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MORAL FIBER IN BUSINESS 207
JOY RIDING MAKES A VERY BAD IMPRESSION ON A YOUNGSTER
dent is not the fact of departure from
the "blue laws" of stricter days but the
admission by the school's principal that
efforts to control students now are hopeless
and hence had been abandoned. The
incident, as I said, is but a bit of flotsam,
but the principle involved drops like a
plumb line into the center of the modern
system of child control. It implies that
the student shall be allowed to dictate
what he wants to learn regardless of
whether or not it is best for him. The
whole idea is to please the youth and
amuse him, this being in contrast with
the old notion of improving him without
reference to his personal feelings or desires
for amusement.
My personal opinion is that you can't
build a Sandow on skimmed soup and
French pastry. And, you can't develop
an Abraham Lincoln, a John Hay, or a
Theodore Roosevelt in a dance hall and
a moving-picture house with sex stories
and plays filling the gaps.
While the logic of these circumstances
seems irresistible, I know that the Evanston
experiment is not exactlv new. although
it is a most striking example.
America has been trying it for almost
a generation. It started perhaps—I
make no claim to being a historian—•
with the introduction of the institutional
church. This was to religion what
homeopathic medicine was to a world
drugged by the allopathic method. It
put a sugar coating on moral training
I
and tried to fill its pews and Sunday
School classes on the Sabbath by teaching
pool and bowling during the days of
the week.
To find what influence this new idea
has, I have studied for a few years five
young men in Chicago. They were, when
I first knew them, about seventeen or
eighteen years old. Now they are past
twenty-two. When I first began to observe
them, they were typical of the new
order of things. The mother of one was
a divorcee. That of another kept a
Pomeranian poodle. The parents of a
third gave him money and left him to his
own devices while they went 10 the picture
show.
Soon I noticed something truly significant.
These same boys were always
at the picture shows when I went there.
I learned they went nearly every day.
On those nights when some vulgar slapstick
farce was to be seen, they were
sure to be on hand. And. when any
glaringly sentimental thing was offered
on the bills, the managers could count
on them as patrons.
Also, they were to be seen playing
pool in the neighborhood barber shop
whenever I went out for an evening
walk. In nearly five years, I never have
seen one of them read anything but a
newspaper. Even then it was some
crime, the sporting section, or the page
of comics, which attracted—never an
article or even a fiction storv that one,