The municipalization of play and recreation; the beginnings of a new institution

Preface

My work as superintendent of city schools forced me into this problem. The recreational life of small cities and towns is so unsatisfactory, so wasteful, and so morally dangerous, that I was led to attempt to understand it. My master's thesis, "The Motion Picture Show with Special Reference to its Effects on Morals and Education," increased my interest in the human struggle for wholesome and developmental exercise of fundamental instincts. This little book is an attempt to show one tendency in this struggle.

The manuscript of this book was accepted, in 1917, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska. It is published as written at that time with a few minor changes and additions. Some new matter has been introduced in chapters ii, iii, and iv. However, no attempt has been made to follow the problem through and after the World War. Social conditions were normal in 1917.

Ideas and facts have been taken freely from others. Credit in no case has been purposely omitteS.

The writer here expresses his deep obligation to many city officials, and other persons, who have so kindly answered questions, and sent helpful material. To Dr. G. W. A. Luckey for his wise direction, and to my wife for her patient and skillful assistance in the preparation of the manuscript, I am especially indebted.

July, 1922 JOSEPH R. FULK

Table Of Contents

Page

Preface , ...III

Chapter I Introduction 1-4

Leisure and work 1

Labor, congestion, and neglect of leisure 1

The American city and its advantages „ 2

Leisure, a serious city problem.. 2

A new institution forming in the city ..., 3

Purpose of the following chapters 3

Play versus work 3

Play, recreation, leisure, as used 4

Chapter II Active Recognition of the Social Value of Play and Recreation 5-14

Play and work, problems of civilization 5

. Democracy and leisure related 5

Labor, leisure, and dissipation 6

Power of environment 6

Conditions growing out of immigration and congestion 7

Recreation a necessary human need 8

Social changes taking recreation from the home 8

Private enterprise exploits the need 8

Rise of Playground and Recreation Association of

America 9

Early city play centers 9

The schools recognize recreation 10

The community center movement „ 10

Recreation legislation 11

Recreation surveyed 12

City planning and recreation 13

Public interest and support of recreational means 13

Industrialism fosters recreation 14 vi MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION

Chapter III Page Factors Forcing Public Recognition of Play and Recreation J 15-24

Slow recognition of recreation as a social problem 15

Perverted forms of recreation 16

Problem of human living together 17

Results of urbanization 17

Shorter labor day and unprotected leisure 19

Child labor laws and child idleness 20

Commercialization of leisure 20

Failure of school and church to solve the problem 21

Recreational prestige of the big city .22

Labor's need for wholesome recreation 22

Summary 23

Chapter IV Municipal Recognition and Administration of Play and

Recreation . 25-37

Progressive meaning of public utilities 25

General administrative plans . 25

Recreation commission and superintendent 26

The Detroit plan, the Recreation Commission 26

Playground Department, Los Angeles.... 31

Cleveland, Department of Public Welfare 31

Superintendent of Recreation, Dayton 32

Board of Park Commissioners, Springfield 32

Chicago's complicated system.... 33

Duplication and lack of coordination 33

Forms and tendencies in municipal management 34

City expense for recreation 34

Summary „ 36

Chapter V A Study of the Public Play and Recreation Facilities of

Forty-Six Small Cities and Villages of Nebraska.. 38-88

A. Introductory — Some Recent Investigations of Municipal Recreation ..38-43

The survey movement..... 38

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

Page

Definition and grouping of surveys 38

Purpose of this study 39

Typical small town studies 39

Purpose of these brief reviews 43

B. State Regulations Relating to Recreation 43-45

Growth of recreation legislation 43

Native legislation , 44

Positive and constructive laws . 44

Permissive laws .... 45

C. An Inventory of the Public Play and Recreation

Facilities of the Forty-Six Cities and Villages.... 45-59

Population of the towns . 45

Density of population of the state 46

Distribution of the towns 46

Sources of data used i 46

Value of the mayors' replies 49

Grouping of recreation activities —..... 49

Governmental agencies , — 50

Commercial agencies , 51

Incidental Agencies , 52

Religious, philanthropic, and social agencies 53

Typical recreation facilities , 54

Attitude of mayors toward recreation 56

Conclusion . -58

D. The Utilization and Inadequacy of the Public Play

and Recreation Facilities in the City and Vil-

Author's right to interpret data... 59

Public school recreation , 59

Libraries and recreation 60

Value of open air concerts 60

Uses of city halls \ 61

Billiards popular and under ban 61

The passing of traveling shows 61

Baseball and carnivals 62

Constancy of incidental agencies 62

Ancillary use of recreation 63

Relation of recreation to religious life 64

Church existence takes church energy 65 viii MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION

Page

Recreational trend of lectures, etc » 66

Semi-private agencies 67

Uses of community buildings 67

Summary „ 68

E. The Evaluation and Meaning of the Complex and Over-Lapping Agencies of Public Play and Recreation , . 68-88

Systemless and inefficient recreation , 68

Purpose of this division ... 68

Towns studied are rural 69

Ruralness of Nebraska '. 70

State population typically American 70

National social consciousness 71

Travel, education, and literature as factors 71

Commercialism and big city prestige 72

Social betterment movements 74

The community Christmas tree 74

Development of community music „ 75

Music and industry .:. „.. 77

The social center a rediscovery , 78

Local clubs 79

Strength of social forces in small and large cities.. 79

A conception of the development of civilization 80

Metropolitan urbanization 81

Home and congestion in small towns 82

Industrialism and the home .... 83

Other factors of family disintegration 83

Recreation a free-lance agency 84

Summary of factors weakening the home 84

Hinderances to social readjustments ~ 85

Home becomes secondary „ 86

A new institution in the margin of leisure 87

Conclusion - 87

Introduction

"Economists have been for a long time trying to discover how best to employ the energies of men. Ah ! if I could but discover how best to employ their leisure ! Labor in plenty there is sure to be. But where look for recreation ? The daily work provides the daily bread, but laughter gives it savor. Oh, all you philosophers! Begin the search for pleasure! Find for us, if you can, amusements that do not degrade, joys that uplift. Invent a holiday that gives everyone pleasure and makes none ashamed. ,, (107: 23-24.)

Leisure is relief from work. Work, in ordinary usage, is whatever is purposely undertaken by an individual that "he would not at the time undertake for its own intrinsic satisfyingness." (114: 10.) Protected, protracted work, mental and muscular, is a product of modern civilization and a measure of its development. Unprotected, protracted work, chiefly muscular was the basis of ancient civilizations. The protection of work and the consequent diffusion of leisure are characteristic of modern democratic civilizations.

The conservation of labor is a new government function that the state has been forced to assume, largely because of the social complications arising from the congestion of population in great cities, and the encroachments of modern industrialism. It has grown up through the city. At first it was essentially a municipal problem.

Governmental intervention has not only diffused leisure, but has added to leisure time. A shorter labor day, and child labor regulations have, perhaps, contributed most to these changes. Though leisure has been diffused and increased, no institution has assumed responsibility for its utilization. Protection of leisure has not at all kept pace with protection of labor. The complicated and troublesome social situation of the city has forced some recognition of the problem of public leisure by municipal government.

The American city is redeeming itself. "A new spirit pervades the city of today — a spirit of hopefulness and genuine interest in the common welfare. A quarter of a century ago, and less, writers were deploring the failure of American cities." (89: 1.) In 1916, Dr. Munro stated that American cities had made more progress in "clean and efficient government" during the last decade than in the half century preceding. (72:1) Dr. Wood reports that standards of living and health in the cities have risen above those of the country ; that "rural school children are less healthy, and are handicapped by more physical defects than children of the city schools, including all the children of the slums" ; and, that for the years 1910-1915, the general death rate of New York City was lower than the death rate of rural New York during the same period. (120: 232-33.) The large cities have more effective pure food laws, and purer water than rural sections. The congestion of the heterogeneous peoples in industrial centers, which really make the American cities, has forced municipal recognition and solution, or attempted solution, of these and many other related social problems.

The extension of the functions of city government has been rapid and important during the last half century. The municipalization of such public utilities as water, sewers, and light, is a commonly accepted practice. Some provisions for public leisure have long been made by cities through the ordinary channels of government. A wide extension of these provisions has been made in many cities within recent years. However, no attempt has been made in any city to provide and control all means for public play and leisure.

The leisure problem, in all its ramifications, is still the menace of the city. Conservative estimates report that at least eighty per cent of all offenses against society are committed during leisure time. Slowly the cities are assuming responsibility and providing facilities for the care of public leisure. As home, church, vocation, education, government, has each built up around itself a complex of customs, regulations and equipment for satisfying human wants and needs — in short, an institution — so is public play and leisure building about itself the bulwark, and the machinery of a new institu-

INTRODUCTION 3

tion, which may be called Recreation, or Play and Recreation. Chiefly through the government of cities is this institution forming. The control and management of many of the activities that will when understood and organized make the new institution, are at present passing over into the recognized channels of city government — are being municipalized. The municipalization of these activities marks the beginning of the institutionalizing of them. For the five great agencies or institutions of civilization — the church, the home, the school, the vocation, and the state — are not able, either individually or collectively, to take care of the new social situation introduced into modern civilization by the development of these activities. Just as education as an institution has grown out of and through the home, the church, and the state, so is recreation as an institution growing out of and through all the other institutions. The municipality is recreation's most rapid growing point at present.

The five major institutions of civilization are not five tight compartments into which the elements of civilization may be placed, all of each element in one compartment. The school does not provide all education. The municipalities will not provide for all recreation. The other agencies will continue to provide play and recreation facilities. The municipality, and finally the institution, Recreation, will provide and control all public play and recreation facilities, and will attempt to eliminate all that are unwholesome, whether public or not, and will build up a developmental community system of public play and recreation. It is the purpose of the following chapters to show that such an institution, with powers and ideals as above stated, is in process of formation in the cities of the United States.

All relief from work is not play or recreation. Play and recreation are not all of leisure, neither are they all leisure. Hard and fast lines have not been drawn between leisure and work ; nor between work and play ; nor between play and recreation; nor between recreation and dissipation. The fact of play is best exemplified in the unrestrained, spontaneous activities of children. We recognize the play of children when we see it, and we recognize the feeling of play in ourselves when we experience it. The origin and significance of play are not so evident. No attempt will be made here to enter into a discussion of the theories of the origin of the tendency to play. Play is a normal activity of the child, and its free exercise is necessary for complete development. Recreation in some form is necessary for normal adult life. The term, play, includes the free activities of children, and the pleasurable activities of children and adults that are not included in work or recreation. Play may exhaust child energy as work does adult energy. Recreation, so-called, may dissipate adult energy, and break down character.

Recreation is a re-creating — a refreshing and recuperating of the energies of mind and body after work. John Dewey is right when he says of recreation: "No demand of nature is more urgent or less to be escaped. The idea that the need can be suppressed is absolutely fallacious and the Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has entailed an enormous crop of evils/' (26: 241-42.)

Some work is really not work for all who perform it. "Whatever one does for the pure love of it, that is play." (28a: 164.) The mental attitude of the worker largely determines for him whether the activity is work or play. This mental attitude is governed, in a great measure, by environment. Again, the words of Dewey are fitting. He says : "In their intrinsic meaning, play and industry are by no means so antithetical to one another as is often assumed, any sharp contrast being due to undesirable social conditions." (26 : 237.) Work done as play is not true recreation. Play and recreation may on account of misdirection, overstimulation, and excess become forms of dissipation. These chapters deal with public forms of play and recreation in cities of the United States.

Though play may be creation as well as recreation, and leisure may be neither, to avoid repetition, the terms are often used interchangeably throughout this discussion. The institution, comparable in importance to the home and the school, which it is contended is now in process of formation, is called Recreation.

CHAPTER II Active Recognition of the Social Value of Play and Recreation

With primitive man play and recreation were not separated as distinct parts of his activities. He probably played at his work or worked at his play indifferently. Recreation was fortuitous. There were no rules outside of his own desires and needs except those fixed by nature's limitations.

The problem of play and recreation has grown out of civilization. The civilized adult plays and requires recreation, because the social requirements of a complicated civilization compel him to work at stated intervals, and usually at definite narrow tasks. Social organization fixes his periods of leisure, but does little toward conserving and caring for them. Children at present play for the same reasons that they have always played, but usually with civilization's handicaps. Proper facilities are often wanting, and free periods are interfered with by institutions that are over-zealous to make adults of them, or monetary profit from them.

The development of democracy has increased the margin of leisure. Probably, a larger proportion of the population of the United States has longer and more frequent periods of play and recreation, than have ever before been so used by any highly civilized people. It is the need of the conservation and the protection of this increased margin that makes the recreation problem. External pressure or coercion may make an activity, though short in duration, drudgery and fatiguing. This tends to pervert nature's demands for relaxation, and dissipation may follow. (26: 240.) Machines, excessive specialization, vocational misfits, and the efficiency drive of industrialism, augment this tendency. If there is little or no self expression in work there is not natural self expression in leisure. When external pressure is removed, there is a tendency to go too far in the opposite direction, and the liberty of leisure leads to self indulgence — to perverted leisure, to dissipation — before the balance is restored.

Man is not a machine. Cessation from regular action of work is not followed by regular inaction of rest, which is of use only as a preparation for another period of work. This relation between work and rest was approximated when labor was a slave's lot, and the laborer was pushed to the limit of physical exhaustion by long hours and heavy work. But even a horse, after the hardest day in the fields, will, relieved of his harness in the evening, roll with evident pleasure on the cool grass in the orchard pasture, and afterwards kick up his heels in play.

The conception of the manual laborer as a work machine, whose sole function was to provide means for the existence and enjoyment of a leisure class, is at least as old as Greek civilization. Today there is unequal distribution of leisure, but leisure is so distributed in the United States that some of it reaches practically all laborers. In many cases it is the prime motive that gives the urge to work. In such cases, man endures that he may enjoy, and the quality of his uncontrolled enjoyment or leisure is apt to be governed in a large measure by the quality of his work, as it appeals to him.

The social values of play and recreation have received renewed attention in recent years because studies of environmental influences with reference to character formation have modified somewhat the generally accepted notions of the relative importance of heredity and environment. The fact is being more and more fully realized that environment must provide the stimulus and opportunity to develop fully the best inherited traits, and that wholesome stimulating environment may counteract untoward hereditary tendencies. (64: 274.) The careful records of the Glasgow Municipal Authorities provide a striking confirmation of the newer theories of heredity. Six hundred thirty children from the worst possible stock and f roinmean and vile surroundings, were taken when very young from that city andwere sent, at the expense of the municipality, to the country to be reared in ordinary homes. For years the record of these children was carefully kept and only twentythree of the number went wrong. "A smaller number than if they had been the sons of ministers or professors," asserts the Poor Law Inspector of Glasgow. All this is but an exemplification of the old Scotch educational maxim :

"Thraw the willow when it's green Between three and thirteen."

(1: 36 and 62: 208-13.) In general, records of charitable institutions show that about 85 per cent of the children of ne'er-do-wells and criminals, who are placed in good homes

ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 7

in early childhood, develop into good citizens. Juvenile delinquency was decreased nearly fifty per cent in the Stock Yards district of Chicago by the introduction of public playgrounds. (71: 370.) There is strong evidence that juvenile delinquency is about one-third a eugenic and two-thirds a euthenic problem.

Lombroso says that where manufacturing crowds agriculture, and still more where it displaces it, the number of crimes increases immediately. (68: 130-32.) In the United States from 1850 to 1900, the percentage of urban population (8,000 and up) increased from 12.5 per cent to 33.1 per cent. From 1880 to 1900 the urban population (2,500 and up) rose from 29.5 per cent to 46.3 per cent. The 1920 census gives the urban population (2,500 and up) as 51.9 per cent of the whole population of the United States. Almost one-tenth of the people live in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago ; more than one-fourth live in 68 cities, each having a population of 100,000 or more. Kellicott states that prisoners per 100,000 population increased during the years 1850 to 1904 from 29 to 125 ; and that murders and homicides per million of the entire population nearly trebled from 1896 to 1911; also that the ratio of known insane to total population rose from 183 per 100,000 in 1880 to 225 per 100,000 in 1903. He shows also that there was during these periods a rapid increase in defectives and unfit generally. (63: 29-33.) There is no implication here that crime and social degeneracy are the results of the rapid growth of cities. However, the environmental changes have come so quickly that society has not been able to adjust itself. The heavy heterogeneous immigration during the periods considered has complicated the situation, for as D. F. Wilcox puts it in his "Great Cities in America," "every American city is, in its population elements, a world city." (118 : 9.) The influx of millions of foreigners from all parts of the world, who came into a strange and unusual social environment, has added to the confusion of the rapid urbanization, which was not at all understood by the native population. The large foreign element in a new environment, and the Americans themselves in a changing and mysterious environment, created a unique social problem, the solution of which is yet to be found. The problem seems to be largely one of environment. The essential nature of the peoples involved has not changed much in a half century. What people do, has changed. The environment has changed most. Probably least effort has been expended in attempting to control the influences that play upon life continually. Heredity, function, and environment are all the factors of life that are known. They are the determining factors. (113: 3.) The labor problem, in its productive and financial aspects, is more on the public mind than eugenics, and eugenics until quite recently probably received more scientific and popular attention than euthenics.

"Play is the most universal activity in the world." (85: 110.) Recreation is an essential human need. They are both necessary to complete development and full efficiency. They know no race or nationality. Provision for their proper developmental exercise is an important part of the problem of euthenics, especially in the modern city.

One cannot imagine a social situation in which play and recreation are not, at least in part, cared for by the home. There is a tendency among social reformers to minimize the home or almost neglect its influence, with reference to certain social problems. Certainly social changes and conditions within recent years have taken many play and recreation activities from the home.

Formal education has at last recognized the significance of developmental play and recreation in child and youth training, and many of the former home activities in these lines have been transferred to the school, and utilized as educational material.

The church is beginning to utilize play and recreation as aids in religious development and training. Industrialism, recognizing the commercial and moral dangers of restoring the balance when released from monotonous work, often provides means of play and recreation for employees. Both of these agencies have detracted from the home's play and recreation strength.

Private enterprise has been left virtually free to exploit nature's need of play and recreation, so commercialization is the characteristic and most common means of providing for these activities outside of the home.

At the National Education Association, in 1902, in discussing "The School as a Social Center," John Dewey said: "I believe that there is no force more likely to count in the general reform of social conditions than the practical recognition that in recreation there is a positive moral influence

ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 9

which it is the duty of the community to take hold of and direct." (27:381-2.)

In 1906, the Playground and Recreation Association of America was organized at Washington, District of Columbia. It was at first called a playground association, and its interests were almost entirely with playground development. The first annual Playground Congress met at Chicago, in 1907. There were two hundred delegates present from thirty cities. The proceedings of this congress are published in a ninety-five page volume. The proceedings of the second congress fill a volume of four hundred fifty-six pages. A conference of city officials was a feature of the second meeting. In October, 1916, the eighth session of the association, called the National Recreation Congress, met at Grand Rapids, Michigan. There were present over seven hundred delegates from one hundred seventy-eight towns and cities. There were eighty persons on the program. Information concerning the work of the congress was sent to a selected list of 22,000 persons.

Zueblin in his ''American Municipal Progress" states that a playground was established in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1872. (124: 297.) Rainwater in his "The Play Movement in the United States," after characterizing the "play movement" as a movement that "seeks to bring about adjustments through the organization of social activities," concludes that the movement began in the United States "with the sand piles of Boston in 1885." (89a : 11 and 27.) By 1900 ten cities had established playgrounds. From 1900 to 1906, twenty-six cities recognized recreational needs in the same way. (122a: 485.) The 1916 Year Book of the Playground and Recreation Association of America shows that during 1915 there was playground and recreation work, regularly conducted under paid supervision, in 3,294 playground and recreation centers of 432 American cities. During July and August, 1915, the total average daily attendance at these centers was almost one million. (122: 383- 386.) H. S. Curtis states that the city of Chicago, in 1904, through the Metropolitan Parks Commission, issued the first municipal playground plan in the United States. (21: 496.)

The Index of the Reports of the National Education Association for the first fifty years of its existence, 1857-1906, lists five topics on the various phases of play. These five topics cover thirty pages of the reports from 1898 to 1906, inclusive. The topic, "Playgrounds for the Poor in the Cities of England," fills five pages of the report for 1893. (74: 148.) The index of the reports for the half century have no other mention of playgrounds. Two articles, one in 1901, and one in 1902, deal specifically with the public school as a social center. (74: 177.) At present an equipped supervised playground is a recognized part of a complete school. Schools, colleges, and universities through their playgrounds, athletic fields, gymnasiums, stadiums, competetive games, and various organizations for caring for student life outside of regular classrooms, recognize the seriousness of the leisure time problem. Physical education is secondary in these various activities.

The school house is in many places becoming a real social center, though the movement as we now know it began no farther back than 1907. The complexity and variety of activities that are grouped around the social center, or as it is now styled, the community center movement, are shown in C. A. Perry's handbook, "Community Center Activities." (87.)

The nation-wide diffusion of the community center idea has resulted in the organization of a National Community Center Association, which held its first conference at New York City in 1916, and its second conference at Chicago in April, 1917. At the second conference there were present nearly five hundred registered delegates representing twenty-six states. (20: 12-14.) "The Community Center" was originally a monthly magazine issued by the association, "Published in the interest of Community Centers everywhere." The first official number appeared in June, 1917. (20.) At present "The Community Center" is published bi-monthly by The National Community Center Association, New York City. It calls itself "A news and discussion organ for all who are endeavoring to enrich life through community action." A wide range of activities is fostered by this association. Many of them are entirely recreational. Though the recreation problem is not the whole problem of the community center, it is a large part of it. "The community center seeks to provide opportunities for the people to know how to live." (99: 15.) To do that recreation must be cared for.

Community Service, Incorporated, which grew out of War Camp Community Service, an organization approved by the federal government during the World War, states in its charter that its object is, "the development in all American cities, through public and private agencies and by every

ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 11

appropriate means, of better moral and industrial conditions, health and welfare, play and recreation, higher and more adequate community and neighborhood expression, and a better social life-" (2a : 402.)

In 1894, the National Municipal League was organized for the purpose of bringing about much needed reforms in the government of American cities. In 1899, this league adopted a reform program called the Municipal Program. Parks and playgrounds were merely named among the attainable means by which a city should serve its citizens. (119: 225-26.) This is an early and an important theoretical recognition of the city's responsibility for providing for public leisure.

Interest in all phases of city government has increased rapidly in the last twenty-five years. Twenty-five years ago not more than three or four of the largest universities and colleges of the United States gave separate courses in municipal government. In 1908, such courses were offered in forty-six institutions ; in 1912, in sixty-four ; and in 1916, in ninety-five. (72a: 565-573.) Knight and Williams in their "Sources of Information on Play and Recreation," 1920, list sixty universities, colleges, and normal schools in the United States that offer both regular and summer courses for recreation and community leaders. (65a: 39-41.) "The Cardinal Principles of . Secondary Education" issued by a committee of the National Education Association in 1916, places "The worthy use of leisure" as one of the seven objectives in education. The rapid spread of the commission form of city government, and the city-manager plan, and the general tendency towards home rule for cities, mark great steps toward the recognition of local needs in all lines of municipal government.

At the nineteenth annual convention of the League of American Municipalities, at New Orleans, in 1915, "Leisure Time — The Municipality's Responsibility," was an important topic of discussion, opened by the Superintendent of the Recreation Commission of Detroit. (60: 19-24.) Many cities have, like Detroit, officially assumed at least part of this responsibility, in a more active way than by providing a few dignified display parks, libraries, and scientific museums.