POPULAR RECREATION AND PUBLIC MORALITY

BY LUTHER H. GULICK, M. D.,

Chairman, Playground Extension Committee, Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.

The things we do, when we do what we please, are vitally related not only to health, but also to morality and the whole development of the finer self. The forms of our pleasure-seeking disclose what we really are. Those nations which devoted their leisure to re-creating health and building up beautiful bodies have tended to survive, while those which turned, in the marginal hours, to dissipation have written for us the history of national downfall. A daily life in which there is no time for recreation may be fraught with as much evil as a leisure given over to a futile frittering away of energy. Greece became famous because four-fifths of her people were slaves and thus one-fifth had opportunity for culture.

The work which human muscle used to do is now being done by engines of various sorts, so that we have leisure again. Not only the few, but the mass have a margin beyond the working hours; the time that is left after the eight-hour day. The world has never seen such equality of opportunity before and the possibilities latent in this fact are stupendous. If it required only a small fraction of the people to immortalize Greece what marvels may not be done by us moderns now that all of us have a little time each day to devote to the expression of our real selves.

Work is

But we Americans, as yet, think only of work. important, but it is only one of the important things. It secures food, shelter and clothing for us. Necessary things, to be sure, but belonging to that part of our lives which does not signify. In respect to these economic things-the things we work for-we are all pretty much alike. It is in the higher life of the spirit where we differ. If we would be individuals, stand out from the multitude, our spirits must have a life of their own. In truth, he has not really lived who has secured for himself nothing more than food, clothing and a shelter for his body.

When I speak of the "higher life of the spirit," do not appre

hend that we are drifting into a religious discussion. A higher liveliness of the spirit would have expressed my thought even more adequately. The "play of the spirit" is not an empty phrase. It is always the spirit that plays. Our bodies only work. The spirit at play is what I mean by the higher life.

Play is the pursuit of ideals. When released from the daily work, the mill we have to tread in order to live, then we strive to become what we would be if we could. When we are free we pursue those ideals which indicate and create character. If they lead us toward wholesome things-literature, music, art, debate, golf, tennis, horseback riding and all of the other things that are wholesome and good, then our lives are rounded out, balanced and significant.

If education is "equipping for life," then it ought to be divided into two parts, equipment for work and equipment for play. If education is bound to provide us with the luxuries of the body it ought also at least to furnish us with the necessities of the soul. It must tell us not only how to get the most out of the working hours, but also how to spend most profitably and joyously the hours that remain.

We do not, however, need to be instructed upon the importance of having a leisure time. That need is instinctive. I am confident that one of the chief sources of social unrest is the envy, not of the food the over-rich eat, the clothes they wear or the character of the roofs over their heads, but of the sure and ample hours in which they can do what they like. The problem of a happy and wholesome use of the leisure time in the cities involves us in difficulties which have never been encountered before, but they are being met with courage and success.

We shall confine ourselves to the city side of the problem because, while the conditions of play and recreation in the country are not unimportant, we are fast becoming a city people, and it is inevitable that in the city the problem will be of primary importance.

You cannot drive people out of the city. We experiment by exporting them. But while driving them out of one slum they return to another, and to stay. The great human abhorrence of loneliness is unconquerable. We like each other so much-at least that is one reason why we refuse to be rusticated.

Statistics tell, even more convincingly, the increasing urbaniza

tion of our population. In 1790 3.3 per cent. of the people in the United States lived in towns and cities of 8000 and upward, while to-day over 33 per cent. live in the cities of the same class. It means not only that the cities are growing with phenomenal rapidity, but that the total population growth in our country during the past three censuses has been almost entirely an urban growth. In Illinois I was recently told that within a single generation the average country school had shrunk from thirty-eight to twentyeight pupils.

I do not, however, view this rush to the cities with the apprehension that is felt by many. The city is meeting its own problems successfully. Take, for example, the testimony of the death-rate, which represents the sum total of the influences that bear upon life. During the past three decades the country death-rate has remained practically stationary, while in the cities it has been going straight down from decade to decade. The truth is that cities. have a purer water supply than the average farm. They dispose of their sewage more effectually than the country. Besides that. they have a more varied food supply. Recall for a moment the vacations when you have gone to the country dreaming of wondrous table delights and found them in reality coming out of tin cans.

There are, however, conditions peculiar to the city which give the problem of recreation there an added pertinence. It has to be admitted that the occupations of the city are woefully one-sided. We function so much of the time with only a particular part of our body or mind, or both, leaving the other parts to deteriorate through disuse, that there is an aggravated need of a leisure time in which to build out the all-around individual. The conditions of city life are so complex and new, so many of us are conscious of a lack of resources, that it is indeed a problem so to employ the margin of the day that it shall make for wholesomeness and rest, health and quietness, and helpful social contacts.

This is indeed the problem of the city, a problem surrounded with many difficulties, but one, nevertheless, whose solution is more clearly visible at the present time than the recreation problems of the country. Strange as it may seem, the greater tractability of the urban problem resides in the very condition to which people are wont to attribute most of the city's ills--I mean the density of the population. But before developing this idea let us take a

glance at a few of the present city recreations which exhibit unwholesome aspects.

There are at the present writing in New York City 200 movingpicture shows with an average daily attendance for each of 1000 persons. That makes 200,000 persons per day taking part in this one form of public amusement. On Sundays these shows have an average attendance of 500,000. While usually unobjectionable from the moral standpoint, the amusement which these exhibitions afford is sedentary and has no value as a bodily exercise. Generally, also, the ventilation in the moving-picture hall is so inadequate that a couple of hours presence in one of them, with all the attendant risks of exposure to contagious diseases, is a positive menace to the health.

New York has also about 200 dance halls, nearly all of them connected with saloons. Now, dancing in itself is a thoroughly wholesome form of recreation and exercise. But the moral environment of these places of amusement is such that it is not pleasant to think that a large proportion of the future mothers of American children has to resort to them in order to satisfy perfectly wholesome and natural cravings for play and companionship.

It is not necessary to mention the saloons and other resorts in our large cities which, under the guise of affording amusement, are also inflicting evil upon our young people. But I dare say few realize to what an extent some of our national institutions have become sources of bodily harm because of our inexcusable way of letting things do themselves and of failing to unite and give them the intelligent direction which they require and which would not only rob them of their capacity to injure, but vastly enhance their ability to do us good. Take, for example, the customary celebration of our national July festival.

It is reported from apparently trustworthy sources that more. persons have been sacrificed in celebrating the Fourth of July than were fatally injured in the War of Independence itself. The following table taken from the Chicago Tribune's record of the last ten years is significant :

And, again, quoting from the Journal of the American Medical Association, we have the following table of cases of lockjaw that have lately resulted:

In the solution of these recreation problems the individual is helpless. Not long ago Dr. Woods Hutchinson met me on the street. Said he:

"Where does your boy play?"

"On the street."

"So does mine. Do you think it is a good place?"

"No."

"Well," Dr. Hutchinson continued, "wouldn't it be a good thing to have a place where they could have some swings and some seesaws, and a place to dig, and where they could make a boat and do things?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Let us get one."

"All right," I said, and he took one section and I took another to find a place. Difficulty after difficulty was encountered until we gave it up.

As a matter of fact city parents cannot provide in their homes places where children may play. We are unable to give our young people the wholesome social life which the full, rounded development of their natures requires.