Present-day excitements have killed the "hooligan" scare. Good nervous people now sleep comfortably in their beds, for the cry of "The hooligans! the hooligans!" is no longer heard in our land. Yet, truth to tell, the evil is greater now than when sensational writers boomed it. It grows, and will continue to grow, until the conditions that produce it are seriously tackled by the State. I must confine myself to the hooliganism of the poor. Of the hooliganism of undergraduates, medical students, stockbrockers, and politicians I say nothing. Of Tommy Atkins on furlough or of Jack ashore I wish to be equally silent. But of the class, born and bred in London slums, who do no regular work, but who seem to live on idleness and disorder, I desire to speak plainly—plainly, too, as to the conditions that are largely responsible for the disorderly conduct of the rising youth.

A large number of undoubtedly good people think it is easy to cure by punitive methods. I do not. "A policeman behind every lamp-post and the lash—the lash!" cried a notable divine during a never-to-be-forgotten week when he edited an evening paper. Such was his recipe! For months the cat with nine tails was a favourite theme, and all sorts of people caught the infection, and there was a great cry and commotion raised and sustained by a sensational but altogether inaccurate press. Every assault committed by a labouring man, every bit of disorder in the streets, if caused by the poor and ignorant, was a signal for the cry "The hooligan again!" Rubbish! But the people believed it, and so to some extent our level-headed and kind-hearted magistrates caught the spirit of the thing, and proceeded to impose heavier sentences on boys charged with disorderly conduct in the streets. But this was not enough, for the Home Secretary (Mr. Ritchie) in the House of Commons, in reply to a question about youthful hooligans, said it was thought that the magistrates had been too lenient with them, and stated that the police had orders to charge those young gentlemen on indictment, so that they might not be dealt with summarily, but committed for trial. In other words, they were to take from the magistrates the power of so-called lenient punishment, and have them tried by judge and jury. Very good, but what good longer terms of imprisonment would do, the Home Secretary did not say; and as to the magistrates, they can be severe enough, though they do know when to be lenient, and in aggravated cases they already commit for trial.

Profoundly I wish that all Home Secretaries would exercise their minds on the causes that lead to youthful hooliganism, and do something to remove them. It were better far than taking steps to secure more severe punishment. Such talk to me seems callous and cruel, for punitive methods will never eradicate the instincts that lead to disorderly conduct in the streets among the "young gentry" of the poor. I must confess to a feeling of discomfort when I see a boy of sixteen sent to a month's imprisonment for disorderly conduct in the streets. It is true that he has been a nuisance to his elders, and has bumped against them in running after his pals. Equally true that he uses language repulsive to ears polite; but to him it is ordinary language, to which he has been accustomed his life through. But I am afraid it is equally true that similar offences committed by others in a better position would be more leniently dealt with. Would anyone suggest that a public-school boy, or a soldier on furlough, or a young doctor, or an enthusiastic patriot, should be committed for trial on a like charge? I trow not. Allowances are made, and it is right they should be made. I claim these allowances for the poor and the children of the poor.

Moreover, if these "young gentry" are to be consigned in wholesale fashion to prison, will it lessen the evil? I think not. On the contrary, it will largely increase it. Some of them will have lost the moderate respectability that stood for them in place of character; many of them will lose their work, and will join the increasing army of loafers; but all of them will lose their fear of prison, that fear of the unknown that is the greatest deterrent from crime and disorder. Familiarize these "young gentry" with prison, and it is all over with them. The sense of fear will depart, and to a dead certainty more serious disorder and grosser crime will follow. Undoubtedly many of them will find prison quarters preferable to their own homes, and though they may resent the loss of liberty, they will find some comfort in the fact that they do not have to share with four others an apology for a bed, fixed in an apology for a room, of which the door cannot be opened fully because the bedstead prevents it.

If our law-makers, our notable divines, and our good but nervous people had to live under such conditions, I venture to say they would rush into the streets for change of air; and if any steam were left in them, who can doubt but that they would let it off somehow? Under present conditions, the "young gentry" have the choice of two evils—either to stay in their insufferable homes or to kick up their heels in the streets. But this includes two other contingencies—either to become dull-eyed, weak-chested, slow-witted degenerates, or hooligans. Of the two, I prefer the latter. The streets are the playgrounds of the poor, and the State has need to be thankful, in spite of the drawback in disorder and crime, for the strength and manhood developed in them. It will be a sorry day for England when the children of the poor, after being dragooned to school, are dragooned from the streets into the overcrowded tenements called home. Multiply large towns, run the "blocks" for the poor up to the skies, increase the pains and penalties for youthful disorder, and omit to make provision for healthy, vigorous, competitive play: then we may write "Ichabod" over England, for its glory and strength will be doomed. Wealth may accumulate, but men will decay. Robust play, even though it be rough, is an absolute condition of physical and moral health.

Consider briefly how the poor live. Thousands of families with three small rooms for each family, tens of thousands with two small rooms, a hundred thousand with one room. And such rooms! Better call them boxes. Dining-room and bedroom, kitchen and scullery, coal-house and drawing-room, workshop and wash-house, all in one. Here, one after another, the children are born; here, one after another, many of them die. I went into one of these "combines," and saw an infant but a few days old with its mother on a little bed; in another corner, in a box, lay the body of another child of less than two years, cold and still. I felt ill, but I also felt hot. I protest it is no wonder that our boys and girls seek the excitement of the streets, or that they find comfort in "dustbins." What can big lads of this description do in such surroundings? Curl up and die, or go out and kick somebody. The pity of it is that they always kick the wrong person, but that's no wonder. Tread our narrow streets, where two-storied houses stand flush with the pavements; explore our courts, alleys, and places; climb skyward in our much-belauded dwellings; or come even into our streets that look snugly respectable. You will find them teeming with juvenile life that has learned its first steps in the streets, got its first idea of play in the gutter, and picked up its knowledge of the vulgar tongue from those who have graduated in a gutter school. Is it any wonder that young people developed under these conditions look upon the streets as their natural right, and become oblivious to the rights of others? They are but paying back what they have received. Neither is it to be wondered at that as they grow older they grow more disorderly and violent, but altogether less scrupulous. It is absurd to suppose that boys who have grown into young men under these conditions will, on reaching manhood, develop staid and orderly ways, and equally absurd to suppose that by sending them for "trial" they will be made orderly.

Let us have less talk of punishment and more of remedy; and the remedy lies, not with private individuals, but with the community. The community must bear the cost or pay the penalty. Oxford and Cambridge contend in healthy rivalry on the river, and the world is excited. Eton plays Harrow at cricket, and society is greatly moved. A few horses race at Epsom, and the people generally go wild. But when the Hackney boys contend with the boys of Bethnal Green, why, that's another tale. But they cannot go to Lord's or to Putney, so perforce they meet in the places natural to them—the streets. "But they use belts!" Well, they have no boxing-gloves, and it may comfort some folks to know that generally they use the belts upon each other. The major part of so-called youthful hooliganism is but the natural instinct of English boys finding for itself an outlet—a bad outlet it may be, but, mind you, the only outlet possible, though it is bound to grow into lawlessness if suitable provision is not made for its legitimate exercise.

At the close of one of my prison lectures, among the prisoners that asked for a private interview was an undersized youth of nineteen, a typical Cockney, sharp and cheeky as a London sparrow. He put out his hand and said, "How do you do, Mr. Holmes?" looking up at me. I shook hands with him, and said: "What are you doing here?" "Burglary, Mr. Holmes," he said. "Burglary?" I said—"burglary? I am sure God never intended you for a burglar." Looking up sharply, he said: "No, He would have made me bigger, wouldn't He? But I have had enough of prison," he said—"I've had enough. I'm going straight when I get out, and I shall be out in three weeks. It is very good of you to come and talk to us, and I am glad to know about all those men you have told us of; but I've come to see you because I want you to tell me how I am to spend my spare time when I am out. I am going back home to live. I've got a job to go to—not much wages, though. I shall live in Hoxton, and I want to go straight. If I get some books and read about those fellows you talked of, I can't read at home—there's no room. If I go to the library I feel a bit sleepy when I've been in a bit, and the caretaker comes along and he gives me a nudge, and he says: 'Waken up! This ain't a lodging-house.' We have no cricket or football. There's the streets for me in my spare time, and then I'm in mischief. Now, you tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

Municipal playgrounds are absolutely necessary if our young people are to be healthy and law-abiding. Of parks we have enough at present. Our so-called recreation-grounds are a delusion and a snare, though to some they are doubtless a boon, with their asphalted walks, a few seats, and a drinking-fountain. They are very good for the very old and the very young; but if Tom, Dick, and Harry essayed a game of rounders, tip-cat, leap-frog, or skittles, why, then they would soon find themselves before the magistrate, and be the cause of many paragraphs on youthful hooliganism in the next day's papers. Now, private philanthropy and individual effort is not equal to the task—and, in spite of increasing effort and enlarged funds, never will be equal to the task—of finding suitable recreation for our growing youth. I know well the great good done by our public-school and other missions, with their boys' clubs, etc.; but they scarcely touch the evil, and they certainly have not the means of providing winter and summer outdoor competitive games. Every parish must have its public playground, under proper supervision, lit up with electric light in the evening, and open till 10 p.m. Here such inexpensive games as rounders, skittles, tip-cat, tug-of-war, might be organized, and Hackney might have a series of competitions with Bethnal Green, for the competitive element must be provided for. A series of contests of this sort would soon empty our streets of the lads who are now so troublesome. I venture to say that a tournament, even at "coddem" or "shove-ha'penny" alone, would attract hundreds of them, and certainly an organized competition of "pitch-and-toss" would attract thousands. Counters might be used instead of coins, and they would last for ever. The fact is, that these youths are easily pleased, if we go the right way to work; but we must take them as they are, and must not expect them all to play chess, billiards, and cricket. Football, I think, I would certainly add, for it is a game which any healthy boy can play, and it gives him robust exercise. Give the lads of our slums and congested dwellings a chance of healthy rivalry and vigorous competition, and, my word for it, they won't want to crack the heads either of their companions or the public. The public are not aware of the intense longing of the slum youth for active, robust play. During last year more than fifty boys were summoned at one court for playing football in the streets and fined, though in some cases their footballs were old newspapers tied round with string. Hundreds of youths are charged every year at each of our London police-courts with gambling by playing a game with bronze coins called "pitch-and-toss." Now, these youths do not want and long for each other's coins, but they do want a game, and if they could play all day and win nothing they would consider it an ideal game. Organized games in public playgrounds, creating local and friendly rivalry, are absolutely essential. The same feeling, developed but a trifle further, becomes national, and we call it patriotism. Play they must, or become loafers; and the round-shouldered, dull-eyed loafer is altogether more hopeless than the hooligan.

It will be an inestimable blessing to the country, and will inaugurate quite a new era for us, when the minimum age for leaving school is raised to sixteen. The increase of intelligence, physique and morality, and order arising from such a course would astonish the nation. Supposing this were done, and for boys and girls of over twelve two hours in the afternoon were set apart for games—in separate playgrounds, of course—and that the evenings were devoted to school-work. The younger children going to school in the afternoon might easily have their turn in the public playgrounds from five to seven. This would allow the youths over sixteen to have the playgrounds for the rest of the evening. But, having provided for play, I would go one step further, and not allow any boy to leave school till he produced satisfactory evidence that he was really commencing work. Hundreds of boys leave school having no immediate prospect of regular work. A few weeks' idleness and the enjoyment of the streets follow, and they are then in that state of mind and body that renders them completely indifferent to work of any kind. For good or for evil, the old system of apprenticing boys has gone. It had many faults, but it had some virtues, for, at any rate, it ensured a boy's continuity of work in those years when undisciplined idleness is certain to be demoralizing. Once let boys from the homes I have described—or, indeed, from working men's homes generally—be released from the discipline of school, and the discipline of reasonable and continuous work not be substituted, and it is all over with them and honest aspirations. Now, this difficulty of finding decent and prospective employment for boys is another great factor in the production of youthful hooligans, but a factor that would be largely eliminated if the age for leaving school were raised to sixteen. The work of errand-boys, van-boys, or "cock-horse" boys is not progressive; neither is it good training for growing boys. To the boys of fourteen such work has its allurements, and the wages offered seem fairly good; but when the boy of fourteen has become the youth of sixteen or seventeen, the work seems childish, and the pay becomes mean. When he requires better wages, his services are dispensed with, and another lad of fourteen is taken on. This procedure alone accounts for thousands of youths being idle upon the streets of London. What can such youths do? Too big for their previous occupation, no skilled training or aptitude for better work, not big or strong enough for ordinary labouring, they become the despair of their parents and pests to society. Very soon the door of the parental home is closed upon them; the cheap lodging-houses become their shelter, and the rest can easily be imagined—but it lasts for life. By raising the school age, the great bulk of this demoralization would be prevented. Technical training in their school years would give these youths a certain amount of aptitude and taste that would enable them to commence life under more favourable conditions, and though many of them would necessarily become errand-boys or van-boys, still, the age at which they would leave those occupations would find them nearer manhood, and in possession of greater strength and more judgment than they can claim at the present age of leaving such work. The step I am advocating would also remove another great cause of lifelong misery and its accompanying hooliganism. Look again, if you please, at the homes of the poor. Is it any wonder that when a youth finds himself earning twelve shillings a week, and has arrived at the mature age of eighteen, he enters into a certain relationship with a girl of seventeen, who has a weekly income of six shillings? This relationship may or may not be sanctioned by the law and blessed by the Church; in either case it is equally immoral, and the effects are equally blighting. How can healthy, virtuous, and orderly children come from such unions?

Give the youth of our large towns a lengthened school-training, but at the same time remember that athletic and technical training must form part of that life; let healthy rivalry have a chance of animating them and a feeling of manly joy sometimes pervade them, and these horrible, wicked juvenile unions will be heard of no more; for at present their only chances of enjoyment are the streets, sexuality, or the public-house.

This last word leads me to another cause of hooliganism. The public-house is bound up with the lives of the poor. To many it stands, doubtless, for enjoyment and relaxation, for forgetfulness of misery and discomfort, and for sociability. To many others it stands for poverty, suffering, unspeakable sorrow, and gross neglect. Where our streets are the narrowest, where the sanitary arrangements are of the most execrable description, there the public-house thrives, and thrives with disastrous effects. The home-life of the poor and the public-house act and react on each other. The more miserable the home and the greater the dirt, the more the public-house attracts; the more it attracts, the viler the home-life and the greater misery and dirt. It is no marvel that people who live thus demand fiery drinks; nor is it any great marvel that all the tricks of science and all the resources of civilization are brought to bear in manufacturing drinks for them. No wonder, when "the vitriol madness flushes in the ruffian's head," that "the filthy by-lane rings with the yell of the trampled wife." But the State shares the profits and the State shares the guilt. Long ago Cowper wrote:

The State does not care very much what compounds are served to the poor so long as the sacred revenue is not defrauded. But the State cannot escape the penalties. What of the offspring that issue from these homes and these neighbourhoods? They have daily seen women with battered faces; they have frequently seen the brutal kick, and heard the frightful curse; they have been used to the public-house from their infancy; whilst boys and girls have been allowed to join openly, and as a matter of course, in the carousals, and stand shoulder to shoulder in the bar and drink with seasoned topers. In the evening, when half drunk, they patrol the streets or stand together at some congested corner. They are not amenable to the influence of the police; they are locked up, and the cry "The hooligans! the hooligans!" is heard in the land; and there is a demand for more punishment, instead of a feeling of shame at the conditions that produce such young people and at the temptations that prevail amongst them. Can it be right—is it decent or wise?—that boys and girls of sixteen should be allowed free access to public-houses, with free liberty to drink at will? What can be expected but ribaldry, indecency, disorder, and violence? A wise Government would protect these young people against temptation and against themselves. No improvement in the morals and conduct of the young is possible until this question is tackled, and there ought to be no difficulty about tackling it. Let the Home Secretary bring in a Bill, and pass it, making it illegal for boys and girls under twenty to drink on licensed premises, and he will do more good for public order than if he committed the whole of the young gentry for trial.

But I would put in also a plea for their parents. It is evident that we must have public-houses; it is also certain that the public have a taste for, and demand, malt liquors and other alcoholic drinks. Now, the State reaps many millions of its revenue from this demand. It is therefore the duty of the State to see that these drinks are as harmless as possible. Let the State, then, insist upon the absolute purity of malt liquors, and also upon a reduction in their alcoholic strength; for, after all, this is the cause of the mischief. In this direction lies the true path of temperance reform. Supposing the alcoholic strength of malt liquors—really malt liquors—was fixed by imperial statute at 2½ per cent. by volume, who would be a penny the worse? The brewer and the publican would get their profits, the Exchequer would get its pound of flesh, the Englishman would get his beer—his "glorious beer!" No vested interests would be attacked, and no disorganization of trade would be caused; everybody concerned would be the better, for everybody would be the happier. It may be thought that I am getting wide of my subject, but even a superficial inquiry will soon lead anyone to the knowledge that the public-house is intimately connected with, and a direct cause of, what is termed "hooliganism."

Alcohol, not the house, is really the cause. To leave the house still popular, while largely taking away its dangerous element, would be a wise course; but this should be followed by a much higher duty on spirits and a law fixing the maximum of their alcoholic strength when offered for public sale. Fifty per cent. under proof for spirits and an alcoholic strength of 2½ per cent. for malt liquors would usher in the millennium.

To sum up what I conceive to be the reforms necessary to the abatement and cure of hooliganism:

1. Fair rents for the poor, and a fair chance of cleanliness and decency.

2. Municipal playgrounds and organized competitive games.

3. Extension of school-life till sixteen.

4. Prohibition to young people of alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises.

5. Limitation by law of the alcoholic strength of malt liquor to 2½ per cent. and of spirits to 50 per cent. under proof, with higher duty.

Give us reforms on these lines, and there will be no "complaining in our streets." The poorest of the poor, though lacking riches, will know something of the wealth of the mind, for chivalry and manhood, gentleness and true womanhood, will be their characteristics. The rounded limbs and happy hearts of "glorious childhood" will be no longer a dream or a fiction. No longer will the bitter cry be raised of "too old" when the fortieth birthday has passed, for men will be in their full manhood at sixty. Give us these reforms, and enable the poor to live in clean and sweet content, then their sons shall be strong in body and mind to fight our battles, to people our colonies, and to hand down to future ages a goodly heritage. But there is a content born of indifference, of apathy, of despair. There is the possibility that the wretched may become so perfect in their misery that a wish for better things and aspirations after a higher life may die a death from which there is no resurrection. From apathetic content may God deliver the poor! from such possibilities may wise laws protect them! "Righteousness"—right doing—"exalteth a nation;" and a nation whose poor are content because they can live in cleanliness, decency, and virtue, where brave boyhood and sweet girlhood can bud, blossom, and mature, is a nation that will dwell long in the land, and among whom the doings of the hooligans will be no longer remembered.