as places of recreation deserves to be carefully considered. The school buildings, which have been heretofore largely relegated to the conventional forms of education, may be much more extensively utilized to develop the play instinct and various forms of relaxation or change essential to recreation.

It should be a fundamental business proposition in every city. that as many hours' use as possible should be secured from every building, no matter what is supposedly its object, since it does not pay the city to carry investment in buildings which serve even as an ornament to a district-although our schools are altogether too frequently merely an eyesore and a mortification.

Among the uses to which public school buildings may be put, in addition to the regular routine classroom work, are:

First, and so obvious that it hardly deserves to be mentioned in connection with the recreation side of the community life, the use of the schoolrooms at night as study rooms temporarily for children whose parents are undergoing the cruel process of being Americanized to two or three-room apartments. Upon the basis of substituting city property for a child's room at home and thereby following the precedent of subsidizing the employer of unskilled labor, this system is not defensible. From the point of view of giving the children of the immigrants who have recently come to American cities the individual attention in the preparation of their studies which their own parents are unable to give them, the system is not so entirely abhorrent and repulsive to the American sense of justice. This system of helping children in their studies inaugurated by settlements, I believe, is more a pedagogical problem than a recreation problem.

Second, the utilization of schools as social centers, which has reached its highest development in Rochester, where they have proven a most successful factor in democratizing the community and in creating a sense of social solidarity. It is merely an extension of the function of the school to include the interests of the adults and parents as well as the children of the community. This is superior, in my judgment, to the mere conduct of recreation centers, which is, however, a feature of the work of social centers, and an important item in the physical development of both the younger and older groups of a community.

Third. Roof gardens. These are often suggested as possible

places of escape from the torturing heat of the tenement and the danger of the street. Here, again, however, an appeal to the common sense of figures shows that this is merely a makeshift, and that where there are six hundred children to the acre or even two hundred, and but ten thousand or twelve thousand square feet of area available on the roofs, it is evident that the minimum of thirty or the maximum of eighty square feet of playground cannot be secured for children.

Fourth. Vacant gardens and lots may in many sections of a community be reserved pending the increase in their land values for playgrounds for children, or for cultivation. This custom has been extensively carried out in foreign cities, notably in Berlin, and to some extent in Chicago and a few other American cities. The potato patch of Detroit has made the late Governor Pingree as noted as the turnip farms made Lord Townshend. This may be condoned as a temporary expedient in congested districts of cities such as are found in most American cities, where the real estate speculator has cheerfully sacrificed the rights of the community to his own interests. and where the community has wilfully ignored the claims of its poorer citizens.

Fifth. The utilization of piers has already been referred to as a possible method of providing space for children whose parents are compelled to live in undesirable districts. Even with a normal distribution of factories, which involves the most economic improvement of water frontage, the use of piers will probably be quite feasible along a seashore and on large rivers, and there will be opportunity for the children to have the advantages of a "boardwalk.”

Sixth. Closed streets are often suggested as a substitute for parks and playgrounds, and, in the conflict now on between the real estate speculator and the citizens in American cities, it may be expedient to adopt this makeshift, and thus to get children used to the hard knocks they are bound to have on the streets. However, in view of the agitation for the curfew law, and in view of the folly of attempting to counteract the bad influence of the street by ethical instructions in the day or Sunday school, the irony of utilizing the street even in the daytime is fairly evident. Other makeshifts, such as the enlargement of fire-escapes on six-story tenements, and lattice-work playgrounds across narrow streets are possible.

We are not prepared to advocate the use of the yards of

police stations and fire stations, nor can the open squares around statues, monuments and circles, be made adequate for the needs.

Why, it may be asked, with the present unused assets of our public recreation facilities, should there be this temporizing and makeshift policy on the part of American cities?

In small towns there is no excuse whatsoever for the failure to provide adequate space under normal conditions for the children. of the neighborhood, but it is astounding to find that many of our smaller towns as well have very few public recreation facilities.

In New York City an expert in playgrounds has suggested that a six-, ten- or fifteen-story playhouse for children would be a Godsend in the built-up districts. Such suggestions are so utterly in defiance of the laws of health as to bring a blush even to the most callous. Such buildings and cramping of living quarters go hand in hand. It would seem that we have reached the point where, instead of attempting to make apology for existing conditions, it is high time to seek rather to emphasize the right of the community to be healthy, which means to have adequate space and to live by light and not by twilight, to bring up its children on square feet and not on square inches, and to keep them within reasonable distance of the ground.

The unused assets for public recreation facilities in the future are to be the ample spaces about the homes of the people, when housing conditions have become what they ought to be and when factories are properly distributed.

MUSIC AND REFRESHMENTS IN PARKS

BY PHILIP H. GOEPP,
Philadelphia.

In matters musical we in America have been wont to take our pattern from European, especially German, traditions, but, strange to say, music for the people in public parks is an exception to this rule. For reasons that are clear, though not patent on the surface, the achievement in this field in America, on distinctly different lines from out-door music on the continent, is a decided advance upon European institutions.

Some three years ago the writer made a cycling tour in Europe, mainly through Germany, crossing north to south from Bremen to Munich, with a special view to the study of the conditions of public music in summer. A startling conclusion of this survey was that nowhere in Germany is the established, regular provision of public music of as high a standard as in the United States in places like Willow Grove Park, Pa., or Ocean Grove, New Jersey. This does not take account of special seasons of opera in Baireuth and Munich, nor of the occasional Mozart festivals in Salzburg, Austria. Whether the cause be a sense of satiety from the high feasts of the winter season or a certain military policy of the government, the fact is clear that almost the only public music in summer in Germany is that of the brass band. It is probably true that the government practises not merely an economy in thus employing its regiment musicians, but that it perceives subtly the wisdom of preserving and encouraging a popular side of the military regime..

Only in one city the writer found an orchestra which alternated with a military band in the Tivoli Garden at Hanover. The effect of this monopoly of the program performed by the brass group and in turn of the taste of the audience is evident. It is to-day a frequent theme and a matter of serious concern to vigilant cities in Germany along with other strange symptoms of the times. Even in the one place where the orchestra alternated with the band, the programs of the former were decidedly inferior to those of the orchestral season at Willow Grove, Pa. To be sure, the writer's survey was not complete, and the time was three years ago. In the

kursaals of fashionable resorts there may be ambitious orchestral undertakings. But in the field of music, to which the great public has access, the writer's review is probably accurate. A great exception on the European field at large are the promenade concerts at Queen's Hall, London, under Mr. Wood, which are a successful popular institution of very high standard. A symphony concert program of the best possible design is regularly supplemented by a group of ballads performed by at least two singers-a model which it is well to bear in mind in America.

The question of refreshments is closely bound up with that of public musical entertainment in the open season. A study of the conditions, especially in Europe, discloses a curious, close relation between the two; whether this relation springs from past association or from inherent reasons is difficult and perhaps useless to determine. The question of refreshments can never be left out of sight in the whole consideration of public music. At the outset, however, it may be well to discuss the form of music that seems most desirable.

Consider the attitude of an average audience, gathered in a park, toward concerted instrumental music. A brass band is expected to be primarily rhythmic, to play mainly street or dance music with rat-a-ta-tat of drums or trip of waltz. It is very difficult with a mere band of wind instruments to play what we may call good music to such an audience, although technically it can be rendered very well. The same crowd will welcome a much better kind of music from an orchestra. The fact has been lately shown in Philadelphia, when last summer a band of wind instruments recruited from the Philadelphia Orchestra, aided by a municipal subvention, gave concerts on the plaza in the center of the city. The excellence of the initial programs met with almost no encouragement from the audience or from the municipal officials. And yet at the same time the people were crowding the trolley cars to hear the suburban orchestral concerts at Willow Grove, where a full symphony program was frequently rendered. The argument seems strong on the side of the orchestra, where it is practicable. It is quite true that stringed instruments are less effective and more sensitive than wind in the open air. But what is needed is, if not a building, at least a roof, as at Willow Grove, and that is needed even with a band, for permanent

use.