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. living after the hours have ceased to bring pleasure! When the play spirit has been lost and the future is only one long-drawn-out work, work, work, which taxes the body but does not engage the soul, then tragedy has reached its climax. Who is Responsible?-"For twenty years I have worked at the same task in the shop," said a spiritless man in Portland, Maine, as he reported his ineffectual efforts to procure work. In the morning he had gone to his labor and bent his back to the day's toil. At night he had returned tired to his home. He retired early, and the next morning awakened to repeat the monotony of the day previous. For him there had been no dissipation, no religious ecstacy, only working, eating, sleeping-working, eating, sleeping. By making himself a piece of machinery he had made it impossible for him to preserve the elasticity which accompanies life. As a piece of machinery he began to show signs of wear. He was replaced. He had hardened in the mold into which he had allowed himself to be placed. He could not then change himself, except by a miracle, and this he was not able to perform. "What has been your recreation?" he was asked. "My $10 a week was needed for my family," was the reply. Who sinned-this man or society, or both that his spirit became blind, that his play spirit died, that he was not kept fresh, strong, resourceful by recreation of the right sort? Recreation need not be a matter entirely, or largely, of dollars and cents. The play spirit kept strong throughout life, however, presupposes that the child has been taught resourcefulness in play, has learned how to turn his leisure time into advantage and power. Living, Yet Dead.-Youthful philanthropists of all ages have lectured on the improvidence of the poor, and have told interesting stories of clothing, given for warmth, pawned for the price of a theater ticket; of whole families going to the circus when there was no bread for supper. One who knew what was in the hearts of men and understood their need spoke wisely when He said: "Man does not live by bread alone." It is far more pathetic to find. families whose only yearning is for bread than it is to find families where bread money is paid for theater tickets. When the yearning for pleasure has disappeared the spirit is dead, life has fled. While there is life, however, while excitement is more highly prized even than food, there is hope. It may be that hopelessness is better than vice, but it is easier for the social worker to deal with the "love of pleasure gone wrong" than with deadness. The lowest inferno is reached when the mother, who should be the inspiration of her children, by her daily routine of drudgery in caring for her thirteen children, toiling for them early and late, has so sapped her own energy that all her labor gives them nothing but a physical return, and they see her only as a machine, a thing like the rest of the furniture of the home, with a few added attributes, such as motion. No Sundays, no holidays, no days off, no rest hours until finally she realizes she is dead, that her children and her husband have grown apart from her; unless they, too, are dead. Amid her gloom, in a moment of vision, she speaks to the social worker, who is trying to find a way of lightening her task and brightening her life: "You must not expect much of the likes of me-the life is all squeezed out." No earthquake, no railroad accident, no sudden catastrophe, involves such depths of tragedy as the slow paralysis of a human spirit, as gradually the unused parts of the spirit atrophy and die, until only the bare shell which is called the body is left. It is especially tragic when the person is conscious that the life is dying, and yet seems unable to prevent it. It is said that a certain insect fastens itself upon the apple tree and draws its nourishment from the sap. When it has fastened itself upon the tree and has ceased to move about, part after part drops off from disuse until the insect has lost all power except that of reproduction and of drawing its food from the tree. It thus comes merely to exist. Whether or not this be a true description of the insect, it is a true picture of some men and women and represents one of the greatest tragedies known-existence which seems to have become purposeless. The Tragedy of Childhood.-We know the longings of the poor boy for a good time. Men who have known in their childhood the depths of poverty and the cruelty of child labor tell us that it was comparatively easy to live on scanty food, that it was no hardship to go without an overcoat on winter days, because they were too proud to wear the old one, threadbare and with short sleeves. The hardship lay in the fact that they had to work while other boys of their age were at play. To miss the childhood games is far worse than to go hungry and cold. It is wrong for society to allow children to bear burdens beyond their years and |