and flavoring syrups, and operates laundries for the bathing suits and refectory tablecloths and napkins.

The fact that facilities are grouped, which in some communities are scattered, is worth noting. A public gymnasium, bathhouse, playground, and reading room if grouped in one "plant" not only save much administrative expense, but increase each other's usefulness. Each recreation center is in charge of a well-educated social director this being a recent advance step to insure and promote the best use and highest efficiency of the center. The staff includes two men instructors in charge of the men's and boys' indoor gymnasium and outdoor gymnasium, running track and ballfield; and two women instructors for the women's and girls' indoor and outdoor gymnasiums and the children's playground; attendants in the locker rooms, baths, refectory and swimming pool; and a force of janitors and laborers for the buildings and grounds. The Public Library Board supplies the books and attendant for the reading

room.

The recreation buildings constructed by the South Park Commission are with one exception built of rough-finished concrete and roofed with green or red tile. One is built of brick, which is also the material used in the three recreation centers established by the West Park Commission, and the one on the north side established by the Lincoln Park Commission.

The use of the facilities would astonish the pessimists who doubt whether the people will take advantage of opportunities. The total attendance on the ten recreation centers on the South Side, for example, numbered 5,175,500 for the twelve months ending November 30, 1907, and this figure does not include visitors or onlookers, but only those who made actual use of the facilities. This was divided as follows: 279,455 in the indoor gymnasiums, 900,948 in the shower baths, 2,164,104 in the outdoor gymnasiums, 654,213 in the swimming pools, 135,978 at social gatherings and lectures in the assembly halls, 28,492 in the smaller clubrooms, 608,585 in the reading rooms and 403,725 customers at 5 cents or more each in the refectories. At one of the West Side recreation centers, located in the midst of a great Polish colony, the attendance on the swimming pool has been as much as 6000 on a single day.

These statistics of attendance, however, are a poor criterion of success and efficiency in playground work. This has been pointed

out repeatedly by Mr. E. B. DeGroot, general director of field houses and playgrounds of the South Park Commission, a man who began his playground experience in the days of the six little schoolyards with their meager equipment, and who now is doing for Chicago work of inestimable value through his expert administration of the manifold service the South Side recreation centers render to the people. He emphasizes the quality of that service-its value not merely in keeping children and older people out of worse things they might be doing, but as a factor of high efficiency in promoting health, good character and public-spirited citizenship. He inspires his subordinates with the same spirit, and their esprit de corps testifies to the effectiveness with which he makes his high ideals felt in the daily routine. He has well said in one of his reports, "The best and most patriotic citizenship comes not as a result of compelling obedience to and respect for laws, but as a result of the practice of right ethical relations with each other, no matter what races, nationalities or classes are involved. This is the spirit of the playgrounds."

While the South Side recreation centers have all been located in neighborhoods which greatly needed their service, those established on the West and North sides have been placed in some of the most crowded districts of Chicago. For instance, one of the West Side recreation centers, eight acres in area, occupies two city blocks on which formerly 165 houses were crowded on 100 building lots.

The significance of the recreation centers is difficult to overestimate. They show most vividly the rapidity with which social progress can move. A decade ago, when Mr. George A. Parker, of Hartford, Conn., made an investigation of the lack of parks in industrial communities and described in his report his ideal of the socialized park, the description seemed almost Utopian. Yet in less than a decade it became a prophecy fulfilled in Chicago in a finer way than even he dared dream. The development of to-day, with its millions invested in recreation centers and playgrounds which cost. annually about $500,000 to maintain, is little short of marvelous when one remembers the struggle required to secure the first appropriation of $1000 from public funds eleven years ago.

The inception of Chicago's recreation enterprise has some aspects of peculiar significance. The South Park Commission, which