PARK AND CEMETERY. 
58 » 
people from the city that they have 
gone out there, ancj blaming the land- 
lords and saying- they must improve 
their houses in order that the people 
may be led to come back to the city. 
Isn’t it most significent and a desir- 
able thing that the people should be 
leaving the houses of the city, four- 
teenteen foot working and living 
cells, a place where nobody can go 
outdoors unless on the front steps, 
and isn’t it desirable to part with that 
condition? You people who come 
from the west don’t know and can- 
not appreciate w-hat the conditions 
really are in our eastern cities here, 
where the small lot obtains, twelve, 
fourteen or sixteen feet front, on that 
a house and block after block of 
them, and where they go out in the 
suburbs and cover them with brick 
and mortar, and where they say, 
we must fi.x up our houses so the 
people will come back from the coun- 
try to the city. And yet the great 
cry is “back to the farm.” and out 
into the sunlight. 
This modern idea that normal liv- 
ing conditions are absolutely neces- 
sary for the individual to be a healthy 
and efficient individual, and there- 
fore an efficient member of the state, 
and that only through that will we 
get a state of society up to date, and 
able to meet the conditions of to- 
day, is responsible for tremendous 
changes that are going to take place 
in the future. It is responsible for 
this demand that children shall not 
have to play upon the streets but 
have reasonable places to play away 
from the dirt and dangers of the 
street. The fact that we are discov- 
ering that by this thing we are reduc- 
ing criminality and juvenile delin- 
quency has created in the minds of 
the people an interest in these things 
and showing a value in them that is 
going in a short while to overtop 
the interest we have at present in 
business and streets and alleys and 
that sort of thing. 
You people are in control of parks, 
all the outdoors that is available to 
the cities. This means that instead 
of the people thinking of their out- 
doors as pretty places to go and look 
at, and admire the trees and listen to 
the birds and rest, that it is going to 
be a thing they want to use. It is 
going to mean tremendous increase in 
the numbers of people in it, an in- 
crease in upkeep expenses. Our park 
boards are realizing the fact that 
when you permit a thousand children 
to play, that you are going to have 
a difficulty in raising flowers and 
grass and properly conserving them. 
and also let these two legged flowers 
grow up in the way that they 
ought to; but then we are getting to 
believe that flowers of the tw'o-legged 
species are more valuable than those 
that we spent so much money on 
in the past. We are going to pro- 
vide for both in their proper places 
and relationship. Now I think we 
can do for both in the same place. 
There have been some demonstra- 
tions of that in some of our cities. 
The meaning is that the out-doors 
is going to be used. It means that 
you genflemen will have to look at 
your parks from now on, ‘not as gar- 
dens to be admired but open jjlaces 
for the uses of the people to do the 
things they do outdoors and plan 
them -wdth respect to certain places 
being provided that in an adequate 
way can be made use of by the boys 
and girls and men and women, young 
and old for the leisure time activities 
that have such a tremendous relation- 
ship to morals as well as to simple 
pleasure, and rest and recreation 
from ordinary daily labor. 
So much, simply to bring to you 
what is, we believe, the point of view 
with respect to the outdoor spaces we 
have now. Thej- are the now avail- 
able places for the people to make 
use of in this outdoor life that it is 
going to be harder and harder to 
provide for. It is going to press 
hard. You may say, they must go 
away out; we must have this for the 
people to look at it. But this is poor 
theory, for primarily nothing is too 
good for the boys and girls and young 
men and women in your own town. 
The thing too good for them is too 
good for somebody from outside. 
They make your' city and are 
going to make it more and more 
in the future, and we are going to 
make it better for them. Take the 
social view that this is a great social 
instrument, an instrument that has 
value, value from the standpoint of 
health, physical, mental and moral 
health, and is going to have a mean- 
ing in relation to these things in the 
future as never in the past. 
We consider athletics the play of 
children beyond eight, nine or ten 
years of age. The little child up to 
six years of age plays in a distracted 
sort of way, doing things nobody 
can see any value in; but if you pre- 
vent him doing it he grows up wholly 
undeveloped. If he does not have 
the opportunity to pick up things 
and throw them down again and 
again' he is not going to get the use 
of his hands. The push and pulls 
;ire all absolutely necessary for the 
development of the muscles and nerv- 
ous system so that he may become a 
sensible feeling being. This is a 
tiling that has a tremendous signifi- 
cance and indication with reference- 
to morals, with reference to tlie law 
of obedience. It is there the boy 
learns what it means to be square. 
The first law that the boy knows, that 
he willingly obeys and follow's, is the 
law of the game that he and his fel- 
lows engage in, and there he first 
learns that law is for some good pur- 
pose and that obeying the law not 
only saves him every benefit but he 
learns that he gets something out 
of it in the way of pleasure or en- 
joyment that he never got from 
obedience to the law imposed through 
people. In our various experiences 
we have found that where proper 
])rovision has been made the morals 
improve. The reports from Chicago, 
where provision for this sort of thing 
has been done on the greatest scale, 
show that definitely, and for this rea 
son our athletics, which are the pre- 
dominating form of activity of the 
boy from nine or ten up to adult 
life, are the greatest leisure time 
regulators of his morals that we 
have; and for that reason there is as 
much reason why the state, through 
its various forms, should provide for 
it as they have for the formal educa- 
tion of the individual through public 
schools. 
In the city of Baltimore we have 
a Public Athletic League that through 
co-operation with the Board of Edu- 
cation, the park commissioners and 
the interests that Superintendent 
Manning and others in connection 
-with him have taken, have enabled us 
to give to the boys of Baltimore an 
opportunity. By athletics w'e do not 
mean only track and field events but 
the whole range of competitive sport. 
Track and field events are individual- 
istic and are not the dominant in- 
terest of boys over twelve or four- 
teen. Instead of the track and field 
athletics we have come to see that the 
greatest value lies in group games, 
games in which the largest number 
can participate with a minimum of 
space. Baseball calls for a large 
amount of space, but the playground 
people have solved that problem and' 
we have now a game that approxi- 
mates it absoutely in interest, exer- 
cise and benefits. With play ground 
ball we can put four game's on the 
same amount of space taken for the 
baseball diamond and use four times 
as many people without danger to any 
of them. 
