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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



undesirable elements cluster. The 

 editor of a lively little periodical, 

 in which many true things are said 

 with great force — The Philistine — 

 has lately declared that his own vil- 

 lage, despite the refining influences 

 radiated from the " Roycroft Shop," 

 could furnish a band of hoodlum 

 youths that could give points in 

 every form of vile behavior to any 

 equal number gathered from a great 

 city. He hints that New England 

 villages may be a trifle better, but 

 that the farther Western States are 

 decidedly worse. It is precisely in 

 Kew England, however, that a bitter 

 cry on this very subject of hoodlum- 

 ism has lately been raised. What 

 are we to do about it? 



Manifestly the hoodlum or in- 

 cipient tramp is one of two things: 

 either he is a person whom a suit- 

 able education might have turned 

 into some decent and honest way of 

 earning a living, or he is a person 

 upon whom, owing to congenital 

 defect, all educational effort would 

 have been thrown away. In either 

 case social duty seems plain. If 

 education would have done the 

 work, society — seeing that it has 

 taken the business of public educa- 

 tion in hand — should have supplied 

 the education required for the pur- 

 pose, even though the amount of 

 money available for waging war in 

 the Philippines had been slightly re- 

 duced. If the case is one in which 

 no educational effort is of avail, 

 then, as the "old Roman formula ran, 

 " Let the magistrates see that the 

 republic takes no harm." Before, 

 therefore, our minds can be easy 

 on this hoodlum question, we must 

 satisfy ourselves thoroughly that 

 our modes of education are not, 

 positively or negatively, adapted to 

 making the hoodlum variety of char- 

 acter. The hoodlum, it is safe to 

 say, is an individual in whom no 

 intellectual interest has ever been 

 awakened, in whom no special ca- 

 pacity has ever been created. Ilis 



moral nature has never been taught 

 to respond to any high or even re- 

 spectable principle of conduct. If 

 there is any glory in earth or heav- 

 en, any beauty or harmony in the 

 operations of natural law, any po- 

 etry or pathos or dignity in human 

 life, anything to stir the soul in the 

 records of human achievement, to all 

 such things he is wholly insensible. 

 Ought this to be so in the case of any 

 human being, not absolutely abnor- 

 mal, whom the state has undertaken 

 to educate? If, as a community, 

 we put our hands to the educational 

 plow, and so far not only relieve 

 parents of a large portion of their 

 sense of responsibility, but actually 

 suppress the voluntary agencies that 

 would otherwise undertake educa- 

 tional work, surely we should see to 

 it that our education educates. Di- 

 rect moral instruction in the schools 

 is not likely to be of any great 

 avail unless, by other and indirect 

 means, the mind is prepared to re- 

 ceive it. What is needed is to 

 awaken a sense of capacity and 

 power, to give to each individual 

 some trained faculty and some di- 

 rect and, as far as it goes, scientific 

 cognizance of things. Does any one 

 suppose that a youth who had gone 

 through a judicious course of man- 

 ual training, or one who had be- 

 come interested in any such subject 

 as botany, chemistry, or agriculture, 

 or who even had an intelligent in- 

 sight into the elementary laws of 

 mechanics, could develop into a 

 hoodlum ? On the other hand, there 

 is no difficulty in imagining that 

 such a development might take 

 place in a youth who had simply 

 been plied with spelling-book, gram- 

 mar, and arithmetic. Even what 

 seem the most interesting reading 

 lessons fall dead upon minds that 

 have no hold upon the reality of 

 things, and no sense of the distinc- 

 tions which the most elementary 

 study of Nature forces on the at- 

 tention. 



