Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Playgrounds

We may cite a single example which may serve as an inspiration to other public-spirited women.

A few weeks before her death, Mary Graham Jones, of Hartford, Connecticut, who did so much during her life for the betterment of child life and neighborhood life in her native city, submitted to the city authorities a plan for providing small local playgrounds for young children in various parts of the city. Her scheme was that each playground should be near enough to its neighborhood to make it convenient and safe for the children to reach and use it. The report recommended the leasing from the city at nominal rent of a dozen or more vacant lots, the preparation of the lots to be in the hands of the park department and their supervision in the hands of the department of education.

The juvenile commission of Hartford petitioned the board of aldermen for permission to lease these lots and for an appropriation to pay for their support. The request was granted, and $2,500 was allowed for the first year’s expense. Nearly all this sum was expended and the work was carried out under the supervision of the superintendent of parks, with various successful results. It seems highly probable that the work will be continued another summer and perhaps something may be done during the winter to provide for skating and like sports.

Thus the citizens of Hartford feel that Miss Jones has left their children a city-wide playground system as an enduring legacy. The Mary Graham Jones Playground is the name given by the North Street Settlement of Hartford to a place set aside for all neighborhood children under nine years of age. Miss Jones had spent sixteen years in settlement and child welfare work in Hartford. In 1900 she became headworker of the North Street Settlement.[^[18]]

In a history of the playground movement in America, Herbert H. Weir, one of the field secretaries of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, says: “No age has been without its visioners who saw the light and led the way, so luckily there were men and women, especially women, who saw and understood and acted.”[^[19]]

The history of their work for playgrounds shows that like almost all modern social endeavor, there has been, first, private demonstration of a public utility, then city control, then state-wide legislation to bring backward communities into line with forward urban movement. Women have everywhere been largely instrumental in initiating the playground work, they have followed it in many cases by service on appointed commissions and as paid city playground employees, and in other cases they have held positions on state recreation commissions.

Interesting and important as has been the work of individual women in this great battle for adequate recreation in cities, it is of course the associations of women that have been most powerful and determined. For an instance of the associated effort of women, we may turn to the experience of Winthrop, Massachusetts.

When the cities and towns of Massachusetts were voting on the playground referendum during the fall of 1908 and the spring of 1909, Winthrop, just outside of Boston, seemed to regret that her 7,034 people did not entitle her to a similar privilege. The people of Winthrop, however, are ingenious, and they set about seeing what might any way be done, for they were not willing to give up the idea of having playgrounds. They, particularly the women, proceeded to agitate along many lines. At a town meeting in the spring, when the towns of over 10,000 were voting on the referendum, the people inserted warrants for various appropriations for playground purposes. A special committee was appointed to consider the entire question of parks and playgrounds and report in the fall. The committee gave hearings during the summer, and went extensively into the question of the town’s development, its future needs, its peculiar nature (because of the large areas of marsh land), available sites, and so on.

In the meantime the people kept busy. They decided to conduct an experimental playground during the summer so as to gather experience, show what could be done and develop public sentiment. The Woman’s Club, the Improvement Association, the Arts and Crafts Society, the Woman’s Equal Suffrage League, apparently every organization got into the action and did valiant work. The School Committee gave the use of a convenient school yard, with a pond and suitable open area. The societies mentioned provided the apparatus; money was raised to employ a supervisor; articles such as magazines, books, toys, games, raffia, sewing materials, scissors, shovels and hoes, were solicited to give scope to the activities; the meetings of many of the societies were devoted to discussions of various aspects of the playground movement; the newspapers were kept filled with articles, comments, accounts of what other places were doing, notes on the local activities; and, finally, the whole was capped with an exhibit when the playground was closed. This exhibit was witnessed by many people, but particularly by the children, who were by then as active as any of their parents in support of the movement.