If we go back to our main thread of enquiry and draw together the results of our observations, they seem to offer a comparatively simple diagnosis of this supposedly mysterious disease which has gotten hold of our young people. We have located the seat of the trouble and indicated the nature of the developments which have, so to speak, thrown the motives of conduct out of their accustomed balance.
Obedience, discipline, respect for authority and traditions, consideration for others, fear of punishment, fear of consequences, fear of God,--these great check-weights to self-interest, self-seeking, have lost in weight and substance to such an extent that they no longer turn the scales and point the way. If our diagnosis is on the whole correct, we have finished with the first part of the problem.
_N.Y. Times_, July 5, 1921.--Says lax parents make boy felons. Judge Talley analyzes youthful crime. Defiance begins at home.
Judge Alfred J. Talley of the Court of General Sessions told several thousand persons gathered in the Mall in Central Park for an Independence Day celebration by the Knights of Columbus yesterday afternoon that modern American children are not brought up with the proper respect for their parents, law and order, or constituted authority, and that the fault lies with their elders. Judge Talley described the situation as a "cancer on the body politic." He drew a distinction between liberty and license and said that his experience in the criminal courts of New York had brought one great American failing very strongly home to him.
"The one thing the American people lack to-day," he said, "is a proper method for bringing up their children. I see the results of this every day. The hardened criminals turn out to be youths of 19 and 20 years who first thrust themselves against law and order at 16 and 17 years, and who at 14 told their fathers that they were leaving school--and left.
"Behind this hardened criminal stands the sullen drab figure of a girl who tries to show how loyal she is to the vagabond in the hands of the law. It all began with a misguided idea of liberty. The youth is the one who told his father he had had all the education he needed and promptly became a street corner type, and the girl, she who silenced her mother when bound for a dance by tossing aside criticism of the indecent dress she wore.