CHILDREN 153

wrong. Through all the hours of the day,
from early morning and often till after midnight,
they kept up a perpetual rampage about the decks.
Almost without exception they were pallid in
colour and otherwise rather unhealthy-looking,
but their vitality seemed, unhappily, inexhaustible.
The efforts of their parents to restrain them,
never very forcible, were quite futile. As I
studied their ways I seemed to be getting a new
light on the phenomenon of " lawlessness " of
which one hears so much to-day in all parts of
America.

But the independence of American children is
a phenomenon with a good as well as an evil side.
In contrast to the stories of parents losing influence
over their children I have heard many others
which tell of children gaining influence over
their parents, much to the advantage of the latter*
The remarks of the lady quoted above to the
effect that the children acquired their habits
and standards not in the home but in the school
must not be taken to mean that their habits and
standards are any the worse on that account.
They may be better. And this seems to be
happening on a large scale among the children
of foreign immigrants who are Tquick, so I am
told, to pick up the self-assertiveness of the native
American child.

An interesting instance of this came under
my observation in the slum district on the east
side of New York. Wandering about in those