Children’s Playgrounds 
A GARDEN OF SWEET PEAS 
this,” said one policeman more honest than the 
rest, “for it is one step toward pushing a boy down¬ 
ward into the criminal class.” 
No more interesting phase of the work is to he 
found than in Pittsburgh, where playgrounds have 
met with marked success. Public and private 
donations have provided for about 5000 children, 
who are taught studies they do not learn in the 
schools. Basketry, sewing, music, all come in 
for their share of attention and even little babies 
enjoy the playground hammock or revel in the 
sand pile with the buckets, wooden shovels and 
implements furnished them. Cooking has 
come in for its share of attention, as has 
wood-carving in the manual training de¬ 
partment. It is pitiful to think that a child 
does not know how to play, yet many of 
these children in all cities have to be 
taught. All are hungry for sunshine and 
fresh air, which they get at the playgrounds 
besides receiving attention which they could 
not get at home. 
The plan of throwing open the play¬ 
grounds of the public schools to children 
during the summer vacation has been in 
effect in New York for several years. In 
the beginning, twenty playgrounds were 
opened and the children rushed into them 
with whoops of joy. Tents are provided 
so as to afford shelter on very hot days for 
little ones and here, as elsewhere, assistants 
teach the children games and provide 
amusements. The wisdom and humanity of 
furnishing the city children wide open ait- 
recreation has led to the roofs of school 
houses being fitted up as playgrounds in the 
crowded districts. In a few instances private 
enclosures have been donated. A number 
of the city piers have been transformed 
into recreation pavilions by erecting sum¬ 
mer-houses above the pier so that while 
the pier is utilized for the loading and 
unloading of vessels, a thousand children 
are afforded each summer the opportunity 
of breathing the fresh air from the seacoast. 
For some time the children have been taken 
on excursions and boat rides, but the throw- 
ing open of the school grounds is considered 
the least expensive and most direct method 
of benefiting the children who ought to 
romp and gain physically. 
One encouraging feature of this work is 
that any town can have one or more play¬ 
grounds if public-spirited people will coope¬ 
rate. The per capita expense for furnishing 
these pleasures to children is about ,^1.00. 
This provides for intelligent supervision and 
a place to play through the spring and 
hot summer days. If the people who leave com¬ 
fortable city homes for lake or country had any 
realization of the thousands of children left behind 
whose only chance for the open air is the public play¬ 
ground, the experiment would be more widely 
adopted. Of the million children comprising part 
of Greater New York’s population fully sixty per 
cent live in tenement districts. By the George Jun¬ 
ior Republic at Freeville, the Kensico Farm of the 
Children’s Aid Society and the Gardiner Farm of 
the Industrial Aid Society, New York City chil¬ 
dren are benefited, but the public playground fills 
GARDEN PLANTED AND TENDED RY CHILDREN 
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