Gang

“ The gang is an institution in New York. The police deny its existence while nursing the bruises received in nightly battles with it that tax their utmost resources. The newspapers chronicle its doings daily, with a sensational minuteness of detail that does its share toward keeping up its evil traditions and inflaming the ambition of its members to be as bad as the worst. The gang is the ripe fruit of tenement-house growth. ”

“ Who are these close-nudged folk and whither away?
She who runs may read them for hard-headed, white-handed men in search of "prospects"; brown-throated homesteaders; real-estate agents out for talking points and for snap fortunes; mining engineers with dunnage bags—young fellows all in the full force of life—these, and "the gang," who are ill-looking men and rather dirty. The gang fare forth to work on the railway grades. They are always ganging—that is going—for the words are strictly synonymous. The gang going to the city meet the gang coming out. ”

“ A gang. But do they not rather demonstrate the absence of a gang? What struggle could have taken place—what struggle so violent and so enduring as to have left its ‘traces’ in all directions—between a weak and defenceless girl and the gang of ruffians imagined? The silent grasp of a few rough arms and all would have been over. The victim must have been absolutely passive at their will, You will here bear in mind that the arguments used against the thicket as the scene, are applicable, in chief part, only against it as the scene of an outrage committed by more than a single individual. ”

“ These three are, the family, the neighborhood, and the play group; but for the normal boy the play group is the gang. All three are instinctive human groupings, formed like pack and flock and hive, in response to deep-seated but unconscious need. Like all such instinctive associations, the gang appears useless or stupid to those who have never felt the inner impulse which caused it, or who, having felt, have forgotten. The boy’s reaction to his gang is neither more nor less reasonable than the reaction of a mother to her babe, the tribesman to his chief, or the lover to his sweetheart. ”

“ It saves trouble and expense. I don't travel with a gang, like that bone-headed Buck. What's the use of a gang? They only get tumbling over each other and spoiling everything. Look at Buck! Where is he? ”

“ Let's try to find out first what the gang means to the boys and what it means to the race. When a boy joins a gang, he does not discard his instinct for play or for running and shouting. He simply takes on a new relation to the world about him. As a member of the gang, he still runs and plays and shouts; but now he has become conscious of his place in the world, and that place is with his fellow-members, surrounded by all sorts of enemies and dangers and obstacles to his well-being. In his gang he finds comfort and support for his struggle with the outside world. ”

“ THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE GANG The gang age, from ten to sixteen, is one of the most important eras in a boy’s life. One man out often may belong to a church, one out of five to a fraternity: but as Sheldon has shown, three boys in every four are members of a gang; and the character of this gang determines in no small degree what sort of men these boys shall become. Taking our lives through, our parents probably make us most, and next to these our wives. ”

“ Organized gangs of all sorts have at last learned the amusing trick of pointing a pistol at the publics head and threatening it with starvation, and up go its hands, and the gang gains whatever it wants for itself, regardless of anyone else. ”

“ The gangs belt the city like a huge chain from the Battery to Harlem--the collective name of the "chain gang" has been given to their scattered groups in the belief that a much closer connection exists between them than commonly supposed--and the ruffian for whom the East Side has became too hot, has only to step across town and change his name, a matter usually much easier for him than to change his shirt, to find a sanctuary in which to plot fresh outrages. ”

“ The master of the gang commenced, and after much stamping with his foot, and the gentleman warmly exhorting him to cry aloud, like the roaring of a lion, he endeavoured to call forth nonentity into existence. ”

“ The gang demands fair play and fidelity among its members, and it usually gets these. The gang demands devotion and self-sacrifice of its members, and the boy who cannot show these qualities becomes more effectually ostracized than any defaulting bank official or corrupt politician. These fine virtues, then—loyalty, honor, devotion—are cultivated by the gang just at the time when the instincts for them are strongest, and at a time when no other agency is prepared to do the work. ”

“ A gang has seized a tailor, a poor, miserable-looking wretch with no fighting in him, almost literally as well as metaphorically the “ninth part of a man,” and his captors are dragging him off, knock-kneed and incapable of resistance. ”

“ The gang contains the friends to whose praise and criticism he is most keenly sensitive, its standards are his aims, and its activities his happiness. Untrammeled by the perversion of special circumstances it might encourage his latent interests, train him to obedience and loyalty, show him the method and the saving of co-operation, and teach him the beauty of self-sacrifice. Gang life at its best does so. ”

“ Playing field and swimming place,171 trips into the country on foot, with longer journeys by rail and trolley, keep the gang actively engaged in ways which are for the most part wholesome. Even the least desirable of them serve to work off the boy’s abounding energy, and keep him from worse things.
The peril of the city gang comes with the cooler weather of fall, when the early darkness hides its doings, and any meeting place becomes attractive if it is warm. This is the time for the boys’ club to capture the gang. ”

“ What I especially urge, then, is that the good home shall recognize the good gang as among the most efficient of its allies. As the careful parent keeps an eye on school and church and social set, so ought he to keep his eye on the gang. He should make it his business to know, not only that his boy gets into the right gang, but that he enters it at the right age, neither too early nor too late, and that he graduates at the right time, after the gang has done its perfect work and more would be too much. ”

“ It is the old story; only the worst and most vicious form of the gang spirit has a chance of finding expression in these streets. And so gang warfare has become not the exception but the rule, and the violence and ferocity with which the small boys pursue their feuds excites the alarm of the entire neighborhood. ”

“ The brief but picturesque descriptions of individual gangs seem to indicate that the play group tends to pass over into the gang when it comes into conflict with other groups of like type or with the community. The fully developed gang appears to possess a restricted membership, a natural leader, a name—usually that of a leader or a locality—a body of tradition, custom and a ritual, a rendezvous, a territorial area which it holds as a sort of possession and defends against invasion by other groups. ”

“ They go in gangs, and if you hit one of the gang, all the rest will ‘deal with you,’ as they call it. If they have to wait a year to get you, they’ll wait, and get you alone some night or other and set on to you. They jump on a man if they get him down, too. ”

“ The bad gang, therefore, tends to be a persistent and dangerous institution, taking in new members as the older ones graduate. But the good gang dies young. This circumstance probably accounts in no small degree for the bad odor in which all boys’ gangs are commonly held. ”

“ These lose, perforce, the education that comes in the gang. But the rest who stay out of the gang, stay out for the gang’s good. They have been trained, often against their nature, to do violence to the gang’s standard of honor. They fail to pass through the normal development of human males; they lack a fundamental virtue and their fellows will not trust them, boy or man.
In the gang, then, we find the natural time and place for the somewhat sudden birth and development of that spirit of loyalty which is the foundation of most of our social relations. ”

“ That is why the gang appears in the second generation, the first born upon the soil,—a fighting gang if the Irishman is there with his ready fist, a thievish gang if it is the East Side Jew,—and disappears in the third. ”

“ Running being a deep-seated impulse of all young life, the formless running-games of childhood tend to hold over into the gang age. Thirty-one of my sixty-six gangs, or practically half of them, reported that they still clung to their pre-adolescent sports. Tag, hide and seek, and relievo are the favorites, being represented in twenty-one, fourteen, and twelve gangs respectively. ”

“ Through all the trials and tribulations of his fifty years of life he has never been in danger of the chain gang before, for he has kept a good character for one of his hue, and now the certain prospect of the gang unless some miracle happened had crushed the spirit out of him. ”

“ The gang has its elected leader, its officers, its members; and although it is liable to sudden disruption and seldom outlasts a few terms of school-life, each succeeding club or company is for the time being of paramount importance in the estimation of its members. The gang spirit may at times cause trouble and lead to anxiety, but if rightly directed it may be turned to good account. ”

“ It appears that, when a gang have come upon a larger plunder than they can carry away from the premises inside them, one of the number lies down on his back while the others load him up with the booty; that he balances the pile with four legs, and, to make matters extra safe, folds his tail over the goods and holds the tip in his mouth, and that his pals then drag him off along the ground by the ears and fur! ”

“ And a man sprang out before him,— a man both strong and tall,—
By his clothes I should say a cowboy,— a stranger in town, I think,—
p. 12 With his pistol he waved back the gang, who was wild with rage and drink.
"I warn ye, get back!" he said, "or I'll blow your heads in two!
A dozen on one poor creature, and him wounded and bleeding, too!"
The gang stood back for a minute; then up spoke Poker Bill:
"Young man, yer a stranger, I reckon. We don't wish yer any ill;
But come out of the range of the Greaser, or, as sure as I live, you'll croak;" ”

“ As a general rule, the different divisions of a gang used to encamp near each other at the various halting grounds, and were always in frequent communication with one another. No sooner had one of them fallen in with a party of travellers than the intelligence was conveyed to all the others, and every one was on the alert. Their leaders, travelling as merchants, gentlemen, soldiers, or peasants, usually succeeded by their [Pg 63] plausible manners in ingratiating themselves with the strangers. ”

“ The impulses to loyalty, fidelity, coöperation, self-sacrifice, justice, which are at the basis of gang psychology, are powerfully reinforced, as we have already seen, by nearly all the typical gang activities.
149 Even collective stealing is a lesson in coöperation. Thieving expeditions are often definitely planned; one boy watches while the others steal; one engages the attention of the storekeeper while another annexes his property; one member of the gang plagues the victim to get chased, and then the rest loot his goods. ”

“ Nearly always, the gang is a strictly local affair, limited to a certain district or to one or two streets. “We all live on L street,” run the boys’ reports. “We all come from one street and a little street off from it.” ”

“ The people on most estates are divided into three gangs; first, the great gang, composed of the principal effective men and women; second, the weeding gang, consisting of younger and weekly persons; and third, the grass gang, which embraces all the children able to work. ”

“ Each exists for the sake of a definite set of activities—to play games, to seek adventure, to go swimming, boating, and playing Indians in the woods, to make mischief, to steal, to fight other gangs. Few are the groups which do not, at one time or another, do all these things. Especially noteworthy is the desire of the gang for a local habitation—its own special street corner, its clubroom, its shanty in the woods. ”

“ Generally little [Pg 24] gangs associate together and work in company; but it is rare that they do so on communistic principles. More often, each member of the gang works entirely for his own hand, though they may have food and so on in common. ”

“ Then one thing led to another, until he was face to face with dealing that took on crooked form. To protect himself he bound men to him. And so the gang developed. Many powerful gangs have developed that way out here. ”

“ When a large gang is collected, the most able-bodied and alert of their number are fixed upon as stranglers, and they are made the bearers of the handkerchief only after the performance of various and often expensive ceremonies, and only on the observance of a favourable omen. ”

“ But next to our wives, in their influence over our characters and careers, come for most of us, the group of companions whom we knew as boys and who together with us formed our special gang. Our domestic education takes place in our parents’ home and in our own; but our social training has had at least its foundations in our gang. ”

“ It is your concern whether he belongs to a Boy Scout gang or a Dirty Dozen gang. The good gang should be encouraged; it is good because it is supervised; and the bad gang should be converted into a good one by adult direction. The recognition of the psychologic necessity for gangdom has changed the former prohibition against gang association to the encouragement of the boy to join a clean crowd engaged in clean activities. This innate tendency to gangdom furnishes the cue for his reclamation. Supervised gangs are the tongs by which many boys have been pulled from the fires of delinquency. ”