When we trace back to their source even the fights for revenge, we generally find a play motive there also. Two years ago the small boys on West Fiftieth Street and West Fifty-third Street, near Eleventh Avenue, were celebrating election night with bonfires on their respective streets. The Fiftieth Street boys had more material than the Fifty-third Street boys. When the Fifty-third Street boys ran out of material they raided Fiftieth Street, extinguished all the bonfires, routed the celebrants, and triumphantly carried the bonfire material to their own street. This was the beginning of a feud which lasted over a year between the denizens of the two streets, during which time a score of boys were jailed, a number seriously maimed, and hundreds of dollars’ worth of property destroyed. Yet, despite the number of arrests on the charge of fighting, disorderly conduct and destruction of property, the feud itself continued unabated, until a compromise was arrived at by the boy leaders themselves. This feud was a typical instance of the play spirit expressing itself through rivalry, without any attempt to check it as such. Of the thirty or forty boys who were arrested as a direct outcome of these fights, not one but was arrested as an individual criminal without reference to the motive of his wrong doing. The result was that after his arrest the boy responded to the same motive as promptly as if he had never been arrested. Again we are brought to the serious question of whether or not all this destruction to property and morals could not have been avoided had there been proper facilities and a leadership to have turned the spirit of rivalry into legitimate play channels. A summary of the record of Mr. Barrow’s 193 cases shows that 188 of them, or all but nine, can be traced directly to a play motive, normal or perverted. Of the nine, two were acts of personal revenge and seven showed an economic motive. According to Mr. Barrows these 193 cases did not include a single one where mental deficiency was the predominant cause. He says: To conclude, child crime in New York is built on play--wholesome, educational play--which the law treats as crime and which street conditions gradually pervert until innocent play becomes moral crime. Child crime begins with the attempt to play on streets in violation of law, and in forbidden places under conditions of trespassing. The first arrest is normally a punishment for the attempt to play, and to play in ways which are intrinsically good.