Those early steps in the reform path stumbled sadly at times over obstacles that showed how dense was the ignorance and how rank were the prejudices we had to fight. When I wrote that the Allen Street school was overrun by rats, which was a fact any one might observe for himself by spending five minutes in the building, I was called sharply to account by the Mayor in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. There were no rats, he said. The Allen Street school was the worst of them all, and I determined that the time had come to make a demonstration. I procured a rat trap, and was waiting for an idle hour to go over and catch one of the rats, so that I might have it stuffed and sent to the board over which the Mayor presided, as a convincing exhibit; but before I got so far reform swept the whole conspiracy of ignorance and jobbery out of the City Hall.
That was well enough as far as it went; but that the broom was needed elsewhere we learned later, when the Good Government Clubs fought for the inspection of the schools and of the children by trained oculists. The evidence was that the pupils were made both near-sighted and stupid by the want of proper arrangement of their seats and of themselves in the class-room. The fact was not denied, and the scheme was strongly indorsed by the Board of Health and by some of the ablest and best known oculists in the city; but it was wrecked upon an opposition in which we heard the ignorant and selfish cry that it would "interfere with private practice," and so curtail the profits of the practitioner. The proposal to inspect the classes daily for evidence of contagious disease—which, carried out, has proved a most effective means of preventing the spread of epidemics, and one of the greatest blessings—had been opposed, happily unsuccessfully, with the same arguments.[6] It is very well to prate about the rapacity of politicians, but these things came often enough to show what they meant by the claim that they were "closer to the people" than we who were trying to help them; and they were all the more exasperating because they came rarely from below,—the tenement people, when they were not deliberately misled, were ready and eager to fall in with any plan for bettering things, notably where it concerned the schools,—but usually from those who knew better, and from whom we had a right to expect support and backing.
Speaking of that reminds me of a mishap I had in the Hester Street school,—the one with the "frills" which the Board of Education cut off. I happened to pass it after school hours, and went in to see what sort of a playground the roof would have made. I met no one on the way, and, finding the scuttle open, climbed out and up the slant of the roof to the peak, where I sat musing over our lost chance, when the janitor came to close up. He must have thought I was a crazy man, and my explanation did not make it any better. He haled me down, and but for the fortunate chance that the policeman on the beat knew me, I should have been taken to the lockup as a dangerous lunatic,—all for dreaming of a playground on the roof of a schoolhouse.
PLAYGROUND ON ROOF OF NEW EAST BROADWAY SCHOOLHOUSE
Area 8,348 square feet
Janitor and Board of Commissioners to the contrary notwithstanding, the dream became real. There stands another school in Hester Street to-day within easy call, that has a playground measuring more than twelve thousand square feet on the roof, one of half that size down on the ground, and an asphalted indoor playground as big as the one on the roof. Together they measure a trifle less than thirty thousand feet. To the indignant amazement of my captor, the janitor, his school was thrown open to the children in the last summer vacation, and in the winter they put a boys' club in to worry him. What further indignities there are in store for him, in this day of "frills," there is no telling. A resolution is on record which states, under date of May 18, 1897, that "it is the sense of the Board of Superintendents that the schoolhouses may well be used in the cause of education as neighborhood centres, providing reading-rooms, branch offices of public libraries, etc." And to cut off all chance of relapse into the old doubt whether "such things are educational," that laid so many of our hopes on the dusty shelf of the circumlocution office, the state legislature has expressly declared that the commonwealth will take the chance, which Boards of Education shunned, of a little amusement creeping in. The schools may be used for "purposes of recreation." To the janitor it must seem that the end of all things is at hand.
In the crowded districts, the school playgrounds were thrown open to the children during the long vacation last year, with kindergarten teachers to amuse them, and half a score of vacation schools tempted more than four thousand children from the street into the cool shade of the class-rooms. They wrought in wood and iron, they sang and they played and studied nature,—out of a barrel, to be sure, that came twice a week from Long Island filled with "specimens;" but toward the end we took a hint from Chicago, and let the children gather their own specimens on excursions around the bay and suburbs of the city. That was a tremendous success. The mere hint that money might be lacking to pay for the excursions this summer set the St. Andrew's Brotherhood men on Long Island to devising schemes for inviting the schoolchildren out on trolley and shore trips. With the Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, and kindred societies looking about for something to try their young strength and enthusiasm on, we may be here standing upon the threshold of something which shall bring us nearer to a universal brotherhood than all the consecrations and badges that have yet been invented.