"Fighting an athletic battle," said the head director of the playground, "for the glory and honor of one's neighborhood, as a member of an organized team composed of one's neighbors, is a long step in advance of fighting for oneself against every one else in the neighborhood."

Governor Hughes, of New York, believes that the supervised playground is fertile soil upon which to grow a higher type of citizenship. He has said:

We want playgrounds in order that we may develop the sentiment of honor. In the playground the boy learns without any suggestion of rebellion against instruction and precept and preaching. He learns it because he does not want anybody else to cheat him and he is down on the boy that does not play fair. Thereby he maintains a standard which he must establish in the community, and particularly in our great cities. This is a safeguard of the country and of the institutions of our government.

The social significance of play reaches to the roots of community life. Our American cities are creating playgrounds because they are civic investments in vitality, citizenship and the prevention of crime.

THE PLAYGROUND FOR CHILDREN AT HOME

BY BEULAH Kennard,

President Pittsburgh Playground Association, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Constructive philanthropy must set the child in the midst of all its reasoning and planning. In the child alone is inspiration and hope for those who are weary of our present patchwork methods of social progress, for those who look for a better time when decisive victories shall be gained over the causes of dependence, degeneration and crime, and when the present discouraging struggle with effects shall end.

In communities where bad housing, bad food, bad labor conditions, bad recreational conditions and bad social and political ethics are allowed to exist, the child in the midst of these things has no reasonable chance to grow into a normal healthy member of society. All social effort must look toward radical changes in these conditions if it would be effective. Neglect of them is as stupid as a fight against typhoid fever or tuberculosis, while water. and air remain polluted.

One of the most fundamental defects in our public policy, until a very recent time, has been the lack of provision for play in the modern town and city. Now, however, a wave of enthusiasm is sweeping over the country and playgrounds are being opened in many places. Indeed they are becoming a factor in the betterment of families and neighborhoods that have become subnormal as a result of bad social conditions in general. When properly handled, playgrounds have given splendid service and have helped to solve many home and neighborhood problems, but when managed without intelligence and proper supervision, they have done nothing of the kind.

It requires but little investigation to see that many of the children in the congested sections of our towns and cities are below the average height and weight, have physical defects of sight, hearing and breathing, and are of low average scholarship and high average delinquency. Examination of the family life of these

children shows that, as a result of overcrowding and lack of family privacy, of long hours of labor and the pressure of modern industrial life, parents are unable to give their children the necessary care and attention, that the physical surroundings do not make for health and vigor, that the opportunities for the development of latent mental powers are wanting, and that there is little incentive for self-control or for the cultivation of moral strength. The excitement and the social advantages of the city streets are much more attractive to such children than are the dull crowded living rooms. In the case of immigrant families, the unaccustomed language and manner of living makes the parents still less able to cope with their self-assertive, Americanized children. Far too early the latter slip away from home to find their social life and recreation in the street. The street, aimless, distracting, good natured, not always vicious but always unstable and volatile, becomes their school of life. The street is the greatest disintegrating force in our modern civilization, yet children are turned loose upon it without other guide or restraint than their own undisciplined wills.

The children of the city streets may be roughly divided into two classes: the negative type, which lacks initiative, is conventional, timid, weak, and often anæmic physically and mentally; and the positive type, having initiative, vitality, daring imagination and strong will with an impatience of restraint. The former is unquestionably providing the material for the next generation of "under dogs," to be used, led and exploited by their more energetic fellows, to suffer injustice and deprivation, to go down before the first blast of serious misfortune and recruit the helpless and unhelpable. Beginning with a natural handicap, their burden of disability is constantly increased by a formless, stupid environment which provides no stimulus to endeavor, no challenge to the will, no opportunity for initiative, and no food for the imagination. Those in the smaller class who have excess energy, courage and will power sometimes rise above their surroundings, forge ahead in school and become skilled workmen and leaders. But unfortunately for these, also, the careless spirit of the street has its enticing charm, and their social supremacy in the gang draws them into political life rather than into productive work. The temptations to law breaking and excess are so many, and the legitimate amusements and

avenue for the expenditure of energy are so few that the juvenile court often receives the brightest of them before they are fairly started in life.

With both of these classes of children, the public school has been struggling with a growing sense of ineffectiveness. Our American school system was not designed to remedy the defects of homes and neighborhoods. Its methods are at present too formal and its machinery too limited, for successful character building, and it does not at all satisfy the child's social instincts. Moreover, its training is competitive and individualistic, with no provision for the social education which is so essential to modern life that for lack of it our overstrained commercial system is breaking down. The more alert among our teachers and superintendents realize that some radical changes in our schools must take place before they are capable of giving adequate service to socially impoverished communities.

In the meantime the playground has been called upon to supplement the schools, sometimes working with the educational forces, at other times, quite independent of them. In more than three hundred cities and in many towns and villages, more or less supervised playgrounds are now maintained. In spite of its popularity, however, the playground idea is far from being reduced to a satisfactory working plan. Some cities are even suffering a reaction from their first enthusiasm because the glowing pictures of happy, well-behaved children thronging these play centers have not always been realized. Until some of the pleasing superstitions concerning children are dissipated these ideals never will be realized, yet understanding will come slowly for there is nothing harder to change than a mistaken sentiment. One set of superstitions is concerned with the nature of children and the other with the nature of play, but both are opposed or indifferent to properly supervised and directed playgrounds.

This

"All children are good," say the sentimentalists, "except," after a few bitter experiences, "the naturally depraved and bad." is a modern version of the older doctrine of infantile depravity. They ignore the facts patent to parents and teachers, that the moral sense of children is rudimentary and their ethics chaotic, that so far from having fixed notions of right and wrong, they are gradually forming their ideals from the examples nearest them.

The friendships and occupations of children, particularly their plays, should be watched with unceasing vigilance, for by these are their moral notions defined and their character fixed. In the case of children who lack proper home training, the need for care is evidently much greater.

Another sentiment often expressed is that children are more natural and joyous in their play if let alone. Any mother should know that this is not true, that children love no playfellow so well as one of a larger growth, and if they do not ask us to join their games, it is because we are not good playfellows. The need and the desire for help is painfully obvious among children of lower vitality and social development. Those with dwarfed imagination and little initiative do not know what to do with themselves even when provided with play apparatus and they cannot associate with other children without jealousy, self-seeking and quarreling. The small number of games known to street children of to-day is a constant surprise to those associated with them. The games which they do play, require little skill and less organization. The older ones who should be ready for team play cannot keep together through the simplest ball game unless they are fortunate enough to have among them a natural leader who can exercise a wholesome authority similar to the iron rule and personal supremacy of the

ward boss.

If we had no other evidence than that of attendance, we should know that the supervised playground is more popular as well as more effective than that on which the children are allowed to "gambol like the lambs." In one city the directors in charge of certain playgrounds have objected to the admission of children under the leadership of members of the local "guild of play" because, as soon as these groups begin their games, the other children forsake all else and wish to join the personally conducted party.

When city and town playgrounds were first proposed, they seemed to present a very simple problem, almost too simple to be treated seriously. If children who lacked a place to play were given the space and a small amount of play apparatus, they would play; yet I have seen a well-equipped playground deserted on a bright summer morning while the children swarmed in the alleys and sat upon the curbstone outside. Again, I have seen playgrounds quite dominated by the rougher element in a neighborhood while the