Modern cities have been built to concentrate industrial opportunity.
They have taken their rise and form subsequent to the industrial
revolution wrought by steam and as a result of that revolution. So far
they have paid only minor attention to the conservation or improvement
of human life. Justice, not to mention mercy, toward the family and the
individual has not been the guiding star. The human element has been
left to fit as best it could into a system of maximum production at
minimum cost, rapid and profitable transportation, distribution
calculated to emphasize and exploit need, and satisfactory dividends on
what was often supposititious stock; and because these have been the
main considerations the latent and priceless wealth of boyhood has been
largely sacrificed.

The amazing and as yet unchecked movement of population toward the city
means usually a curtailment of living area for all concerned. The more
people per acre the greater the limitation of individual action and the
greater the need of self-control and social supervision. Restrictions of
all sorts are necessary for the peace of a community wherein the
physical conditions almost force people to jostle and irritate one
another. In such a situation the more spontaneous and unconventional the
expression of life the greater the danger of bothering one's neighbors
and of conflicting with necessary but artificial restrictions. Even
innocent failure to comprehend the situation may constitute one
anti-social or delinquent, and the foreigner as well as the boy is often
misjudged in this way.

But on the score of the city's inevitable "Thou shalt not," it is the
boy who suffers more than any other member of the community. His
intensely motor propensities, love of adventure, dim idea of modern