.

It ought not be a difficult question to answer. Any teacher could do it.
He knows, if he knows anything, that the way to get and keep the
children's confidence is to trust them, and let them know that they are
trusted. They will almost always come up to the demand thus made upon
them. Preaching to them does little good; preaching at them still less.
Men, whether rich or poor, are much like children. The good in them is
just as good, and the bad, in view of their enlarged opportunities for
mischief, not so much worse, all considered. A vigorous optimism, a
stout belief in one's fellow-man, is better equipment in a campaign for
civic virtue than stacks of tracts and arguments, economic and moral.
There is good bottom, even in the slum, for that kind of an anchor to
get a grip on. Some years ago I went to see a boxing match there had
been much talk about. The hall was jammed with a rough and noisy crowd,
hotly intent upon its favorite. His opponent, who hailed, I think, from
somewhere in Delaware, was greeted with hostile demonstrations as a
"foreigner." But as the battle wore on, and he was seen to be fair and
manly, while the New Yorker struck one foul blow after another, the
attitude of the crowd changed rapidly from enthusiastic approval of the
favorite to scorn and contempt; and in the last round, when he knocked
the Delawarean over with a foul blow, the audience rose in a body and
yelled to have the fight given to the "foreigner," until my blood
tingled with pride. For the decision would leave it practically without
a cent. It had staked all it had on the New Yorker. "He is a good man,"
I heard on all sides, while the once favorite sneaked away without a
friend. "Good" meant fair and manly to that crowd. I thought, as I went
to the office the next morning, that it ought to be easy to appeal to
such a people with measures that were fair and just, if we could only
get on common ground. But the only hint I got from my reform paper was
an editorial denunciation of the brutality of boxing, on the same page
that had an enthusiastic review of the college football season. I do not
suppose it did any harm, for the paper was probably not read by one of
the men it had set out to reform. But suppose it had been, how much
would it have appealed to them? Exactly the qualities of robust
manliness which football is supposed to encourage in college students
had been evoked by the trial of strength and skill which they had
witnesse