CHAPTER VI
RECREATIONAL PHASES
_By Lebert Howard Weir_
This chapter is in no sense an attempt to discuss pathologic sex problems, but rather to show the necessity of providing facilities for normal, wholesome living for all the people during their leisure time. This will solve many of the vexing sex problems.
At the outset, it is important to contrast the 27,000,000 hours a year, during which the school has charge of all the children, with the 135,000,000 hours at the children's free disposal. Yet we are inclined to charge the schools with the responsibilities of many failures in the physical and moral make-up of growing boys and girls. The greater part of the education of the boys and girls is received outside of school through the various activities which fill up these 135,000,000 hours a year. Society has, therefore, a great responsibility in directing the activities of the free time of young people.
People employed in the home, store, factory, shop, or office, in a year of 365 days spend about 2880 hours of this time in sleep. Taking the average working-day as nine hours and the number of working-days in the year as 300, excluding Sundays and holidays, each person is employed in needful occupations 2700 hours during the year. Out of the working-days, a total of 2100 hours are at each person's disposal to use as he sees fit. Of the remaining 60 days, 15 hours of each day are for free use,--or a total of nearly 35 per cent of the entire year. What are the children, young people, and adults doing with this time?
One answer is found in the records of the juvenile court, in rescue homes, in reformatories, in the police and criminal courts, in jails and penitentiaries, in hospitals for the treatment of venereal diseases, the insane and feeble-minded; another in the fallen women (and men, too), of whom so much has been said of late; another in the crowded saloons and busy restaurants in the heart of the city, with their music, bright lights, food, liquor, and overdressed, painted women with their consorts; still another in the billiard-rooms and the moving-picture theaters.
The extent to which people of all ages and races resort to the moving-picture show is known by few people. In Portland, Oregon, a weekly attendance of 5000 is reported for a house with a seating capacity of 175; a weekly attendance of 3500 for a house seating 75; a weekly attendance of 25,000 for a house seating 500. Another with a seating capacity of 567 reports a weekly attendance of 22,000. The attendance of all the moving-picture houses in any city is a startling revelation of the use of the time of the people.
All forms of leisure-time consumption are offshoots of the one great common meeting-place of all the people, the street. The street is more than an avenue for traffic. It is the social meeting-place of many of the inhabitants. It is the playground of nearly all the children. Its glitter and glare, its lights and shadows and care-free spirit, attract boys and girls. They come as moths flutter about the candle flame and often with equally disastrous results. The call of the street is irresistible. It is the simplest, most convenient avenue for the satisfaction of that hunger for pleasure, excitement, amusement, and recreation, common to all ages, all races, and both sexes. It is the avenue for the spontaneous outpouring of the spirit of democracy. No matter how thickly the city may scatter its playgrounds, its athletic fields, boating and swimming centers and recreation buildings, the street will always have to be reckoned with as the one great all-engulfing factor in the use of the leisure time of the people.
Surely the possibilities for good or evil are infinite when the spirit of youth and age play free, willingly receiving impressions on every hand. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases the ministry in this field of infinite character-building possibilities has fallen into the hands of men who for the most part reckon its possibilities only in terms of the nickels, dimes, and dollars that pass over the bar or counter or through the box office. Many of them conceive low opinions of the recreation desires of the people, furnishing the lurid, the _risqué_, the bold, the daring forms of entertainment, or coupling it with other lines of business, as in the case of the saloon, with unfortunate social results.
Can the city afford the commercial exploitations of so much of this valuable time? The answer must be that it can afford it only when the ideals of the men conducting these various forms of amusement are as high as the best that the community would demand if managing similar institutions. The saloon proprietor is not interested primarily in the physical and moral welfare of his patrons or in the general social welfare of the city. He provides various forms of recreation to increase the patronage of the bar; it is an unwritten law that those who avail themselves of the card-tables, of the pool- and billiard-tables, the moving-picture shows in the saloons, and who hear the music, must patronize the bar. Thirty-six per cent of the pool and billiard licenses are held by men holding saloon licenses, and in all the large pool- and billiard-halls, especially in the center of the city, not connected directly with saloons, liquor is served upon the demand of the patrons. The evil of the situation is significant when it is remembered that the larger percentage of the patrons of those places are men under twenty-five years of age. Profanity is common, and usually gambling is permitted. Often these pool- and billiard-parlors are the "hang-outs" of vicious, depraved young men who live upon the earnings of unfortunate women. This use of the leisure time of men is physically, morally, and socially dangerous and should not be permitted.
The public skating-rink is fairly free from objectionable features, but boys and girls attending without proper chaperons often form undesirable acquaintances. Women of the street and their male companions often attend. Juvenile court officials are aware of the immoralities springing from this source.
The amusement parks present almost unlimited possibilities for the formation of undesirable acquaintances. The fact that they are open in the evening, and not lighted in all parts, the presence of cafés where liquors can be had, inadequate police protection, the secrecy possible through the presence of large crowds, the size of the parks, the distance from the homes in the city, and the unchaperoned attendance of large crowds of young people, all make amusement parks dangerous without closer supervision by public authorities.
In former days the road-house ministered to the legitimate needs of wayfaring travelers. To-day the name "road-house" is synonymous with the "bawdy-house" of the city. Located just beyond the borders of towns and cities, beyond police supervision, catering to men and women who desire secrecy for their revels and orgies, the road-house is one of the worst possible institutions now ministering to the leisure time of the people.
In some sections of this country, the public excursion, both by land and water, is as bad as the road-house. Instead of being a time of relaxation and recreation, a time of freedom from cares of the workaday life and enjoyment of pure air, sunshine, and beauties of nature, and of fine social relationships of people, the excursions have become dissipations of physical and moral energy. With proper supervision and with proper standards on the part of promoters of transportation companies, the public excursion can be a fine constructive factor in the use of the leisure time of the people.
Festivals and carnivals conducted by the people of a community, commemorative of national holidays or of historical events or of religious life, are often admirable. But whenever the festival or carnival becomes a commercial enterprise for the purpose of attracting crowds to the city, for advertisement and for gain by merchants and hotel proprietors, young people are in danger. The city becomes the mecca for undesirable men and women who prey upon the susceptibilities of the people, animated by the festival spirit. The hotels are the temporary homes of women of the street. Every large festival of this kind has been followed by social evils of the most virulent type. Many a girl and many a boy, yielding to the influences of the abandonment of the crowd, take the first step in sexual vice. This type of festival is not socially profitable to a community, where the commercial aim and purpose predominates. The commercial exploitation of the recreation and social needs of the people is usually productive of sexual immorality.
A characteristic feature of American life is the club, union, society, or order spontaneously formed by the people. No matter what the fundamental purposes of these groups may be, whether for protection against sickness, accident, and industrial evils, whether for the study of art, music, and literature, or for the promotion of physical activities, the primary bond that brings the group together and holds it together is the social instinct of mankind.
Those which administer to the play and recreation life of their members most efficiently are strongest. The dances, card parties, lectures, entertainments, and other social activities conducted by such groups are usually under the best kind of social control, far better than any type of commercial amusement and perhaps better than most public-supervised amusements. The strength is in the comparative smallness of the group, the personal acquaintance of the members, the presence of older people with the young, and the existence of individual and group responsibility and ideals. Far better social control would result if all public dances and public skating-rinks and excursions were conducted on this group or society basis.
One field of neglected social activity is the home as a recreation and social center. The day of the "party" seems to be past. Parents have thus lost one strong hold on the character development of their children. Thousands of parents in the modern city have lost the social spirit of the home because of crowded living conditions, but there are also thousands, especially in the Western cities, who still have individual homes; every such home should be the primary social and recreation center for adolescent boys and girls. The revival of the small group social in the home for the young people would be a constructive contribution to some of the moral problems of the young.
In the leisure-time activities of children, the Sunday supplement or "funny sheet" of the newspaper is of importance. The funny sheet appeals not so much through humor as through glaring color and grotesque pictures which violate every canon of color combination and of art. Exaggerated types of mischievous children and freakish adults, and equally freakish and unthinkable mechanical devices, are favorite subjects. Disobedience of children, premature and unnatural childish love-affairs, domestic infelicity, the privileges and advantages of bachelorhood are paraded Sunday after Sunday before the susceptible minds of millions of children.
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Multitudinous as are the private agencies administering to the leisure-time activities of all the people, neither the commercial amusements nor the numerous spontaneous private organizations answer all the requirements of social and recreative needs of the people. On the one hand, commercial amusements, while used and enjoyed by masses of the people, have been objects of danger and distrust because of their anti-social effects. On the other hand, the private society, club, order, and organization are essentially narrow, and formed with other purposes and ideals in view than ministering to the social and recreative needs and desires of the people. The providing of ample facilities for the fullest and most wholesome use of the leisure time of the people is a community responsibility, just as important to the public welfare as a system of public education.
This community sense of responsibility did not in the beginning have the wide constructive vision which characterizes it to-day. It was designed first as a corrective of pathological social ills, especially relative to childhood and youth. Congestion in the modern city, an incident and a result of specialization and expansion of American industrial and commercial life, caused living conditions inimical to the health and morals of all the people. As usual the children suffered most. Deprived of light, air, wholesome living quarters, play space, and the advantages of a real home, they fell easy victims to disease, sickness, death, and, what is worse, to the disease and death of ideals and morals. Juvenile faults and crimes increased at an alarming rate. The therapy of play was applied. It was soon found, however, that the great mission of playgrounds was not as a therapeutic agent, but as a preventive and constructive force. The movement took on large, positive, constructive aims, purposes, and ideals. It expanded into the playground and recreation movement, with emphasis upon the latter, aiming to provide for and direct the leisure-time activities of all the people. Play was restored as the right of every child, without which no wholesome physical, mental, and moral growth is possible.
As constructively related to other great social problems, the playground and recreation movement was found almost universally applicable. Sexual immorality and the white-slave traffic are combated by recreation centers where young women obtain under normal conditions the highest ideals and satisfy the spirit of youth, which is the sign of life itself.
The scope of this larger movement is as follows: It promotes the establishment of playgrounds within walking distance of every child; athletic and sport fields for older boys and girls and for men and women; boating and swimming centers and parks for the use of all; recreation and social centers in municipal recreation buildings and in school buildings, where all the people of a community, irrespective of race or creed, may find opportunity for the fullest possible recreation and social life; it promotes school and municipal camps, tramping-clubs, and other activities that cultivate the habit of outdoor life; physical education and athletics in the schools that reach every child, instead of a few as now; it stands for school playgrounds, in connection with every school; it seeks to provide facilities through which musical, literary, dramatic, and artistic talents of the people may find encouragement and expression, and for a constructive social supervision of all commercial amusements.
Yet playgrounds and recreation centers are not free from social dangers. Many of the moral dangers of commercial amusements may arise in municipally owned and managed systems of recreation. In fact public playgrounds have become such moral menaces as to warrant their closure in the interests of public welfare. Some of the worst cases of sexual immorality coming to the juvenile courts arise in public playgrounds. This is the result of bringing large numbers of young people into a common play place without the most careful supervision, guidance, and direction. The physical growth and health, the morals, the happiness, and the ideals of citizenship of great masses of the people are so deeply involved in the right use of the leisure time of the people that to conduct their activities in any way but according to the highest standards is a civic crime.