made in Sunday schools, they of them-selves will never meet the necessities of the case. To teach a boy religion on one day out of the seven, and to leave him to the streets and the public houses and the music-halls on the other six, this is surely not the plan of campaign that commends itself to rea-sonable men. Religious teaching by a sympathetic teacher may be a very potent factor in the building up of a boy's character, but it is terribly easy to make it too prominent, and the result, the natural and inevitable result, is failure.

Here, then, is our problem. We have a splendid system of elementary education that takes and trains the rough-est, crudest material, and sends it out at thirteen or fourteen fairly educated and trained to something like habits of discipline and order. We have also a rapidly developing system of great Polytechnics and Institutes for young men. But for the great mass of average boys who have left school and gone to work there is no provision made worth thinking or speaking of. Is it any wonder if in a year or two the welltrained schoolboy degenerates into the larrikin of the streets-ignorant, foulmouthed, predatory? What would be said of an engineer who undertook to supply a great city with water from a distance, and left, halfway, a gap of a mile in his aqueduct? But not a whit less absurd than that is our present condition-magnificent Board Schools, splendid Polytechnics, and between them-nothing.

III.

But it is easy to criticise. Is there a remedy, and if so, is it among the things that are possible?

To the first question my answer is an unhesitating "Yes." I believe-I am certain-it is quite possible to get

hold of the class of boys I have been trying to describe, as soon as they leave school, and to induce them to continue their education and forego the hazardous delights of the streets. I am certain, because I have tried the

experiment and succeeded. I do not, of course, say that every boy would be amenable to such inducement. In every hundred boys there may perhaps be six or seven who need no persuasion to carry on the work of self-improvement, and who are so situated at home as to be safe-guarded from the ordinary temptations of the ordinary working-class lad. And there may be another six or seven who are so incorrigible that nothing but a course of sharp and long-continued discipline will restrain and reform them. The percentages might vary with the locality from which the boys were taken, but, roughly speaking, I believe 80 per cent. of the elementary school output could be secured.

Of my own attempts I will say nothing but this-that our success has been substantial and I think startling, considering the utter inadequacy of the premises and means at our disposal. Nor can it be considered a mere ephemeral success, for our work has been in progress more than ten years. But if the success had been far less, I should still have reckoned those ten years abundantly well spent, for they have made me realize-with the clearness and certainty that only actual experience can give how great is the need, how obvious and simple the remedy.

Put in plain words, that remedy is the Boys' Club. But since the word covers all kinds and degrees of ineptitude and inefficiency, it is necessary to define and explain. The Boys' Club of which I am thinking, and for which I claim such sovereign efficacy, must be no haphazard concern, open once or twice in a week, and furnished with

the worn out litter from middleclass nurseries, the happy huntingground of dilettanti philanthropists, willing to play at doing good when not better occupied. It must be a serious undertaking, seriously entered upon, reasonably endowed and fitted, and staffed with workers who mean business and have counted the cost.

The model for such an enterprise-to put my point in another way-must be, not a Band of Hope meeting, but an institution such as Elmira.

It may sound almost an insult to honest and decent boys to suggest that a club for them and their fellows should be modelled on the lines of a Reformatory, but the suggestion can be easily explained and defended. In the reformatories of the Elmira type the idea of punishment is dropped. Everything there is subordinated to the purpose of physical, mental and moral progress. Every device that scientific ingenuity and enthusiastic zeal can suggest is employed to strengthen weak wills, to develop latent faculties, and to eradicate or counteract vicious tendencies. The merely recreative and the merely punitive are alike kept severely in the background. This system would, of course, need modification where the subjects are free agents and compulsion is out of the question. case, unless the Club is made attractive, it can never succeed. Personal influence, that strongest of all agencies for good or for evil, must have time to operate, and unless the delights of the Club are many and obvious, the boys will drift away before it begins to tell. Besides, a club after the Elmira model will make large demands on the loyalty and patience of its members. Order must be maintained, lessons must be learned, progress must be tested by examinations, good manners must be insisted on, esprit de corps must be cultivated, and all this means

In this

a constant crossing of the individuat will. It means also on the part of the members a surrender-partial, at any rate of his newly won and cherished independence, and a resumption of the burden of lessons. Bearing all this in mind, it is not difficult to see that one of the first conditions of success must be that the Club should be overwhelmingly attractive.

It would be easy but tedious to enter into the details of an institution that has, as yet, no existence, but I may just briefly mention what seem to methe requisites of a really efficient Club. In the first place, it is absolutely needful that it should he open every night in the week. Of course, few of the boys will be able to come every night, but it is essential that a boy who is able and willing to comeshould always find a welcome awaiting him.

In the next place, however well equipped and however large the building, the numbers should at first be restricted to comparatively few. The start is half the race, and the greater the undertaking, the more care should be taken to make a good beginning.

A Club, like its individual members, should be, not merely an aggregation of separate parts, but a living organism with a life of its own and the power of growth and development. And in such an enterprise personal influence and sympathy is the breath of life that makes healthy growth possible. So to begin with numbers which make that personal relation between. managers and boys impossible is simply to court disappointment. Begin. with, say twenty, and add ten or fifteen year by year, till the limits of theClub's capacity is reached.

With regard to equipment, I have already spoken of the paramount necessity of making the club attractive. And-especially in dealing with juniors to do this involves constant

uses during the day and early evening. For its specific work it would open its doors about eight o'clock.

IV.

And this brings us to the second question. Are such clubs among the things that are possible? And this involves a further enquiry-Who is to found and maintain them.

Probably the first idea in most minds would be to look to the Churches, and the fact is in itself a splendid compliment to them. Yet, even if they were willing to undertake the work, they would, I am convinced, only conduct the experiment to a disastrous issue. Ecclesiastical charity is philanthropy in snippets. We all know the various organizations that loom SO large on notice boards and in Church year-books. The Sunday school two hours a week; the Boys' Brigade two hours a week, the Christian Endeavor Society one hour a week, the Junior and Senior Bands of Hope one hour a week each, the Girls' Sewing Meeting one hour a week, the Young People's Guild one hour a week; and so on and so on. Now, doubtless each of these efforts has and does something to justify its existence. If nothing more, at any rate it benefits those who work it. But it differs from serious, sustained scientific work in the same way as a course of ambulance lessons differs from the regular training of a medicar student. And the Church that has grown accustomed to diffusing its energies in a dozen beneficent little shallows is not the source one would look to for filling the channel of a great river-bed.

Besides-and this is a still more serious objection-the tendency in all ecclesiastical work of this nature, is to measure progress by one test, and that the feeblest and most fallaciousattendance at church or chapel. The feeblest and most fallacious, be

as

cause it draws a line of demarcation between sheep and goats with this startling result, that while among the sheep will be found the well-mannered, easy-tempered, acquiescent boys, the goats will include the boys of strong character, blunt, masterful, independent, suspicious of patronage, resentful of coercion, the very boys who, wisely treated, will be the salt of the Club, they would grow up to be the salt of the Church. The truth is, that the closer the connection between Club and Church or Chapel, the harder is it for religion-pure and undefiled-to hold its rightful place. The unwisdom, the impatience, not seldom the intolerance of its official representatives too often makes it appear an ulterior object for which all that is attractive in the Club is merely a bait. And the interpretation which the shrewd but irreverent street-boy puts upon the parson's policy is just this: "E wants to fill 'is show."

But an independent club, standing apart from any particular religious organization, though in friendly relations with all, and managed by a layman, occupies a very different position. Such a manager can, so to speak, spiritualize the Club without awakening hostility or suspicion. A boy may think religion "rot," but even so, he can hardly attribute the manager's solici tude to anything but an unselfish care for the interests of the lads.

And if here and there an exceptional parson-I use the word because it includes Church and dissent-has shaken himself free from the shackles of convention, and recognizes that what is milk and meat to some, may be, if not poison, at least caviare to others, that what may be a means of grace to the venerable deacon may be a weariness of the flesh and an occasion of stumbling to a restless errand boy, still he does not stand alone. There is his con

gregation to be considered, And just as every body of Christian people is sure to include some large-hearted, liberalminded folk, so also is it sure to be hampered by others of a very different temper and spirit. And a really successful Club, such as we are desiderating, could never be the outcome of an even compromise between a wholesome breadth and the narrowness of the knife-edge.

But if not the churches, who then? In the present state of public opinion it is idle to expect anything in this direction from the state. Yet it would almost certainly, even from the standpoint of the pocket, be a wise and prudent investment, for nothing would be so likely to cut off the supply of criminals, and relieve us from a considerable portion of that enormous burden which crime lays on the community. Great Britain's crime bill is not less than ten millions a year. One tenth of that annual expenditure would build and equip at least two hundred such clubs as I have attempted to describe, and would provide a harbor of refuge for 30,000 boys, many of them in im. minent peril of making shipwreck.

If for this the time is not yet, there only remains one other hope. What the churches cannot, and the state will not, do, the munificence of private benefactors might easily accomplish. "The millionaires," said the Spectator the other day, "found nothing and build nothing except palaces or themselves." It is a hard saying, all the more striking because of the eminently respectable quarter from which it comes. It is a hard saying, and the Jubilee year has happily proved it a little too smart to be quite just. But It must be admitted that the American millionaire has shown an example which his brethren in England have not been very quick to follow. At least a dozen great colleges and uni

Fortnightly Review.

versities on the "other side" have been lavishly endowed by wealthy citizens. Centuries ago, when fortunes were less colossal, and the need was less urgent, the education of poor boys was a favorite object of beneficence. Many of our great public schools, now diverted from their primary intention, still bear witness to the zeal and generosity of fundator noster. Will no pious founder come forward now to link his name with the noblest and most hopeful of all enterprisesthe safeguarding and training and reforming the youth of the nation! One such club as I have tried to sketch in outline, successfully worked, would raise the standard of work among working boys, just as Elmira has shifted the low-water mark of reformatory work. And good work is fruitful and multiplies. Elmira in 1876, was followed by Concord in 1884, by Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Colorado in 1889, and by Ohio, Illinois and Ontario later still. And so one really adequate Boys' Club would not remain solitary for long.

In such work as this, even party shibboleths lose their power to divide. It is at once progressive and conservative; progressive because it tends most powerfully to raise the moral and intellectual tone of the democracy; conservative because, more perhaps than any other kind of work, it brings into friendlier relations the sundered classes, and helps to raise the people above the influence of mere ignorant demagogy.

And finally, in the great warfare against crime, that great struggle to the necessity and seriousness of which society is only just awakening, such work as this is one of the keenest and most effective weapons. Take care of the boys and the men will take care of themselves. The best way of fighting crime is not to cage it in the man, but to slay it in the boy.

B. Paul Neuman.