The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-06-05
BY ISAAC TOTEM.

1
| For several years the large cities
have been maintaining play grounds
for the children.
These Fairgrounds not only provide
means of healthful recreation, but
they tend to draw the boys and girls
away from harmful mischief and loaf
| ing places where the influence is not
| for good.
| Boys and girls, and boys especially,
have a certain amount of pent up mis-
chief that must be worked off, or play
ed off, in someway, and If this mis-
chieviousness can be played off under
the guidance of older people who have
made study of child life, considerable
good is done toward making for
more law abiding future citizenship.
Last week the Saturday Evening
Post contained an article regarding
school at Rochester, New York, that
has revolutionized social conditions in
that city.
A citizen of that town by the name
of ward invited some of his neighbors
into the school on evening to talk ov
er the subject of utilizing the school
building as a social center for the en-
tire city.
There were a few over three hun
dred people present at the first meet
{ ing, and they had music, recitations
and dancing.
They found their neighbors were
very pleasant people," says the writer
of the article. "Soon the building
would not hold all who came. 1t was
amazing how hungrily the people took
! to the idea They had not thought of
the schoolhouse as their property"
! This school center idea is now being
talked of all over the county.
| A conference was held at Madison,
Wisconsin, last year for the purpose of
promoting this idea.
| The purpose is not only to make
the city schools social centers, but to
make the rural schools social centers
also.
| Let us quote again from the Satur-
day Evening Post article:
| "As soon as the people came togeth-
er they saw the waste in the use of
schools. They induced the Board of
Education to appropriate five thous-
and dollars to keep them open four
teen hours a day instead of seven.
They converted the kindergarten into
library and club room. They opened
the gymnasium Ave nights a week for
| entertainments. Fathers and sons be-
gan to spend their evenings together
on the rings, bars and tumbling mats.
They had boxing and wrestling match
es and basketball games. The women
formed a gymnasium class.
Others borrowed a travelling library
from the capital at Albany, subscribed
for periodicals and bought a stereopti-
con and dining-room appointments, so
that they might give lectures and din
ners.'
Several stages have taken up the
movement to push forward the social
center idea throughout the rural dis
tricts; because they are needed as
much, if not more, in the farming dis
tricts as they are in the cities.
| We have mentioned this subject sew
eral times before in the columns of
| the Palladium: but we believe that it
| is a subject that cannot be repeated
too often in the face of the social con-
ditions that prevail in many of the
! farm neighborhoods near Richmond
! There is to be Rural Recreation
Congress at Cleveland, Ohio, June to
s. The idea back of the movement is
to provide healthful recreation and
| amusements for country and small
| town districts.
A congress of this kind may seem
visionary to the matter-of-fact mind at
| first glance, yet, it is true that the
great objection to rural life is its iso-
| lation and monotony
| Farm folks have. in many neighbor-
| hoods, a very aggravated case of stay
at-homeitis.
| They do not know many of their
neighbors on adjoining farms
| A neighbor may be sick for two
! weeks, and then die. and be buried be-
| fore We know that he has even been
sick.
Those back of the rural recreation
movement believe that through it the
pull of the city on the young men and
| young women can be somewhat lessen
ed and farm life made more attractive.
Nine cases out of ten where the
boys and girls leave the farm are due
| to the lack of social conditions.
We may be advised to work, and dig.
and grind to become successful men
and women; and we may be told by
the old foggies that you've got TO
| work hard and keep at it TO win OUT"
but what is the use Of living at all if
| We cannot enjoy life little as We go.
| 1t is claimed that the economic effi-
cheney in rural districts may be In
ceased through the development OF
the rural play life
W. no. - g.