Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-08-12
THE NEED OF PUBLIC RECREATION.

ant supply of serious minded people who
desire to do good in their generation, but
all their ideas look toward solemn and
grave methods, and most of them would
think it little short of scandalous to pre-
pose any scheme of popular recreation as
part and parcel of a system OF social re-
form. Yet it is very certain that man
kind requires recreation as much as food
or clothing, and it is open to demonstra-
ton that the absence of congenial amuse-
ments does as much as anything to pro.
duce crime and dissipation. The old
Romans and Greeks understood human
nature much better than the American
and English of the present era in this re-
spect. They provided ample means Of
popular amusement. The state in Rene
built splendid theaters, at which the pub
lie attended gratuitously, and the most
lavish expenditure was resorted to for
the purpose Of furnishing entertainment
to the masses. Public baths and public
theaters were universal pagan institutions.
and Christendom with all its Boosting has
thus far failed to exhibit as high stand
ard of civilization as was shown in the
theory of life which gave these benefits
to the old world.
At the present time enormous sums are
annually expended in the repression and
punishment of crime. Everywhere great
prisons are filed with criminals, and
everywhere, despite of the adoption of
new theories, the production of new
criminals still proceeds. Our philanthro-
pists as rule appear to think that book
education is the one thing needful, and
they give their wealth to the endowment
of colleges and schools But they see no
significance in the dreadful tenement
house phase of our civilization. They do
not think Of the effect of that sordid,
brutal, pain-flled life upon hundreds of
thousands of children. They do not see
that the id!eness which so easily passes
into mischief, and thence into crime, is often
the product of that dull, unamused life
which our great cities offer to their poor.
They fail to realize that scores of thousands
might be rescued from crime and made
good citizens if only some light and
pleasure were admitted into the dreary
round of their social existence. We have
prisons in plenty, and we have hospitals
in plenty. There are commodious estab.
lishments where the poor who have at
last broken down under the strain may
be nursed back to health. But all our
public and private benevolence seems too
much directed toward the cure of evils
which might be much more easily pre-
vented.
A little fresh air anoccasional glimpse of
green fields and running water and flowers
and trees an opportunity to expend the
surplus energies of the growing system
in wholesome and innocent sports; few
days in the year devoted to pleasure, and
the memories of which would serve to
illuminate all the days of toll these are
the medicaments required to disintect our
city slums, to diminish the criminal rolls,
to thin out the population Of the hospitals,
to put red blood into the veins of the chill
dren of the poor, and so to nourish their
brains and purify their minds. How can
thinking men look for high moral stand
ard among people who live in dirt and
darkness and squalor and wretchedness
who do not know what pleasure is who
know no relaxation but that Of drink and
debauchery who if they are honest have
nothing to look forward to but life of
unrelieved, sordid penury who are urged
to do better by people who belong as it
were to another world, and who are ignor-
ant of all their trials and temptations and
sufEerings : Society is blind to its nearest
interests when it fails to perceive that the
way to lift up these fallen ones is to put
some hope and brightness into their lives.
What they need is something to convince
them that the world into which they have
been born is not huge slave-pen, but that
it contains possibilities OF enjoyment even
for them.
Philanthropy and political economy
have for long time made the mistake OF
beginning their ministrations in the wrong
place. Governments undertake to deal
only with already matured effects. They
suffer crime to be Matched out as if by a
great machine specially devised for that
work, and then they try to deal with this
crime, all the time ignoring the sources of
it, and pretending that they have no con.
Germ with them. There is no economy in
this neglect, and no wisdom. On the con-
trary, crime costs US tenfold what it
would if society had the acuteness to per.
ceive that the best way to prevent it is to
deal with the conditions which tend to
foster it. We have in fact created an un-
natural brand of human beings in our
great cities. They are like the blind
fish in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky.
They are born without the conscious.
ness OF anything pleasurable in life,
and they are bred into conviction
that the world is wholly grim and
dismal. And we treat ourselves generally
with the same indifference to the needs of
the intellect. Amusement is even now re-
garded generally as a mere obstruction to
business, and those who are sensible
enough to like it are suspected of being
frivolous and unbusinesslike. The plain
truth is that the world of to-day needs
more recreation of all kinds, and above all
needs public amusements on liberal SCALE
Gymnasiums, baths, thesters, all should
be supplied by the State for the benefit of
the people, and if this were done it would
soon be found that the elevation of the
moral standard in the entire community
had more than made up for the increased
expenditure.