A place of meeting or “hang out” is essential to every gang. It may be a room behind a shop, an attic, a stable loft, a dugout, or a shack built of old boards, scrap tin, and paper. Such shelter supplies the place for their meetings, houses their communal property, and satisfies their atavistic desire for cover, privacy, and security. They exhibit a strong sense of proprietorship in such a retreat. It is all their own and is guarded from intrusion by other boys with all the physical force necessary to accomplish this result. The morale of an unsupervised gang (just as of a mob) is never so high as the individual morale of its constituents--while in the supervised gang it is higher. The gang will steal milk bottles from a back door-step, loot a fruit stand, or smash a window, when no individual in it would commit the same acts. The love of excitement and adventure and the desire to be “doing something”--including the joy of being chased by the police without capture--are the motives which prompted a certain gang to grease street car rails and to derail cars by placing spikes in the switches; none of which depredations would have been committed had the interest of the members been directed to legitimate activities and sports which would occupy their leisure time and satisfy their need of physical activity and mental occupation. Such offenses are unnatural manifestations of natural tendencies--exuberance run wild, because unrestrained. The contest of matching wits with the police is thrilling in its possibilities for adventure. Hours of time are occupied in planning depredations and much ingenuity is afterwards shown in evading detection and capture. Their common danger is the bond which knits them together. They have a code of honor--exhibited principally in their dealings with one another--the first and chief rule of which is that no member shall “snitch” on any other member of the gang. And woe betide the gangster who violates this cardinal principle! He may confess as to himself, but under no circumstances may he include the others, under the certain penalty of a beating--or worse still, in the eyes of the boy--ostracism by the gang. Psychologically considered, this trait is a manifestation of loyalty gone wrong. It is as unwise as it is useless to attempt to stamp it out, when it can and should be directed into its proper channel of manifestation in which it becomes one of the highly prized virtues.