The Social Center Association of America, recently formed, includes among its vice-presidents, Miss Anne Morgan of New York, Miss Jane Addams, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, and Miss Mary McDowell of Chicago.
Wisconsin, California, Indiana, Massachusetts and Ohio have excellent legislation with regard to the use of schools as social centers; and it was secured with the help of women in private and organized advocacy, strengthened by experiments made by them which demonstrated the advisability of municipal control over educational recreation.
In Detroit two women persuaded the school authorities to grant the use of a school for evening dances, desiring to make the school a neighborhood center. The “Buffalo Federation of Women’s Clubs indorses any plan to make social centers of the public schools along lines so successful in other cities. An appropriation is asked from the city to carry on the work.” St. Louis club women have secured the use of several school buildings as social centers. “A social center in every public school is the plan of the club women of Syracuse, New York. Plans are being made to throw open the doors of the school buildings for neighborhood meetings and entertainments on several evenings of each week. The school officials are coöperating with the various forces in favor of social centers.” Women of Chicago asked the coöperation of the Board of Education in conducting a social center in the winter of 1911–1912. It was open thirty-two evenings with 13,000 people in attendance.[[26]]
Experiments
Scarcely a town in Illinois and in other states can be found in which a woman’s club is not planning some wholesome recreation for boys and girls. Loan collections of games is a practicable method resorted to in some cases where children have comfortable homes in which to play and such collections are issued from the library just as books are.
The Good Citizenship Club of Boise, Idaho, a woman’s organization, plans for municipal entertainment, among other ways, by arranging an address or various forms of amusement one evening a week in the plaza in the business district. In planning these entertainments, the women have made every men’s organization in the city responsible for one evening’s program: church brotherhoods, labor unions and other non-partisan and non-sectarian organizations. This Good Government Club is also taking the initiative in providing for a paid supervisor of the public playground in the aforesaid plaza for morning and evening play during vacations.
Bennington, Vermont, had a community sleigh ride one winter as a part of the town’s recreation program. Recreation activities there are in charge of the Civic League, a group of young women, and in one year they included a summer playground providing for tennis, baseball, volleyball and other games, popular concerts, a community Christmas tree, a pageant of patriots on Washington’s birthday, story-telling, a baby contest, athletic meets, skating in safety for five weeks, and folk dancing festivals. The town voted $500 that year and the rest was raised privately. The municipal Christmas tree has grown to be a recognized institution in the larger cities. Mrs. Louise Bowen, however, takes a very thoughtful position on the question of this form of recreation. She would prefer indoor fêtes for the people, owing to the menace to health and young girls in the winter open-air festivity. In support of her contentions she cites the fact that the committee having the Chicago Christmas tree affair in charge promised to provide 50 nurses, 25 doctors, and 500 policemen.
California, so far as we know, was the first state to create a commission for the study of recreation. Five of the members were appointed by the Governor; one by the President of the Senate, and one by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Dr. Grace Fernald, of the Juvenile Court of Los Angeles, is a member, together with Miss Bessie Stoddard of the Playground Commission of Los Angeles.
The Public Recreation Commission of St. Louis has broad advisory powers which include supervision of moving-picture shows, dance halls, poolrooms, steamboat excursions and other “commercial recreation,” as well as holiday celebrations and recreation in public schools, parks and libraries. “It is planned to open public dance halls over the public markets. The school yards are to be used as playgrounds for children under ten years of age in the daytime under paid women instructors. Classes will be sent to the swimming pools every morning and afternoon under the care of teachers. The Public Schools Athletic League will use the public playgrounds. There will be public concerts in the schools and the libraries will have clubrooms and evening lecture courses. The playgrounds in the parks will be open for children in the daytime and for adults at night. It is interesting to note the composition of each of the sub-committees of the Commercial Recreation Committee: one picture exhibitor, one school man, one clergyman, two women and one policeman. Is there not here a tribute to the civic influence of womanhood as such, apart from avocation?”[[27]]
“New York City now has a federation of associations interested in recreation. The widest meaning will be given to the word recreation. Committees will look after both indoor and outdoor amusements from the viewpoints of health and morality. The new federation will act as a clearing house for information gathered by societies working for the same general object, pointing out deficiencies and suggesting plans of work.”