sections. It is suggested as the center for a group of three buildings devoted to science, art and literature. Playgrounds, recreation centers and larger parks are, after all, but vehicles for the better expression of the people's recreative spirit. To promote this, and give some glimpse of its many forms in physical activity and of its meaning for a city, a great play festival is annually held by the Playground Association of Chicago, a voluntary organization of people interested in extending the playgrounds and recreation centers, in promoting their efficiency and in stimulating the play and recreative spirit. So successful have these occasions been that many small neighborhood play festivals are now held each year in the playgrounds and recreation centers. The large festival in 1909 brought together no less than 3,100 participants and three crowds of onlookers for the morning, afternoon and evening sessions, aggregating a day's attendance of over 30,000, including many visitors from other cities. All ages and nationalities are represented among the participants. Games of childhood, activities of the playgrounds and schools, athletics, and a great variety of peasant games and national and folk dances are shown. The latter are performed in many cases by people from the immigrant population of Chicago, some of whom have so recently arrived that they speak no English. A great variety of peasant costumes adds picturesqueness to the scene, which is usually in an open meadow of a larger park. The spirit which the Playground Association has sought to foster among all who participate is one of co-operation through each nationality and period of life, from childhood to maturity, contributing what it can to the richness of American play. The day is prophetic of the social spirit that will one day permeate the commingled nationalities and classes, which, in the modern industrial city, now crowd and jostle each other. We have only begun to appreciate what provision for public recreation may contribute to the greater happiness of our community life. "For descriptive articles, illustrated, on the Chicago Play Festivals, see "The Survey," November 6, 1909, "Charities and The Commons," August 1, 1908, and August 3, 1907. PLAY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS1 BY HOWARD S. BRAUCHER, Secretary Playground Association of America, New York City. No person can work in an associated charities long without witnessing tragedy. No artist can paint pictures quite like those indelibly impressed upon the memory of a social worker: A self-supporting father and mother, both under thirty-five, out of work, yet afterwards proving their willingness to labor; three little children; two rooms up one flight; family without food for three days because they were too proud to beg. Four children under thirteen found in zero weather going to school without overcoats, mittens, or even underclothing; blue with cold, yet cheerily replying, "We are used to it." A refined family of five, the man a clergyman's son, dejectedly reading a notice of eviction from their home, and not knowing where they were to spend the night. A woman suffering great physical pain for three years for want of an operation because she kept putting off visiting the doctor until there should be money to pay. "The children needed so many things," she said. Because the industrial depression forced her to receive aid, she was in mental distress, but at this time was willing to be treated by a physician, and happy when once again she was free from the needless physical pain. Hunger, cold, loss of shelter, and needless pain-surely these are tragedies. Yet the climax of tragedy is not reached until one has unveiled another picture—that of a dwarfed, starved, unresponsive, joyless life. The other pictures have dealt with externals; this one deals with the spirit itself. Here is tragedy. The body is found living after the spirit is dead. Lack of food, fuel, even the lack of a home, is no such tragedy as the lack of life. Death by accident is for the moment terrible, but not nearly as tragic as the gradual death of the spirit while the breath still remains in the body to see an individual or a family going through the forms of 1An address delivered at the Maine Conference of Charities and Corrections, held at Bangor, Me., October 18, 1909. |