ABSTRACT
It is not because the boys of the middle and wealthier classes are native white that they do not form gangs but because their lives are organized and stabilized for them by American traditions, customs, and institutions to which the children of immigrants do not have adequate access. The gang, on the other hand, is simply one symptom of a type of disorganization that goes along with the breaking up of the immigrant's traditional social system without adequate assimilation to the new. […] The extensive demoralization which exists in the Polish-American community is a good example of the cultural frontier which provides fertile soil for the development of the gang. Intense pride of nationality, which has sometimes been described and explained as an ‘oppression psychosis’, has often led the Poles in America to concentrate their energies on the development of Polish spirit and patriotism at the sacrifice of adjustment to American society. There is a high degree of disorganization in Chicago among the poor Polish populations. (Thrasher 1927: 217‘18)
