Youth: For Its Own Sake

In the sunny resort village of Lake George, N.Y. (pop. 1,026), every tavern and roadhouse was doing S.R.O. business. Then, when the bars closed at 3 o'clock on Labor Day morning, 1,500 college students poured out on Lake George's main street, singing, yelling and tossing beer cans. Alerted to the danger, police and volunteer firemen blockaded the street, finally dispersed the rioters with jets of water from fire-truck hoses. That night 60 beer-filled students, many in their teens, were arrested.

"We Want Booze." What happened at Lake George happened, in varying degrees of violence, in dozens of cities, towns and resort centers across the U.S. last week. At Ocean City, Md., police used K-9 dogs to break up a mob of 2,000 beer-swilling students. Many had come to town with mischief aforethought: their cars bore signs that read, "Fill Your Flask and Come to the Second Annual Ocean City Riot." At Wildwood, N.J., where merrymaking teen-agers did $1,500 worth of damage to one hotel, police arrested 160 over the weekend, imposed $6,000 worth of fines for disorderly conduct. At Clermont, Ind., near the scene of the national drag-racing championship, liquor stores were closed on Sunday by state law, but 150 hot-rodders surged through the streets yelling "We want booze." More than 75 state police and sheriff's deputies were called up to control the mob. In the Cape Cod resort towns of Falmouth and Hyannis, 240 summering students were arrested for drunkenness, disorderly conduct and traffic violations.

Much of the violence was clearly a summer's-end, preschool spree. And in Manhattan—where nine policemen were hurt attempting to control the crowd that turned out for an annual West Indies Day parade in Harlem—the nerve-shreddingly humid heat was mostly to blame for trouble. But not all the rebellion could be explained away by back-to-books excesses or hot weather. The U.S. juvenile delinquency rate was up 6% last year over 1959, has more than doubled over the last twelve years. In Houston, where there has been little juvenile delinquency in recent years, police report a 30% increase in teen-ager arrests this summer. In San Francisco, recorded illegitimate teen-ager pregnancies are 64% above last year's totals.

Kids Without Standards. What most disturbed police and social workers was that so much of the current juvenile rebellion took the form of violence for its own sake. In Los Angeles last week, Gene Klossmer, 87, was treating Mrs. Edith Sanford, 70, to a ride along the street in his slow (4 m.p.h.), three-wheel electric cart, when two teen-agers in a 1951 sedan drove up behind him, gleefully pushed the unsteady cart along until it overturned. The elderly riders suffered broken bones and numerous cuts. The two youths drove on—laughing—and showed no signs of remorse when they were arrested later. "It's not against the law to push a cart, is it?" one asked, grinning. "The old people weren't hurt, were they?"

"This is typical of what we're up against," said Captain Jim Glavas of the Los Angeles police department's juvenile division. "A complete disregard for everything—you can't give a reason for it. It seems to be a national malady. The standards seem to have disappeared, and we have kids without standards."