They propose to turn against it its own most powerful weapons. The joy of life is to be fed with proper food instead of poison. Girls and young men are to be offered a chance to escape the nets stretched for them by the underworld. In many cities women's clubs and women's societies are establishing on a small scale amusement and recreation centers for young people. In New York Miss Virginia Potter, niece of the late Bishop Potter, and Miss Potter's colleagues in the Association of Working Girls' Clubs, have opened a public dance hall. The use of the large gymnasium of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls was secured, and every Saturday evening, from eight until eleven, young men and women come in and dance to excellent music, under the instruction, if they need it, of a skilled dancing-master. A small fee is charged, partly to defray expenses, and partly to attract a class of people who disdain philanthropy and settlements. The experiment is new, but it is undoubtedly successful. As many as two hundred couples have been admitted in an evening. In half a dozen cities women's clubs and women's committees are at work on this matter of establishing amusement and recreation centers for young people. In New York a Committee on Amusement and Vacation Resources of Working Girls has for its president a social worker of many years, Mrs. Charles M. Israels. Associated with the committee are many other well-known social economists,—women of wealth and influence who have given years to the service of working girls. The committee began its work by a scientific investigation into the dance halls of New York, the summer parks and picnic grounds in the outlying districts, and of the summer excursion boats which ply up and down the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. The revelations made by this investigation, carried on under the supervision of Miss Julia Schoenfeld, were terrible enough. They were made to appear still more terrible when it was known that men of the highest social and commercial standing were profiting hugely from the most vicious forms of amusement. A state senator is one of the largest stockholders in Coney Island resorts of bad character. An ex-governor of the State controls a popular excursion boat, on which staterooms are rented by the hour, for immoral purposes no one can possibly doubt. The women of the committee submitted the findings of their investigators to the managers of these amusement places and to the directors of the steamboat lines, and in many instances reforms have been promised. The point is that a committee of women had to finance an investigation to show these business men the conditions which were adding to their wealth, and into which they had never even inquired.
Another investigation made by the committee revealed the meagerness of the provision made by churches, settlements, and business establishments for working girls' vacations. There are, in round numbers, four hundred thousand working women in Greater New York. Of these, something like three hundred thousand are unmarried girls between the ages of fourteen and thirty. In all, only 6,874 of these young toilers, who earn on an average six dollars a week, are provided with vacation outings. They are usually given vacations, with or without pay, but they spend the idle time at Coney Island, on excursion boats, or in the dance hall.
Of the 1,257 churches and synagogues of New York, only six report organized vacation work for girls and women. Of the twenty or more large department stores, employing thousands of women, only three have vacation houses in the country. Of the hundred or more social settlements in New York only fifteen provide summer homes. There are several vacation societies which do good work with limited resources, but they are able to care for comparatively few. We have heard much of fresh air work for children, and we can afford to hear more. But that the fresh air work for young girls and women who toil long hours in factory and shop must be extended, this committee's investigation definitely establishes.
The first practical work of the committee, after the investigation of amusement and recreation places, was a bill introduced into the State Legislature providing for the licensing and regulation of public dancing academies, prohibiting the sale of liquor in such establishments, and holding the proprietor responsible for indecent dancing and improper behavior.
Against the bitter opposition of the dancing academy proprietors the bill became a law and went into effect in September, 1909. Almost immediately it was challenged on constitutional grounds. The committee promptly introduced another bill, this one to regulate dance halls. This bill, which passed the legislature and is now a law, aims to wipe out the saloon dance hall absolutely, and so to regulate the sale of liquor in all dancing places that the drink evil will be cut down to a minimum. The license fee of fifty dollars a year will eliminate the lowest, cheapest resorts, and a rigid system of inspection will not only go far towards preserving good order, but will do away with the wretchedly dirty, ill-smelling, unsanitary fire traps in which many halls are located. The dance-hall proprietor who encourages or even tolerates "tough" dancing, or who admits to the floor "White Slavers," procurers, or persons of open immorality, will be liable to forfeiture of his license.
The committee has done more than try to reform existing dance halls. It has taken steps to establish, in neighborhoods where evil resorts abound, attractive dance halls, where a decent standard of conduct is combined with all the best features of the evil places—good floors, lively music, bright lights. Two corporations have been organized for the maintenance, in various parts of the city, of model dance halls, and one hall has already been opened. The patrons of the model dance hall do not know that it is a social experiment paid for by a committee of women. It is run exactly like any public dancing place, only in an orderly fashion.
Every extension of use of public places, schools, parks, piers, as recreation places for young people between fifteen and twenty is encouraged and supported by the committee. Already two public schools have organized dancing classes, and several settlements have thrown open their dances to the public where formerly they were attended only by settlement club members.
By helping working girls to find cheap vacation homes in the country, and by establishing vacation banks to help the girls save for their summer outings, the committee hopes to discourage some of the haphazard picnic park dissipation. In summer many trades are slack, girls are idle, and out of sheer boredom they hang around the parks seeking amusement. It is only a theory, perhaps, but Mrs. Israels and the others on her committee believe that if many of these girls knew that a country vacation were within the possibilities, they would gladly save money towards it. At present the vacation facilities of working girls in large cities are small. In New York, where at least three hundred thousand girls and women earn their bread, only about six thousand are helped to summer vacations in the country. What these women are doing now on a small scale, experimentally, will soon be adopted, as their children's playgrounds, their kindergartens, their vacation schools, and other enterprises have been adopted, by the municipalities. Their probation officers, long paid out of club treasuries, have already been transferred to many cities, east and west. Soon municipal dance halls, municipal athletic grounds, municipal amusement and recreation centers for all ages and all classes will be provided.
Already New York is preparing for such a campaign. The newly-appointed Parks Commissioner, Charles B. Stover, looking over his office force, dismissed one secretary whose function seemed largely ornamental, and diverted his salary of four thousand dollars to recreation purposes for young people. Commissioner Stover desires the appointment of a city officer who shall be a Supervisor of Recreations, a man or a woman whose entire time shall be devoted to discovering where recreation parks, dancing pavilions, music, and other forms of pleasure are needed, and how they may be made to do the most good. A neighborhood that thirsts for concerts ought to have them. A community that desires to dance deserves a dance hall. In the long run, how infinitely better, how much more economical for the city to furnish these recreations, normally and decently conducted, than to bear the consequences of an order of things like the present one. The new order must come. It is the only way yet pointed out by which we may hope to close those other avenues, where the joy of youth is turned into a cup of trembling, and the dancing feet of girlhood are led into mires of shame.