The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1909-10-24
SALT LAKE S OBLIGATION
TO ITS CHILDREN
By ELwOOD s. BROWN Secretary for Physical A

Councilman L. +. Halls proposition
that the proceeds from the sale OF pub
lie lands be turned over TO a playground
fund. promises TO be the forerunner of
one OF the biggest movements in the
development of Salt Lake. Salt Lake
may lead in building permits, her
streets may be wide, her climate good
and the water pure, but unless more
| thought is given to the children and
more provision made for their proper
growing up" Salt Lake will find itself
at some future date under the necessity
of spending a great deal of money in the
effort to cure situation which should
have had the most careful attention be-
fore it arose
salt Lake is peculiarly fortunate at
the present time in having plenty of
room in most localities for the use of
I the children, but will this situation al
ways obtain? At the present rate Of
/ growth il will be but a few years until
the open areas of the city are covered
with buildings. or shut in to such an
extent that the esta blishment of play
grounds viii be impossible. Slowly, but
surely, the child is losing its precious
heritage, the back yard" with its bot
ties and brickbats, old boards and bar
Tels. which offer unlimited opportunity
to build forts, houses and perform min
iature engineering feats. Slowly, but
surely, the child is being crowded into
the streets, and the play becoming less
and less supervised.
After a boy has turned a few SOM
mersaults, thrown a handful Of rocks
/ against some billboard and punched his
companion a time or two, his energy
and power is ready to be used for some
| definite purpose. If that purpose is not
| directed into supervised, organized play
ii very easily degenerates into rough
/ house" wrangling argument and some
/ times fighting. If any Salt Lake citi-
zen needs to be convinced that the
games of the boys of this town need su-
] pervisiOn, let him go up to the Eight
zenith ward square during the baseball
season and watch one of the boys
! games there in progress.
Strongest Boy Dominates.
The good citizen will find that the
| strongest and sometimes the most
vicious boy dominates the situation. In
many cases, the boys that talk the
/ loudest and fight the hardest, win he
| games. Swearing, cheating and aTgu-
ment take up a great deal of the time.
| This does not mean that boys are essen
TALLY bad. 1t goes back to the old
proposition of law and order, and means
/ that we are allowing young boys to be-
come convinced that might is right"
| Take these same boys in this same
game, organize them into definite teams,
make il an honor to captain one of these
teams, put the games in charge of a
popular, tactful adult, and the whole
! face of the situation is changed at once
/ Let boys learn that games must be
| played by rule, that some one eminent
| ly fair is there to enforce the rules. Let
them learn to respect the rights of the
other players, to play fair and to be
/ square with their opponents. ROose-
welt says on Fairgrounds:
In the games of the street. every
| boy is for himself. Victory belongs to
! the shrewd, the crafty, the strong. Team
games of the Fairgrounds require the
/ submission Of the individual will to the