Record PBH Squad Treks to Settlement Houses

Skinny kids and five-by-fives, soot-covered scalawags and rosy-checked cherubs, kids from all the dark reaches of Boston and Cambridge's soapier side have one thing in common if they spend their idle hours in one of the metropolitan area's 44 settlement houses: they like "that Harvard guy" who comes down of an afternoon or evening to show them a good time.

"That Harvard guy" might be any of 220 students in the College who are on this year's record-high roster of the Phillips Brooks House Social Service Committee. Today nearly half of the entire PBH program, manning the settlement houses began inauspiciously before the turn of the century when there was no central agency in the College to correlate scattered social consciences. Religious groups alone recruited contingents--for charitable work in the old Sailor's Home. By the Nineties duplication of effort brought amalgamation in the Student Volunteer Committee, which eventually called itself the Social Service Committee and took up its present quarters when Brooks House opened in 1900.

Ten Thousand Men

In the course of half a century some ten thousand men of Harvard have worked through the Social Service Committee, including Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, who served as finance chairman. Although the totals credited to previous years exceed in certain cases this year's 220 figure, many counted tutors and entertainers, now both the province of separate committees themselves.

Beyond the basic attempt to meet settlement-house demand for an endless stream of day-to-day workers, holiday occasions call for gestures to match. Last night was Halloween: PBH whipped up a special corps of 30 men to fan out into key houses and organize celebrations. At the South Boston Boys' Club alone 1500 kids delighted in the old standbys of sawing girls in half, sipping eider, and calling forth taffy apples from a cauldron of goo. This afternoon is the Rutgers game: another squad of 30 leaders will corral a howling 200 anxious to see football played in the Stadium.

The hoopla surrounding whether Bingham would grant the 200 passes has a history. Before the war several thousands of boys found their way eased into each University grid contest. Supervision was casual to say the least; many of the tickets given out were resold by the shrewder, and of the kids who really went to the game, an acquisitive minority stripped up seat boards for sweet nostalgia's sake.

One of the specifications in the PBH letter to settlements concerning the game called for house troupe leaders who are "over 21 or Harvard students." No director would consider this patronizing. It is a recognized fact that the Harvard student is ahead of his age in leadership and responsibility, and for this reason he can command the respect of toughies and professional settlement workers alike. Brooks House President Charles J. Lipton '48 guesses that more than half of the volunteer workers in the average settlement house are Harvard men.

If the Crimsons have consistently turned out crackerjack performances it is not an accident. Norman H. Brooks '48, who together with Jay A. Meltzer '49 chairs the Social Service Committee, estimates that either he or one of his seven House supervisors spends a three-hour minimum in the recruiting, assigning, and final initiation of a new man. He must be thoroughly interviewed to determine his interests and his background. The chances are that he will come out on top during his first bout with a gang fresh in from the streets. But not, according to Brooks, "if he is a man who is too typically Harvard, complete with accent and fastidious dress. He must be able to speak their language, and above all, he must have a little athletic prowess, because those kids like to respect you as a strong man."

Mortality Rate is High

With a continuous mortality rate of men bowing out from either academic pressure or inability to cope with the youthful charges, Brooks must constantly look out for new faces. Usually he can tell at a glance how an individual will fare. The rule's exception came when an inarticulate Danish exchange student applied. Brooks hesitated. Later a Continental fencing daredevil was holding a popeyed crowd spellbound.

Withdrawals, coupled with some half-way participation, cut the actual core staff of the Social Service Committee down to a loyal 130 who are always on the job. This means large slices of week-day afternoons and evenings. Although settlement houses in the strict tradition are always available for the neighborhood (the name itself derives from the fact that social workers actually 'settled' in the poorer districts by living in the houses), the heavy traffic comes from 3:30 to 5:30 and from 7:30 until closing time. Kindergartens in the morning do not involve Harvard men. But teen-age evening canteens do, and the mixing of business with pleasure by the college buckos is not altogether unknown.

Trip to Gotham

Long-term close contact with the same group of boys sometimes produces a kind of camaraderie enduring as long as the more formal education in the University proper. Lloyd Marcus '47 found that his four shavers at the Margaret Fuller House near Central Square knew little about anything beyond their dozen-block radius. What started out at that point an attempt to "see Boston" through tours of radio stations and industrial plants soon took on larger proportions. Marcus figured the gang would barely escape ecstasy at the prospect of looking over New York City. With friend Norbert Jacker '49 in the driver's seat and empty beds at his home and his cousin's in Manhattan, Marcus carried off the lively venture of showing a Dead End quartet Times Square at night, St. Patrick's services on Sunday morning, the top of the Empire State and the Statue of Liberty. He won't forget what four foot five Gary Fonseca sputtered one day before the trip: "now don't work too hard, Mark, we d-don't want anything to happen to you!"

When the undergraduate scrambles in the outside world of people competing for real spoils the reward of extracurricular time spent in settlement houses can hardly lie in sentimental memories. The enduring value will consist in that measure of social perspective--of understanding the underdog--that must accompany intellectual preparations for democratic living. It is during College, declares James Ford '05, former associate professor of Sociology, that "broad human contacts" must enter a man's development. "Postponement until graduation," he wrote in 1940, "is unsafe, for sympathy so long held in check may become atrophied. A man's character is the sum of his habitual responses and each year it becomes more difficult to change."