to the 
 youth, and we would rear a generation of 
 men that would not require much police pro- 
 tection. I have never had a boy scout in 
 my court and there are twelve hundred of 
 them in Kansas City." President-emeritus 
 Charles W. Eliot of Harvard stated in a 
 recent address: "I feel sure that nothing 
 but good will come from the educational 
 or training qualities of the Boy Scout move- 
 ment as a whole. It is setting an example 
 200 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 that our whole public school system ought 
 to follow." 
 
 The scheme supplies the companionship 
 of those of his own age and the opportunity, 
 under competent supervision, for the exer- 
 cise of physical, mental, and manual activi- 
 ties which make for his betterment. Its 
 effectiveness lies in the universality of its ap- 
 peal ; it touches the life of every boy regard- 
 less of social status or religious affiliations; 
 it gets a moral grip on boys of every phase 
 of temperamental condition; and its moral 
 virus gets under a boy's hide like a hypo- 
 dermic injection. 
 
 The universality of its appeal to boyhood 
 is shown by its membership which is re- 
 cruited from all ranks of society from the 
 slum to the palace. It touches the boy on 
 every side of his manifold interests. The 
 best proof that the organization is founded 
 on correct psychologic principles is its popu- 
 201 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 larity with the boys themselves and the splen- 
 did caliber of the boys who are graduated 
 from it. Its strong appeal is grounded in 
 its harmony with boy nature. Without un- 
 derstanding his mental processes or the psy- 
 chology of his preferences, the boy knows 
 what he likes and what he dislikes. He 
 loves the Boy Scouts because it is an organi- 
 zation which satisfies the cravings of his boy 
 heart. One Scout expressed the thought in 
 these words, "Scouts are always doin' things 
 and they have the most fun." Always doin' 
 things! What a world of psychological 
 truth is crystallized in this youthful state- 
 ment! It drops the plummet in the well- 
 springs of truth. Continuous action is the 
 key to his evolution and by it the budding 
 boy blossoms into the mature man. In a 
 word, the entire Scout plan consists of 
 crowding the boy's life so full of agreeable 
 activities of useful and ethical import that 
 202 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 he has no time for noxious things. The busy 
 boy is the best boy. The Scout influence is 
 one of the most powerful factors for good 
 in the boy's life and is the most potent sup- 
 plemental agency which has yet been de- 
 vised for adolescent development. 
 
 We hear much, in these latter days, of 
 business and industrial efficiency. Experts 
 in this line are able to systematize a busi- 
 ness, a railroad, or a factory so that a given 
 amount of labor will produce a maximum of 
 results. Even such unskilled labor as shovel- 
 ing is susceptible of scientific improvement. 
 An efficiency expert employed by a great 
 corporation decreased the number of move- 
 ments of ore shovelers one-half, with a cor- 
 responding increase in tonnage of ore 
 handled, and without an increase in the ex- 
 penditure of physical energy. 
 
 It is equally important that efficiency 
 methods should be employed in the training 
 203 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 of boys. Scientific methods applied to boy- 
 culture will increase the quality of the output 
 as well as make the work easier for the boy 
 and the parent. The Boy Scout movement 
 is an efficiency method of scientific boy- 
 training in mass. It supplements perfectly 
 the work of the home, the school, the church. 
 It furnishes a kind of training which none 
 of these supplies and in making this state- 
 ment I do not undervalue the inestimable 
 influence of these institutions on the life of 
 the boy today. 
 
 The home is the primary and most im- 
 portant agency for the boy's general train- 
 ing, the school for mental development, and 
 the church for moral and religious culture; 
 but in the wide field of boy nature not 
 reached by these agencies the Boy Scout 
 organization directs his development from 
 the child into the man. 
 
 The organization has passed the experi- 
 204 
 
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE 
 
 mental stage and is now on the highway of 
 proved success. Thousands of boys are 
 clamoring for admission which must be de- 
 nied until Scout Masters can be enlisted and 
 trained to take charge of troops. Here is 
 a wonderful field for social service, ripe for 
 harvest, awaiting the man who loves boys 
 and who recognizes his duty in having some 
 part in raising the standard of our future 
 citizenship. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 JUVENILE READING 
 
 NEXT to environment and companions, 
 books exercise the most powerful in- 
 fluence for good or evil on the life of the 
 boy. His companionship with books is as 
 intimate as his companionship with play- 
 mates and usually occupies as large a por- 
 tion of his life, especially after puberty. The 
 value of literature is two-fold: it molds the 
 character and develops the taste, both of 
 which processes are closely related. It is 
 I natural for the boy to want "something to 
 \ read" and this desire is not satisfied by 
 \ schoolbooks, biographies, or histories. His- 
 1 tory which is a mere recital of facts, names, 
 \ and dates in which the human element is 
 1 206 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 little emphasized becomes wearisome and un- 
 profitable. The boy voluntarily reads for 
 entertainment; he studies because he is com- 
 pelled to. 
 
 It is, of course, apparent that the child's 
 reading should be suited to his mental and 
 psychological requirements. He begins with 
 nursery rhymes and jingles and then follow 
 fairy tales, folklore and wonder-tales told 
 by the parent. These serve as an introduc- 
 tion to tales and stories of mythology, whicli 
 are in turn stepping stones to history and 
 biography. At the age of nine or ten he 
 begins to develop a taste for fiction, tales 
 of adventure, chivalry, and daring experi- 
 ence which exploit the virtues of some hero, 
 on which he feeds for a number of years. 
 
 Still another class of reading not denomi- 
 nated literature is contained in the so-called 
 "useful" books which are purely informative 
 and educational in character. Shortly be- 
 207 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 fore the "teen age," when he is interested 
 in experimentation and construction, he 
 seeks books giving information about gar- 
 dening, handicrafts, mechanics, physics, 
 magic, and manual training, the latter usu- 
 ally accompanied by plans and diagrams for 
 making such things as sleds, boats, model 
 aeroplanes, and electrical apparatus. 
 
 The boy whose reading has been properly 
 directed graduates from tales of adventure 
 into the better forms of literature, including 
 standard fiction, imaginative narration, his- 
 tory, historical novels, essays, and poetry. 
 /Few children, unaided, develop a taste for 
 good literature; it must be cultivated by 
 judicious direction. The best literature is 
 as potent in its influence for good as trashy 
 reading is for evil. The boy's love for the 
 thrilling, exciting story of adventure beyond 
 the realms of his own experience leads him 
 to devour the so-called "nickel library" and 
 208 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 "dime novel," which may be easily procured 
 from certain news-stands and provides his 
 private reading of which the parent knows 
 nothing. 
 
 These paper-back pamphlets are usually 
 brilliantly illuminated in colors to attract 
 the eye and exhibit a thrilling picture illus- 
 trating some incident in the story. A few 
 of the titles of these "yellow" books afford 
 ample evidence of their contents and influ- 
 ence. I recall through the aid of boyhood 
 recollection such titles as "Hobo Harry, the 
 Boy Tramp"; "Reckless Rob, the Red 
 Ranger of the Rockies"; "Dare Devil Dick, 
 the Boy Bandit"; "The Jesse James Week- 
 ly," devoted to the exploits of that outlaw 
 gang; "Slippery Sam, the Boy Detective," 
 and others of that ilk. The widespread de- 
 mand for such stories is shown by their 
 circulation which now exceeds a million 
 copies annually. 
 
 209 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 In all these lurid tales, the detective, out- 
 law, vagabond, adventurer, bandit, or tramp 
 is made the hero. Their pernicious effect on 
 the boy's character results from idealizing 
 the reputed virtues of the criminal or semi- 
 criminal hero until the lad's moral sense is 
 debased; and this is quite apart from the 
 vitiating effect on the boy's literary taste 
 which is the inevitable result of feeding on 
 these potboilers and penny-a-liners. Such 
 reading matter may be instantly recognized 
 by the parent from its outward dress and 
 should be as promptly banished. 
 
 But not all trashy reading bears such open 
 and extraneous evidence of its character. 
 Another equally vicious class of books ap- 
 pears in the outward form of good fiction, 
 bound in boards, with attractive titles and 
 covers, and sometimes written by authors 
 of well-known reputations. They consist of 
 stories that fascinate the boy with their thrills 
 210 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 but inspire false ideals of life even though 
 they do not always possess the fault of 
 openly idealizing vice; the story of the cabin 
 boy who advanced to captain through some 
 impossible deed of heroism or adventitious 
 circumstance, without the training or experi- 
 ence necessary to qualify him for the posi- 
 tion ; the story of the boy who achieved honor 
 and distinction by trickery or sharp prac- 
 tice ; the story of the hero who gained wealth 
 by some get-rich-quick method, all are as 
 vicious in their suggestion and influence as 
 the "nickel library." And the poison of such 
 literature is as subtle as it is fatal. Mr. E. 
 W. Mumford is authority for the following 
 statement: "Many a parent, who would 
 promptly take John out to the woodshed 
 if he learned that the boy was collecting dime 
 novels, himself frequently adds to John's 
 library a book quite as bad." 
 
 The author once requested a twelve-year- 
 211 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 old boy friend to tell him about the best book 
 he had ever read. Here is his reply: "It 
 is a story about two boys who went to Flori- 
 da in an aeroplane to explore the Ever- 
 glades. They got lost in the swamps and 
 jungles and were captured by a tribe of 
 wild Indians. These Indians had also cap- 
 tured a little white girl who had wandered 
 away from her parents. One night, the boys 
 killed nearly all the Indians with tomahawks 
 as they slept and escaped with the little girl 
 in the aeroplane followed by a volley of 
 poisoned arrows which just grazed 'em but 
 didn't hit 'em." The impossibility of the 
 situations, the false ideals presented, the 
 mock heroics and the lack of literary quality 
 in the story all were unnoticed by the boy. 
 He saw only a youthful hero engaged in a 
 thrilling adventure which culminated in a 
 rescue of chivalric idealism. 
 
 The danger from such books is even great - 
 212 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 er than from the "nickels" because, com- 
 ing in the guise of good fiction, their appeal 
 is more insidious. The average boy knows, 
 either by intuition or by direct statement of 
 the fact, that the "blood-and-thunder nickel" 
 is prohibited by his parents; hence he reads 
 them in the barn or in the privacy of his 
 room and hides them meantime where they 
 will be safe from the inquisitive eyes of spy- 
 ing parents. 
 
 I once asked a boy who was engaged in 
 this prohibited reading if he knew the reasons 
 for his parents' opposition. His reply was 
 characteristic: "They don't want me to 
 read nothin' excitin'." They committed the 
 mistake of attempting to crush his natural 
 desire for exciting tales of adventure and 
 heroism by confiscating "nickels" without 
 giving him equally exciting books of daring 
 enterprise which breathed a high moral 
 spirit. Instead, they fed him on goody- 
 213 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 goody books which he accepted with the same 
 grace with which one takes a dose of bitter 
 medicine, until finally he rebelled. By out- 
 side suggestion, conveyed through his par- 
 ents, this boy is now reading "thrillers" of 
 some ethical and moral value, which already 
 give evidence of becoming the gateway to a 
 desire for good literature. 
 
 The "yellow" tale bound in boards should 
 be confiscated and destroyed by the parent 
 as quickly as he would cast an armful of 
 paper-bound "libraries" into the furnace. 
 The reading of this stuff by boys is much 
 more common than is ever suspected by par- 
 ents. Boys exchange these books w r ith each 
 other until they become dog-eared and dirty 
 through repeated readings, and the supposed 
 merit of each is passed from lip to lip as 
 the reader lends the book to a companion 
 with the statement, "It's a pippin." The 
 continued reading of this trash cannot fail 
 214 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 to have its effect in a lower standard of 
 morals and a longing to achieve the fruits 
 of industry, ability, and experience by im- 
 possible short-cuts; in addition to which it 
 keeps him out of touch with good literature. 
 
 Equally detrimental in their influence are \ 
 most of the comic Sunday supplements of 
 the newspapers, especially where they pic- 
 ture the small boy engaged in vicious or 
 mischievous acts alleged to be humorous. No 
 parent would wish to see his own offspring 
 copy the examples set by these comic heroes 
 yet the inspiration to emulate them is fur- 
 nished when the parent hands the supple- 
 ment to his son. ' 
 
 There are many books of fiction which V 
 give the boy the thrills he seeks for and at 
 the same time present high ideals, a decent 
 standard of morals, and such reasonable ap- 1 
 proach to probable conditions as will not \ 
 destroy the boy's perspective by their illog- 
 215 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 icality or impossibility. Such books do not 
 always possess the highest literary quality 
 but they do serve as stepping stones by 
 which the blood-and-thunder addict mounts 
 to better literature, and, as such, they have 
 a definite and valuable place in juvenile 
 eading. 
 
 It must be apparent that morals cannot 
 be acquired by committing to memory a set 
 of rules, but are unconsciously fashioned by 
 every influence which strikes the impres- 
 sionistic and receptive character of youth 
 and leaves its indelible imprint for good or 
 evil throughout the life of the individual. 
 Character is formed during the short period 
 of boyhood. It is, therefore, of superlative 
 importance that all character forming in- 
 \ fluences to which the boy is subjected, includ- 
 \ ing his reading, shall be of the best and 
 >|iighest type. 
 
 Ideal companions for our sons are more 
 216 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 difficult to find in real life than in fiction. 
 The perfect boy may live somewhere but 
 not in my immediate neighborhood. The 
 companions of our boy are usually worse 
 than he at any rate we think them so; if 
 one is good-natured he may be a bully; if an- 
 other is of high moral character he may be so 
 lazy and untidy that his influence is un- 
 wholesome ; a third may be untruthful, while 
 still another may be so goody-goody that 
 his influence is positively depressing. But 
 in the carefully selected literature of today 
 may be found suitable companions for your 
 son the heroes who exemplify in the 
 achievement of enterprises of adventure and 
 daring the virtues which all boys should seek 
 to emulate. Manly models are unconsciously 
 copied. From the intimate companionship 
 with such heroes gained by reading, the boy 
 obtains inspiration for bravery, truth, obedi- 
 ence, honor, loyalty, industry, manliness, 
 217 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 courtesy, and ambition. Chumming with 
 virtue inspires virtue. 
 
 "There is a world," says Walter Taylor 
 Field, "into which children may enter and 
 find noble companionship. It is the world 
 of books. Let your boy escape for a time 
 from the meanness of the boy across the 
 street, and let him roam the woods with 
 Hiawatha, sail the seas with Sindbad, build 
 stockades with Crusoe, fight dragons with 
 Jason, joust with Galahad; let him play at 
 quoits with Odysseus, and at football with 
 Tom Brown. These are playmates who 
 will never quarrel with him nor bully him, 
 but from whom he will learn to be brave, 
 self-reliant, manly, quick to do for others, 
 and set with his face toward the light." The 
 character-building qualities of such books are 
 \as unquestioned as their intellectual value. 
 A library has been termed by Lord Lyt- 
 
 3n a "literary pharmacopoeia" which con- 
 218 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 tains the remedies for mental and moral 
 shortcomings. Modified to suit the require- 
 ments of boyhood it means that doses of 
 literature should be administered as specifics 
 for diseases of character, as well as to act 
 as tonics to build up the moral virtues. For 
 the boy inclined to deceit books are pre- 
 scribed in which truthfulness and honor are 
 exalted; for the lazy boy is prescribed the 
 tale of monumental achievement through in- 
 dustry; the anemic bookworm should receive 
 a course of reading concerning athletics, 
 sports, and life in the open; disloyalty and 
 disobedience would call for a diet of stories 
 in which the antithesis of these defects is 
 exploited. In a word, it is an attempt to 
 correct his moral and temperamental de- 
 ficiencies by placing him under the influence 
 of the heroic characters of fiction who exhibit 
 the moral qualities which the boy lacks. This/ 
 device is no longer a mere theory; it hajl 
 219 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 been tried in innumerable instances and al- 
 ways with good, if variable, results. The 
 eff ectiveness of this unique plan will doubt- 
 less be in proportion to the skill of the diag- 
 nostician in recognizing the exact moral 
 ailment and the accuracy of the literary 
 physician in prescribing the corrective read- 
 ing. 
 
 Every boy admires a hero and seeks to 
 emulate him. If his hero is one of question- 
 able morals, the effect of his companionship 
 on the boy reader will be almost as pernicious 
 as the influence of an evil chum in daily life. 
 On the other hand, companionship with the 
 noble characters of fiction cultivates in the 
 reader the same virtues as those exhibited 
 by the hero and inevitably establishes moral 
 standards. When the boy demands that 
 virtue shall be rewarded and vice punished 
 it is an evidence of his ethical evolution, and 
 the continued recurrence of these instances 
 220 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 in his reading finally fixes for all time his 
 criterion of moral values. 
 
 The dust-covered books which formerly 
 filled the shelves of our Sunday-school 
 libraries depicting milk-and-water characters 
 and heroes of immaculate goody-goodyness, 
 happily, have been replaced by books por- 
 traying virile, red-blooded, intensely human 
 heroes who are not afraid to get their clothes 
 dirty. No dust ever accumulates on such 
 books but they do become worn and soiled 
 with constant reading. 
 
 Stories of animal life are valuable wheA 
 informative of their customs and habits and 
 they generally inspire a love for animal 
 heroes which prompts a manifestation of 
 kindness toward all dumb creatures. Not 
 infrequently the hidden moral contained i: 
 these stories is driven home as forcibly as i: 
 the best fiction in which human beings pla; 
 the principal roles. 
 
 221 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 A well selected juvenile magazine should 
 find a place on every boy's reading table, 
 not so much for the value of its fiction 
 which is so variable in quality as for its 
 news features concerning the things which 
 loom big in the boy's life school and col- 
 lege athletic events, Boy Scout meets, new 
 games and sports, the latest improvements in 
 wireless construction, and new ideas in handi- 
 craft. It is from such a journal that he ob- 
 tains information of current events which 
 are commanding the attention of all boys 
 and he thus keeps abreast of the times in 
 Boyville. 
 
 The book which furnishes entertainment as 
 well as inspires interest commands the atten- 
 tion of the adolescent in the direct ratio that 
 these elements conform to his psychological 
 development. Juvenile fiction is usually in- 
 teresting to the adult only when read from 
 the juvenile viewpoint. When so read it 
 222 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 may prove a fascinating recital of human 
 aspirations and achievements as well as a 
 profound study in the covert psychological 
 impulses which actuate the several characters 
 of the story. 
 
 "The great problem in juvenile reading 
 for the parent/' to quote Franklin K. 
 Mathiews, librarian of the Boy Scouts, "is 
 to choose from the huge mass of boy's books 
 the ones the boy will like best and yet. those 
 which will be best for the boy." It is obvious 
 that he will not read what he does not like, 
 but it does not follow that he should be given 
 all books that he likes irrespective of their 
 influence. Rest assured that your boy does 
 not himself select a book because of its high 
 moral tone or its qualities of uplift. He 
 would doubtless side-step it if he suspected 
 such influence. He is looking for thrills, 
 excitement and adventure something out- 
 side the domain of his everyday experience. 
 223 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 If he finds them he is satisfied with the book 
 irrespective of its tendencies for good or 
 bad. I am now speaking of the average red- 
 blooded boy and not the halo-crowned youth 
 of supernal goodness. As long as we supply 
 him with the needed thrills coupled with 
 good influence, he will not go after the thrills 
 coupled with bad influence. Juvenile fiction 
 which does not count for character culture 
 is worthless. As he advances in years and 
 increases his intellectual equipment his love 
 for lurid tales will wane, and if his reading 
 has been supervised, a desire for the best 
 fiction, history, biography, essays, ethics, and 
 poetry will easily and naturally take its 
 place. 
 
 The limitations of this chapter have pre- 
 vented more than a brief discussion of the 
 influence of literature in shaping the boy's 
 character and intellect and the reader is re- 
 ferred to those books which will be found 
 224 
 
JUVENILE READING 
 
 useful by the parent in outlining and direct- 
 ing a course of reading for the boy at his 
 several periods of development from infancy 
 to manhood. The first two volumes given 
 below are especially valuable for their com- 
 prehensive lists of suitable books. 
 
 TITLE 
 
 The Children's Reading - - 
 Fingerposts to Children's 
 Reading ----_. 
 How to Tell Stories to Chil- 
 dren 
 
 How to Teach Reading - - 
 Special Method in Primary 
 
 Reading - - - 
 Special Method in the English 
 
 Classics 
 
 Books and Libraries - - - 
 Books and Culture - - - 
 Biblical Masterpieces - - - 
 Readings in Folklore - - - 
 History and Literature - - 
 Childhood in Literature and 
 
 Art 
 Little Folks' Lyrics - - - 
 
 225 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 Olcott 
 Field 
 
 Bryant 
 Clark 
 
 / 
 - - McMurray 
 
 McMurray 
 
 Lowell 
 
 Mabie 
 
 Moulton 
 
 Skinner 
 
 Rice 
 
 Scudder 
 Sherman 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 TITLE AUTHOR 
 
 Counsel upon the Reading of 
 
 Books Van Dyke 
 
 Kindergarten Stories and 
 
 Morning Talks - - - - Wiltse 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 AGENCIES FOR SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 THE importance of educating the 
 young in the physiology and hygiene 
 of sex is no longer doubted. The widespread 
 ignorance and misinformation among boys 
 concerning the human sexual function is 
 proof of the necessity of substituting there- 
 for normal, accurate knowledge which will 
 conduce to hygienic and eugenic betterment. 
 However much one may close his eyes to 
 the fact, it is nevertheless true that many 
 children acquire distorted information about 
 matters of sex at a very early age much 
 earlier than the average parent ever sus- 
 pects. Among boys, misinformation on sex 
 matters is the rule and correct information 
 the exception. 
 
 227 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 The necessity for scientific knowledge on 
 the subject is based on (1) the preservation 
 of individual sex health, (2) the improve- 
 ment of the progeny; (3) the relief of boys 
 from the mental disquietude caused by cer- 
 tain normal manifestations of adolescence; 
 (4) his rescue from the clutches of quack 
 "medical specialists"; (5) the suppression 
 or control of venereal diseases; (6) the 
 abatement of false modesty which prevents 
 sane discussion among adults of a question 
 so important to humanity, to pave the way 
 for sex-education backed by an enlightened 
 and cooperating public opinion, without 
 which a general dissemination of knowledge 
 covering the dangers to health and morals 
 resulting from wrong sex habits is im- 
 possible. 
 
 There is an ever-present disposition to 
 ring down the curtain of taboo on the dis- 
 cussion of sex. A subject which so vitally 
 228 
 
SEX-INSTRUCTION AGENCIES 
 
 affects the health and morals of both the 
 individual and the community should war- 
 rant such discreet discussion and thoughtful 
 consideration as will best conserve these vital 
 fundamentals of life. The former antipathy 
 to any reference to the subject is now 
 being slowly superseded by a nobler and 
 purer sentiment which invites the formation 
 of plans and methods designed to obviate 
 the grave physical and moral dangers at- 
 tendant on ignorance and misinformation. 
 A healthier public opinion and enlightened 
 conscience will clear the way for the instruc- 
 tion not only of the young but of adults 
 concerning the sacred processes of human 
 reproduction. 
 
 It is obvious to say that instruction on sex 
 can best be given the child by his parents; 
 they are his natural teachers, possessing the 
 confidence of the child and having the inti- 
 mate relationship, affection and sympathetic 
 229 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 understanding whicK renders personal in- 
 struction effective. But the neglect of this 
 parental duty is so prevalent even among 
 educated parents who are solicitous for their 
 children's future, that courses of instruction 
 in our grammar and high schools and col- 
 leges are now being advocated to supply this 
 parental omission. Indeed, one or more 
 public high schools in our large cities have 
 already added sex instruction to their course 
 of study, while a number of normal schools 
 and colleges have for some years included 
 it in their curriculums. Such a revolutionary 
 innovation has not been unattended by op- 
 position, chiefly from parents and public 
 school boards, but only rarely from the heads 
 of educational institutions of advanced 
 grades. The introduction of such a course 
 is attended by some impediments, not the 
 least of which is the difficulty of procuring 
 teachers who possess both the tact and the 
 230 
 
SEX-INSTRUCTION AGENCIES 
 
 pedagogic knowledge necessary to give in- 
 struction on the subject in its biological, 
 hygienic, and ethical aspects in such a man- 
 ner as will inform and warn the child against 
 the dangers of premature sex excitation and 
 satisfy his curiosity without stimulating his 
 interest. Another difficulty in the way of 
 teaching the subject in public and other 
 schools even when classes are segregated 
 by sex is the psychology of the mob, evi- 
 dent in a large group of boys who already 
 are possessed of copious misinformation 
 which tends to a more flippant and prurient 
 reception of the subject than when the in- 
 formation is given privately. This is evi- 
 dent even in advanced schools. One of our 
 greatest institutions of learning has two 
 courses of lectures on sex hygiene for fresh- 
 men and seniors, which are generally referred 
 to by the students as "Smut One" and 
 "Smut Two." The American Federation 
 231 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 for Sex Hygiene is perhaps the leading ad- 
 vocate of the policy of sex education in 
 graded and high schools, to be given in con- 
 formity with a thoughtful and conservative 
 plan which has its basis in biological study. 
 The heads of many prominent colleges and 
 universities have given their indorsement to 
 this plan which is endowed with such elas- 
 ticity that it may be varied to meet the needs 
 of the differing mental and physical require- 
 ments of the young. 
 
 Conceding that the average public school 
 teacher has one essential qualification for 
 giving such instruction, i. e., the confidence 
 of the children, her incapacity because of the 
 lack of a broad scientific knowledge of the 
 subject, or youth, or both, is generally rec- 
 ognized. The other alternative special 
 lecturers of known scientific qualifications- 
 is open to the suggestion that they would 
 soon be known as "sex specialists" and the 
 232 
 
SEX-INSTRUCTION AGENCIES 
 
 presentation of the subject under these con- 
 ditions would place upon it an undue 
 emphasis instead of having it taught in its 
 natural and orderly sequence as a part of 
 nature study, biology, and ethics where it 
 belongs. So, also, the children's lack of con- 
 fidence in an outside lecturer would minimize 
 the good results of such information. Physi- 
 cians are generally regarded as the proper 
 persons to give this instruction, although 
 the suggestion has been made that inasmuch 
 as the ideal instruction must concern the 
 normal function of sex, and that a physi- 
 cian's work is chiefly along the abnormal 
 line (disease) and a tendency to the develop- 
 ment of certain morbidity necessarily results 
 therefrom the biologist, especially if a 
 regular instructor, is the one best equipped 
 for this delicate task. There is an ever- 
 present danger, either from unqualified 
 teachers or wrong pedagogic methods, of 
 233 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 unduly emphasizing the topic in such a man- 
 ner that the curiosity of the child will be 
 stimulated. This is the very result which 
 should be avoided; the boy should be given 
 only enough instruction, as an incidental 
 part of one of the broader subjects with 
 which it is intimately related, to satisfy his 
 natural curiosity and suffice the physical and 
 ethical requirements of his particular stage 
 of development. On the other hand, the 
 difficulties connected with sex-instruction 
 should not be unduly stressed, for they are 
 not insurmountable. 
 
 By whatever instrumentality the instruc- 
 tion is given to classes it is agreed that, as 
 in private instruction, the information should 
 be only sufficient to satisfy the psychological 
 and physical needs of the child at the period 
 of development which he has then attained. 
 During the period of adolescence the scope 
 of information is, therefore, greatly broad- 
 234 
 
SEX-INSTRUCTION AGENCIES 
 
 ened to meet the requirements of that period. 
 The opponents of sex-instruction in schools 
 believe that it will obtrude the subject too 
 prominently in the consciousness of the 
 youth and thereby destroy the restraints of 
 modesty which were intended to be con- 
 served. 
 
 The advocates of the school plan insist 
 that the beneficent results of such instruc- 
 tion will greatly outweigh any possible evil 
 which may follow from it. They submit 
 that the moral and physical dangers to which 
 children are subject as the result of ignor- 
 ance, and the presence of venereal disease 
 in boys to a degree not understood by the 
 general public, are sufficient warrant for 
 such instruction wholly apart from other 
 considerations. 
 
 The entire subject is of tremendous mo- 
 ment and worthy of the careful study, 
 thought, and judgment of parents and 
 235 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 scientists for the formulation of a future 
 policy which can adequately cope with this 
 great problem. 
 
 In a report of the Special Committee of 
 the American Federation for Sex Hygiene 
 on the matter and methods of sex-education 
 this recommendation is made: "Your com- 
 mittee would emphasize the necessity of good 
 judgment and tact in introducing sex-in- 
 struction into schools. It should not be 
 introduced prematurely, but only so fast as 
 teachers can be found or trained who are 
 competent to give it, and so fast as public 
 sentiment will support it. On the other 
 hand, undue weight must not be given to 
 the difficulties attending such instruction 
 even under present conditions, inasmuch as 
 even occasional mistakes will do far less 
 harm than allowing children to continue to 
 gain this knowledge, as many of them now 
 do, from impure sources receiving a per- 
 236 
 
SEX-INSTRUCTION AGENCIES 
 
 nicious first impression which induces in 
 them an attitude of mind toward the sub- 
 ject that makes it extremely difficult later 
 to give them the best instruction. In not 
 a few such cases subsequent sound teaching 
 is practically fruitless." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AN OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 THE limitations of this chapter will pre- 
 vent more than a mere outline of the 
 periods in a child's life when sex-informa- 
 tion should be imparted and the character of 
 it. Familiarity with the boy's psychology 
 given in Chapters III and IV will be of 
 value in its application. From birth until 
 the child is six years old the prescholastic 
 age he is at home under the care and guid- 
 ance of his mother, excluding the kinder- 
 garten which is attended by a small propor- 
 tion of children. During this period the 
 mother's chief concern should be the hygienic 
 care of the child's body and the prevention 
 of danger which may come from an inju- 
 238 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 $ 
 
 idicious or immoral nurse. The only sex- 
 instruction should be a simple answer to his 
 question as to the origin of human life 
 usually prompted by the birth of a baby 
 whom he has seen or of whom he has heard. 
 This may be done by the statement that 
 God sent it in a human basket and the doctor 
 delivered it, or other phraseology which car- 
 ries the same import and will satisfy his 
 curiosity for the time being until another 
 inquiry is made. It is desirable to remem- 
 ber that the child up to approximately ten 
 years of age will continue these interroga- 
 tories to his mother from time to time and 
 that whenever he ceases to make such in- 
 quiries it is evidence that he believes he has 
 obtained full information on the subject 
 either from parental or from outside sources. 
 The mother, not the father, should begin 
 the sex-education of her son. The most ef- 
 fective method of imparting sex-information 
 239 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 is by what is called the biological approach. 
 At age seven or eight the foundation for 
 sex-instruction should be laid by information 
 concerning plant production ; that the pollen 
 dust of the father plant becomes attached 
 to the legs of the honey-seeking bee and is 
 transferred to the mother plant, where it 
 fertilizes the seed from which a baby plant 
 grows. The function of the wind, also, in 
 eff ecting the conjunction of pollen with the 
 ovule of the stigma should be explained; and 
 how the pollen or male principle fertilizes 
 and gives life to the female ovule, making 
 seed from which a new plant is born. 
 
 Now by successive stages and in detail his 
 mind should be directed to the processes of 
 reproduction in the lower forms of animal 
 life, such as fishes, snakes, and frogs ; then to 
 the higher forms of life represented in birds 
 and domestic fowl, and then to the still 
 higher form of mammals, and finally to re- 
 240 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 production in the human being, emphasizing 
 its biological and sacred aspects. The won- 
 derful workings of nature should be made 
 predominant in explaining the reproduction 
 of the lower orders of life while the pure 
 and spiritual phase of human reproduction 
 should be stressed. Coincident with the con- 
 clusion of such instruction, there should be 
 given a brief explanation of the functions 
 of the generative organs in the process 
 of reproducing the species, the injury of 
 secret vice and the necessity for personal 
 purity. 
 
 At this first sign of approaching puberty 
 the father should assume the duty of further 
 instruction, which should now advise the boy 
 of the wonderful sexual changes about to 
 take place in his body and the new and pow- 
 erful desires about to be awakened. The 
 normal development of adolescence should 
 be pointed out and a warning sounded as to 
 241 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 the error of mistaking certain natural phe- 
 nomena for the abnormal. 
 
 At the age of fifteen to sixteen the neces- 
 sity arises for admonition against sexual 
 promiscuity and its relationship to the hy- 
 gienic health of the individual and its eu- 
 genic influence on coming generations. 
 During the entire period the note of per- 
 sonal purity should be sounded by a strong 
 appeal to his moral and religious sense. 
 
 Untold numbers of boys go wrong sexu- 
 ally through ignorance, who would have 
 kept to the paths of purity had they but 
 known. 
 
 It is important that the boy, especially 
 during adolescence, shall be kept from the 
 contaminating influences of theatrical pro- 
 ductions whose sex-appeal is conspicuous. 
 The moving picture show, which fascinates 
 children with its interest, is objectionable 
 chiefly because of its connection with the 
 242 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 cheap vaudeville so commonly associated 
 with it. Few vaudeville "turns" have any 
 ethical, moral, or intellectual value. They 
 are, at best, ephemeral entertainment and 
 frequently are so coarse as to be unmoral if 
 not positively immoral in their persuasive- 
 ness. The sex excitation produced by the 
 physical display of the partly clothed female, 
 risque dialogues and suggestive songs which 
 are common, in some degree, to a certain 
 class of musical comedies, burlesques, and 
 vaudeville shows is a potent reason for keep- 
 ing the adolescent away from their influence. 
 And it must be obvious that the sex-problem 
 play is equally unsuited to his needs. 
 
 As a guide to the subject matter and 
 methods of sex-instruction the author ap- 
 pends a brief bibliography culled from the 
 flood of literature on the subject. Much that 
 has been published is good; some is bad 
 and some is indifferent. The necessity for 
 243 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 wide-spread sex-education has resulted in the 
 formation of many societies whose primary 
 object is the dissemination of knowledge on 
 the subject through lectures and the pub- 
 lication of pamphlets designed for the edu- 
 cation of the parent in how and when to 
 impart sex-instruction to his child. Other 
 pamphlets, graded according to the age of 
 the reader, are to be placed in the hands of 
 the boy himself. Such leaflets may be pur- 
 chased from these societies for the few cents 
 which they cost to publish, and samples are 
 frequently issued gratuitously. Among the 
 many pamphlets, leaflets, and circulars is- 
 sued by the several societies for sex-hygiene, 
 the following are suitable for the instruction 
 of parents or may be placed in the hands of 
 the boy himself if so indicated: 
 
 AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR SEX HYGIENE. 
 105 West 40th St., New York City. 
 "Report of the Special Committee on 
 244 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 the Matter and Methods of Sex Edu- 
 cation." Thomas M. Balliet, Dean of 
 the School of Pedagogy, New York 
 University; Maurice A. Bigelow, 
 Professor of Biology, Teachers Col- 
 lege, Columbia University; Prince 
 A. Morrow, M.D. 34 pp., Decem- 
 ber, 1912. Copies upon request. 
 "The Teaching of Sex Hygiene." 
 Prince A. Morrow, M.D. Copies 
 upon request. 
 
 CALIFORNIA SOCIAL HYGIENE SOCIETY. 
 U. S. Custom House, San Francisco, Cal. 
 Four circulars as follows: 
 "The Four Sex Lies." 4 pp. 
 "When and How to Tell the Children." 
 
 For parents. 7 pp. 
 "The Secret of Strength." For boys 
 
 ten to thirteen years of age. 5 pp. 
 "Virility and Physical Development." 
 245 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 For boys thirteen to eighteen years 
 of age. 7 pp. 
 Samples upon request with postage. 
 
 COLORADO SOCIETY FOR SOCIAL HEALTH. 
 1434 Glenarm St., Denver, Colo. 
 
 "Teaching Regarding Sex in the Pub- 
 lic Schools." Edward Jackson, M.D. 
 Reprint from Denver Medical Times. 
 7 pp. 
 Samples upon request with postage. 
 
 CONNECTICUT SOCIETY OF SOCIAL HYGIENE. 
 
 42 High Street, Hartford, Connecticut. 
 
 "Sex Hygiene for Young Men." 8 pp. 
 
 CHICAGO SOCIETY or SOCIAL HYGIENE. 
 305 Reliance Building, Chicago, 111. 
 A circular: 
 
 "Self Protection." Sexual Hygiene for 
 Young Men. 4 pp. 
 246 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 MARYLAND SOCIETY OF SOCIAL HYGIENE. 
 15 East Pleasant Street. Baltimore, Md. 
 Two circulars on Social Hygiene: 
 "Sex Hygiene for Young Men." 1912. 
 
 4pp. 
 
 Reprint of seven Charts, on "Methods 
 of Teaching Sex Hygiene," from 
 the exhibit of The American Fed- 
 eration for Sex Hygiene. 1913. 
 8pp. 
 Samples and prices upon request. 
 
 DETROIT SOCIETY FOR SEX HYGIENE. 
 Wayne County Medical Society's Build- 
 ing, Detroit, Mich. 
 Three leaflets : 
 
 "A Word to Parents on Sex Hygiene." 
 
 6pp. 
 
 "A Plain Talk with Boys." For par- 
 ents to tell boys from six to fourteen 
 years old. 4 pp. 
 247 
 
[YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 "Some Plain Facts for Young Men 
 upon Sexual Matters." 6 pp. Single 
 copies upon request with postage; 
 25 cents per 100. 
 
 ST. Louis SOCIETY FOR SOCIAL HYGIENE. 
 4069 Shenandoah Ave., St. Louis, Mis- 
 souri. 
 Two circulars: 
 
 "A Plain Talk with Boys on Sex Hy- 
 giene." 4 pp. 
 "The Effect of Venereal Diseases on 
 
 Young Men." 4 pp. 
 Samples upon request. 
 
 THE SOCIETY or SANITARY AND MORAL 
 
 PROPHYLAXIS. 
 
 105 West Fortieth St., New York City. 
 Educational pamphlets: 
 
 "The Young Man's Problem." 32 pp. 
 "Instruction in the Physiology and 
 248 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 Hygiene of Sex." For teachers. 
 24 pp. 
 
 "The Boy Problem." For parents and 
 teachers. 32 pp. 
 
 "How My Uncle, the Doctor, In- 
 structed Me in Matters of Sex." 32 
 pp. 
 
 "Health and Hygiene of Sex." 32 pp. 
 Each 10 cents. 
 
 THE OREGON SOCIAL HYGIENE SOCIETY. 
 719 Selling Building, Portland, Oregon. 
 Five circulars : 
 
 "The Four Sex Lies." 4 pp. 
 "When and How to Tell the Children." 
 
 8 pp. 
 "Books for Use in the Family on Sex 
 
 Education." 2 pp. 
 "The Secret of Strength." For 
 younger boys, ten to thirteen years 
 of age. 6 pp. 
 
 "Virility and Physical Development." 
 249 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 For older boys, thirteen to eighteen 
 years of age. 8 pp. 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVEN- 
 TION OF SOCIAL DISEASE. 
 1708 Locust St., Philadelphia, Penna. 
 "The Social Evil in University Life." 
 Robert N. Willson, M.D. 1912. Re- 
 print from the New York Medical 
 News. 19 pp. 
 Prices upon request. 
 
 THE TEXAS STATE SOCIETY OF SOCIAL HY- 
 GIENE. 
 
 T. Y. Hull, M.D., Secretary, San An- 
 tonio, Texas. 
 
 "Instructions Our Children Need to 
 Form Ideas of Personal Purity." 
 Malone Duggan, M.D. 10 pp. 
 "The Child." Theo. Y. Hull, M.D. 
 Reprint from Club Woman's Ar- 
 gosy, December, 1910. 8 pp. 
 250 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF SOCIAL AND MORAL HY- 
 GIENE OF SEATTLE. 
 
 League Building, Seattle, Washington. 
 "Stamp Out the Black Plague." An 
 envelope containing three circulars: 
 "Four Sex Lies." 
 "The Black Plague." 
 "Why, What, When and How Parents 
 should Instruct Children in Sex Mat- 
 ters." 
 Samples and prices upon request. 
 
 THE SPOKANE SOCIETY OF SOCIAL AND 
 
 MORAL HYGIENE. 
 
 422 Old National Bank Building, Spo- 
 kane, Washington. 
 Five circulars : "The Need for Education 
 
 in Sexual Hygiene." 4 pp. 
 "A Frank Talk with Boys and Girls 
 About Their Birth." Children six to 
 
 ten. 4 pp. 
 
 251 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 "A Straight Talk with Boys About 
 Their Birth and Early Boyhood." 
 Boys ten to thirteen. 4 pp. 
 
 "A Plain Talk with Boys About Their 
 Physical Development." For boys 
 approaching puberty and during pu- 
 berty. 6 pp. 
 
 "Sexual Hygiene for Young Men." 
 
 8pp. 
 Sample Set upon request for 10 cents in 
 
 stamps. 
 The following books, among others, are 
 
 recommended: 
 
 "Truths. Talks with a Boy." Dr. E. 
 B. Lowry, Forbes & Co., Chicago. 
 
 "From Youth to Manhood." Dr. 
 Winfield S. Hall. Association Press. 
 New York. 
 
 "What a Father Should Tell His Little 
 Boy." Isabelle T. Smart. Bodmer 
 & Co., New York. 
 252 
 
OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION 
 
 "What a Father Should Tell His Son." 
 Isabelle T. Smart. Bodmer & Co., 
 New York. 
 
 "The Renewal of Life. How and 
 When to Tell the Story to the 
 Young." Margaret W. Morley, A. 
 C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 NO work on boy-training would be com- 
 plete without a reference to an in- 
 strumentality of recent origin for reclaiming 
 the wayward boy which marks a forward 
 step in the solution of the child problem 
 the juvenile court. The most notable change 
 in American jurisprudence in the last dec- 
 ade has been the establishment and develop- 
 ment of such courts for child saving and 
 the prevention of crime. Before the advent 
 of these courts, all children charged with the 
 commission of offenses were tried in crim- 
 inal and police courts as criminals and with 
 criminals. While awaiting trial, they were 
 confined in jail with thieves, confidence men, 
 254 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 beggars, drunkards, burglars, hold-up men, 
 and murderers, because the state had made 
 no provision for their separate detention 
 pending trial. 
 
 Under such conditions the child acquired 
 through association and conversation the 
 viewpoint of the criminal as well as an educa- 
 tion in crime which he would put into 
 practice after his release. Amid such 
 surroundings were laid the foundations for 
 the careers of many of the criminals who 
 now crowd our jails and penitentiaries 
 to overflowing. Speaking of such condi- 
 tions, Judge Richard S. Tuthill of the Chil- 
 dren's Court of Chicago said, "The State 
 had educated innocent children in crime 
 and the harvest was great." A thoughtful 
 police official once remarked of a boy in 
 such surroundings, "He is on a toboggan, 
 the lower end of which rests in hell." 
 
 The gradual recognition, by an aroused 
 255 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 public conscience, of the evil results of such 
 a system put into operation the forces which 
 in many states have abolished the old plan 
 of regarding and punishing the child as a 
 criminal and substituted the principle that 
 the wayward child is a dependent whom the 
 state, like a wise parent, will restrain from 
 evil and educate in the paths leading to good 
 citizenship, through the agency of the juve- 
 nile court and its efficient aid, the probation 
 officer. 
 
 We now recognize the inability of the child 
 to commit a crime, judged by the standards 
 applicable to the adult criminal, for the rea- 
 son that his mental and moral concepts have 
 not yet reached the stage of development 
 which can distinguish between right and 
 wrong with the clearness of the adult. What 
 in the adult with full consciousness of the 
 import and effects of his acts would be tres- 
 pass, assault and battery, larceny, and bur- 
 256 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 glary, are in the child varied forms of moral 
 disease which it is the state's business to cure 
 not punish. It is conceded that it would 
 be monstrous and brutal to punish a child 
 for contracting measles, scarlet fever, or 
 whooping cough, and it is equally monstrous 
 for the state to punish the same child before 
 he attains moral maturity, for contracting a 
 moral disease which manifests itself in acts 
 which are crimes only when committed by 
 adults with full comprehension of their moral 
 significance. 
 
 Again we revert for our guidance to the 
 child's viewpoint which in many instances is 
 closely akin to that of the untutored savage. 
 During a summer which I spent in the wil- 
 derness of the great woods of the North I 
 encountered an Indian who habitually killed 
 deer out of season and in violation of the 
 laws of the state in which he lived. When 
 I asked him why he did not obey the law, he 
 257 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 replied, "God made deer for Indian before 
 white man made book [the law]." From 
 his viewpoint, he was not guilty of wrong- 
 doing in killing deer to supply food for his 
 family; from the viewpoint of the law he was 
 a lawbreaker. 
 
 The underlying principle of the operation 
 of children's courts is the recognition of the 
 fact that the offender under sixteen years of 
 age should not be judged or punished by 
 adult standards; that he should not be ar- 
 rested, indicted, convicted, imprisoned, or 
 punished as a criminal. Evidence of the 
 offense is not regarded as proof of criminal- 
 ity but rather as light on the question as to 
 how the state, standing in loco parentis, can 
 best exercise its parental function in the 
 formation of the embryo character needed to 
 make the boy a good citizen. 
 
 The child is not punished to make an 
 example of him, nor to reform him but to 
 258 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 form him. Reformation implies the change 
 of a character already formed. The child's 
 character is in an evolutionary period, sus- 
 ceptible to formation but not to reformation. 
 The criminal power of the state metes out 
 punishment for reformation and as a deter- 
 rent to other persons who may be tempted 
 to violate the law. The parental authority 
 of the state is exercised to train the boy to 
 be good and to remove him from the vicious 
 environments which chain him to delin- 
 quency. 
 
 Boys are naturally good not bad. A 
 study of the records of juvenile offenders 
 will show that there are four dominant 
 causes of delinquency, stated here in the or- 
 der of their importance, for none of which is 
 the boy himself directly responsible, namely: 
 environment, poor training or lack of train- 
 ing, the bad example of parents, and hered- 
 ity. I do not subscribe to the theory of 
 259 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 the "innate cussedness" of boys. The "in- 
 nate cussedness" of parents, in the last analy- 
 sis, is usually the propelling factor in juve- 
 nile delinquency. 
 
 The establishment of children's courts has 
 been significant in the awakening of the pub- 
 lic mind to the state's duty toward those of 
 its children who from parental neglect or 
 otherwise are delinquent or dependent. This 
 moral awakening to the consciousness of 
 governmental responsibility for the child has 
 manifested itself in many states in the enact- 
 ment of laws for the establishment of juve- 
 nile courts, and in others in the revivification 
 and enforcement of sleeping statutes de- 
 signed to meet the juvenile problem. 
 
 But the state's duty does not end with the 
 placing of laws on the statute books ; it still 
 remains for them to be made effective by a 
 judge who not only knows the law but who 
 is inspired by a sympathetic understanding 
 260 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 of child problems and child nature; one who 
 is able to ingratiate himself into the confi- 
 dence of the boy and thereby become his 
 friend, helper, and co-worker in his salva- 
 tion. A knowledge of adolescent psychol- 
 ogy will be of great help in getting the 
 juvenile viewpoint which is so essential for a 
 solution of the problems of wayward chil- 
 dren. In a report by the Honorable 
 Samuel J. Barrows, Commissioner for the 
 United States on the International Prison 
 Commission, he has this to say con- 
 cerning the fitness of a judge of such 
 court: "The personality of the judge, 
 as well as that of the probation of- 
 ficer, is an element of vast importance in 
 the success of any juvenile court. Such a 
 court cannot be run on automatic or me- 
 chanical methods. Let it be reduced to a 
 mere technical mechanism of rules and pro- 
 cedure and it will fail altogether. A firm 
 261 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 yet sympathetic, tactful man of magnetic 
 personality, as well as of legal knowledge, 
 who understands boys and can secure their 
 confidence is the man needed for this work; 
 and some such men have already been called 
 to this position." 
 
 To the same effect is the testimony of 
 Judge Stubbs of the Juvenile Court of In- 
 dianapolis as to the necessity of securing 
 the offender's confidence: "It is the per- 
 sonal touch that does it. I have often ob- 
 served that if I sat on a high platform be- 
 hind a high desk, such as we had in our city 
 court, with the boy on the prisoner's bench 
 some distance away, that my words had lit- 
 tle effect on him; but if I could get close 
 enough to him to put my hand on his head 
 or shoulder, or my arm around him, in 
 nearly every such case I could get his confi- 
 dence." 
 
 The probation system and probation of- 
 262 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 fleers are necessary and effective elements in 
 the operation of juvenile courts. The func- 
 tion of the probation officer is to investigate 
 the facts before trial, and after probation 
 to visit the child in his home; keep in close 
 touch with his conduct and school attend- 
 ance; admonish or cite for punishment 
 parents who in any way have contributed to 
 the child's delinquency; advise and encour- 
 age the child and report conditions to the 
 court. Most courts have one or more paid 
 probation officers, the others being volun- 
 teers. One Indiana court was fortunate in 
 having the assistance of two hundred vol- 
 unteer probation officers who responded in 
 turn whenever needed to assist in the work 
 of probation and parole. The effectiveness 
 of a juvenile court is measured by the abil- 
 ity, efficiency, and character of its judge and 
 probation officers. 
 
 Judge Ben B. Lindsey of the Juvenile 
 263 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 Court of Denver, a leading authority on this 
 subject, said: 
 
 "Of course a juvenile-court system, while 
 under any average circumstance, is bound to 
 be a step in advance of the old methods of 
 the criminal law in dealing with children, yet 
 its permanent and more complete success 
 depends upon the individuals to whom its 
 execution is intrusted. We have heard a 
 great deal about probation officers. Upon 
 the character, tact, skill and intelligence of 
 the judge and his assistants the probation 
 officers largely depends the success of the 
 court. Without personal touch, influence, 
 patience, encouragement of the child, and 
 attempt to arouse all the nobler and better 
 impulses, and to subdue and suppress the 
 discords of the soul, complete success is not 
 likely to be attained. The law itself is of 
 small importance compared to these ele- 
 ments. There is no higher or more impor- 
 264 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 tant position of a public character in the 
 community than that of a probation officer, 
 unless it be the judge of the juvenile court. 
 Perhaps this might illy come from one oc- 
 cupying that position, yet I have no apology 
 to make for the statement. I am sure the 
 statement can be appreciated by few more 
 than by one who occupied so important a 
 position. As this work progresses and its 
 wonderful results are constantly observed, 
 the force of the statement impresses itself 
 more and more upon the mind of the judge 
 of the juvenile court." 
 
 The same authority gives the following 
 resume of his method of dealing with the 
 boys brought within the jurisdiction of his 
 court: "In my opinion the best way to re- 
 form a boy waywardly disposed is first to 
 understand him. You have got to get in- 
 side of him and see through his eyes, under- 
 stand his motives, have sympathy and pa- 
 265 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 tience with his faults, just as far as you can, 
 remembering that more can be accomplished 
 through love than by any other method. 
 But I would not have you misunderstand 
 me. It has been well said that love with- 
 out justice is sentiment and weakness! We 
 must be just. There is no justice without 
 love and yet we can judge in the light of 
 both, forgetting not firmness and the right 
 of others. We cannot be just without the 
 exercise of patience and a plentiful supply 
 of those higher qualities of the soul which 
 must be brought to bear if we are able to 
 call out the noblest impulses and the highest 
 and most energetic forces of a child. The 
 juvenile court and the probation system sim- 
 ply supply the machinery for doing this 
 where heretofore such machinery was not 
 permitted by the law. We pursued the 
 blind, brutal, incongruous methods of recog- 
 nizing a child as an irresponsible being in 
 266 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 dealing with its dollars and cents, and de- 
 nied it the right of contracting even while it 
 was a minor, whereas when it came to of- 
 fending against the law, when its moral 
 welfare, its very soul, was involved, we de- 
 nied its irresponsibility and placed it upon 
 the same plane and in the same category 
 with an adult." 
 
 Supplemental to the juvenile law is the 
 adult delinquency law, now on the statute 
 books of certain states, which makes it a mis- 
 demeanor for any parent or other person to 
 encourage, cause, or by any act contribute 
 to the delinquency of a child, punishable by 
 a fine not to exceed $1,000 or by imprison- 
 ment not to exceed one year or by both such 
 fine and imprisonment; and the juvenile 
 court is given exclusive jurisdiction over 
 such offenders. Such statutes are a com- 
 plete recognition of parental responsibility 
 for many cases of juvenile wrongdoing, 
 267 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 such as visiting saloons to obtain beer for 
 parents; stealing coal from railroad yards; 
 stealing brasses or appliances from cars; 
 breaking open cars and stealing goods, usu- 
 ally edibles, which are taken home and used 
 either with the tacit or express consent of the 
 parents; and many other thefts the fruits of 
 which are shared directly or indirectly by the 
 parents. 
 
 From this class of depredations the boy 
 graduates into burglary and highway rob- 
 bery. The adult delinquency law punishes 
 such parents and drives home the conscious- 
 ness of their responsibility to their children. 
 Practically all delinquent boys who appear 
 in our juvenile courts have one or both 
 parents delinquent delinquent either in the 
 active, direct sense stated above, or in the 
 passive, indirect sense of indifference or 
 ignorance whereby their sons do not receive 
 the moral training which is their birthright. 
 268 
 
CHILDREN'S COURTS 
 
 The result of the new method of boy-con- 
 trol now used by children's courts is to re- 
 duce the number of commitments to indus- 
 trial schools, reform schools, and other simi- 
 lar agencies of detention and correction from 
 seventy-five to approximately ten in each 
 hundred. Where the environment of home 
 life is bad, the court does not hesitate to re- 
 move the child from his home to a place in 
 which he will not be handicapped by such 
 influence. 
 
 Our juvenile courts are at once a standing 
 reproach to thoughtless, indifferent, igno- 
 rant, and wayward parents and a beacon 
 light for the guidance of the unhappy chil- 
 dren of such parents to useful citizenship. 
 They inspire the admiration, sympathy, and 
 cooperation of every lover of children who 
 sees in them the future of our great re- 
 public. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 EVERY boy is endowed "with certain 
 inalienable rights," not the least of 
 which is the right to be so trained that he will 
 approach the stature of perfect manhood. It 
 is a birthright in the same sense as his right 
 from birth to food, clothing, and shelter. 
 And this right of the child fixes upon the par- 
 ent the corresponding duty of supplying 
 intelligent training and character-building 
 environment. The basis of all boy-training 
 is parent-training, which I wish to em- 
 \ phasize even at the risk of continued reitera- 
 tion. And parent-training should be based 
 on a knowledge of boy-psychology and its 
 application to the evolution of the boy, which 
 270 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 will throw a flood of light on many of the 
 problems which we formerly attempted to 
 solve in the dark. His physical and moral 
 growth are so dependent upon or intimately 
 related to his mental growth that the solu- 
 tion of his psychological problems will, in 
 most cases, tend to solve the others. 
 
 The subject presents no serious difficul- 
 ties to the parent who possesses a conscious- 
 ness of its importance to the welfare of his 
 son. All of us have certain preconceived 
 ideas on boy-training which emanate from 
 the adult viewpoint and the adult standard 
 of morals. We realize how, if we were in 
 our son's place, we would act or ought to act, 
 but too often we forget that this is an appli- 
 cation of the adult standard which is psy- 
 chologically impossible to the boy. Get the 
 boy's viewpoint. 
 
 Patience, tact, and insight; insight, tact, 
 and patience will work wonders with your 
 271 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 boy. Insight is but another name for the 
 boy's viewpoint ; it implies acquaintance with 
 his psychology. The adult viewpoint of 
 boy-problems is out of focus. We must re- 
 adjust our psychologic lenses to see and per- 
 ceive the motives which actuate his conduct, 
 if we are to judge justly and sentence right- 
 eously. While the parent is passing judg- 
 ment on his son's acts, he should not forget 
 to pass judgment on his own judgment. 
 In training your boy, "y ou are handling 
 soul-stuff and destiny waits just around the 
 corner." 
 
 Again I would stress the need of a com- 
 panionship between father and son which 
 should attain the intimacy of chumship. 
 Such relationship is indispensable to a knowl- 
 edge of all his difficulties, trials and troubles, 
 for he will attempt to solve them in his own 
 crude way if there is no one to whom he 
 can lay bare his soul in the belief that he will 
 272 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 find sympathetic understanding and advice. 
 Fewer sons would go astray if more fathers 
 would be big brothers to them. The founda- 
 tion of such companionship is laid in infancy 
 and early boyhood, but it is neglected and 
 frequently lost at puberty, at which time it 
 is most needed. We are quite willing to ac- 
 cept the pleasures of association with the 
 light-hearted frankness and joyousness of 
 infancy, but too often we evade the responsi- 
 bility of sharing the burdens of the adoles- 
 cent. 
 
 Few fathers know their adolescent sons. 
 It is true that they recognize the exterior 
 boy and are familiar with his patent activi- 
 ties, but they seldom know his inner self and 
 it is his inner self which needs help. Un- 
 fortunately, we men are endowed with a su- 
 perfluous amount of egotism which causes 
 us to assume that our sons will, through 
 heredity or force of our example, absorb or 
 273 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 inhale much of our surplus moral virtue. 
 Few boys can work out their own salvation. 
 The let-alone policy is no policy at all. A 
 passive system of training cannot be com- 
 mended for results. Instead, a plan of ac- 
 tive, suggestive, sympathetic, intelligent, 
 and informative cooperation will produce the 
 same beneficial results when applied to the 
 boy-problem as to a business problem. 
 
 ertain apparent deficiencies of intellect 
 as well as of character are often the result 
 of influences far removed from those which 
 are commonly assigned as their compelling 
 ! causes. It is usual for us to look for the 
 immediate and proximate causes of ailments 
 while remote causes are often unsuspected. 
 Among such causes are the physical abnor- 
 malities known as adenoids and hypertro- 
 phied tonsils, both of which exercise sinister 
 ^ influence in repressing the growth of intel- 
 Vlect and character. It is now generally con- 
 \ 274 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 ceded by the medical profession that these 
 conditions exercise such a profound influ- 
 ence on the physical and nervous system 
 that the free and normal development of in- 
 tellect as well as of character is retarded. 
 Frequently the boy who is backward in 
 school and who often displays tendencies to- 
 ward truancy, evasion, and falsehood because 
 of his mental retardation has reached this 
 state on account of his physical condition. 
 
 The correction of astigmatism, myopia, 
 and other defects of eyesight (alarmingly 
 prevalent among children) by supplying him 
 with proper eyeglasses uniformly results in 
 better school grades as well as marked im- 
 provement in cheerfulness. The evil effects 
 of impaired hearing, decayed teeth, and mal- 
 nutrition on intellectual progress are also 
 noticeable. The backward, indolent boy 
 should always have the advice and assistance 
 of the physician, the oculist, and the dentist 
 275 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 ^before he receives blame for either mental de- 
 Ificiency or laziness. 
 
 A The effects of heredity and prenatal in- 
 / fluence in determining the character of the 
 f child have been, in the opinion of many in- 
 vestigators, greatly overestimated by the 
 popular mind. The causative influence of 
 training (and environment which is a part 
 of training) is immeasurably more potent in 
 the upbuilding of strong moral qualities than 
 heredity. The records of the Children's 
 Aid Society of New York, covering more 
 than 38,000 children, many of whom are the 
 offspring of drunken and criminal fathers 
 and dissolute mothers, show beyond cavil 
 that a good home with love and moral train- 
 ing will usually submerge hereditary ten- 
 lencies be they ever so vicious. A very large 
 5fbportion of these children of delinquent 
 parents, stamped (according to the theory of 
 heredity) with rotten physiques and rottener 
 276 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 characters, have, through good training and 
 good environment, developed into law-abid- 
 ing and useful citizens. Among them may 
 be mentioned two governors of states, two 
 congressmen, four judges, one justice of the 
 Supreme Court, nine members of state 
 legislatures, thirty-five lawyers, eighty-six 
 teachers, nineteen physicians, twenty-four 
 ministers, sixteen journalists, twenty- 
 nine bankers, and countless farmers, 
 mechanics, clerks and business men. The 
 theory of the "inherent depravity" of the 
 boy, whether .attributed to heredity or to 
 an act of God, is a rapidly fading myth. 
 The boy is inherently good not bad. 
 
 First know your son and love him; then 
 you will be able to help him. When you 
 come to know the boy even the adolescent 
 he is an exceedingly lovable creature; and 
 his inherent potentialities for future excel- 
 lence should be our inspiration for such as- 
 277 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 sistance as will build them into perfect man- 
 hood. 
 
 Do not deceive yourself with the belief 
 that your Johnny is different from other 
 boys and that therefore the principles of boy- 
 psychology have no application to him and 
 to his problems. Diversities of temperament 
 and character differentiate individuals, but 
 all boys possess a common nature whose evo- 
 lution progresses according to fixed laws. 
 Idiosyncrasies and abnormalities of character 
 are of slow growth. They do not erupt sud- 
 denly like the measles. It must be obvious, 
 on consideration, that no simple panacea can 
 be found for the speedy cure of such complex 
 and diverse diseases of character. Good 
 training and wholesome environment sup- 
 plied throughout boyhood will make good, 
 wholesome character in manhood. 
 
 We may summarize, in so far as it is pos- 
 sible to do so (of necessity, crudely and im- 
 278 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 perfectly) the principles of boy-training in 
 the following statements: 
 
 "Better boys!" should be our slogan. 
 
 Intelligent training is the birthright of 
 every child. 
 
 The boy is the mirror of his home. 
 
 The wayward boy is usually the son of a 
 wayward parent. 
 
 When we reclaim wayward parents we 
 will reclaim wayward boys. 
 
 The average parent is either unskilled or 
 underskilled in boy-training. 
 
 The first step in boy-training is the edu- 
 cation of the parent. 
 
 The intelligent parent is the natural and 
 best teacher of his own child. 
 
 The busy boy is the best boy. 
 
 Constant activity is the key to his evolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Encourage athletics and out-of-door ac- 
 tivities for the growing boy. 
 279 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 Work with boys, not for them, produces 
 the best results. 
 
 Get the juvenile viewpoint. 
 
 Insight and patience are the corner stones 
 of boy-training. 
 
 Every father can become a hero to his son 
 through chumship. 
 
 Through play the boy attains a large part 
 of his growth physical, mental, and moral. 
 
 Fix the habit of obedience early. 
 
 Every boy is a gangster at heart. En- 
 courage him to join a good gang instead of 
 a bad one. 
 
 Never punish him in anger. He has a 
 keen sense of justice. Let the punishment 
 fit the "crime." 
 
 The mother's influence on the child is most 
 potent before puberty the father's after 
 puberty. 
 
 Adolescence is the period of storm and 
 stress in which incongruities of conduct and 
 280 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 character are certain to appear. With your 
 patient helpfulness he will outgrow them. 
 
 Train by positive, helpful suggestion, 
 rather than negative repression. Never pro- 
 hibit an act without suggesting a substitute 
 to fill the void. Give him your reasons for 
 the change. 
 
 Environment molds a score, where hered- 
 ity molds one. 
 
 Do your part in building up symmetrically 
 all four sides of his nature physical, men- 
 tal, moral, and spiritual and the result will 
 be God's noblest work a Man! 
 
 What profound emotions are stirred in the 
 father's breast when he realizes that his long 
 years of intelligent training have borne fruit 
 in the son he has sired; and what supreme 
 joy comes to the mother when she beholds 
 her son standing at the threshold of superb 
 manhood and she can truly say, "I mothered 
 
 a man!" 
 
 281 
 
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING 
 
 If I have seemed too severe in my stric- 
 tures of delinquent parents, it is because of 
 a desire, grounded in the necessities of the 
 case, to impress upon them duties and 
 responsibilities which are so frequently neg- 
 lected. If I have seemed too ardent a cham- 
 pion of the adolescent, I offer no apology 
 but the fact that he is often misunderstood 
 and needs an advocate to present his side of 
 the case at the bar of parental judgment. 
 
 Happy the man who has a son and thrice 
 happy he who has three! 
 
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