The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets

Spirit of Youth and the City
Streets, The

Project Gutenberg's The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, by Jane
Addams This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets
Author: Jane Addams
Release Date: July 6, 2005 [EBook #16221]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE ***

Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Diane Monico, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE CITY STREETS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW
YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN
FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO

THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE CITY STREETS
By JANE ADDAMS
HULL HOUSE, CHICAGO
_Author of Democracy and Social Ethics Newer Ideals of Peace, etc._
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1930

COPYRIGHT, 1909, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909
Norwood Press: Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO MY DEAR FRIEND
Louise de Koben Bowen
WITH SINCERE ADMIRATION FOR HER UNDERSTANDING OF
THE NEEDS OF CITY CHILDREN AND WITH WARM
APPRECIATION OF HER SERVICE AS PRESIDENT OF THE
JUVENILE PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Youth in the City 3

CHAPTER II
The Wrecked Foundations of Domesticity 25

CHAPTER III
The Quest for Adventure 51

CHAPTER IV
The House of Dreams 75

CHAPTER V
The Spirit of Youth and Industry 107

CHAPTER VI
The Thirst for Righteousness 139

FOREWORD
Much of the material in the following pages has appeared in current
publications. It is here presented in book form in the hope that it may
prove of value to those groups of people who in many cities are making
a gallant effort to minimize the dangers which surround young people
and to provide them with opportunities for recreation.


CHAPTER I
YOUTH IN THE CITY
Nothing is more certain than that each generation longs for a
reassurance as to the value and charm of life, and is secretly afraid lest
it lose its sense of the youth of the earth. This is doubtless one reason
why it so passionately cherishes its poets and artists who have been
able to explore for themselves and to reveal to others the perpetual
springs of life's self-renewal.
And yet the average man cannot obtain this desired reassurance through
literature, nor yet through glimpses of earth and sky. It can come to him
only through the chance embodiment of joy and youth which life itself
may throw in his way. It is doubtless true that for the mass of men the
message is never so unchallenged and so invincible as when embodied
in youth itself. One generation after another has depended upon its
young to equip it with gaiety and enthusiasm, to persuade it that living
is a pleasure, until men everywhere have anxiously provided channels
through which this wine of life might flow, and be preserved for their
delight. The classical city promoted play with careful solicitude,
building the theater and stadium as it built the market place and the
temple. The Greeks held their games so integral a part of religion and
patriotism that they came to expect from their poets the highest
utterances at the very moments when the sense of pleasure released the
national life. In the medieval city the knights held their tourneys, the

guilds their pageants, the people their dances, and the church made
festival for its most cherished saints with gay street processions, and
presented a drama in which no less a theme than the history of creation
became a matter of thrilling interest. Only in the modern city have men
concluded that it is no longer necessary for the municipality to provide
for the insatiable desire for play. In so far as they have acted upon this
conclusion, they have entered upon a most difficult and dangerous
experiment; and this at the very moment when the city has become
distinctly industrial, and daily labor is continually more monotonous
and subdivided. We forget how new the modern city is, and how short
the span of time in which we have assumed that we can eliminate
public provision for recreation.
A further difficulty lies in the fact that this industrialism has gathered
together multitudes of eager young creatures from all quarters of the
earth as a labor supply for the countless factories and workshops, upon
which the present industrial city is based. Never before