The Spirit of Youth and the City StreetsAddams, Jane
General
The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets
Addams, Jane
Child rearing; Urban youth
The youth who calls himself an "Evolutionist"--it is rather hard to
find a name for this youth, but there are thousands of him and a fine
fellow he often is--has read of that struggle beginning with the
earliest tribal effort to establish just relations between man and
man, but he still needs to be told that after all justice can only be
worked out upon this earth by those who will not tolerate a wrong to
the feeblest member of the community, and that it will become a social
force only in proportion as men steadfastly strive to establish it.
If these young people who are subjected to varied religious
instruction are also stirred to action, or rather, if the instruction
is given validity because it is attached to conduct, then it may be
comparatively easy to bring about certain social reforms so sorely
needed in our industrial cities. We are at times obliged to admit,
however, that both the school and the church have failed to perform
this office, and are indicted by the young people themselves.
Thousands of young people in every great city are either frankly
hedonistic, or are vainly attempting to work out for themselves a
satisfactory code of morals. They cast about in all directions for the
clue which shall connect their loftiest hopes with their actual
living.
Several years ago a committee of lads came to see me in order to
complain of a certain high school principal because "He never talks
to us about life." When urged to make a clearer statement, they added,
"He never asks us what we are going to be; we can't get a word out of
him, excepting lessons and keeping quiet in the halls."
Of the dozens of young women who have begged me to make a connection
for them between their dreams of social usefulness and their actual
living, I recall one of the many whom I had sent back to her
clergyman, returning with this remark: "His only suggestion was that I
should be responsible every Sunday for fresh flowers upon the altar. I
did that when I was fifteen and liked it then, but when you have come
back from college and are twenty-two years old, it doesn't quite fit
in with the vigorous efforts you have been told are necessary in order
to make our social relations more Christian."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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