ABSTRACT
Despite the findings of the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that juvenile crime had increased 45 per cent after World War II, which seemed to confirm the US Children's Bureau report of an increase in youthful misbehaviour, it is unclear whether American teens in the late 1940s and 1950s were actually committing more crimes or, if they were, what the exact nature of those crimes was. As many historians have noted, new worries about adolescents in the Cold War period may have encouraged adults to be more aware of what teenagers did, to actively look for evidence of adolescent offenses and to report those transgressions that occurred. In The Bully, Chick, the eponymous troublemaker, forces another boy to let him ride his new bicycle and later schemes to ruin a class picnic by throwing dirt on the park tables.
