Superintendents and pastors have been known to sign entrance credentials for boys who were not eligible under the rules.  In some instances church boys have descended to welcome the “ringer” for the purpose of “putting it over” their competitors.  In grappling with these difficulties and in interpreting sound morality in the field of play the Y.M.C.A. has already made a successful contribution to the moral life of the Sunday-school boy.  Nothing could be more startling to the religious leader, who insists upon facing the facts, than the facility with which the “good” Sunday-school boy turns away from the lofty precepts of his teacher to the brutal ethics of the “win-at-any-price” mania.  The Sunday-School Athletic League under the guidance of the Y.M.C.A. tends to overcome this vicious dualism.

In some districts the leader of the church boys’ club may arrange to make use of the social settlement, civic center, or public playground, thus holding his group together for their play and supplementing the church outfit.  The object in every case is to maintain and strengthen a group so possessed of the right ideals that it shall shape for good the conduct and character of the members severally.  To the many ministers who despair of being able to conduct a club in person it should be said that young men of sixteen or seventeen years of age make excellent leaders for boys of twelve to fifteen years, and that they are more available than older men.

These leaders, including the teachers of boys’ classes, should come together for conference and study at least once a month.  The Y.M.C.A. will be the most likely meeting-place, and its boys’ secretary the logical supervisor of inter-church activities.  Wherever there is no such clearing-house, the ministers’ meeting or the inter-church federation may bring the boys’ leaders together for co-operation on a community-wide scale.  The multiplication of clubs is to be desired, both for the extension of boys’ work throughout all the churches, and for the development of such inter-church activities among boys as will make for mutual esteem and for the growing unity of the church of God.

Footnotes

Footnote 1:  General reading:  W.I.  Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, The University of Chicago Press; G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, D. Appleton & Co.; C.H.  Judd, Genetic Psychology for Teachers, D. Appleton & Co.

Footnote 2:  Books recommended:  Official Handbook, Boy Scouts of America, 200 Fifth Ave., New York; K.L.  Butterfield, Chapters in Rural Progress, The University of Chicago Press; K.L.  Butterfield, The Country Church and the Rural Problem, The University of Chicago Press.

Footnote 3:  Books recommended:  Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, Macmillan; D.F.  Wilcox, Great American Cities, Macmillan.

Footnote 4:  See monograph on Five-and Ten-Cent Theatres by Louise de Koven Bowen, The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago.