Before the beginning: 1860-1906
Bad social conditions in 19th century New England moved concerned citizens to take action on behalf or children: the first Boys' Clubs opened. In 1860 the Industrial Revolution was in action and it affected Hartford, Connecticut in both good and bad ways. Factories and mills helped Hartford run. Many worked there for little pay with long hours and ended up having a shortened life expectancy.
The first Boys and Girls Club was created in 1906. I was called the Federated Boys' Clubs (FBC) and was made up of 53 organizations that united in Boston. The president was a social reformer, Jacob Riis.
Jacob Riis
The first president (1906-09) of Federated Boys' Clubs provided valuable name recognition for the cause at a crucial stage in its development. Jacob Riis was the most prominent social critic of the age, as well as an adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt, who termed Riis, "The best American I ever knew." TR's model American was born in Denmark and emigrated to the U.S. as a young man. After a hard start--experiencing the harsh side of immigrant life--Riis showed aptitude in the emerging field of photojournalism. Armed with one of the new flash cameras that could illumine the dankest recesses of a slum, as well as a pen fearless in exposing grim living conditions, his observations culminated in a book, How the Other Half Lives, that provided an unflinching look at the dirty, dangerous and often fatal lot of the urban poor. Riis showed harrowing images to audiences who (according to one observer) "moaned, shuddered, fainted and even talked to the photographs he projected, reacting to the slides not as images but as a virtual reality that transported the new York slum world directly into the lecture hall." When organizers of Federated boys' Clubs persuaded Riis to become their first leader, they had a true children's champion. "It is through the Boys Club that the street is hardest hit," Riis told Americans. "In the fight for the lad, it is the club which knocks out the 'gang,' and with its own weapon--the weapon of organization."
The next president was Fall River's beloved Tom Chew. He's been reluctant to sit at the head of the table, but Chew's first president's address, given at the Federated's 1910 annual meeting, succinctly outlined the cause's basic wants:
We need wider publicity.
We must help the small towns.
We need more Boys' Clubs.
We should maintain a library.
We need trained men.
We need bigger and better Boys' Clubs.
Thomas Chew
The Boys' Club Movement's second president (1909-1913) was as well known within the cause as his predecessor was in the world at large. tom Chew headed the Club in Fall River, Mass., since the day it opened and the history of that organization was his story for more than half a century. As a national leader, Chew was successful in promoting the idea that a regularly employed, full-time director was necessary to the effective operation of each Club. Chew came to America as a child from England, going to work in a Fall River cotton mill when barely in his teens. After 15 years there, he took up Club activity. When he died at 82, in 1944, it was at the summer camp of the Fall River Boys' Club.