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THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE
SOCIAL CENTER COMMITTEE
(In Active Charge of Investigations and Experiments)
FRED M. STEIN
Chairman
HENRY DEFOREST BALDWIN
Chairman, Board of Trustees of the People's Institute
FREDERIC C. HOWE
Director of the People's Institute
SAM A. LEWISOHN
Of the Board of Trustees of The People's Institute
The material in the following report was gathered by
EDWARD M. BARROWS
CLINTON S. CHILDS
HENRY FRITZ
HENRY S. KAUFMAN
NORA VAN LEEUWEN
FRANCIS Low
HELEN R. RICHTER
LESTER F. SCOTT
ELIZABETH C. WATSON, and
JOHN COLLIER, Secretary of the Committee
The report was drafted by John Collier and Ed. M. Barrows
Valuable cooperation has been given by the Recreation
Department of the Sage Foundation and the Recreation
Alliance; by Orrin G. Cocks, Pauline Goldmark, Bascomb
Johnson, Dr. Luther H. Gulick, Sonya Levien, Burdette
G. Lewis, Hiram J. Myers, Richard B. Neufeld, Natalie
Sonnichsen, and Howard B. Woolston. Several hundred
volunteer workers aided in the flashlight survey described
in Chapter III.
Since this report was completed, the New York Social
Center Committee, originally organized by the People's
Institute, has transferred to the People's Institute the executive responsibility for the experimental social center at
Public School (3. The Institute's representatives, co6perating with the local Social Center Association, are Mr. Childs
and Miss Van Leeuwen.




T' 4 tNMIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN IBRARIES




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THE CITY WHERE CRIME IS PLAY
A CITY OF THE HOMELESS - - - -        1
GIVE THE IMMIGRANT A CHANCE! - ---    4
THE CITY WHERE CRIME IS PLAY -11
SELF-SUPPORTING RECREATION FOR ALL - - 30
IMMEDIATE STEPS IN IMPROVED USE OF
PLAYGROUNDS AND SCHOOLS -- 38
THE FLASHLIGHT SURVEY OF STREET PLAY - 42








FOREWORD


A CITY OF THE HOMELESS
EW YORK is a City of the Homeless. This is the comprehensive human problem of New York. This is the
great remediable cause for crime. This is the strength
of Tammany Hall. This is the need for socialized recreation.
New York is not merely a city where nearly the whole population lives in flats and hotels. For the home elements, which
the tenement cannot furnish, are not furnished by dance halls,
saloons or moving-picture shows, or by the street where most
of the children play. New York could still remain a tenement
city, and yet it could be a home city. Centers could be provided,
around which the human interests could meet and organize themselves; for the essence of home is not merely a place, but a
friendly group with something worth while to do.
This report deals with the fact that New York is a city of
the homeless, and points out remedies which lie at hand-remedies which if made fully effective would cure much of the crime,
much of the corrupt politics, the waste of young women's lives
and hopes, and the disintegration of the family, conditions which
now stare New York City in the face.
The People's Institute here offers a summary of experiments
and investigations which have been carried out over a term of
years. Most of the facts are facts of common knowledge. But
facts may be known to everyone, and yet their meaning or consequence may be ignored. This report is not primarily a research
document, although the chapter on Juvenile Delinquency contains
new facts of a profound significance. The report is addressed
to those who dwell in the midst of immigration, of tenements, of
politics which is organized through the saloon, and of commercialized amusement-those who, taking these things for granted,
are inclined to take for granted the evils which grow out of them.
I




A new administration has taken the reins in New York. This
administration was elected on a constructive platform. It gained
power through the most sweeping reform victory in the history
of New York. It is pledged to efficiency, and it is not likely to
fail in its pledges.
But there is another kind of service to which the new administration is not definitely pledged. This service is not less
vital than efficiency, and is more human. It is the development
in New York of those elements of home life which, in a great
city, can only be provided through public enterprise.
It will be easier for the new administration to establish
efficiency than to establish human contact. But it will be easier
for it to remain in power through establishing human contact
than merely through establishing efficiency.
What is Tammany Hall-the type of politics represented by
Tammany Hall? We know what Tammany Hall is from the
standpoint of city government, but what is Tammany Hall from
the standpoint of the common man, woman and child? Tammany Hall does not succeed because it is wicked. The weakest
thing about Tammany Hall is its wickedness. The weakest thing
about good government in New York has always been its lack
of human contact, and of distinctive social policy.
Tammany Hall, looked at through the personal eyes of the
wage-earning masses, is a social and human resource.
Scientific views about government, and lofty civic ideals, are
recent acquisitions, and only a minority have ever attained them
in New York City. But everyone is human; everyone is social.
Everyone needs a local, personal and human connection with
the city government. Tammany, through its district organization, provides this local and human bond. Tammany uses its
power to exploit the city, but this is a fact which does not mean
much to the plain man, who first of all requires the human and
the social.
Tammany Hall is a means through which our sumptuary
laws, inflexible and often out of relation to the people's need,
are made adjustable to the neighborhood and racial peculiarities of New York. It may be that Tammany, while mitigating
the severity of law, also extorts blackmail, but the mass of those
who are loyal to Tammany Hall are more interested in the mitigation than in the blackmail.
In this city, where human relationship is not taken account of
2




by business, by the schools, by commercialized amusements, or
by any of the dominant institutions, Tammany Hall stands for
human relationship. Tammany Hall provides a social center and
a benevolent institution-social during the man's ordinary life,
benevolent in his time of trouble.
Tammany Hall's wickedness is its weakest part. Tammany's
strength is due to Tammany's good points. Tammany satisfies
many requirements essential to human life itself and characteristic of most of our people. These requirements, which Tammany
Hall satisfies, are really the center of gravity of our local civic
life. Without its essential humanity Tammany Hall would be
innocuous. Alas that the human and social loyalty of the people
should be claimed only by an agency whose historic purpose is
to exploit New York City!
To shatter Tammany Hall politically is not to shatter Tammany Hall humanly and socially. Tammany Hall needs to be
absorbed. No mere centralized programme of government-no
possible programme of mere efficiency-can compete with Tammany Hall in the social and human field. What is the new Administration going to do in the face of this fact?
The following report tries to answer these questions, with
reference to immigrants, children, adult boys and girls, and family
groups. It is a programme for the economic, social use of existing public properties.


3




GIVE THE IMMIGRANT
A CHANCE!
N       EW YORK has an immigrant problem which no action
by the Federal Government can solve. It is a local
problem  and yet New York will aid civilization by
meeting it.
In Elizabeth Street, Manhattan, there used to live a Sicilian
family named Marosi. Three generations of Marosis lived in
one apartment. Four generations are now living in adjacent
flats on Eleventh Street. Eight years ago there were two members of this family of eight who spoke English. They were the
two boys, who went to school intermittently and roamed the
streets a great deal.
Signor Marosi had been an impressario twenty years before,
in Messina. He was, like his fathers before him, the keeper of
a serious and very ancient art, the folk-theatre of Sicily. This
was only a marionette show, but the figures were nearly lifesized, and there were hundreds of them. They played the heroic
tales of chivalry, bloody melodramas of the Italian civil wars,
and morality and mystery plays. Signor Marosi had brought this
show, with its art tradition, to America. Marosi had a deep and
rich voice, and a rich nature. The Marosi family danced, dialogued, and sang the whole show.
The Marosi theatre was a neighborhood center for three
blocks around. It was regularly patronized by several hundred
Italians. They came in family groups, and in groups of friendly
families. The physical air was bad enough, but the social air
was delightful. Few of the patrons talked English, but they
sang thrillingly in Sicilian dialect, and they were a unit upon the
moral questions which were raised in the marionette dramas.
The Latest Eight years ago there were six other marionette
Lost Art  shows in New York, every one of them a true
neighborhood center for hundreds of people. When they passed
away-for all of them but one are gone-New York City was
the loser not only of a child-like and really beautiful form of
4




drama, the oldest form which survives in the western hemisphere, but of a vital social center. That whole group of a
thousand and more Americans-in-the-making, whom the marionette theatre had held together, could have been transplanted to a
school building, following the marionette show, which could easily
have been transplanted, and they could not only have been
gradually infused with every good American influence, but their
own richness of social inheritance could have been preserved for
New York, which needs it.
The Marosi equipment is now in a garret, and Signor Marosi
has gone into the plumbing business. The boys roll cigarettes
for a living. They are good people-there is no better human
material, no better social capacity in New York, than in the
Marosis and their circle. There is no more pathetic loyalty to
friends, to family and traditions and to the social ideals which
they know.
The object of this chapter is to show the immigrant as a
human being, and to suggest that the immigrant problem is first
a human problem, and second a local New York problem. Immigration is a Federal problem, too, but here and now it is the great
characteristic New York City problem. It is a problem which
New York must attack on behalf of humanity. The immigrant
of New York is a victim and a menace, and it is totally unnecessary for him to be either. He is eager to be a good American.
He has gifts for us. He is here to stay.
Forty per cent. of New York's population are foreign-born
immigrants (I,9oo,ooo). Of the total population of 4,775,000,
seventy-eight per cent., or 3,750,000, are foreign-born or of forNew York a eign parentage. New York is predominantly a forForeign City eign city. What the immigrant needs in regard to
education, recreation and civic preparation is exactly what the
whole population of New York City needs. The native American
suffers from the very same conditions that afflict the immigrant.
When we urge that public education must be adapted to the
needs of this or that immigrant group, we do not mean that it
does not need to be adapted to the neighborhood needs and individual needs among the American born.
When we urge that at least our public recreation should be
adapted to the tastes and needs of the immigrant groups, we do
not mean that our public recreation is now adapted to the native
5




American, for it is not. It is not adapted to any class of the
population. But the fact becomes most glaring when we study
the immigrant groups.
When we point out that there is no civic education of immigrants, and that the immigrant family is disrupted by its leisure
pursuits, exactly the same could be said of the American family
in New York City.
Altogether, the immigrant has not brought to the field of
citizenship or of social and human need any distinctively new
problem. He has enabled us to realize the deficiency of our
social institutions, no matter to what group they be applied.
And sooner or later the pressure of the immigrant will force
New York to adjust its education and recreation to the people's
needs. The immigrant is now a reminder and a plea for modernized education and for adequate recreation. After a while, unless
New York City acts, the immigrant will become a scourge, forcing the city to act. The immigrant needs what we all need. May
he encourage us to get it!
Over the Bowery from Elizabeth Street is a city of immigrants, probably the largest Jewish city in history. Five years
ago the People's Institute organized over one thousand young
men in the lower East Side, and about two thousand in other
districts, mainly American, into civic clubs. These young men
were idealists by nature. They were just out of the grammar
schools or high schools, and many of them had been influenced
by the settlements. They were formed into groups of ten, fifteen,
thirty or forty, for study, for the survey and improvement of
their neighborhood, and in preparation for their lives as voters.
The young men were not a problem. Leadership was not
a problem. The problem which confronted the immigrant and
American groups equally was mainly a physical problem. They
The Viper Un- had no place to meet. This was before the social
der the Rock center movement had taken hold of New York's
imagination. The clubs preferred to maintain their own type of
organization and therefore they were excluded from the few
school buildings which were open in the evenings. They also
wanted to smoke, and this was forbidden in the school buildings.
The settlement facilities were utterly inadequate. The young
men could not guarantee that they would not talk about politics,
so the libraries were closed to them. Private meeting halls are
like gold nuggets, especially in the lower East Side, the demand
6




being far beyond the supply. But the clubs found one institution with open arms-the saloon, of course. They found that
they could get saloon rooms for a nominal rental, or free of
charge. The only condition, expressed or implied, was that they
should drink, and drink generously.
The Raines-law hotel in many a New York neighborhood
is like the shadow of a rock in a weary land, but there are vipers
under the rock. The public are driven there by the bare impossibility of being accommodated anywhere else, and yet the
Raines-law hotel is the focus of the alcoholism, the commercialized vice and the political exploitation of New York City.
One more illustration must suffice. Two years ago a Polish
boy named Henry Lefkowitz, who worked in a dry-goods store,
felt the excitement of musical genius and the impulse of public
service. He gathered three or four friends around him and they
started an orchestra, which they called the Beethoven Symphony
Orchestra. They met in the boys' homes, and when their numbers outgrew the homes, they moved to a settlement house and
then to another and to another, seeking adequate space and a
reasonable amount of freedom. These boys were wage-earners.
Here, as in the case of the civic clubs, the only problem was a
material one, the need for physical space. The boys have never
asked anyone for money, and they never will.
A year after the Beethoven Orchestra was formed, the New
York Social Center Committee began its social center experiment in East Fourth Street at School 63. It sent Clinton S.
Childs into the neighborhood to serve as connecting link between
the school and the people. The center was opened-the expenses
of entertainment and part of the janitorial expense was met by
the neighbors from the first day. This is an immigrant quarter.
The dance, dramatics, and civic discussion flowered immediately
in the social center.
Here was the opportunity the Beethoven Orchestra had been
waiting for. They moved into the school building. At that time
there were thirty-five members. There are now I07 members
in the Beethoven Orchestra-young people and old, men and
women. They not only play: they study and rehearse perseveringly, and they play beautifully. They have purchased their
own instruments. Mr. Lefkowitz gives his time without charge.
Soon another orchestra formed itself, made up of the cloakmakers of the neighborhood.  It has now about fifty pieces.
7




Then a third orchestra was formed, and a fourth is now in the
process of forming.  These orchestras are not only musical
achievements —they are one of the great social results in School
63. They have gone beyond the school and have played in
Cooper Union, in Carnegie Lyceum and at numerous benefits.
Offshoots of these orchestras have taken life in other schools.
At School 63 Mr. Lefkowitz now leads a club called the Jewish
National Club, with sixty members, who are devoted to the revival of Jewish national songs.
This entire development has cost nothing, either to the city
or to philanthropy. Instead, it has contributed to the city, to
the neighborhood and to the solution of the immigrant problem
and of the problem of the social life in New York City, which
are one problem.
Mr. Lefkowitz may be a genius, and in this measure the result is unique, but the men and women, the boys and girls, the
two hundred devotees who work in these orchestras and who find
The Genius their best life there, are not geniuses. In any case,
We Waste there is not only musical genius but various genius
scattered richly throughout New York's population-very richly,
in the immigrant quarters. This genius is usually not even allowed to become conscious of itself, because it has no outlet.
Twenty thousand people, being given the right educational
opportunity and the civic encouragement they needed, produced
the civilization of ancient Athens. Sir Henry Maine has remarked that "all things which move in the modern world are
Greek in their origin." Athenian civilization was a response to
the social institutions of Athens, which were essentially leisuretime institutions.
Through the influence of the social center it has come about
that the music of these orchestras is not just music; it is not just
fine art lying on the other side of a chasm from life. It is part
of the living soul of a community institution. The latent powers
of a crowded neighborhood are finding themselves in School 63.
They are springing into conscious life. They are co-operating
and giving service. School 63 has become the organizing center
for many thousands of people. It has done far more than bring
together that which lay already in scattered form through the
neighborhood. It has created a multitude of leaders and helpers,
and of new wholesome habits, social games and the beginnings
8




of a fine art, and the whole activity is fundamentally civic.
School 63 will be the theatre for many kinds of art and civic experiment during the next year, but there will be nothing taken
into the neighborhood-nothing, that is, except the friendship
and vision of the resident leader and the mere freedom to use,
and to pay the cost of using, one of the five hundred school buildings of New York City.
This whole report could be filled with examples from the
little-explored, neglected social life of the immigrant-examples
which would show the immigrant to be a tragically human problem, and a thoroughly hopeful civic problem. The immigrant
does not represent a deficit to be made up. The vigor and the
good will are there, and eager would be the response if New
York were to adopt the social center idea and apply it methodically to the problems of education and of leisure.
Miss Nora Van Leeuwen, investigating for the People's Institute amid the immigrant groups last spring, found no less than
seventeen distinct nationalities, speaking eight or nine languages,
each of whom had a wealth of imported games, beautiful social
customs, and the material for pageantry and drama, and they
were eager to contribute it to the community life. But no physical space or social medium was available to them, nor did the
community invite them to contribute. School 63 will be a
pageantry and dramatic center during I9I4.
Another investigator reports that he has found more than
one hundred musical societies, not counting the German and
Italian groups, who are keeping alive, in tenement flats or in
rented halls, the musical inheritance which they have brought with
them to this country.
Unless these elements of beauty and idealism which the immigrant has so richly brought with him are given civic recognition, and made use of, they will perish in exactly the same way
The Wealth  that the marionette show has perished, and that
we Must Save the Yiddish drama perished years ago. The conservation of immigrant social wealth is a real, an urgent, issue.
The immigrant is like a healthy and abundant seedling, cast on
barren soil. This barren soil is the cramped tenement home,
the street through which traffic roars, the school buildings,
library buildings and armory buildings which lie idle more than
half the time, the playgrounds which are closed and dark at
night, the roofs which are closed to the use of tenement dwellers.
9




There are rank weeds growing in this barren soil-the saloons
and commercial dance halls, the purposeful political exploitation,
the thousand or more of commercial shows.
New York City is constantly going through excitement and
spending millions of dollars in making war on these weeds or in
trying to change the weeds into useful plants. It cannot be done.
At least, repression is the costliest, the least hopeful way. New
York must plough deeply into its soil. The healthy seed will
do the rest. The only fertilizer needed is a minimum amount of
democratic leadership. As the child represents a power eager
to be used, but easy to abuse, just so does the immigrant. Just
so does the adolescent boy or girl, native or immigrant. Outlet
is the one need.


10




THE CITY WHERE CRIME IS PLAY
P      LAY is the way of life to the child. It is his means of
growth, his motive for study and work, his greatest asset.
New York City has made of play the child's pitfall, his
vestibule to crime, his title to be considered an intruder and a
public nuisance. Child crime in New York is built on playwholesome, educational play, which the law treats as crime and
which street conditions gradually pervert until innocent play
becomes moral crime.
Crime is increasing in all parts of America. Juvenile crime
is increasing more rapidly than adult crime. It is true that juvenile crime as shown in statistics is rather a statutory or legal
fact than a spiritual fact. In New York City most child crime is
not crime at all in a moral or spiritual sense. But this report will
show that the crime of children, which begins as a purely legal
fact, becomes, through normal evolution under street conditions,
a moral evil, and results in criminal types and criminal gangs.
Is there not a comparatively simple remedy for this condition?
Child crime begins with the attempt to play on streets in
violation of law, and in forbidden places under conditions of
trespassing. The first arrest is normally a punishment for the
attempt to play, and to play in ways which are intrinsically good.
This condition presses on the child life of all the tenement
districts of New York City. It is a uniformly operating cause
which results in a fairly uniform method of resistance on the
The Out-   part of the children. Not only are the statutory
lawed Young crimes of fighting and stealing regarded as play
by the children, but the more innocent kinds of play, like baseball, are in law regarded as crimes and are so punished. This
is not, on the one hand, a defect of child character, nor on the
other hand a mere stupidity of law. It is a real condition, inherent in the fact that the street with its traffic, and the street
front with its stores and windows, are the only playground of
95% or more of the city's children.
The result is a fundamental schism between the child com11




munity and the adult community. The child community is a
nuisance. The adult community is a tyrant. Neither is to
blame. Our laws, our court procedure and our probation system, imperfect though they be, are not to blame. The blame
rests with the city which has not provided play space and which
does not intelligently use even the little play space that is provided. Juvenile crime is a play problem not only in the sense
that play is an alternative to crime-a cure for crime; but in a
more specific sense, namely, in the streets of New York, under
present conditions, play is crime and crime is play.
What is street play really like? Is it essentially good or essentially bad? If street play were transferred and carried out
in exactly the same way in the open country, would it be reIJ Play  garded as educational or demoralizing, as social or
a Crime? anti-social?  In brief, is the child a criminal?  The
following chapter will show that the play which children try
to engage in is intrinsically wholesome and desirable. Children tend to develop play leadership which, with a little adult
encouragement and guidance, will be found more useful than any
kind of play supervision. This means that our playgrounds can
be multiplied in usefulness, and that the effective play area of
New York City can be largely increased by the allotting of streets
which are little used by traffic, to be used by the children for play
with the minimum of adult guidance and police supervision.
These facts are treated in detail later in this report.
The following chapter is condensed from a report by Mr.
Edward M. Barrows, now supervisor of the Milwaukee District
for Wisconsin University, who for the past year was special investigator for the People's Institute, and who has studied juvenile delinquency in the courts, the streets and the homes, and has
been an actual member of numerous boys' gangs. Probably Mr.
Barrows has achieved a more human and essential understanding
of the beginning and end of the boy criminal than any other man.
"The facts which follow have been obtained through my personal experience as special investigator for the People's Institute.
Before this I worked on various phases of the child play and
child crime question as an agent of the National Child Labor
Committee, an investigator for the Russell Sage Foundation, and
secretary of the West Side Recreation Committee. As a means
to investigation I lived for about three years in the Middle West
12




Side of Manhattan, which is popularly called the Hell's Kitchen
District. I was not known as a social worker or investigator, but
as a free-lance newspaper man and good fellow generally. The
hundreds of adults and children with whom I became intimate
in that neighborhood are still without an inkling as to my professional identity.
"This method of investigation had no romantic object, but was
based on the fact which I became aware of several years ago,
that the child life of the New York tenement neighborhoods is a
The Defensive world apart. The Middle West Side was chosen
Secret League for investigation both because it stands high among
New York districts for its juvenile crime record and because it
is a relatively old neighborhood, representing the condition toward'
which the newer congested neighborhoods are developing. In
the Middle West Side the child life is,;.rganized-yes, definitely
and somewhat elaborately organized-into what amounts to a
defensive secret league, with fens of-thousands of members. This
league is made up of small gang-units, which are sometimes
federated for brief periods, which war on each other but are
united against the common enemy-against the law and its
agents, who are aliens, and generally against the adult community
as such. This condition means that no investigator who is known
as an investigator can find his facts. Still less can an 'uplifter'
find his facts or do his work if he is known as an 'uplifter.'"
After this brief word, as to the methods according to which
the more analytic studies were made, we may proceed to the facts
ascertained.
Twelve thousand children are arrested annually in New York.
These are not exceptional children and they are not a special
problem. Rather, they are typical children. They are mere exhibits drawn from the mass of those children who live in the congested neighborhoods.
This fact looms large in the child problem. The twelve
thousand children arrested annually in New York are but a small
proportion of the children who have done the same things and
have not been caught. These children are not sub-normal, and
they come from homes which are typical of whole enormous
population districts. They are arrested for the only thing a child
can do on the street, and they have no place but the street in which
to do anything. These children represent the child population
of half or more of the tenement districts of New York City.
13




Though they are physically and morally normal at the start, they
do tend to become at least morally abnormal as the years of
their childhood go by. No child, entering into the life of the
tenement districts, can wholly escape the conditions which brought
the unfortunate twelve thousand children to Court last year
or which make the boy gang a progressively anti-social institution.
The Crimes The analytic sections of this chapter are based on I93
of the Child cases of juvenile arrest drawn from the court records.
All these arrests fall within the Middle West Side region. They
were made on the following direct charges:
Assault                      Picking pockets
Attempt at burglary          Pitching pennies
Begging                      Playing ball
Bon-fires                    Playing shinney
Burglary                     Playing with water pistol
Destruction of property      Putting out lights
Disorderly conduct           Selling papers
Fighting                     Shooting craps
Gambling                     Snowballing
Intoxication                 Stealing
Jumping on cars              Subway disturbances
Kicking the garbage can      Throwing stones
Loitering                    Trespass
Playing football on the streets  Truancy
These I93 cases were studied as types and in a way to learn
the surroundings, the life history and, as far as possible, the
ultimate outcome of the cases.
It is clear at the very start that the punishment, as far as
law goes, has little relation to the alleged crimes as listed above.
The same section of the penal code punishes baseball and
burglary, and both of these acts are punishable under several
other sections of the penal code. Frequently the arrest brings
out a series of acts, committed in previous days or weeks, which
bear little relation to the direct cause of the arrest. We find cases
of children arrested for playing ball but whose story in court
reveals stealing, assault and burglary. Again, we find a child rearrested under three or four different sections of the penal code
for the same repeated act, be it the kicking of a garbage can or assault and battery. We find in the court records the most indiscriminate blending of arrest and punishment for innocent play
with arrest and punishment for deviltry or perverse crime of a
serious nature.
14




Be it remembered that this is the hand of the law as the child
knows it. This is the real organized society-the political statewith which he is in contact.
To make the case specific rather than general, a few typical
instances may be given:
John C. was arrested for creating a disturbance. This is a nuisance
and, from the standpoint of the adult, a moral offence in a crowded
city. Special inquiry developed that John C. was one of a number of
boys who gathered in front of a tenement home late one
Br eaLa- evening and sang in chorus. Incidentally, only one of the
several malefactors was caught. Most of the arrests of
children are for acts committed by groups of children ranging from
two to fifty, and as often as not there is only one boy in the whole
group who is caught.
Charles C. was arrested for violating Penal Code Section 675, relating to disorderly conduct and committing nuisance. His act consisted in throwing a baseball on a public street.
William C., arrested for disorderly conduct, was charged with
playing football on the street. The record showed that he was an
athletic enthusiast, and there was no other football field but the
street. In contrast with this fact, it should be mentioned that the
New York Board of Education maintains an elaborate and costly
organization for encouraging the athletic spirit among boys.
George C. was arrested for throwing stones. The record showed
that George C. had been one of a group engaging in a street fight,
the street fight being a typical form of vigorous play among children
of this district.
Thomas C. was arrested for throwing stones. He had thrown a
stone in revenge and with murderous intent at an unsuspecting
enemy. His motive was wholly different from that of George C., but
they were classified together in law.
Frank P. was arrested for stealing. The record showed that the
boy's own parents had preferred the charge and they gave as a reason that they had no other way to keep him off the streets during
vacation. He was released from the protectory when school opened
in the fall.
William L. was arrested for playing ball. Actually, he had been
holding some bats while the other boys were playing. He remonstrated with the police officer, but the officer told him he could not
get the other fellows and so had to take him.
Harry M., charged with pitching pennies, had been actually playing marbles near by, but the boys who were pitching pennies ran
faster than he.
John M., arrested for burglary, was one of a gang who made organized burglary an avocation-a form of play. This case is typical
of hundreds, which are discussed later in this chapter.
John R., arrested for burglary, was one of three who broke into a
notion store and stole two baseballs and some fishing tackle.
15




An implication of these cases needs to be pointed out. The
figures in the Children's Courts are of almost no value as showing the quantity of law-breaking, innocent or otherwise, on the
part of the city's children. Nathan A., for instance, was arrested
for crap-shooting. There was no other arrest. Similarly with
Joseph B., William C. was arrested for playing baseball, and the
rest of his team are not mentioned. George C. was arrested for
fighting, with no mention of his fellow combatant or combatants.
Now, coming down to the more intimate analysis of the cases
in question, what are the children really trying to get at when
they fall into the clutches of the law? Children are our wards.
What Are the The child criminal, though he is a nuisance on the
Children After? street, is primarily a case needing our help for its
own sake. And under New York conditions the motives of the
child often lead to the most unexpected consequences.
No matter what the legal nomenclature for the child's act,
whether burglary, destruction of property, fighting or loitering,
we find on analyzing these typical cases that the child was eitherI. Trying to play; or
2. Trying to get money to purchase what he needed for play
or other purposes; or
3. Trying to avenge himself for some real or fancied
wrong; or
4. Responding to the impulse of a weak or abnormal mind.
This classification is of material importance, inasmuch as
the children who commit crime out of revenge or in order to help
meet family expenses, cannot be helped merely through playgrounds or play leadership, and on the other hand, if the predominant motive is a true play motive the problem is really a
recreation problem.
The acts which lead children to arrest are nearly always
games. They are (I) games which are against the law only because they are played on the street, and (2) games which
through their nature involve an infraction of the penal code. In
the first class we find baseball, football, jackstones, singing and
marbles. In the second we find stealing, fighting, destruction of
property and similar violations of the code of social procedure.
But the point which is overlooked by the law, and in a large
measure by the law enforcer, is that both these forms of play
are to the child merely or mainly play, reprsenting a perfectly
16




normal childish instinct which has, in many of the cases of
arrest, been distorted through a morbid street environment.
The following is an analysis of 170 of the cases here being
considered:
Total arrests for moral but il-  Total arrests for immoral and
legal play:                     illegal play:
Bon-fires.................... 19  Assault.....................  8
Disorderly conduct (shouting    Disorderly conduct........... 6
and harmless disturbances). 13  Burglary.................... 12
Football....................  4  Putting  out  street  lights.....  2
Baseball.................... 22  Stealing.................... 42
Snowballing................ 2  Throwing various missiles... 16
Throwing various missiles.... 24
Totals.................. 84    Totals.................. 86
This classification purposely takes no account of 34 arrests
for petty gambling, 17 arrests for truancy, and io arrests for intoxication, begging, etc., for these things constitute a group with
a very sad significance; they are games full of harm in themselves and with dangerous tendencies, but which the blunted,
perverted instincts which children inevitably acquire on the streets
of New York have led them to regard as perfectly moral, as
devoid of moral significance as are baseball and football. Even
the great majority of boy crap-shooters on the street have, for
reasons mentioned later, no such consciousness of wrong-doing
as have the boy-burglars or fighters. Many even of the arrests
for stealing could be properly classified as acts which, while
really. criminal, are not acknowledged as criminal by the boys.
This will be later explained. But in the above classification stealing is classified as an immoral crime rather than a play crime.
The attitude of the law with reference to the first, or innocent,
class of acts leading to arrest is suggested by the wording of the
charges preferred against various children:
"Arrested with another boy... charged with throwing a hard
ball about a public place, thereby endangering the safety of persons
in the place."
"Charged with annoying and interfering with others and endangering their safety and property by playing with a hard ball on a
public street."
"Charged with playing game called baseball on the public street,
thereby interfering with free use by persons of that street."
"Playing a game with a hard ball across the sidewalk of a public
street to the annoyance of persons thereon." (This game really consisted in bouncing a rubber ball from the different stairs in succession
17




of a tenement doorway. This is a popular game with New York
children.)
"Charged with another... with playing on the sidewalk of the
public street a game called pitching pennies, thereby obstructing the
sidewalk and interfering with and annoying persons on the public
street."
"Charged with another boy with obstructing the sidewalk while
playing a game called pitching pennies." (Note that while in the
previous case the boy was charged with pitching pennies and thereby
obstructing the sidewalk, in this case he is charged with obstructing
the sidewalk while pitching pennies.)
"Charged with playing a game called craps on the public street
to the annoyance of persons thereon." (Note that this arrest also
was for obstructing the street and not for gambling.)
The above cases illustrate the fact that the law deals with the
child from one standpoint only-the annoyance he causes the
adult passersby, and the store windows he breaks.
It will now begin to be plain why the moral aspects of the
deeds for which children are arrested must generally be hazy to
the little wrong-doers themselves. Gambling is a case in point.
TheDe-Mor- Public opinion classes gambling as a vice and a
alizing Iaw crime ranking with theft and sexual immorality.
Yet the tenement streets of New York are infested with adult
and juvenile gamblers, who gamble usually through shooting
crap or pitching pennies. Street gambling is hardly less common than baseball or any of the other street games. The unwritten law of the city streets has sanctioned gambling for many
child-generations, until gambling has lost all moral significance
to the children of New York. As for the law, we have seen how
it adds to the confusion of moral values. The law treats crap
shooting as being identical in terms both of punishment and of
why the punishment is given, with chalk games, or ring-aroundthe-rosy, or kick-the-can. The arrests for gambling and for
chalk games alike are treated as cases of street obstruction.
But strangely enough, one offense is particularly singled out
in law to be prohibited on the streets. This offense is baseball.
Baseball is no sin and the children know it. They merely know
that they will be arrested if they play baseball. They know that
if they are going to play ball they must send out pickets to announce the coming of the policeman before he gets there.
Baseball, and the co-operative evasion of necessary law on the
part of children, leads up to the question of gangs.
The innocent group of child offenses has been described.
18




The second or vicious group are the many organized games which
have been developed under street conditions and which involve
acts which, as a rule, the children themselves know to be immoral, though the group standards or gang standards allow them.
An example of this type of child crime is the widely popular
sport of gang stealing. Gang stealing is recognized as a sport
and game by unknown thousands of children in New York. It
Crime   would have been so recognized by the elders but for
is Play the fact that in our dealing with juvenile crime we have
hitherto studied the overt acts rather than the children's reasons
for committing these acts. Just as we do not analyze the child's
motive for playing baseball on the streets, though we arrest him
for it, so we do not recognize the motives of the child thief when,
in an elaborate and traditional organized game, he steals
groceries, baseballs, door-knobs or street lamps. How many of
the male readers of this report can remember, when they were
boys, how they stole fruit from their neighbors, or when they
went to college how they pilfered signs and door-knobs and.
souvenirs in a spirit of hilarity?
Gang stealing in many parts of New York has come to have
a definite form of organization. A band of boys, from three to six
or seven in number, will go from tenement to tenement on Saturday evenings, taking orders from the housewives for fruits,
vegetables, groceries, light hardware and clothing, just as though
they were delivery clerks. When they think they have a sufficient
number of orders they go out on the street and by a series of
organized raids secure the goods which the housewives have
ordered. These goods are sold on a regularly established scale of
prices, which in most parts of the city is arbitrary, with no relation to the market value of the stolen articles. After the boys
get their money they retire to their "hang-out," where the
money is divided into equal parts and the possessors shoot
"craps" until one of them has it all. This boy divides the winnings into two parts, one of which he spends in treating the other
members of the gang. The other half he is permitted to keep
and spend for himself.
This is a regularly organized form of amusement, which has
existed to the writer's personal knowledge for a decade or more
on the Middle West Side. As far as the boys themselves are
concerned, it is a game and nothing more. The crimes committed are incidental to the game. The elements the boys are
19




striving for are the dramatic adventure in obtaining stolen goods,
the excitement of gambling, which to them is no crime, and the
physical joys of soda-water, the cigarettes, motion-picture shows,
etc., which follow the game. These boys start out to seek adventure, excitement and a "treat." Unguided and irresponsible,
and with a tradition of lawlessness based upon the hostile indifference of their elders, they have gone after their ends without regard to consequences, with the result that before their game
is over they will have obtained money under false pretenses,
committed larceny, and gambled; for any one of which acts they
are criminally liable. Yet punishment for any one of these acts
leaves the zest for adventure, the lust of gambling and the taste
for sweets and cigarettes as strong as ever.
Gang stealing opens up the whole question of the nature and
peril of gangs. Gangs are formed through a primitive instinct
for group life. The development of the gang is necessary for
The Gang-A So- the fulfilment of individual life and the creation
cial Corner-stone of adult society. But what is the gang to do,
and what conception of law and order will be taken on by the
gang? What gang traditions and what type of gang leadership
will be developed under the conditions of New York street life?
How will these gang traditions react on the individual standards
of the boy or girl? If the gang is a force for evil, is it essentially
evil or merely accidentally so, and can the balance be shifted to
good? Can the gang even be made wholly good-can the gang
influence be harnessed to the cause of education and public
service?
A whole book could be written on the natural history of
gangs, but this chapter aims only to show the nature of child
crime and of the gang in relation to child crime. The typical
gang is the boys' gang. Girls do not ordinarily form gangs. But
individual girls are frequently attached to boys' gangs and are
sometimes real factors in the gang-government. The present
chapter relates simply to boy criminals, the delinquency of girls
being of a very different order, and relating itself rather to sexual
delinquency than to law-made crime or the mere continuance of
primitive impulses in the child after that time when they would
normally be outgrown.
There are two simple questions which must be asked in studying each gang. In the first place, what activities does the en20




vironment present to the gang? That is, how can the gang
The Perversion express itself in a positive way-what kind of orof the Gang ganized action can the gang make possible to its
members? In the second place, gangs are a defensive organization. What is there in the environment from which the gang
needs to protect itself and its members? An elemental social
force is the group sentiment for safety. This sentiment probably
generated the original human group and it has operated constantly and registered itself in the inherited mentality of the
race for hundreds of thousands of years. The group sentiment
for safety is strong in the boys' gang. But safety from what?
Essentially, in our present study, the answer would be, safety
from the adult society, from the law which violates all the child's
real needs, from the policeman who is the hated and helpless
agent of an inhuman law. So the gang becomes a conspiracy
against adult society and against law. As the gang ages and
matures and its members approach the voting age, it is quite inevitable that the gang, thoroughly trained in anti-social ways,
will be used by any anti-social force which has interests at stake
in politics.
To return to the immediate question-how is the transition
brought about from innocent to pernicious play, in the boy's development as a member of a play group? The following are
illustrations taken from the 193 cases studied:
The case of Philip B. is typical. He was arrested for stealing
$1.50 worth of groceries; yet the record showed that his family was
self-supporting and honest and could not have needed the stolen groceries. Our knowledge of gang stealing, however, and the ways boys
steal from grocery stores as an incident in a concerted game, reveals
at once the nature of his crime.
Daniel D. was arrested with a companion for stealing seven pairs
of suspenders. The record showed that this boy was not contributing
to the family support. His theft was typical of the kind which is
committed during organized gang raids.
Michael B. was one of a gang of five, all arrested in the act of
stealing clothes from a tailor shop. He confessed that he wanted the
money for spending purposes.
Thomas B. was one of a gang caught stealing books; he was arrested for theft.
John R. was a member of a very well-known middle West Side
boys' gang, many of whose members appear in the court records, and
nearly always in connection with gang stealing. One arrest shows
him as one of a gang that broke into a notion store and stole two
baseballs and some fishing tackle. The circumstances surrounding
the robbery show clearly its play origin.
21




John W., a member of the same gang, is identified with two such
gang burglaries.
Lawrence A., a member of the same gang, was thrice arrested for
stealing, each time in connection with gang raids.
Peter P., an Italian, was arrested for stealing lead pipe from a
cellar. The record shows that the boy was only the lookout for a
gang which was really doing the stealing. He was arrested and the
others of the gang escaped.
Frederic C. was arrested for burglary. The record shows that he
was one of a gang which was playing in the backyard of a candy store
on Fifty-fifth Street. The proprietor of the store left for a moment,
whereat the gang crept through a window and stole a large quantity
of candy, which they immediately devoured.
Alexander S. raided a market with two companions and carried off
some chickens. Patrick S., with another boy, broke through a store
window and stole a toilet set. The indications in both of these arrests
pointed to organized gang robbery for play.
A case not of gang robbery, which yet illustrates the play motive,
was that of Jacob D., son of well-to-do parents. He stole a quantity
of iron filings for some purpose of his own from a store near his
home, and after the experience in court his father gave him a beating.
The motives behind these cases are, in general, not apparent at first glance, and the law ordinarily takes no account
of them. A child is arrested for burglary and is tried on the
specific charge of "entering an inhabited dwelling in the night
season with intent to commit a felony." Yet this may have been
simply an unguided expression of the child's dramatic play instinct. The boys may have organized into a gang of robbers and
may, for the game of the thing only, have committed the burglary.
Thus there was no criminal intent on the part of the marauders.
Passing from this example, in which we see the methods of
crime utilized for the purposes of play, we next come to the degradation of legitimate, health-giving games, under the exigenEven Baseball cies of street play, into the class of crime-breeding
Breeds Crime games. The national game of baseball is perhaps
the chiefest of these games. Aside from the fact that this game
is itself specifically forbidden on the streets, it is the direct cause
in hundreds of cases of assault, obstruction, destruction of
property, and even of petty larceny. The surroundings of the
game, not its nature, bring about this condition. When two juvenile nines attempt to settle the question of supremacy in a
crowded street, flanked by high tenements, trouble invariably follows. Such games are common in the tenement districts.
The petty larceny element in these games occurs through the
22




fact that the boys are seldom able to go clear through a full game
without losing one or two balls, and, being poor, they have
worked out systematic methods of stealing new ones. The theft
in this case may be directly traced to the lack of adequate space
in which to play a normal game of ball.
This fact is given not to detract from the seriousness of the
crime, but only to raise the question of whether or not society
would progress farther in dealing with such cases if it treated
them as cases of perverted play rather than as cases of deliberate
wrong-doing.
Gang fighting, another common and serious offense, is a
product of the complex gang organization which is the basis of
all boy life in the streets of New York. It has its sources either
The Gang in gang rivalry or in the infliction of a wrong by one
at War   gang upon another, which results in a long series of
retaliatory fights sometimes extending through many months.
From being simply physical contests between gang and gang,
these fights often become neighborhood feuds in which small boys
are maimed and on rare occasions killed outright, windows are
broken, and all kinds of neighborhood outrages are perpetrated.
There is a great distinction between these organized gang
fights and the smaller misunderstandings which result in fights
between two small boys. Gang fights are a part of the traditional
play life of the New York boys. Except among the older boys
they are carried out in the spirit of play, and the theft, destruction of property, and mayhem which accompany them are regarded as incidental. The fights are very distorted manifestations of the same spirit of rivalry of which baseball or football, or the more primitive "tug-of-war," are less destructive
expressions.
When we trace back to their sources even the fights for revenge, we generally find a play motive there also. Two years
ago the small boys on West Fiftieth Street and West Fifty-third
Street near Eleventh Avenue were celebrating election night with
bon-fires on their respective streets. The Fiftieth Street boys
had more material than the Fifty-third Street boys. When the
Fifty-third Street boys ran out of material they raided Fiftieth
Street, extinguished all the bon-fires, routed the celebrants, and
triumphantly carried the bon-fire material to their own street.
This was the beginning of a feud which lasted over a year be23




tween the denizens of the two streets, during which time a score
of boys were jailed, a number seriously maimed, and hundreds of
dollars' worth of property destroyed. Yet, despite the number
of arrests on the charge of fighting, disorderly conduct and destruction of property, the feud itself continued unabated, until
a compromise was arrived at by the boy leaders themselves.
This feud was a typical instance of the play spirit, expressing
itself through rivalry without any attempt to check it as such.
Of the thirty or forty boys who were arrested as a direct outcome of these fights, not one but was arrested as an individual
criminal without reference to the motive of his wrong-doing.
The result was that after his arrest the boy responded to the same
motive as promptly as if he had never been arrested. Again
we are brought to the serious question of whether or not all this
destruction to property and morals could not have been avoided
had there been proper facilities and a leadership to have turned
the spirit of rivalry into legitimate play channels.
As a summary of the 193 cases here discussed, it can be said
that of this number I88, or all but nine, show the predominant
operation of a play motive of the normal or perverted kind. Of
the remaining nine, two were clearly acts of personal revenge,
and seven showed a clearly economic motive. The I93 cases
did not contain a single one where mental deficiency was alleged
in the court records or discovered on investigation to have
directly prompted an overt act-though unquestionably weakmindedness and faulty reasoning are often the circumstances
that cause the child to be caught rather than escaping, and maleducation, if not mental deficiency, is of course a condition producing as well as produced by such later stages of play perversion as gang stealing.
To review the foregoing pages. Play is the chief business
and the way of growth of childhood. The children of New
York have inherent rights, which Nature, not man, has given
The Juggernaut them, and which man cannot take away save at
of a Great City his own peril, for these children are the men of the
future. Of these inherent rights the chiefest is the right to play,
and New York City has so allowed conditions to overwhelm her,
and has so badly adjusted her penal code and police methods to
the social needs of the people, as to make the satisfaction of this
primary right of children a crime in itself. Instead of making
24




play an enemy of crime, New York City has forced play to become the ally and the fountain-source of crime.
In New York City child play is peculiarly a nuisance. The
streets are inadequate even for business purposes, and business
must go on even though life itself withers. New York is not
intelligently laid out for human use. The leisure even of adults
is unprovided for. What is leisure to the adult is the beginning
and end of life to the child. So the child finds himself in New
York City a misunderstood, persecuted and objectionable stranger
in a strange land.
There is no one remedy which will wholly solve this penal
problem of child play. Child play is inseparable from child education and from child life itself. Children are not all alike;
A Problem as there are more and less delicate types of child mind
Deep as Life and body. There are bullies; there are children
whose home experience has rendered them dangerous to other
children. And there are the false social values which are hovering about to seize on and perpetuate the child's greed, lust, fear
and hypocrisy. For children are not mere innocent spirits with
a jubilant heart. Children are theatres wherein is lived out all
that is primitive, for bad or for good, in the past of our species.
These facts being true, it would be idle to claim that the question of child crime, or the moral education of children, can be
disposed of through the mere provision of any number of playgrounds or playhouses. Be it frankly said that not only our
playground movement, but our public education itself, as now
conducted, are not going to solve the child problem. Under ideal
conditions, this will remain a long-lasting constructive issue, requiring the best intelligence of the nation.
How appalling then is this problem, when complicated by the
conditions described in this chapter!
As some constructive possibilities, suggested by the above
facts and remarks, we here indicate measures which ought to be
applied, specifically in the Middle West Side of New York, to
There Are Rem- provide play-space and to utilize educationally
edles at Hand  the play instincts.
Public school buildings in the Middle West Side are used to
as small an extent of their capacity as is the case in the city at
large. This means a 40% non-use or more.
25




There is a large recreation pier at West Fiftieth Street, where
the activities could be multiplied.
The DeWitt Clinton Park, at Fifty-ninth Street and the North
River, is unused during the evenings and very inadequately used
during the day. It is one of the finest playgrounds in the world.
There are at least ten city blocks in the Middle West Side
which could, if the city government desired it, be devoted to
playground uses for at least several hours of every day.  Apparatus would not be needed, and the only supervision required
would be police supervision.
A plan is now under way looking to all the above aims, and
involving a complicated experiment at neighborhood regeneration. This plan is described at the conclusion of the present chapter. But it is here necessary to ask: How far is the Middle West
Side typical of Greater New York? Is the crime problem a play
problem only in special neighborhoods or in every congested
neighborhood?
There is no doubt as to the answer.  In all important respects, the Middle West Side typifies Manhattan Island and a
large part of Brooklyn and Bronx Boroughs and part of Queens
Borough. The conditions in the so-called Hell's Kitchen neighborhood are merely a developed instance of the conditions toward
which the whole city is rapidly moving.  The Hell's Kitchen
problem is more difficult because two generations of tradition
now lie behind the life of that neighborhood. It is a matured
tradition, both among adults and children, and this tradition has
many bad elements in it. On the favorable side, even the perverted leadership of that neighborhood has, in the main, no organized selfish motive. Most of this bad leadership is really not
so much perverted as it is a strictly logical response to the conditions of life which have been imposed by New York City itself.
There is good-will, waiting to be enlisted even in the hearts of
the seemingly perverted leaders. Certainly, the good-will of the
groups themselves can be depended on. Just as with the immigrant neighborhoods described in the first chapter of this report,
so with the West Side district as a whole, the need is outletoutlet for individual energy and for group activity; outlet for the
adventurous interests of boys, and for the sexual interests of
boys and girls, other than a destructive outlet.
And this is true of all New York City.
26




Play is crime all over New York, not merely in the Middle
West Side. The juvenile crime rate is growing for the city
as a whole. School buildings, armories, playgrounds and piers
The W e es t ide are largely idle throughout the city.  PlayTypifes New York grounds are everywhere inadequate. Traffic has
a monopoly of the street everywhere except in one or two highclass residence neighborhoods where the children do not need
to play on the streets.
Throughout the city the child is separated from his family
not only during school hours, but during his play hours.
And finally, children throughout the city try to play on the
street in a constructive way.
Last April the People's Institute conducted the most novel
play census ever taken. This was an instantaneous or flashlight
survey of the children playing on the streets of Manhattan
A Hundred Thousand Island. About four hundred civic workers,
Children at Play  who had been carefully drilled in advance,
with tabulation sheets, maps, etc., classified a total of about
I Io,ooo children.  The analysis of this count is appended
to this report. The count revealed no less than thirty-nine
constructive games, which were being played by approximately
55,000 children.  These were individual constructive games,
dramatic games, competitive games, and group games involving
competition or social intercourse. Twenty thousand children
were participating in the organized games as an audience-taking sides, shouting encouragement, and otherwise contributing
to the enjoyment. There were 27,000 children wandering idle on
the streets. There were about 30,000 adult loafers in the immediate neighborhood of these active and idle children.
The games which could be called essentially criminal were
negligible in number. Nine hundred and ten children were fighting, and 420 were shooting craps, as compared to 4,711 who were
"tending babies," and 458 who were splitting kindling wood.
One hundred and forty-three children were playing at bon-fire,
to the destruction of the asphalt pavements. No less than 13,000
of the children who were counted at active play-or one in about
four and a quarter-were playing or practising organized baseball.
All of these children who were playing actively were violating
the law.
27




Most adults passing along a crowded street after school hours
think that the child street life is a shouting, fighting, boiling
chaos. How false is this impression! The play census brought
The Organized out that this child life of the streets, far from
RepublicofPlay being a chaos, is an intricate and a fairly well
organized democracy of play; that the children are spontaneously
playing more educational games than are taught in the kindergarten itself. Many of these games they have learned from no
adult, but from the previous generation of children.
Of course the flashlight survey, which was supplementary to
the intensive studies of Mr. Barrows, did not bring out the legal
status of the games these children were playing, or the haunting
menace of arrest which hung over each child. One salient fact
appeared-namely, that the games which are especially troublesome on the street from the standpoint of traffic and of the
damage they do, and of the danger to the children themselves,
are the organized team games. Individual street games, or craps
played in alleyways, are far less dangerous, and naturally they
are pursued with less vigor by the police, than is the case with
organized games. Both intensive study and the flashlight census
brought out the fact that the street environment operates silently
and relentlessly to break down the more highly organized forms
of child play-to disintegrate them into the more elementary
kinds of play or to prevent the elementary play from becoming
organized group play.
The census reinforced Mr. Barrows's conclusion that street
play is deeducational in its tendency-cutting short the normal
evolution of the child's play interests which would, if society cooperated with them, lead the child upward toward social
relationships.
In brief, the main conditions, whether for good or for bad,
which hold good in the Middle West Side, are true for all of
New York City. The problem intensively studied in this chapter is a Greater New York problem. If the Middle West Side
is degenerating, so is Greater New York, though the degeneration may not have become so dramatically evident as yet. If the
Hell's Kitchen children are trying to be good citizens, though
the conditions will not allow them to be, then so are the rest of the
city's children. If the Middle West Side needs a neighborhood
and social programme, then so does New York City as a whole.
28




As a result of the investigations by Mr. Barrows, the People's
Institute has undertaken a neighborhood work which will correlate and broaden the various recreation activities now going on
The Experiment  in the Middle West Side. A social center has
Begun         been opened in School 17, on West Forty-seventh
Street, on the initiative of the Local School Board. The People's
Institute has taken executive charge of the work. About this
center there will be focussed a neighborhood movement, which
will work in DeWitt Clinton playground, on the West Fiftieth
Street pier, in the public libraries and on the streets. Mr. Clinton S. Childs will be the neighborhood secretary. It is under
his direction that School 63 has been developed so brilliantly.
It is planned to build this work upon the neighborhood groups
as now organized-both the child and adult groups. The neighborhood group will be encouraged to establish and enforce its
own codes. There will be as little imported work as possible.
There will be very little pedagogical work, at least in the beginning. The activities will be made so interesting that they
can really compete with the commercial amusements and gang
avocations of the neighborhood as it now exists.
The work in School 17 will be carried out in co-operation
with the recreation center and the after-school athletic center in
that building, and will be supervised for the Board of Education
by Dr. Edward T. Stitt, the director of evening recreation centers.
There is needed for one year's work a minimum sum of
$3,500. Of this sum $2,750 has been raised. Contributions are
invited to complete the budget. A larger budget would make
possible a much more rapid development of the work.
We may assume, if results in School 63, School 41 and other
social centers be typical, that the neighborhood will contribute
in the first year a sum equal to at least half of the central budget.
Most of the work will not be paid for at all, for it will rest on
the interest of the neighbors and will not be professional work,
but neighborhood life and self-directed play.
The above small expenditure will make possible a multiplied
use of one large playground and one large pier. It will maintain, in a modern school building, an educational and social institution reaching thousands of people continually, and will
make possible the organization of street play among thousands
of children. In brief, it will give a hope to the Middle West Side.
29




SELF-SUPPORTING RECREATION
FOR ALL
S OME months ago the Honorable John Purroy Mitchel
asked the following question of a group of social workers:
"Why is it necessary for New York City to spend large
sums on public recreation, when commerce is able to provide
recreation at a profit?"
The answer to this question would be a solution of New
York's recreation problem.
There are in New York I2,500 saloons, paying heavy rents
and license fees and yet making money.
A thousand motion-picture shows are collecting over twelve
million dollars a year from the people of New York.
Nearly six hundred dance halls are running on a basis of
profit.
There are thousands of miscellaneous resorts which must be
making money or they would not continue to do business.
And in the public parks there are numerous concessions, held
by private enterprise, doing the public's work on a basis of
private gain.
New York City provides five per cent. or less of the people's
indoor amusement. All this amusement is conducted at a pecuniary loss.  Commerce provides ninety-five per cent. or
more of the indoor amusement of New York. The commercial
amusements are self-supporting-more, they are profitable.
Public recreation has been made free either as an offshoot
of public education or through a more or less unconscious policy
of municipal philanthropy.
This policy, right or wrong, is equivalent to a policy of restricting public recreation to the enjoyment of the few. Free
public recreation, if given in a continuous way to a majority
Is Public Recrea- of the people of New York, would involve the
tion for the Few city in new expenditures of twenty, thirty, or
forty million dollars a year at least. If recreation centers, as
30




now conducted, were increased in number on a free basis until
half the children of New York were reached six nights a week,
the cost would be not less than $5,000,000 a year.
In view of these striking facts, an answer is needed to the
following questions:
I. Is it permanently desirable to leave the people's recreation
to commerce?
2. Is public recreation intended only for the very poor, who
must have free recreation, or is it intended for the mass of the
people?
3. Why is commercial recreation able to pay its own way?
Is the popularity of commercial recreation due to the fact that
it is wicked, and that the public will not buy any amusement except wicked amusement, or is there some other reason?
4. Would the public, if invited, willingly pay an admission
fee to the public recreations as now administered?
The above questions have an importance equal to any other
human question before New York City. The preceding chapters
of this report have shown that juvenile recreation is an important factor in juvenile crime, and that the neglect of recreation
has made our immigrant problem doubly difficult to solve. Some
other facts which give importance to the question of whether
public recreation can be made to reach the mass of the people,
are the following:
I. The adolescent girl, who must seek her recreation and
social life in commercial resorts, and who depends on commercial resorts for meeting men, is exploited by the dance hall and
the saloon.  No one knows how largely the social evil is increased by this fact, but all students of the question agree that
present conditions are demoralizing.
2. The indoor recreations of New York, public and private
alike, operate to discourage family life. The family must separate to get its recreation. This is equally true of the saloon,
to which the father cannot legally bring his children, and of the
public recreation center, which makes provision only for children
of one sex. The family, which no longer works together, is
thus forbidden to play together.  This condition is socially
demoralizing.
3. Because of mercenary reasons, the moving-picture, which
should be a tremendous aid to education, is kept in the position
31




of a labor-saving device used for purposes of vaudeville. An
educational opportunity is thus being wasted, and over forty
thousand children a day continue to violate the law by attending
moving-picture shows without parents or guardians.
4. Public discussion and political organization and labor
union organization are, through the lack of public provision,
driven into private halls and saloons. This condition insures the
The Privi-  continuance of the saloon as the community and
leged saloon neighborhood center. The saloon is privileged and
is virtually compelled to violate the law. It has, in other words,
a motive for corrupting our politics. This condition underlies
a very large part of the political difficulty which besets New York.
In brief, the failure to extend public recreation to reach the
mass of the people means that leisure life will not be used for
carrying forward education or citizenship. But leisure is the
only part of life which can be used for education or citizenship
by the wage-earning masses.
Commercial recreation is, of course, infinitely better than no
recreation. Neither the State nor the Church has provided for
the leisure needs of the people, and leisure in an industrial city
Making Good the is life itself. To retard the growth of commersocial Deficit cialized amusement without opening up new, attractive and adequate alternatives, would be to starve and imprison the very soul of the race.
The People's Institute has worked for nearly ten years in the
field of commercialized amusement, and always as a friend, not
an enemy. The Institute has always been appreciative rather
than critical of the commercialized amusements. It has been
more interested in developing them constructively than in merely
preventing the evils to which they give rise.
It is not too much to state that the whole idea of construction rather than prevention, in the handling of the amusement
problem, was opened up by Professor Charles Sprague-Smith,
founder of the Institute, twelve years ago. He established a department of drama and music, the forerunner of the wage-earners' leagues and drama leagues which are now influencing the
theatre in many parts of the country. Six years ago the Institute, under his direction, carried out an investigation of cheap
amusements which led to the formation of the National Board of
32




Censorship of Motion Pictures. The Board of Censorship,
which is still administered by the Institute, now controls the programmes of I6,ooo motion-picture theatres, through a voluntary
arrangement which is more efficacious than any control that
could be exercised through law. A nation-wide propaganda on
behalf of educational motion pictures and of the scientific regulation of motion-picture theatres, has continued for several years.
Even in the handling of the saloon problem, the Institute has
urged the value of constructive rather than repressive measuresthe abolition of statutory prohibitions, the principle of home rule
and the adoption of a system of discriminating licenses in order
to encourage the sale of light beverages in place of distilled
drinks.
The Institute still holds to this hopeful and sympathetic view
of commercialized amusement. Commercialized amusement has
been one of the indispensable, beneficent forces of American life,
The Bread and this statement includes the saloon, at least in New
of Life  York City. There have been and are great evils attached to the commercialized amusements. These evils are due
in part to the rank, over-swift growth of amusement places.
They are due, in the case of motion-picture shows and saloons, to
nothing so much as to the unwise, chaotic repressive laws which
have been enacted, and to the lack of an experimental public
policy in dealing with these places. But allowing for all these
evils it is still true that the commercialized amusements have
given to the wage-earners of our industrial cities the very bread
of life-the bread of the spirit's life-which no other agency
has provided.
This statement of the friendliness of the People's Institute
toward commercial amusement, and of its active work in that
field for many years, is here made in order to give additional
force to the main recommendation of the present report-the recommendation, namely, that the city shall go into competition
with the commercialized amusements and shall reclaim the leisure
of its people.
This subject is important enough to call for adequate statement, even at the risk of repetition. The inadequacy of commercialized amusement is shown by many facts beyond those
already stated.
33




I. Commercialized amusement severs the individual from
the community. The saloon is the only form of commercialized
amusement which unites the individual with the community. But
The Failures the saloon only reaches the man, uniting him with
of Commerce the male elements and the unwholesome female elements of the community, and it draws him into the machine
politics from which New York is now struggling to be free.
2. Commercialized amusement wholly fails to take care of
the child. He is left to the public street.
3. Commercialized amusement, in drawing off the various
elements of the population into specialized resorts, has failed to
make any provision for the mother of the wage-earning family.
The moving-picture show is the only exception to this statement.
4. Commercialized amusement aims to draw crowds in the
cheapest way for the highest price, and the individual is helpless
to get what he personally needs. Popular amusement without
an ulterior social or educational motive-this is the method of
commercialized amusement. Miscellaneous crowds rather than
neighborly groups-this, for obvious reasons, is the preference
of commercialized amusement.  In other words, the evils of
commercialized amusement are not exceptional or temporary, and
they are not capable of being remedied by repressive means. The
whole tendency of commercialized amusement runs counter to the
needs of education and of citizenship.
On the other hand, can public recreation be made as attractive
as the commercialized sort, and still have an educational value?
And can it be extended to reach the mass of people through some
method of self-support?
This question does not need to be answered on theoretical
grounds. It has been practically answered through many experiments which have been tried during the past two years. These
Self-Supporting are especially the social center experiments in
Public Play  New York and in other cities. The best known
New York experiment is the center now supervised by the People's Institute at School 63, East Fourth Street, Manhattan. Social Center 63, founded eighteen months ago, has for seven
months met all its local expenses through admission fees, membership fees, rentals, etc. From May Ist, to October Ist, I9I3,
34




the local income was $800.  This sum was disbursed by the
neighborhood committee and included the following expenditures:
Janitorial  service.........................................$126
Salary of supervisor appointed by the Board of Education.. 150
A fence to protect open-air dances from the street crowd.. 65
M usic...................................................  195
During the six months here treated, the motion-picture show
at School 63 was not in operation. A much larger income and
probably an actual surplus over all local expenses would probably have resulted had this feature been under way.
School 63 is only one of many examples. The social center
in School 41, Manhattan, is now meeting its own local expenses.
There are four other social centers, governed by local committees and maintaining a variety of activities more or less self-supporting. In addition, there are five school buildings in which
public dances, self-supporting or profitable, are regularly held.
Public lectures cost the city twelve cents for each auditor,
but the lectures and debates in School 63 during I913 attracted
on an average three times as many people as are claimed to attend the public lectures, and they cost nothing to the city.
The local expenses of School 63, paid for outside the neighborhood, for the year ending May Ist, I914, will not exceed a
few hundred dollars and are likely to be zero. School 63 in these
twelve months will have locally raised and expended from $2,000
to $3,000.
The experiment of transforming a playground into a social
center in the evenings has not yet been tried in New York,
though it has been successfully worked out in Chicago. Common
sense would anticipate that partial self-maintenance would result if playgrounds were open in the evenings under neighborhood committees, to be used for motion-picture shows, concerts,
festivals and open-air meetings.
It is certain that a constructive policy with reference to park
concessions would result in the development of a large number
and variety of amusements, serving the people at a low cost and
paying their own way.
The city of Hartford acts on the principle that no free entertainment should be given by the municipality. Concessions
are operated by the city. Even in its well-developed playground
system Hartford provides no teachers or supervisors, but gets
35




results through spontaneous play leadership. Hartford has even
extended its recreation work to the renting of play apparatus at
cost to any group of people, and the furnishing of decorations
and greenery at cost to groups in public and private halls.
Cleveland has conducted municipal dances, which have not only
been self-supporting, but largely profitable.
The studies in street play, made by the People's Institute and
described in the preceding chapter, prove the educational
tendency of street play-a tendency which continues to operate
in spite of the worst possible conditions.
Why are the social centers popular and increasingly selfsupporting? In the first place, they are neighborhood institutions. They are what the neighboring community wants them to
The Social Center-A be. What they do is settled by local demand.
Philosopher's Stone They are not stereotyped. On the other hand,
recreation center and playground work of the traditional type
are maintained in almost exactly the same way in all neighborhoods and under all conditions.
The second cause of the popularity of the social center is to be
found in the freedom which it gives to the individual. The individual is not only free, but he has a sense of ownership.
Supervision is maintained by the neighbors themselves and the
standards of behavior are neighborhood standards. There is no
paternalism, no unsympathetic authority, and no philanthropy,
to keep the independent spirit away from the social center.
The third element of appeal in the social center is its active
rather than passive character. Every man, woman or child who
attends the social center is a member of a living institution.
He helps to decide its policies. He is urged to "start something."
He functions in an interesting organization, with many activities,
with both sexes, and with his friends or his children near by to
participate in the benefits. The disposition toward social life and
the readiness for organized action, on which the social center is
built, are not only not invited, but are in most cases prohibited
in the older type of public recreation work which still prevails
in New York City.
Finally, the social center does not aim at culture in an obvious
and tyrannical way. The social center leader has a task of developing the spontaneous interests of the neighborhood-of or36




ganizing them toward education and citizenship, and he must
make of the social center a thing of practical utility to the neighbors. He builds on a foundation of interest, rather than attempting to hang the work on a pedagogical idea which is not yet interesting to the people.
In brief, the very elements which make the social center inexpensive and in some cases wholly self-supporting, are the ones
which make it educationally and humanly preferable to the older
supervised and philanthropic recreations which have grown up
in New York City.


37




IMMEDIATE STEPS IN THE IMPROVED USE OF PLAYGROUNDS
AND THE WIDER USE OF
SCHOOLS
HERE will be given in the second section of this report,
to be made public in the near future, a plan for the unification of all public recreation outside the schools, libraries
and museums of New York City, and for the co-operative development of all public properties for leisure use. The following
chapter is devoted solely to those improvements of an immediate
character, requiring no new legislation, which would result in an
increased economical use of playgrounds and schools.
The first need of the New York playgrounds is overhead
supervision.  In Manhattan, competent overhead supervision
needs to be secured in place of the present inefficient supervision.
In Brooklyn there is practically no overhead supervision, and it needs to be provided. The following broad indictment holds against the present supervision of
playgrounds in Manhattan:
I. Neither policy nor purpose are discoverable in the park
playgrounds.
2. Some playgrounds, like the De Witt Clinton Park, are
notoriously unpopular, even while the neighboring streets are
thronged with children. This condition persists month after
month with no apparent effort to modify the playground policy
in the direction of attractiveness.
3. There are practically no efficiency tests on the Manhattan
park playgrounds. Even the records of attendance have little
validity.
4. There is no evidence of effort or desire to instill an esprit
du corps or any conception of general policy in the playground
attendants.
5. In line with the lack of policy in all directions, is the fact
38




that the attendants have not been required or encouraged to
solicit the co-operation of the forces of the neighborhood where
the playgrounds are located. Most of the playgrounds are as
isolated in their neighborhood, so far as effort by the Park Department is concerned, as if they were located beyond the border
of New York City.
6. No policy appears, in the supervision of playgrounds,
to establish, with civic organizations, such contact as has
been established by the Board of Education, and which is resulting in a rapidly growing amount of volunteer help and private
contributions of money, notably in the case of the Public Schools
Athletic League and of the social center work of the Board of
Education.
7. New York, which needs efficient playgrounds more than
any other city on earth, is notorious among all the large cities
of America for its inefficient park playgrounds.
In the Borough of Brooklyn, a supervisor of playgrounds
should be provided at once through transfers or through the
voting of special revenue bonds. During the regime just closed
it was not even customary in Brooklyn to require such nominal
reports on attendance as are required in Manhattan. There is
practically no central control of the Brooklyn playgrounds.
Next in urgency to the need of competent central control
in Manhattan, and the provision of a central control in Brooklyn, is the need of new civil service tests and new gradings for
playground attendants.  The civil service tests have taken
little account of the specific fitness of a candidate for playground
work. They have not demanded specific experience or the
knowledge of pedagogy and training in social science. Neither
is there any method of discovering merit in the attendants after
they are appointed. A new set of examinations and grades was
recommended by the Park Board which went out of office December 3Ist, I9I3.
It is equally urgent to shift the payment of playground attendance from a per diem to an annual basis. Playground work
should be continuous. Competent and loyal service cannot be
secured when bad weather is likely to deprive the worker of a
day's wage which is low at best. Playground attendants are not
day laborers. To compensate for playground service on a day
laborer's basis is as unreasonable as it would be to pay a school
teacher on this basis.
39




The above changes of administration are capable of being put
into effect at once.
With proper administrative organization and personnel, it
would then be easy and inevitable for the Park Board to adopt
efficiency tests for its playgrounds; to adopt a policy of seeking neighborhood relationship; and to invite the co-operation of
neighborhoods in the evening use of playgrounds, exactly as the
Department of Education has already done for school buildings.
The playgrounds of New York are in a slough of despond
at this time. The efficiency programme of the present administration will surely not allow a continuance of such radical, extravagant inefficiency as now prevails in this field of public work.
In contrast with the playgrounds, which call for an immediate revolution of administration, the schools require, in an
immediate way, only an improvement in details of procedure.
School   The development of recreation centers into social
Buildings centers, and the establishment of many social centers
in buildings now unused after school hours, is already under
way. The most pressing need is action by the Board of Education, in the direction of defining the obligations and privileges
of those neighborhood groups which use the schools as social
centers. A standard charter for social centers should be adopted
through resolution of the Board of Education. This charter
should enable any group of citizens, intending to use the school
building in a continuous or periodical way, to obtain the privilege
without elaborate negotiations carried out with two or three
committees of the Board, as is now necessary. These neighborhood groups should be entitled to collect money and dispense it
in the center, the accounts being subject to the audit of the Board
of Education. They should be entitled to establish their own
discipline and maintain it in their own way, subject to the general rules of public order, and subject to the withdrawal of all
privileges if the privileges are abused. There is already a subcommittee on social centers, of the committee on special schools
of the Board of Education. Central supervision is already provided for through the overhead machinery of the recreation
centers and of the department of physical training.
An important change, whose cost would be negligible, is
needed in school equipment-namely, the provision of movable
furniture in at least a few of the rooms of those buildings used
40




as social centers. There now exist several types of adjustable
and movable desks, but none are yet found in the New York
City schools.
The Board of Estimate and the Board of Education have
already adopted the principle of paying at least part of the janitorial expenses and of the physical upkeep of the buildings used
by social center groups, leaving it to the groups themselves to
pay all other expenses. This principle is a proper one. But it is
to be hoped that the Board of Education will in the budget of
1914 secure appropriations for an experimental number of men
or women, to be salaried by the Board and to devote their whole
time to the work involved in the wider use of the school plant.
Ultimately, the development of the many wider-use activities
will call for the provision of afternoon and evening principals in
charge of the varied activities who will devote their whole time
to their work. The main criticism against the activities now
proceeding in the New York schools after school hours is the
lack of co-ordination one with another and the lack of correlation with the school neighborhood. This condition must persist
so long as the work is paid for on a per diem basis and so long
as the school building is not regarded as a unit, the only units
being the separate activities going on in the building.
For example, there may be found in a single building an
evening school, a recreation center, a lecture center, and an
afternoon athletic center, each with a different principal, and
with uncoordinated activities, although with perfect good will
on the part of everyone. There is probably no need of a centralized administration from the Board of Education itself, but
only of a unification of activities within a given building through
the provision of whole-time after-school principals.
The New York school properties represent an investment of
more than $I30,000,000. If, as has been reliably estimated, these
properties are idle 40%  of the time, this fact means that over
$50,000,000 invested in the school plant is now bringing no return. The interest and sinking fund on this investment amount
to more than $2,500,000 a year. This annual waste is nearly
double the total present expenditure on wider-use work in New
York City.
Is this municipal economy?


41




APPENDIX


THE FLASHLIGHT SURVEY OF
STREET PLAY
{       O N Saturday, April I9th, 19I3, at 4 P.M., about 400 investigators counted and classified the children on the streets
of Manhattan. The aim of this survey, as organized by
the People's Institute, was the correction and criticism, through
statistical methods, of the conclusions reached by Mr. Barrows
in his prolonged study of the Middle West Side. Prior to the
flashlight survey, a number of careful district surveys were carried out through volunteer workers. These previous studies
served, in their turn, as a sort of laboratory control on the broadcast results of the flashlight survey.
The method of the flashlight survey was as follows: Manhattan Island was mapped into districts, in accordance with the
outlines in use by the Federation of Churches in New York.
These districts were sub-divided into areas not too large for the
work of a single investigator on one afternoon. The general
supervision of each large district was committed to an experienced social worker, usually one identified with a settlement
or neighborhood association.
None of the twelve large districts was exhaustively covered,
but definite streets and groups of blocks in each district were
carefully counted. Briefly, each inspector counted the number
of children and specified what each child was doing. Boys and
girls were classified separately. The returns were then massed
and classified. The resultant chart shows the number of boys
and of girls counted in each of the twelve districts of Manhattan,
classified into fifty-one street activities, ranging from craps to
baseball and from fighting to the work of "tending" babies.
The estimate for Manhattan as a whole was arrived at as follows:
The count was assumed complete for the children on the streets
in those sub-districts covered. The total child population of each
sub-district was known and also the total child population of each
42




complete district.  The actual exhaustive count covered approximately 28 per cent. of the child population area of Manhattan. The
actual count is therefore treated as representing 28 per cent. of the
total which would have been arrived at, if inspectors had covered
every block of Manhattan Island.
The returns were astonishingly uniform, when one large district was compared to another. As the districts had each an
average of about thirty-five inspectors, who worked individually,
variations in personal judgment and fluctuations in accuracy
were overcome. And the survey as a whole bore out most impressively the conclusions regarding the Middle West Side which
are stated in Chapter 3 of this report. It had been planned to
make a second flashlight survey in the fall, in order to still further classify the facts, but the People's Institute was without
adequate funds to repeat the investigation. To marshall and instruct 400 investigators, providing them with report-blanks of a
somewhat intricate character, and subsequently to analyze and
combine the results, requires many weeks of expert time and
several hundreds of dollars.
Following is given a summary of the census chart, the twelve
districts being combined and the results for boys and for girls
being united:
Estimate for
Manhattan
Game                                  Actual count    Island
Football...................................   39              136
Shinny.....................................  17               59
Tennis....................................    8              28
Dancing...................................   51              178
Indian and Soldier.........................   35              122
"Playing Horse"..............................  3               10
"Playing   House"..........................  135             472
Chalk  Games..............................   51              178
Building Bon-fires..........................  41              143
Sand   Play.................................  317         1,109
Sew ing....................................   5               17
Craps......................................  120            420
Pitching Pennies........................      94              329
Cutting   Kindling...........................  131          458
"Tending" Baby............................ 1,344           4,711
Vending...................................  430            1,505
Children Watching Games.................. 5,710            19,985
Children Wandering Idly................... 7,929      27,604
Adult Idlers in Neighborhood of Children... 9,734           30,429
Unclassified (Children Idling, or Playing
Games unfamiliar to the Inspectors).... 8,538           29,883
"Hoople"..................................   157              549
43




3 9015 03810 8984                        Sstimate for
Manhattan
Game                                  Actual count   Island
Jumping  Rope.............................  2,104          7,364
Jum ping...................................  39             136
M echanical Toys...........................  47             163
Examining Construction Material...........   23               80
Playing  on  Vehicles........................  535         1,659
Riding   Bicycles............................  86           301
Roller  Skating.............................  601         2,100
Running  and  Racing........................  361         1,239
Jackstones.................................  81             283
M arbles....................................  524          1,834
"Cat"......................................  192            672
"Potsey".....................................  537          1,879
"Tag".....................................  937        3,279
Friendly  Tussling..........................  26             91
Fighting...................................  260            910
H and-ball..................................  618         2,163
"Follow   M aster"..........................  7             24
"Foot Corners"...........................     7               24
"Puss  in  Corner"..........................  3               10
"Hide  and  Seek"...........................  15            52
"Kick-the-Can"............................   54              189
"Prisoner's  Base".........................  25             87
"Red   Rover"...............................  10            35
"Ring-around-the-Rosy"....................  133              465
Tricks with Dogs.........................     5               17
Fishing for Hats of Pedestrians.............  2                7
T ops......................................  11              38
Baseball...................................  1,592        5,565
Baseball  Practice...........................  2,154      7,504
The following classification, more or less arbitrary, indicates
the actual nature of child-activity on the streets of Manhattan:
Individual play of constructive value.....   4,156
Competitive play......................       3,337
Competitive games involving team work,
and social games....................27,482
Gambling...........................     749
Children at work......................6,674
Children watching.....................9,985
Children idling........................27,604
Adults  idling..........................30,429
Total boys............................65,397
Total  girls............................45,590


44




THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE
CHARLES SPRAGUE SMITH, Founder
70 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
FBEDERIC C. HowE, DIBECTOB


LESTER F. SCOTT
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
WILLIAM MCGUIBE
EXECUTIVE SECY. NATIONAL
BOARD OF CENSORSHIP
CARL BECK
CIVIC SECRETABY


JOHN COLLIE
SECY. SOCIAL CENTER COMMITTEE
CLINTON S. CHILDS
SOCIAL CENTEB OBGANIZEB
WALTACE BENEDICT
CHELSEA-GREENWICH ACTIVITIES
NORA VAN LEEUWEN
SOCIAL CENTER FIELD WOBKER


Trustees
HENRY DE FOREST BALDWIN, CHAIRMAN
JOHN G. AGAR                        CHARLES H. INGEBSOLL
GEORGE W. ALGER                     SAM. A. LEWISOHN
LINCOLN CROMWELL                    J. HOWABD MELISH
LEE ASHLEY GRACE                    E. W. ORDWAY
MRS. BEN ALI HAGGIN                 AMOS. R. E. PINCHOT
THOMAS C. HALL                      THOMAS R. SLICER
J. ASPINWALL HODGE                  MRS. CHARLES SPBAGUE SMITH
FREDERIC C. HOWE                    FRED M. STEIN
JAMES P. WARBASSE


The preceding report is not merely based on an investigation. It is an expression of the ideals which have moved the People's Institute for many years
past and is a result of the practical work of the Institute in a number of fields.
The People's Institute became roused to the leisure time problem, and to the
relations between recreation and crimne, and to the needs of the immigrant,
through direct contact at Cooper Union and in the scores of civic education centers
which have been maintained by the Institute in the congested quarters of
New York.
The People's Institute continues as an agency primarily working for civic
education and for bettering the human lot of the New York millions, and any
research work which may be done is incidental and by the way.
The People's Institute was the pioneering New York agency in advocating and
organizing the wider use of school buildings on a democratic and self-supporting
basis. Two experimental centers are now supervised by the Institute-School 63
and School 17, in Manhattan.
The Institute founded and now administers the People's Music League, which
carries the best music to hundreds of audiences in school auditoriums and encourages the formation of social center groups in many neighborhoods.
The Institute may be said to have discovered the dangers and possibilities for
good of motion-pictures. It organized and now administers the National Board of
Censorship of Motion-Pictures, which regulates the programs of 16,000 picture
theatres throughout America.
The People's Forum and People's Church, maintained in Cooper Union by the
People's Institute, have given a voice to the people of New York for fifteen years.
These meetings have served as an inspiration for free and fundamental discussion
and a model for People's Forums in many parts of the country.
To promote the intelligent growth of democracy and the redemption of the
people's leisure hours, is the aim of the People's Institute.




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