The Five-Day Week

...a few of those disposed to assume, summarily, the role of justice in person...

...They had grown used to lisreach a sturdy age and are released from institutions, tening to proposals whose realization seemed schedfind themselves so ignorant of ordinary social practice uled for some dim and distant future...

...These since the industrial system broke, once and for all, the conditions were not accepted without many a revolt, easy hierarchy by which the prentice became the patron...

...But what is not "It might naturally be assumed that a society which so generally perceived is the new conception of work found itself possessed of such vastly increased labQr that it brought in its train-the divorce from any- power . . . would devise a system for the distributhing that had been human nature which made con- tion of labor by which no individual, least of all the tentment with it unthinkable...

...Many boys there would be able to approach this impressive sum-total, no large become demoralized even without the gang...

...In the aggregate they probably totaled It is rather surprising that this was not forea "loss of time" not much less than the abolished seen, since, while the speeding up of manufacturing church festivals, and equaling the shorter week now processes is a matter of ingenuity and organization, proposed...

...In like, manipulating machines more than all the day Protestant countries, where it attained its rankest hours of each week, while others lived idly and luxurigrowth, it derived partly from the sudden shutting ously, and others lived meagerly by means of charity off of spiritual interests and the time they claimed...

...But in the long run, Professor F URTHER machine-gun murders in...

...Experience be an illusory gain...

...So thoroughly admit- in his Industrial Society in England Toward the End ted are the meanness and heartlessness that presided of the Eighteenth Century, reviewed in The Commonover its beginnings, that to marshal all the evidence weal some months ago, puts the matter very cogently would be time and space wasted...

...overt and secret too, that is the real and underlying The world today is reaping the fruit of his disastrous tragedy of modern history...

...to overtake those unequipped for it, without some What the industrial system did, and so flagrantly help and guidance...

...And thereby hangs a tale which formed spontaneously, and then integrated through is at the present moment peculiarly pertinent...

...Gangs on the whole, none of our American "movements" in Chicago do not, therefore, differ essentially from displays a healthier spirit...

...In countries where the process of indus- consumption remains subject to all manner of untrialization has not been so thorough as in hapless foreseen accidents, of which the human factor is not England, the traveler may still watch the old concep- the least...

...We have here a challenge that "crying against the Holy Ghost...

...In certain inas to fear the companionship of normal persons...

...The conflict...

...private citizens...

...Bad urban district is free of the gang evil...

...It is a sin, let it never be forgotten, which Catholic theplain we are facing something that is little less than ology lists, with the sin for which Sodom fell, as one a social revolution...

...It is characterized by the following types of statistics of crime have been gathered in a thousand behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement and one places, by a thousand and one agencies...

...But these were partial changes, matters of secured a reservoir of labor and raw material pracexpediency whose repercussion was hardly felt outside tically illimitable, entered into a partnership with the industries affected...

...Meantime, what seems important, once the tion of work as an all-day affair, suspended again and five-day week is upon us, is that the old mistake shall again, at intervals, for meals, gossip, and domestic not be repeated, and a new rhythm of life be allowed chores...

...Until the more eleLong ago it became apparent that, granted certain mental institutions-the school, the family, the comeconomic and social conditions, the gang would appear munity-realize the complexity of the growth of youth as naturally as flies are an inevitable deduction from and prepare themselves to foster it adequately, there unsanitary drainage conditions...

...It is upon the shoulders of millions, and this indefinitely, the direct result of a system imposed on him...

...Almost everyone has a good instance of how quickly far-reaching social known professional gangsters who in private life were changes sometimes eventuate...

...But How much can be done toward remedying the situaregardless of such matters, Mr...

...Were THE FIVE-DAY WEEK the "interstitial areas" referred to by Professor Thrasher eliminated, crime would not cease, but gang T HE five-day week that now seems to be on us is criminality probably would...

...The result of though they lead to varied conclusions, they all this collective behavior is the development of tradition, enforce one truth : that not the race, not heredity, but unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solid- the child is the father of the man...

...come might also help...

...an "extra-curricular" activity...

...The outlets...

...No doubt the doubtedly one reason why the coming musical season tightening of legal and police processes might terrify will be unusually stimulating and compelling...

...It is quite easy to imagine circumstances the burden of an intensive production to satisfy them under which it would never have been made...

...to the growing anxiety of society, and doubtless scoutThey fight each other's battles, take a liking to each ing is an excellent thing...

...Deems Taylor is un- tion is still a matter of conjecture...

...arity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a Thus far the remedial energy expended on the local territory...

...Possibly the elimination of prohibitory legislation as a source of subterranean inWHAT IS A GANG...

...He might produce an equal-or even far The first thing to note about the new demand is greater bulk of merchandise with less labor...

...This peculiar view is sometimes the result without which higher wages and fairer contracts would of circumstances that challenge reflection...

...They merely regarded their social Hardly any congress where labor has met to define its code as a kind of "natural law" which ruled the human aims has missed featuring on its agenda as a factor universe...

...mind...

...Overtion of machinery, many of the old alleviations re- production today sits squarely over the shoulders of mained...

...move the unwholesome influences with which the boy Though other thriving centres of population may not in gangland is surrounded...

...It is necessarily what may be in post-bellum Missouri...

...spending for the public weal ought to be a social rule, have overlooked a few rather essential matters...

...But the practical-minded were has shown, for instance, that foundlings, when they not greatly impressed...

...Imperialism, the millionaire, and proletarizaplea that it is called for quite as much in the interests tion all date from this oppression of the poor manof employer as employed strikes a new note...

...The interruptions to work while the worker our manufacturers, unless the tempo of production is was still not divorced from his home must have been allayed...

...writers today have a good word to say for the indus- Professor Witt Bowden, of Pennsylvania University, trial system in its early days...

...Or he that it does not entirely proceed from the worker's might, by an intensive search for new markets, lay volition...

...But what, to be boys' as defined by society, are largely created by the precise, is a gang...

...Scouting is the reply of the welfare worker weedy lot, between prosperous and urbane districts...

...In other words, the gang is a group problem has generally taken the stand that more beneof fellows who fall in with one another somewhere ficial associations must be created to take the place of in a part of town which sags, like an old house on a the gang...

...The new stress that came from the importation and Undoubtedly, a sense of social justice has been coinage of gold, the supersession of payment in kind, growing among us during the last few decades...

...continuous...

...Perhaps a few weaknesses other's favorite haunts, and gradually get into the that have cropped up in its history need correction, but habit of undertaking "community" enterprises...

...That does not imply is little enough hope for a time when the "gang," offera comparison between flies and mortal men: it merely ing an easy and adventuresome way out of daily signifies that those who feel that government has no drudgery, will be completely eliminated as a force that hygienic function, that economy and not salutary makes for lawlessness and crime...

...Frail mation, and Protestant historians of the positive order women, feeble men, dependent children, toiled machinehave not forgotten to make capital therefrom...

...It dustries, carried on at night or under special circumis not at all surprising that they should take refuge in stances of strain, the shorter week had already been October 27, 1926 THE,COMMONWEAL 6o1 conceded...

...The demand for the forty- government, which it soon controlled, to secure it new hour week generally is something quite different...

...Professor Frederick Thrasher disorganizing forces consequent upon the confused conoffers this definition in a recent contribution to The ditions where American life is in process of ferment Survey : "The gang is an interstitial group originally and readjustment...

...6oo THE COMMONWEAL October 27, 1926 find exquisite materials in Chinese legends, a composer the outskirts of respectability-instead of upon rewho lives under the beneficent rule of the Constitution spectability's bosom...

...But, until the introduc- of human energies, to any change of heart...

...should keep economists and social workers busy for a The choice before the early industrialist was clear, generation or two, if the innovation is to turn event- and cannot have escaped his practical and mechanical ually to good...

...But through space, conflict, and planning...

...The demand of the amiable, trustworthy and sometimes even religious as worker for more abundant leisure is nothing new...

...Very few worth-while choice...

...immature and dependent child, would find it necessary The habit of continuous work, the fashion of re- to exhaust his entire store of energy in economic progarding it as a dawn-to-dark every-day-in-the-week ductivity...

...Those who would exploit the that it is hard to read of it without indignation, was workers' leisure today (we may be quite sure of this) really this : it took the acquired habit of work, canal- are neither less wide-awake to their own interests, nor ized and shut it up in factories, intensified and speeded animated by any better concern for his, than those it up to the limit of endurance, and then, having who robbed him of it 15o years ago...

...But even so, scouting alone the little crowd which Jesse James gathered round him can never be sufficient...

...must never hazard a peep beyond the horizon...

...Chicago have Thrasher is right in saying: "The abolition of the once more concentrated attention upon the 1,313 gang, even if it co i1d be accomplished, would not regangs which the city is said to possess, by actual count...

...But and the terrible land enclosures which robbed the poor it is not necessary to refer the halt which now seems artisan of an economic anchor to windward, were con- on the eve of being called to the inhuman exploitation tributing causes everywhere...

...because of lack of opportunity for work...

...But, in this respect, the possibilities of imaffair, dates, roughly in every sense, from the Refor- proved methods of producton were not utilized...