--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Gowans, E. G. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 11 number: 3 published: 1908-01 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'E. G. Gowans, "The Boy Problem—I. Juvenile Faults," *Improvement Era* 11, no. 3 (January 1908): 194–197.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1103unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1103unse start_page: 194 end_page: 197 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1908-01) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1103unse publication_year: 1908 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1908, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Boy Problem—I. Juvenile Faults THE BOY PROBLEM. BY DR. E. G. GO WANS, JUDGE OF THE JUVENILE COURT. JUVENILE FAULTS. In the preface to his great work on Adolescence, G. Stanley Hall says: Statistics show more sects and more clergymen per capita of population than in any other land, and a rapidly progressive ignorance by the rising generation of the very Bible we profess to revere. Churches, charities, missions abound, but our slums are putrefying sores whose denizens anthropologists believe lower in the moral and intellectual scale than any known race of savages; and the percentages of juvenile crimes and the average age of first commitment grow citeadily earlier. We have vastly simplified politics by separating church and state, but we have also permitted a chasm to yawn between oar secular and religious life, between science and theology, till even seminaries for the training of clergymen neglect and even suspect the study of nature, as if God did one thing in his works and said another in his word; when, in fact, each supplements and is an imperfect thing without the other. The greatest thing on earth is a fully developed man or woman. A boy is the raw material out of which the man is made. What the man will be depends first upon the stock — heredity; and second, upon the influences which surround him —environment. It is to this latter that I would call the attention of the reader, because in the modification of the boy's environment, lies our immediate responsibility. A careful study of statistics will convince us that there is going on a steady increase of crime of all kinds among juveniles^ particularly at about the age of 12 or 14 years. Truants constitute the youngest class of offenders. Next comes a group of offenders who are guilty of malicious mischief, incorrigibility and trespass. THE BOY PROBLEM. 195 the maximum age being about 14 years: fifteen is the age for larceny, vagrancy, assaults, and disorderly conduct. Burglary and intoxication follow at sixteen, and at seventeen fornication and other sexual crimes. The difficulty which youth has always found in adjusting itself to social surroundings is no doubt responsible, primarily, for juvenile crime, and we will no doubt find that the great increase that is taking place is due to the constantly changing and ever increasing complexity of our social surroundings. Probably every normal adult has felt the impulse to a nomadic or wandering life. Let this same impulse appear in the boy's life, at a time when there is no feeling of responsibility to restrain, and combine it with the revulsion which nearly every boy feels at times against the rigid and more or less unnatural requirements of the modern school, and we have sufficient cause for the truancy and the runaways. So, too, the crimes which reach their maximum at fourteen and fifteen may be explained by the existence of a feeling of resistance to the institution of private property — another feeing of almost all adults. We cannot help but feel the injustice of an industrial system which encourages private ownership, instead of brotherhood, community interest, and stewardship. The crimes against persons which appear later are more difficult to account for, but I am persuaded that the chief cause lies in arrested development and degeneration. This would take us quite into the field of heredity, and it is not the purpose to touch upon this phase of the subject, at this-time, although it holds out to us very great interest and inducement.. The criminal class, as a whole, has a crude system of philosophy and rude standards of ethics and morality of its own. These are expressed fairly well in the phrase, "The world owes me a living, and I am going to get it." It is quite impossible for us to estimate the attractiveness of this theory or standard to the youth who is starting out with a poor hereditary equipment — in fact, it becomes a genuine infatuation to those who are innately criminal . Most truancies and runaways are a protest against unnatural methods of education. Just at this age the boy does not like to have his freedom abridged. He has a hunger for out-of-door life, and now begins to have new interest in men and nature. So he 196 IMPROVEMENT ERA. protests, and the most effectual way to do so is to get away from what he dislikes. The schools do but little to satisfy the inherent demand for physical activity, and the boy finally acquires a genuine hatred for the school. Why do we not look the matter squarely in the face, and not try to fit the boy into a theoretical place which we have made for him? The boy who leaves home, runs away, is an embryo tramp. Any place else than "here" has a peculiar charm for him. He drifts into shif tlessness and finally crime . If he commits a crime and moves on to another locality, he is not found out, and so he is still further encouraged. This tendency to travel is almost universal, and, as Hall says, it "should be an indispensable part of every life curriculum, just before settlement, to travel far and wide, if resources and inclination permit. But this stage should end in wisely chosen settlement, where the young life can be independently developed, and that with more complacency and satisfaction, because the place has been wisely chosen on the basis of a wide comparison . The chronic vagrant has simply failed to develop the reductives of this normal stage." Concerning lying, we have observed in the Juvenile Court, that many boys think it honorable to lie for a friend? Others tell lies from instinct and weakness; others, for self-defense; others, from vanity in getting the better of others; others, out of selfishness, imitation, revenge, jealousy, envy, fancy or laziness. This classification of the motives for lying is given by Ferriani, who studied the lying traits of five hundred condemned juveniles. Stealing is no doubt due in young children to lack of knowledge of what ownership means. Children ordinarily in the home may help themselves to whatever they need or desire. To change from this almost communal state to one in which individual ownership is fully rocognized, is a very difficult thing for the child. Out of this difficulty of adjustment grows much of the delinquency of early youth. Thieving is indulged in by adults to satisfy a seeming passion, but among children, it is to satisfy some immediate want. There is a curious note to make concerning stealing among boys and girls — girl thieves are hardly ever reformed, while boys are more amenable to reform measures. Nearly all thieves are expert liars. • THE BOY PROBLEM. 197 This is not the place to discuss the sexual crimes, prostitution, or suicide, but we would find causes for these crimes that if better understood by parents, in many instances could be removed or reduced to a minimum. This study or search for the causes of juvenile crime is as interesting as it is important, and it is important because whatever effort we put forth to cure, we must seek first to remove the causes. Chief among these causes we must mention heredity and bad prenatal conditions, bad homes, disease during childhood, which is responsible for much of the arrested development, overcrowding and necessary promiscuity (as in a recent case investigated by the Juvenile Court, where the father, mother and seven children were living practically in one room), homelessness, and a condition in which there is but one parent or none in the home, due to divorce, separation or death. Some say that ignorance is one great cause of crime. If that were true, the work of the schools would have lessened youthful crime, which it has not done. Many teachers claim that all that is necessary is to train the intellect, but on this point we can get something to think about in the remark of Hall, ''that we ought to confess that youthful crime is an expression of educational failure." What I plead for is a more careful study of these things by parents, in order that they may better qualify themselves to deal with individual cases that may arise in their families, and in order, too, that they may better devote themselves to the work of preventing juvenile crimes . I wish I could write that word -prevention indelibly in the heart of every father and mother in the land. It is a thousand times better than cure. Concerning the curative work, some of which must necessarily be done, it can be said that in dealing with youthful offenders particularly, vengeance and punishment are no longer the things most sought for , but simply the reformation of the offender, that he may no longer be dangerous to the community, and that he may become a useful citizen. Reform, then, is the object to be attained; and that cannot be attained by criminal codes, and skilfully designed punishments, but by bettering the prenatal conditions, improving the hereditary equipment of the individual, making better homes, preventing the diseases of childhood, improving the social and sociological conditions of the