The rule seems to be that the mental development of children is hastened by city life, but soon stops short. Up till thirteen or fourteen they are precocious and then come to a standstill. "At its best," says Dr. Stanley Hall, in his work on Adolescence, "metropolitan life is hard on childhood and especially so on pubescents, and children who can not pass those years in the country are robbed of a right of childhood that should be inalienable, and are exposed to many deleterious influences which jeopardize both health and morals."
City life at its best is bad for children, involving as it does early puberty, exciting distraction, superficiality of knowledge, insufficient repose, and the want of the soothing influences that the country affords, and at its worst when it means a tight squeeze in squalid dwellings, poor food, foul air, foul language, contact with vice, and manifold temptations, it is utterly demoralizing. The chief constable of Glasgow who had to report an increase of juvenile crime in that city, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts of the police to prevent it, informed the Royal Commission on Physical Training that juvenile depravity was regulated to a large extent by the home influence on the child, the period between twelve and fourteen being that when the mind is most susceptible to influence for good or evil. "Amongst the lower class in the city," said Mr. Ross, "of course one finds the children most depraved, the parents or guardians in many cases being criminals of the lowest possible standard. Street trading is undoubtedly a curse to this class of children. It has been proved again and again that the street gamin is second to none in vice and wickedness of every conceivable kind, in fact, he reduces the commission of a crime to a fine art. If, however, he is taken from his evil surroundings and placed in an industrial school or reformatory he, in the majority of cases, turns out a success in life."
The facts and figures I have been quoting represent the city as an instrument of physical, intellectual and moral degradation. They represent it as sucking in the crude vigor and vitality of the country, sophisticating and enfeebling them by its rigorous competition, and ultimately turning them into inefficiency. It seems obvious that if the city goes on growing at the nineteenth-century rate, and under nineteenth-century conditions, it will dry up the reservoirs of strength in the population, and leave an immense proletariat of inferior quality and without commanders.
But the shield we have been examining has another side. Big cities are with us and are likely to. remain. They have sprung up in obedience to economic laws, and they contribute to wealth, for production increases with increasing concentration of population, and wealth redounds to the advantage of the whole country. They favor specialization and enable every man to make the best of any talent or skill he
