the gang age, as we have seen, is from ten to sixteen. in a few cases, this organized group life begins as young as seven; in a few, also, it lasts up to eighteen or nineteen. between thirteen and fourteen is the average age; and in a general way, the boy’s social education in the gang takes about five years. before this period, the little boy plays a good deal by himself, or plays in company with other boys a good deal as if he were playing alone. after it, he cultivates individual friendships, or courts a girl.
nearly always, the gang is a strictly local affair, limited to a certain district or to one or two streets. “we all live on l street,” run the boys’ reports. “we all come from one street and a little street off from it.” “fellows who lived up that way could be in the crowd.” “come from down around27 the wharves.” “if he lived down there, and the fellows knew him, he could get in with them.” the neighborhood spirit is strong in boys; it needs to be regarded in all social work.
nationality and social class
as for nationality, the gang is apt to be thoroughly unprejudiced and democratic. to be sure, twelve of my sixty-six gangs were all of one nationality. but that is largely because the streets or sections of the city where the boys live are likely to be given up to a single race. fifty-four of my gangs were of mixed nationality, while in only one was any line drawn at breed or color—“no jews or negroes allowed.” far more than we realize, the boys’ gang is helping out the public school in the great problem of assimilating the diverse races in the united states.
nevertheless, there are some curious differences of nationality in the membership of gangs. irish boys are especially gangy, with americans and french a good second. jews,28 on the other hand, are conspicuous for their absence. i questioned several jewish boys, without discovering a single typical gang; and only two of my sixty-six gangs had jewish members, though jews are decidedly numerous in the regions from which the boys came. the reader who is interested in race psychology will find food for thought in the differing instincts of irishman and jew.
there is also some social difference in boys’ gangs. boys from well-to-do homes are, as one might expect, less gangy than those brought up amid poorer surroundings. in the case of the more fortunate boys, the gang is only one of a number of factors in their social development. but boys from bad, broken, or inefficient homes are forced to provide their own social life, and the gang is their one instinctive reaction to their social environment.
curiously, too, boys from the better class of homes more often form their social groups de novo to suit their individual social needs; while boys whose home training is deficient tend more to become members of gangs already29 formed. for this reason the permanent and long-lived gangs are apt to be tough, with fixed and dangerous traditions. thus, while among well brought up boys a gang rarely survives the boyhood of the group which formed it, among delinquents of my acquaintance hardly more than a quarter were original members of their gangs, or could tell how their gangs started. the bad gang, therefore, tends to be a persistent and dangerous institution, taking in new members as the older ones graduate. but the good gang dies young. this circumstance probably accounts in no small degree for the bad odor in which all boys’ gangs are commonly held.
organization
in respect to definiteness of organization, there are marked differences in gangs. some are loosely knit and of short duration; others are select in their membership and rigid in their structure, so that they last through several generations of boys. some gangs are autocratic, some democratic,—this, naturally, depending largely on the leader.
30 most of them have names,—the hicks street fellows, the bleachery gang, morse hollow athletic club, wharf rats, crooks, liners, eggmen, dowser glums. most have a regular time and place of meeting, rules and officers, though only a few have written constitutions and by-laws. moreover, the definiteness of the organization and the esprit de corps seem to be quite independent of any formality or written code. two organizations may be equally definite and forceful; and yet one may have its organization explicit in articles of federation, while that of the other is covert in the brain and muscles of its leader.
time and place of meeting
boys at the gang age intend to get together whenever possible. they will use all the time in which they are free from work or school. i have known boys to leave their proper occupations to go with the gang; and to reckon out carefully the balance between a day’s fun with the gang and a general warming-up reception at night by father. most31 of the sixty-six gangs met every day, many met morning, noon and night, or all day. the evening hours are, naturally, the most active and the most dangerous part of the day, for then mischief-making is likely to be rampant, encouraged under the veil of darkness.
during the larger part of the year in most parts of the united states boys prefer the outdoor life. in the cities, a certain street or corner is the customary meeting-place. in the fall and winter months boys look for shelter. in the country they build a cabin of boards or logs in the woods; in the city they get clubrooms, make a shanty in the back yard, or fix up an empty room in the cellar, attic, or shed. in one gang, for example, “the club met down at one boy’s house—in the cellar of the shed. fixed up the place, had pictures out of magazines and papers,—funny pictures. made a little table and benches, had boxing-gloves. two boys had them an hour. no fighting allowed. spent our evenings in the ‘clubroom.’ go to church sundays and then skip down to the club and read books.”
32 in general, about half the city gangs have their regular meeting-place on street or street corner. for the other half, my records show four gangs meeting in clubrooms; three in houses; two in a shed; and one each in a shanty, behind a barn in the woods, in a house made of old barrels in a back street, a hencoop, a hut in the woods, a tent in the woods, a tent in the yard, a dugout, an empty attic, and the cellar of a shed.
boys do not like parlors. they prefer a rather rough and crude place in shed or attic which they can fix up to suit their own tastes. benches, working-tools, boxing-gloves, punching-bags, pictures, magazines and books, form the natural furniture of a gang clubroom. fortunate, indeed, are the parents who can provide the right kind of a room in their home for their boys, and are wise enough to let the neighbors’ boys use it freely, without too much attention to their muddy feet.
naturally, the boys have a sense of ownership of their clubroom tents or camps; but we find the same sentiment of ownership33 developing over the street or corner where they meet. the following are familiar expressions of the boys in regard to ownership: “had a shanty in the woods. other fellows would come and tear it down. had a right over it.” “wouldn’t let any gang in that street. gave a strange boy a licking.” “thought that medford street belonged to us.” “every corner has a gang. that corner belongs to us.”
officers
two boys said: “we didn’t have no leader.” this is not correct. consciously or unconsciously there must be a leader in every social group. a few gangs have a long list of officers elected formally by ballot at stated periods. but forty-four gangs (66? per cent) have one leader, who takes his position naturally with little form or ceremony. of the sixty-six gangs—
1 gang had six officers or leaders
1 four
4 gangs three
8 two
44 one officer or leader
8 no regular leader
34 the following words express the spirit of the boys in reference to leadership:—
“j. was ringleader. steals most; says, ‘come on.’” “i was leader. had stumps, and the one who could do the most stumps would be leader.” “d. was the leader. he could fight best and had most money.” “g. was leader. he gave you anything if he had it. worst one in the gang.” “g. was leader. big, strong fellow. he is always bringing a gang around him.” “d. was leader. pretty good fellow. most daring fellow. choose him by ballot. he got seven votes.” “no regular leader. one fellow proposed a thing. he knew most about it, and take the lead.”
the leader of the gang is such an interesting personality that we shall make a more careful study of him later, in another work.
initiation
commonly when boys enter a new gang some form of a reception is tendered them. in winter the new fellow may get a rub in the snow; in summer months he may be given a ducking or a little rough-and-tumble35 good time. in the jenhine boys, the new fellow “had to wrestle with gibson to see if he was strong,” while in the tennis club, they “pounce on a fellow and give it to him for two or three minutes.” in a few gangs there were definitely planned initiation ceremonies. in the jeffries point gang they threw a new fellow up in the air for five or ten minutes to test his grit. “if he didn’t cry, let him in.”
the object of the initiation ceremony appears to be to test the new fellow’s grit and strengthen his spirit of loyalty.
rules
in the sixty-six gangs we find—
18 rules as to “squealing,” snitching,
or tell-taleing
8 lying to one of the gang
8 standing by each other in trouble
5 “divvying up” or paying equal parts of the expenses
3 unjust fighting
2 using tobacco
1 rule swearing
1 stealing
36 we find the demand for loyalty and justice in the foreground and for morality in the rear. although the rules are rarely put on paper there are few gangs without an unwritten code. these rules are necessary for the existence of the gang. they must be strictly enforced or the gang is dissolved. expulsion is the usual penalty.
dropping out of gangs and expulsion
boys drop out of the gang suddenly, so that very few remain after sixteen years of age. at this time boys are entering the second adolescent period, and become intensely interested in girls. they feel so far above boys twelve or thirteen years old that they no longer care to affiliate with them. in gangs where younger boys have been allowed to enter, the older boys retire without disturbance to the structure of the group or its object; but in a gang where younger members have not been admitted and the boys are about the same age, the group may sometimes continue with a new set of interests.
37 as for involuntary withdrawals, ten boys were expelled from their gangs for “squealing,” three for unjust fighting, one each for bossing, failure to pay dues, cowardice, getting fresh, and disobedience. “kicked one fellow out,” ran the reports, “for telling on the others.” “put a fellow out for fighting with another boy. the other fellow was in the right.” “put him out because he would run off when needed to fight.”
settling disputes
disputes are sure to arise in any social group and especially in a gang. “if there was any dispute, have a scrap over it. fellow who got the worst of it, gave up.” “if there was a dispute the leader settled it.” “the officers would most always settle disputes, talk it over, get circumstances, and then settle it.”
these cases illustrate the most common methods of settling internal troubles. in ten cases the boys fought it out; in seven other cases the matter was settled by the leader, a bigger boy, or an outsider.
38 the typical boys’ gang, then, is no mere haphazard association. accidents of various sorts—age, propinquity, likeness of interests—bring together a somewhat random group. immediately the boys react on one another. one or more leaders come to the fore. the gang organizes itself, finds or makes its meeting-place, establishes its standards, begins to do things. it develops, in some sort, a collective mind, and acts as a unit to carry out complex schemes and activities which would hardly so much as enter the head of one boy alone. the gang is, in short, a little social organism, coherent, definite, efficient, with a life of its own which is beyond the sum of the lives of its several members. it is the earliest manifestation in man of that strange group-forming instinct, without which beehive and ant hill and human society would be alike impossible.
