NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
23 
‘What a Community Owes to its Bays 
BY GEORGE H. MARTIN 
PART ONE. 
_ That great German statesman, 
Martin Luther, in an address to the 
councilmen of all the towns of Ger- 
‘many in 1524, used these words, 
which are as significant in America in 
the twentieth century as they were 
in Germany in the sixteenth :— 
' “A city’s increase consists not 
alone in heaping up great treasures, 
in building solid walls or in multi- 
plying artillery; nay, where there is 
a great store of this, and yet fools 
with it, it is all the worse and all 
the greater’ loss for the city. But 
this is the best and the richest in- 
crease, prosperity and strength of a 
city,— that it shall contain a great 
number of polished, learned, intelli- 
gent, honorable and well-bred citi- 
zens; who, when they have become 
all this, may then get wealth and put 
it to good use. Since, then, a city 
must have citizens, . we are not 
to wait until they are grown up. We 
can neither hew them out of wood 
nor carve them out of stone... . 
We must use the appointed means, 
and with cost and care rear up and 
mold our citizens.” 
The long process of development 
by which the boy ultimately becomes 
useful includes on its physical side 
much that belongs to the lower ani- 
mals. He is a whole menagerie. 
He runs like a hound, climbs like a 
monkey, digs like a woodchuck, dives 
like an otter, swims like a fish, fights 
like a bull dog, and in it all works like 
a beaver and is as busy as a bee. 
The boy finds himself under an ir- 
resistible impulse to measure himself 
against every external force, to test 
every limb, every organ, every func- 
tion, to its limit, and to do this every 
day. Although he bears no banner to 
advertise his emotions, ‘“E;xcelsior’’ is 
stamped on his every act. The warn- 
ing cry of his anxious mother, “Try 
not the pass,” is always sounding in 
his ears; 
—if not today, tomorrow. 
By obeying this impulse he ac- 
complishes two things. He gains in 
strength and agility, in power to 
handle himself,— to direct his energy 
in the most effective way. 
According to the Lamarckian the- 
ory, the neck of the giraffe grew by 
a long-continued effort to reach a re- 
ceding food supply. So by doing 
stunts, by perpetual effort to break 
his own record, the body of a boy 
but he tries it all the same, © 
grows into the body of a man and 
becomes the efficient servant of his 
mind. And the mind itself grows in 
perception and judgment and general- 
ization and inductive reasoning. 
This fundamental law of boy life 
explains things which perplex many 
good people. It explains his general 
attitude towards the world, his con- 
tempt for the weak, his hero-worship, 
pirate, a cow-boy, a policeman, a 
fireman, a locomotive engineer, a 
diver, a balloon man,—and latterly 
he sees in the occupation of a chauf- 
feur a supreme opportunity to kill 
and be killed. The sea with its mys- 
teries and its perils has always had 
an irresistible charm for boys. 
It explains, too, his choice in read- 
ing. He wants to know about men 
who dare. When a small boy had 
asked his mother to read to him in the 
papers about the prize fights, and had 
been refused, “Then read to me in 
the Bible about Samson,” was his 
reply. 
In all this are we not hearing a 
faint echo from that dim and far-off 
past, where the ancestor of all boys, 
that creature which we call “primitive 
man,” was feeling his way into the 
mysteries of his new-found world, 
measuring himself against its inhos- 
pitable forces? Was it not by doing 
stunts that the primitive man saved 
the race and set it going on its for- 
ward and upward way? Has it not 
been the law of growth in the race 
as well as in the individual? Does it 
not underlie all myths and legends, 
all the giant lore of all the ages? 
Who were Hercules, Thor and Sig- 
urd, Lancelot and Roland, but proto- 
types of all boys? . 
With this orderly, beneficent world 
process of development a city inter- 
feres in the most ruthless way. All 
the natural impulses of the boy are 
thwarted—and most aggravatingly 
thwarted. There are trees, but he 
may not climb them; flowers and 
fruit, but he may not pick them; 
stones, but he may not throw them; 
waters, but he may not swim in them; 
hills, but he may not coast on them; 
animals, but he may not hunt them. 
His vagrant instincts must be re- 
strained. He must walk in beaten 
paths. He has lost his freedom. He 
is a caged animal. 
All this is no fault of the city. 
_ containing many children; 
The city cannot help it. Steadily as 
the town becomes a city and as the 
city grows populous, the happy hunt- 
ing grounds of the boys grow fewer 
and narrower. ‘The woods, the fields, 
the gardens, the orchards, the houses 
with their enticing sheds and attics, 
disappear. Blocks and _ tenement 
houses cover and cumber the ground, 
and the boys are turned into the 
streets. This process is called “im- 
proving the property.” We read in 
the paper that a piece of property has 
been sold to Mr. A., and that Mr. A. 
buys for improvement. I have re- 
cently watched this process in two 
pieces of property in a suburban city. 
On one street was a house sheltering 
a single family. About it were trees 
and shrubs, and back of it was a gar- 
den and an orchard. ‘There was a 
barn and sheds,—an ideal place to 
grow boys in. Two or three years 
ago this property was bought for im- 
provement. ‘The old house was torn 
down, and on the land are now thir- 
teen three-tenement houses, occupied 
by thirty-nine families. In these thir- 
teen houses are about fifty children; 
they play in the streets. Another 
similar improvement has replaced two 
single houses by twenty tenements, 
they play 
in a public square. 
The Spartans exposed their chil- 
dren on Mt. Taygetus; we expose 
ours in the city streets. 
Under such conditions, inseparable 
from city life, one of two things hap- 
pens. The boy gradually learns to 
submit to the superior forces about 
him, goes tamely in leading strings 
and becomes a good boy,—a comfort 
to his mother and the pride of his 
school teachers. But he has lost 
something in fiber, he lacks initiative, 
has no go in him. He likes to wear 
clothes and talk with the girls. He 
is ignorant alike of his own powers 
and of his own limitations. He 
doesn’t know what to do in emer- 
gencies. He wants to ride when he 
ought to get out and push. Or he re- 
fuses to recognize the reigning au- 
thorities as legitimate, breaks through 
their restraints, eludes their vigilance, 
matches his own powers against the 
powers that be. Having little better 
bodily development than the others, 
he becomes precociously acute. His 
perceptions are keen but narrow, his 
judgment-warped, and his reasoning 
is ready but fallacious. 
These are extreme types, but every 
city has them both in numbers suffi- 
cient to make the problem of dealing 
with them a perplexing one. ‘The 
majority of city boys will be found 
between these two extremes, having 
