PARK AND CEMETERY. 
264 
day, five hours per person. That means 
there are three and a half million recrea- 
tion hours in a week, and over one hundred 
and eighty million in a year. I went over 
the city of Hartford trying to find out and 
determine what was done with these five 
hundred thousand recreation hours each 
day. Not to go into details, I decided that 
about one-fifth could be spent profitably 
and wholesomely in our recreation centers 
and parks and playgrounds. 
The amount of money which it costs to 
take care of that number of recreation 
hours has then to be considered. Hart- 
ford spends from $8,000 to $10,000 a day 
for its recreation. That seems a large fig- 
ure, but I am classing as recreation not 
only theatres and games, but the hours at 
home, the time spent walking the streets, 
the ordinary recreation time, the saloons, 
the lectures, and, to quite an extent, the 
churches. I use the word recreation in a 
sense which it would have if it were spelled 
re-creation ; it is the refreshment that 
comes after labor; it is of two kinds, pas- 
sive and active, compulsory or free. A cer- 
tain amount is compulsory. We must sleep 
and eat, or die. But there are hours when 
each person can do what he chooses, and 
the way he spends those hours either makes 
or breaks a man, and the measure of a 
city’s livableness or one measure at least, 
is found in the way the city spends those 
recreation hours. I will not go into de- 
tails, but I determined that the cost per 
recreation hour in Hartford was nearly two 
cents per hour. I also determined, as I 
studied other cities, that that was rather 
a higher rate than usual, that in some cities 
it was not more than one cent per hour, 
that most cities varied between these two 
rates, and that where it cost less the city 
was hardly a livable place. If, then, we 
get two cents per hour for recreation, and 
have 100,000 hours, we get $2,000, so that 
the city as a whole, by using the parks, 
would save about $500. Of this, how much 
is profit, and how much expense? After 
the experience in the refectory — and there 
we found each visitor would spend about 
two cents per hour — we found that, taking 
the whole three years together the cost of 
the supplies we disposed of was about 
fifty-five per cent, the cost of service 
twenty-five per cent, and profit about 
twenty per cent, or about five mills. If 
you take two cents per hour, of that two 
cents eleven mills are for supplies, five for 
service, and four for profit. We found we 
could take care of all that for about three 
mills, and so we had about one mill lee- 
way. Figure that out on that basis and 
you find it comes to $400 a day, or $146,000 
a year. A park system is different from 
other business — it is a continual process ; 
there arc no holidays ; it works from day- 
light or shortly after, till eleven or twelve 
at night, and while the figures seem small 
when put in mills, yet the continual repe- 
tition brings out the larger amounts, and 
I have found that in order to be successful 
in this we must become adept in figuring 
on the right-hand side of the decimal point. 
Our cost of maintenance of the whole sys- 
tem was $120,000, which gave us a leeway 
of $26,000. 
Then comes the question as to why we 
made money, a profit on our work, when, 
as a private business it would be less. I 
think I have found the solution. The pri- 
vate business has to pay taxes, interest, div- 
idends, and from all these the public parks 
are exempt. Also, we found that in our 
work we had the unlimited credit of the 
city behind us, and could buy freely with- 
out question. It cost $8,000 a day to run 
the municipal government, the city pays 
about $6, COO a day itself for its mainte- 
nance, and therefore, even in our little 
work, we had the benefit of their credit 
and of the discount; we could buy even 
in small quantities at the lowest wholesale 
rates. These advantages were great. We 
had figured out that we would have $146,- 
000 profit. Hartford parks have cost about 
three million dollars. There are 1,335 acres 
distributed in twenty-one different parcels ; 
it is practically a monopoly, for no private 
party could possibly come in and get that 
amount of property. One acre out of every 
fifteen in all Hartford is parks or play- 
grounds, and we have a city which is now 
spending towards $10,000 a day for recrea- 
tion. 
Take this question and put it up to some 
of the financial experts or captains of in- 
dustry; say to them: “If you had a three- 
million-dollar plant, a recreation monopoly, 
with neither rent, taxes, interest, nor divi- 
dends to take care of, and with the un- 
limited credit of a city already spending 
nearly $10,000 in recreation behind you, 
how long would it take you to become a 
millionaire?” I figure that the answer 
would be three years. 
If you apply this to the nation as a whole, 
this is how it looks : Hartford has a pop- 
ulation of about one hundred thousand; the 
State has about a million ; the country 
about a hundred million; and about forty 
per cent of the people live in urban con- 
ditions and need these facilities. Think 
what it would mean if a scheme of this 
kind were to go all oyer the country. If 
we figure, as we do, that two per cent of 
the city’s population is of the same age be- 
low twenty-one years, and we figure our 
recreation work on that basis, we have 
about 40,000 persons under twenty-one in 
Hartford, and about 40,000,000 in the 
United States altogether, of which 16,000.- 
000 live in cities. As we have figured it 
out, we think it is easy to take care of 
the young people under twelve, but quite 
difficult to know what to do with them 
between sixteen and twenty-one. We have 
in Hartford about 10,000 of that age, five 
thousand girls and five thousand boys, 
roughly speaking, and the city as yet has 
no adequate provision for those, but we 
think we can make provision without call- 
ing on the taxpayer, by some method 
which will pay for itself, for that is the 
age that spends most money for recrea- 
tion, and we believe it will be possible to 
take care of their needs in our recreation 
work. I do not know yet what Hartford 
will do. I have talked with some of the 
park commissioners on the self-sustaining 
park system plan, and they have looked 
at me askance at first, but after I have 
gone over the figures they have come to 
believe that it may be possible. I have the 
impression that Hartford is going to allow 
me the opportunity to try it out, not reck- 
lessly or suddenly, but in some conserva- 
tive way that will at the same time bring 
results, and I hope we shall be able to 
prove the feasibility. 
The President : This is one of the most 
important subjects that ever came under 
our consideration. If there are any ques- 
tions raised in the minds of those who 
have heard the last address, it would be 
well to discuss them. 
Question : Has Mr. Parker ever consid- 
ered the matter of moving pictures in the 
parks in a special shelter house for that 
purpose, and not combined with other 
amusements ? 
Mr. Parker: We had a plan for mov- 
ing pictures which we could put in the 
pavilion and use in the late afternoon or 
evening, using the same room for other 
purposes at other times. If the charge was 
three cents admission on week days and 
free on Sunday afternoon and evening, 
and, however we figured, and even after 
paying the fee to get into the League so 
as to get the films, it seemed as if we 
could not avoid making $150 a week, try 
as we would. If we should charge five 
cents admission the profit would be almost 
double. 
Question : Did you consult with the 
moving picture people ? 
Mr. Parker: Not those who were work- 
ing, but a party from 1 the outside who had 
been trying to get into Hartford with a 
moving picture proposition, came to me 
suggesting that they build a moving pic- 
ture theatre and give it to the city after 
ten years, for the privilege of having it 
until then. 
The President: Would you do this in 
any case through concessions, or as a park 
body ? 
Mr. Parker: Just as soon as you touch 
concessions you kill the thing. I do not 
believe in it. Mr. Foster converted me 
against that five years ago, and I am all 
the time growing stronger against it. The 
whole idea of the concession is to make 
money. That is not our idea. We do 
not do any advertising. We will sell a 
glass of milk for one cent, a pint of milk 
and six crackers for five cents, a slice of 
