weaker and more timid children stood around as helpless and inactive as they would have been in the street.

The modern phrase used by those dealing with the problems of organized philanthropy is "adequate treatment." Let us strive for the same adequacy in our playgrounds and see wherein they are deficient, if they have not come up to our expectations. All endeavor to deal with the human spirit must be compounded of two elements. in about equal proportions--personality and brains. In the playground which gathers unto itself the sensitive, open and responsive souls of children, these two elements are fundamentally necessary. Machinery cannot take the place of character here any better than it can in the church, the school or the reformatory.

The success of any playground depends, firstly and lastly, upon its directors. You can build a playground around a good director if you have nothing but a lamp-post for equipment, while you will have inertia and discord, even vice, upon the most extravagantly equipped playground without adequate and efficient direction. We are not restoring country conditions to the children for whom we fence off a town lot on which they may play. The town or city playground is an artificial child garden with all kinds of difficulties. and dangers on the other side of the fence, unnatural conditions from which we must protect our children as we would nurture the house or garden flowers which might have been safely left to themselves. in their native woods. We have not escaped from the street or destroyed its influence by fencing off these children's corners, but we have hemmed the wayward spirit within such bounds that it may be dealt with, if we are able.

It is not enough for us merely to defend the children from physical or moral dangers; the time is long past when a playground should be considered in this negative fashion. By carefully directed and organized play, we can build character, develop individuality and give a sound education in social ethics, which will counteract the spirit of the street better than any other agency we could devise. Under proper leadership, competitive games and "stunts" wil! arouse the ambition of the indolent and encourage the timid, constructive play will awaken the desire to make things and arouse the instinct of workmanship; dramatic play will appeal to the imagination; and team play will give the bolder spirits a chance while it restrains, by the democratic rules of the game, any bullying or

arbitrary government. This kind of efficient service cannot, however, be given by untrained or half-trained directors that are required to regulate the activities of large numbers of children of all ages and both sexes at the same time. The play director should not be a nurse, or a matron, or a policeman-he is there not to watch the children's games but to lead them.

Classification is as necessary in a city or large town playground as in a large school. In the country village an ungraded playground or school may be successful because of the small numbers, the children separate naturally into groups and the boys and girls play their own games while the little children may receive the major part of a director's attention. In a large playground, each general division should have its own play leader. The little ones need a kindergartner, or at least a woman who has had some kindergarten training, who can sing children's songs and play children's games, tell stories and provide simple occupation for little fingers. In some cities, these little ones are much neglected and, having no special play leader, they do not play many of the games suitable to their age, but dig rather aimlessly in the sand, swing or see-saw for a time and then either stand around watching, or wander away to get into mischief.

The older boys need a man, virile, resourceful, uncompromising, yet sympathetic, who will enforce fair play and the rules of the game, but will never give a boy up until the last expedient has been tried. The older girls who are usually not considered at all, need the influence of trained, enthusiastic, college women who will be able to give them ideals of self-reliance, self-restraint and social co-operation.

If we cannot supply all these leaders for a single playground, we should not lessen its value for the groups of children whose wants may be met by including other children who cannot be taken care of. It is better to have only a little children's playground, or one solely for boys or girls, as the case may be, and make its influence felt. Boys and girls over ten years of age should not be encouraged to mingle on the playground except under the most careful supervision and at exceptional times. Their games can be much better developed when they are in the different. groups. The play leader from this time should be of their own sex. The combination of a little children's playground with that

of the older sisters who are responsible for them, is frequently necessary, but it is most unfair and ineffectual to give the two groups the same treatment, or to expect one woman to divide her attention between basket-ball and kindergarten games. Through organization and co-operation among the children, a director's influence can be extended over a wide area, but this can be secured only when the children feel the director's personal interest and her identification with their activities. If she is distracted by conflicting duties, she cannot develop a social spirit in the playground; she can work only with units or small unrelated groups.

The class of children of which we have been speakingchildren who fail to "measure up" to our standard of American childhood and who seem likely to fall still farther from the standard of American manhood and womanhood, has become dangerously large in our country to-day. Wholesale immigration from countries having lower standards of living has contributed much of the original material, but the conditions of the immigrant's life after coming here are the really potent factors in creating this tendency to degeneration. Investigation has shown that, while some children have improved in physique and mental activity by transplanting, others have become stunted in both mind and body. This has been notably true of Italian peasants who have always lived an out-of-door life, and who suffer marked deterioration from overcrowding and from the artificial limitations of city life.

This great, careless, self-satisfied country of ours is being aroused to consciousness of the fact that it is no longer the paradise of the poor as well as the promised land of the oppressed. Our time-worn democratic policy of "letting alone" has been sadly overworked in every direction, but it is no longer even respectable when applied to children. The playground idea is a mighty protest against the flagrant inequalities of opportunity for those who are too young to appreciate their theoretical equality and freedom. Let us not repeat the errors of yesterday by expecting results without means to secure them, efficiency without training or success without carefulness.

These children are subnormal, but not abnormal; they are neither vicious nor degenerate in any way; they need only a fair chance to become Americans of whom we may be proud. The playground is not the only thing needed to check the present

appalling waste of childhood, but it can help and supplement all other efforts, and it has a peculiar advantage. In other attempts. at social betterment the agency necessarily works from the outside, and the initiative of those who are helped becomes at best a secondary cause; while the playground gives only that which is the right of every child-freedom and leadership. The child owes no man anything but to become a man, and that he sets about doing as promptly as possible. When we provide the right play directors and do not give them too many problems at once, they soon discover the varied phases of the play life of a child. They see that it does not consist merely in romping or in games. The child rejoices in overcoming obstacles and in testing its strength and skill by difficult feats. Its creative energy finds expression in sand or clay or wood or raffia, and its dramatic instinct repeats adult life in a hundred ways.

To open a playground is to start a life process or to discover a new continent. Those who have entered the field with reluctance and a quizzical scepticism, have soon fallen under its fascination and will not leave the children's world for any other vocation. As they see the eagerness, the responsiveness and the rapid development of their charges, they realize, with humility, that they are sharing in the wonderful work which Charles Kingsley says that Mother Carey is doing at the other end of nowhere. They are not making things but making things make themselves.

THE UNUSED ASSETS OF OUR PUBLIC RECREATION

FACILITIES

BY BENJAMIN C. MARSH,
New York City.

Of the fifteen cities, commencing with New York and ending. with Washington, D. C., which had in 1907 a population of 300,000 or over, only four had over five per cent. of the city's land area in public parks. The average for the entire group was 3.8 per cent. In the second group of twenty-nine cities--the largest, Newark, N. J., and the smallest, Grand Rapids, Mich.—having a population of 100,-. 000 to 300,000, only six had more than five per cent. of the city's land area in public parks, while the average for this group was only 32 per cent. In the third group of forty-seven cities having a population of between fifty and one hundred thousand, the average park area was but 1.9 per cent. of the city's land, and the sixty-seven cities having a population of from thirty thousand to fifty thousand in 1907 averaged only 1.4 per cent.

Recognizing the tendency of population to concentrate and even to congest in every one of these cities, it is apparent that the existing recreation facilities must be utilized to the maximum if the city is to secure the largest returns for its investment.

The per capita expenditure for recreation in these four groups of cities was fifty-one cents in 1907, ranging from sixty-eight cents per capita in the first, thirty-six cents per capita in the second, thirty cents in the third, to as low as twenty cents per capita in the fourth or largest group of cities with populations between thirty thousand and fifty thousand. In the first two groups the cost of land for outdoor recreation purposes is a much more serious factor than in the smaller cities.

A serious danger arises in attempting to advocate the maximum use of recreation facilities that we shall ignore the right of a citizen, or at least forget temporarily his right, to have some diversity in his recreation. Among the institutions in our cities of which we first think as providing opportunity for recreation are playgrounds and parks. In every town with any considerable water frontage, whether on a river, a lake or on salt water, the possibility of the use of piers