Politics in our cities have been corrupt, because there have been no meetings of the community to discuss community affairs. The individual has often been reckless in conduct, because he was not acquainted in the section in which he lived and consequently had no social accountability to public opinion. Foreigners have come among us and drifted in and out of the city slum, bearing with them their racial antipathies to each other, and casting no anchor in the locality because at no time have they become a real part of a community. We have had no real city communities or neighborhoods but mere districts of people in no way organized or related to each other. The feet of the image are of miry clay.
In the country sections the situation is little better. In the days of the pioneer the early settlers were drawn together by common dangers and necessities into a brotherhood of the wilderness. They assisted in erecting the cabin of the newcomer. The women had their quiltings and their sewing circles. The whole community met together to marry the lovers and bury the dead. The school house was the common center, where Sabbath service, debate, music school, and “spell down” were held.
These conditions have undergone an almost complete change. The specializing of industry and new machinery have made farmers independent of their neighbors. The community uses of the public school have fallen away.
The last few years have seen a rapid advance in the principles of Democracy through the initiative, referendum and recall, the presidential primaries and other measures; but the fundamental unit is still unorganized. The feet are still of miry clay. To secure the democratic control of the community or district is the greatest problem of our democracy. This result demands that some agora, forum, or neighborhood center shall be restored to the people.
If a neighborhood center is to be created, the facilities which the neighborhood wishes to use must be brought together in a single place. Thus each facility offered will bring patrons, not to itself alone, but to all the others as well, as each department in a department store brings customers to all the others.
A comparatively few years have seen the cities take up as municipal undertakings the public playground, the municipal gymnasium and bath, the branch library, and a few scattered beginnings in the way of municipal camps. While the undertakings have been carried on by the city and maintained by public funds, they have not been really furnished to all the people of the city, as a rule, because they have not been accessible. They have not been placed in communities, they have no definite clientele. They cut across the lines of the existing organizations of the people. The individual has no direct touch with the community that brings him into relationship with them. All of these facilities are at least as much for the children as adults, but they lie off the beaten paths of child travel, and hence secure a minimum rather than a maximum use.
The only public institution that is central to each community is the school. If this can be made the nucleus around which the other institutions can be gathered, it may be possible to create again a modern forum or market place, that will serve the same purpose as did the old. The large undertakings already under way for the improvement of the school itself can not be carried to full success without certain radical improvements in the school equipment. The playground activity demands larger playgrounds. New York is now paying more than a thousand teachers every summer to direct the play in its school playgrounds; but there are very few schools that have an out-door playground fifty feet square. It is not the same thing to play in a school basement that it is to play in the open air. The school basement is always sunless, and the air is not the same as it is in the open. The French requirement for the lighting of school buildings is that there shall be no other building within a distance equal to the height of the school. The gymnastic work, to secure the best results, must be done in the open air, and not in a dusty gymnasium. In London, all the longer exercises are always taken out of doors in pleasant weather. Some foreign cities now require a certain minimum playground space for every child. In Munich this is twenty-five square feet. In London it is thirty square feet. This would mean an acre of playground to 1,452 children, not a large amount surely, and much less than should be taken in the smaller cities. Throughout the middle states and the West, now generally a block for all new schools is given. In some cases the usefulness of the ground is being nearly destroyed by placing the school building in the center, but where the building is placed at the side or end, as it should be, this ground becomes available for many school and community uses.
This block should be shaded by trees. It should have grass plots, if they have to be renewed every year, as Jacob Riis says; and running around the outside should be a narrow space for children’s gardens where all the nature work material of the school could be grown. In one corner should be a school menagerie and benches should be placed under the trees.
During the school hours, the school park should belong to the nurses and mothers with baby carriages. From three to ten p. m. every school day, and all through the summer, it should be the playground of the children and the social center of the adults. In the winter it should be flooded for skating.
Each of the new public schools of New York contains a gymnasium, but most of these are on the top floor, and they have to equip another in the basement for the play center. Each of the new public schools of Cincinnati contains a gymnasium and a swimming pool, and they are generally on the ground floor or near it. Most of the new high schools all over the country contain a gymnasium at least and many of them swimming pools as well. Wherever these facilities are furnished, they are generally used by the school during the day and by the public at night. A number of cities are now building municipal gymnasiums and baths also, but the children want to use the gymnasium and swimming pool during the day, the adults want to use them at night, it is not evident that two sets of gymnasiums and two sets of swimming pools are necessary.