by civic authorities, recreation areas are being provided through other agencies. One type of playground being utilized by communities for colored people is the vacant lot, where the owner of such a lot loans his property to be used as a play space. Chester, Pennsylvania, has one or two such play spaces, equipped with apparatus for basket ball and other games at a nominal cost. Several sites for recreation centers and playgrounds have been donated by white people for such use in various sections of the South. City governments in some instances are including the expenses of the supervision and maintenance of these grounds in their yearly budgets. Many playgrounds have been installed in southern industrial plants employing a large number of colored people. The United States Steel Company the American Cast Iron Pipe Company, the Fairbanks-Morse Scale Company, and the Aluminum Company are among private industrial concerns which have recognized the needs of their colored employees for wholesome recreation oppor tunities. The causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency in large cities have been a matter of serious study during recent years. Conservative estimates indicate that from sixty-two to seventyfive per cent of the delinquency in the average city arises from the lack of wholesome recreational provision. A recent survey of a city in Tennessee discovered recreation centers and playgrounds amounting in space to about thirty acres. In the neighborhoods where these playgrounds and recreation centers were located, fifteen per cent of the violations of the city's laws were committed by young people between ten and twenty years of age. In other sections where no playgrounds existed, eighty-five per cent of the statute violations were by children between these ages. These calculations covered playground sections for the white population only. The town has fifteen thousand colored residents. There were no community playground or recreation facilities available for the colored people of that city. Some time ago the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago reported that one-eighth of the boys and young men and onethird of the girls and young women confined in the county jail were colored. This toll of delinquents came from a group said to be one-fortieth of the population. Lack of public recreation facilities and the absence of equipped playgrounds in the colored districts is no doubt a prime factor in causing these conditions. The predominating recreation facilities available to the colored people are commercialized and the colored youth are left to develop as best they may in a hazy moral atmosphere. An effort has been made in some cities to reduce to actual figures the beneficial influence of a playground. In one western city, after the opening of a playground, delinquency within a half mile radius decreased twenty-eight and a half per cent. In sections unsupplied with similar grounds the increase at the same time was eleven per cent. From this standpoint, playgrounds must be considered as essential for colored communities as for white. Not only in the large cities, but also in sparsely settled districts is there need for some diversion and directed recreation to vary the monotony. "A supervising teacher in Kentucky," said Charles H. Williams, Physical Director at Hampton Institute, "went to one of the remote country districts with the idea of teaching the colored children some games. She asked them what they did for amusement at night and one answered, 'We jes sets and thinks and sometimes we jes sets.' Another said, 'We jes go to bed.' Though sad, it is nevertheless true that this story too often represents the actual condition, and it is this state of affairs that is making our young men and women discontented to remain in the country." Some colleges and state schools for colored people are now providing training for recreation leaders. Colored students are increasingly taking such courses in the other colleges and universities. And as they go out in life they will teach their people a keener appreciation of the need for play and for play space and play facilities. Colored people are intensely human; live in similar environment; have similar aspirations; require the same infusion of influence and impulses to promote joy; and need preventives and curatives as advocated for other groups. So far we have discovered nothing essential for their industrial, spiritual, recreation and sentimental development dissimilar from the analysis of Dr. Richard C. Cabot of what men live by. In the four square institution of "real life" based upon Work, Love and Worship, there may not be omitted for the colored man more than for the white the fourth cornerstone of normal existence, Play. For in the words of Dr. Cabot, "Work, play, love and prayer are open to rich and poor, to young and old; they are of all times and all races in whom character is an ideal." Song of the New Crusaders* Words by F. A. Cummings Glorious o'er the distant mountains All the forms of darkness fleeing In the harbor proud and stately On the shore all eager hearted Come then, Brothers, up and onward- Not for craven hearts to do! With our Chieftains, wise and valiant, O Crusaders, noble hearted, Ours no lifeless tomb to conquer, Life for human hearts entombed. *Written for the School of Community Service, Chicago, Illinois Hymn for Quartet, C Major, Opus 76, No. 3 THE GIFTS WE BRING By Nina B. Lamkin, published by T. S. Denison and Company of Chicago Here may be found a very delightful Christmas pageant suitable for production by school children or high school and college students. From 50 to 200 or 400 may take part. The directions for production are very definite. and the material for the dances can be easily worked out. Directions are given for simple and artistic but inexpensive costumes, and music is suggested. MUSIC FOR EVERYBODY By Marshall Bartholomew and Robert Lawrence. Published by The Abingdon Press, New York, Cincinnati Out of experiences during the war in providing "music for everybody," the authors developed a faith and a technique which they pass on in this little handbook. In many places and under varying conditions, they have proved that "That mysterious combination of rhythm, melody, and harmony which we call music is not merely a pleasant diversion for the elite; it is a fundamental human need." The chapters deal with The Training of Song Leaders; Technique of Song Leading; Rhythm Drills and Other Practice Work; The Òrganization and Types of Community Music; A Sing Wagon. NEW RATIONAL ATHLETICS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS By Frederick J. Reilly, Principal Public School 33, The Bronx, New York City. Published by D. C. Heath and Company, Boston, New York, Chicago. Price, sixty-four cents The system of athletic training outlined in this little book is the outgrowth of years of effort to put into practice the ideal upon which the New York Public School Athletic League was based: "to stimulate and encourage the average boy (and girl) to so train his body that he will become erect, healthy, and strong, and his mind, so that he will become manly, alert and honorable,' Public School 33, The Bronx, has succeeded for some years in getting all its boys and girls into athletics, no small achievement in a school of the size and situation of this one. True, many champions have been developed, but far more important to the school faculty-and to America-is the fact that every boy and girls has attained a minimum standard. PHYSICAL HEALTH AND RECREATION FOR GIRLS A Handbook for Girls and Volunteer Leaders. By Mary E. Moxcey. Published by The Methodist Book Concern, New York. Price, $.60 This pamphlet is written in a manner sure to prove interesting to anyone looking for recreational material suitable for girls' work. The title of the first chapter "How to Hike Happily" makes us feel with what sympathetic understanding of girls in the "teen-age" Miss Moxcey approaches the subject of their proper physical development. The very excellent chapter on "Keep Individually Fit" closes with a paragraph on maintaining girls' interest in their exercises, suggesting several ways in which this may be done. Remarks such as "what girls 'have to or merely ought to' do they are very apt to 'hate to' do or 'leave undone' " and "not only progress but recognition of it is usually needed to keep up enthusiasm," show that the little book is at once humanly as well as purposefully written. The_selection of recreational material including Track and Field Sports, Playground Games, Team Games and Folk Dancing, was made on the basis of eliminating anything which could involve any danger to normal, healthy girls, even if done without expert supervision. Workers with girls should find in this clearly written, attractively illustrated handbook a very practical guide to recreation for girls. REPORT OF NATIONAL PARK SERVICE TO SECRETARY OF INTERIOR Report of the Director of the National Park Service to the Secretary of the Interior for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1920, and the Travel Season, 1920. Published by the Government Printing Office, Washington. The vastly increased interest and enthusiasm of the American People for their national parks is proved by cold figures in this report. "One outstanding feature of the year's achievement undoubtedly is the fact that, while trying economic conditions throughout the country, inflated valuations, increased prices of labor and materials have caused disturbance in every line of human activity and contributed to the general unrest of the masses, our people have turned to the national parks for health, happiness, and a saner view of life. Our final returns show that the volume of tourist travel to our national parks and monuments this year exceeded the million mark. "In the last analysis, this travel is the deciding factor as to whether or not the parks are measuring up to the high standard that has been set for them and all that is being said about them as the great recreational and pleasure grounds of the American people. Our travel figures indicate that our people have enthusiastically and spontaneously accepted these national wonderlands as their own. They are taking a personal interest in them. They are using them." The most notable accomplishment in 1920 in the good-roads movement in its relation to the national parks has been the establishment and designation of a great connected highway between the major national parks of the Far West. SCHOOLING OF THE IMMIGRANT By Frank V. Thompson, Superintendent of Public Schools, Boston, Massachusetts. Published by Harper & Brothers, New York and London. Price, $2.00 This volume is one in the series of Americanization studies made by the Carnegie Corporation under the direction of Allen T. Burns. It presents a comprehensive survey of the state of immigrant schooling, searching for the basis of successful work and the reason for such evident failures as are represented in the huge turnover each year in immigrant education. Distinguished collaborators have contributed certain chapters in the book. Regarding "social supplements" to schooling, the author writes: "We need to take into consideration the kinds of appeal that are effective with the foreign born. We now make the mistake of assuming that the immigrant comes to the school simply to receive instruction. In general, the immigrant is a more social being than is the native, but we are inclined to assume that what suits the native is pleasing to the foreign born. The efforts which New York and Pittsburgh make to socialize their evening schools for immigrants are significant and suggestive for other cities; in these cities the usual instruction for foreign born in English and other common branches is combined with recreation, play, dancing-in other words, it is a socialized scheme of schooling. Increased interest, achievement, and persistence are concomitant results." |