NCJ Number
76527
Date Published
1981
Length
47 pages
Annotation
The evolution of street gangs among immigrant youth in the late 19th century and the gangs' effect on the development of human services are discussed.
Abstract
During the latter half of the 19th century the character of the street gang changed from that of a quasi-political organization affiliated with political party machines to that of loosely-bound juvenile groups resisting both factory work and socialization. Efforts to integrate these youth into the traditional social structure of family and skilled and unskilled factory labor were unsuccessful. Juvenile courts, school attendance laws, settlement houses, and recreation programs were developed to train youths in the requisite disciplinary areas needed for 19th century factory work, but without success. The gangs ultimately became linked in their lifestyle to that advocated by the International Workers of the World who demanded more money and less work, viewed the factory as a social system, and attempted radical labor practices. Henry Ford countered the effects of this initiative by introducing a living wage and by standardizing and simplifying jobs. These measures negated the gangs' habit of changing jobs frequently, by providing sufficient wages for unskilled workers to develop greater stability, ended the perception of workers as individuals and substituted a perception of workers as a mass social group, and ended requirements of worker loyalty to the factory. Notes are included.