38 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
What a Conumity Owes to tts Hoys 
BY GEORGE H. MARTIN 
PART TWO. 
To pay its debt to the boys in full, 
the city should furnish a_ sufficient 
number of playgrounds conveniently 
situated for the use of all the boys. 
These playgrounds should differ in 
size and in equipment, from the small 
neighborhood lot for the young chil- 
dren, with sand-boxes and swings, to 
the large athletic fields, with space 
for gymnastic apparatus, for team 
games and for the usual competitive 
exercises. There should be skating 
ponds for the winter, small and large, 
and swimming places for summer and 
winter. ‘There should be a sufficient 
number of indoor gymnasiums amply 
equipped for the use of all the boys. 
A considerable part of the wild land 
set apart for public reservations 
might be used for temporary camps, 
where some experience in woodcraft 
might be gained. There is land 
enough in a state of nature within 
easy reach of every city in New Eng- 
land to furnish to large numbers of 
boys opportunity to play Indian to 
good advantage. There is a_ field 
here for splendid team work by 
groups or clubs of boys, who, might 
learn all the lessons of civil society 
by practice. 
To plan for such work as this, to 
determine the number and _ location 
and proper equipment of grounds and 
buildings, to organize the whole 
work and then to direct and control 
it, would mean a new department of 
municipal administration, co-ordinate 
with the department of education. Its 
chief would be a superintendent of 
physical training or a master of games 
and sports. His chief function would 
be to furnish opportunity. His inter- 
ference should be only in the interest 
of safety and equal rights. 
The city interferes with the intellec- 
tual development of a boy as disas- 
trously as with his physical develop- 
ment. 
If this experience is gained as a 
partner in the industry, to his othe 
acquisitions are added a social ele- 
ment, a sense of comradeship in ef- 
fort, and of obligation to his com- 
rades to do his part. Loyalty to the 
organization grows out of such effort. 
The man who goes back to the old 
farm, and says, as he looks about, 
“Father and I cleared that woodlot. 
That’s the wall we laid; how well it 
has stood! We made that old harrow 
and that ox-sled, and we built that old 
hen-house,”— got out of that ex- 
perience tired but deft hands, a brain 
to plan and a will to execute, and a 
sense of partnership in a piece of use- 
ful work. 
It is easy to see that these are val- 
uable contributions to that training 
for citizenship which this meeting is 
talking about. 
This was the sort of training which 
all boys got in a greater or less degree 
in those days which we picturesquely 
describe as the “age of homespun.” 
It was the sort of training which 
boys got in the medizval guilds, and 
goes far to account for the fact that 
those guilds were able to gain con- 
trol of civic affairs and to dictate 
terms to kings, while in the public 
buildings which they erected they left 
monuments to their own learning and 
skill in craftsmanship. 
To this natural and healthy proc- 
ess of intellectual leading up to social 
development the modern city opposes 
an impassable barrier. For such ex- 
perience and such partnership as I 
have described, the industrial organ- 
ization must be simple. The family, 
the farm, the shop furnished ideal 
conditions. 
In a modern city the industrial or- 
ganizations are too vast and too com- 
plex. There is no place for boys, ex- 
cept on the fringes. And if a boy 
gets a foothold, he is exceptional if 
he sees enough of a process to de- 
velop any sense of mechanical per- 
spective, any constructive imagina- 
tion, or any sense of partnership and 
of loyalty. 
Again, this is no fault of the city. 
It is an unavoidable result of modern 
social conditions. But the city is 
derelict if it fails to do what it can to 
make up to the boys for what they 
have been deprived of. 
A city owes to its boys a chance 
for intellectual and social develop- 
ment through productive manual in- 
dustry. This is the most difficult 
problem confronting the cities today, 
and the cities of the world are com- 
ing to recognize its seriousness. 
Were we starting anew, it would be 
easier to include such work in our 
scheme of education. All existing 
school traditions and school machin- 
ery are impediments. 
What, then, does a city owe to its 
boys? First, land for cultivation, 
where they may learn by experience 
some of the initial processes of that 
industry that underlies all other in- 
dustries, —the production of food. 
Second, workshops, where they 
may learn by experience those me- 
chanical processes that underlie all 
constructive industry,— real work- 
shops, where a boy with a work 
apron and soiled hands would not feel 
out of place. 
While, as I have said before, some 
cities have made a feeble beginning in 
providing opportunities for boys to 
play and to grow thereby, nowhere 
hereabouts have even beginnings been 
made at providing opportunities for 
the boys to work with their hands and 
to grow thereby. The so-called man- 
ual training is not the sort of work 
I am talking about. That is too 
scholastic and unnatural. 
If the city owes these debts to the 
boys because it has deprived them of 
those natural opportunities which it 
is their right to possess and enjoy, it 
cannot begin too soon to pay them. It 
will cost money to pay them. It 
usually does cost to pay debts, and it 
is easier for the time to repudiate 
them. But these debts to nature are 
never outlawed, and sooner or later 
must be paid with interest, — and the 
interest accumulates rapidly. 
The standing excuse for delay is, 
that the city cannot afford it because 
it is already spending so much on 
schools. I have recently done some 
figuring to see how much the cities 
are spending on schools compared 
with expenditures for other munici- 
pal purposes, to see if the children 
are getting more than their share. 
I have the story of one Massachu- 
setts city. In fifty years its popula- 
tion has increased 390 per cent. Its 
property valuation has increased 565 
per cent. Its total municipal expendi- 
ture has increased 2,577 per cent. Its 
expenditure for fire protection has in- 
creased 1,933 per cent.; for streets, 
2,351 per cent.; for police protection, 
11,023 per cent.; and for schools, 
1,084 per cent. 
This increase in expenditures for 
police does not include the great ex- 
pense of the courts and of the penal 
and reformatory institutions. 
In the city first in the list for po- 
lice expenditures, increasing 11,000 
per cent in fifty years, many years ago 
the city marshal in his annual report 
called attention to the increasing num- 
ber of vagrants and truant boys and 
of juvenile criminals. Had that city 
then begun to safeguard the interests 
of the boys, so that, as their freedom 
was gradually restricted by necessary 
city ordinances, public provision was 
made to supply opportunities for nat- 
ural and rational sports and occupa- 
tions, there is no doubt whatever that 
the saving in police expenditures 
