Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-01-21
THE LITTLE PEOPLE
AND CITY STREETS
The Unsubdued Frontiers Of Civilized
Society-Stories of the City Jungles.
Making the Streets Safe for Children.
(By Member of the Child Federation)

H
tive to the meeting of the Board Of Recrea-
tion to urge consideration of certain matters
pertaining to the interests of children who
play In the Streets especially as touching
streets in which they might we'll play under
supervision
The Board of Recreation appointed COM
| mittee to investigate the feasibility of using
! play space, under supervision, the street
areas Immediately adjoining small city play
! grounds and school yards which are used as
public Fairgrounds.
Getting children Off the street" has been
the slogan of many efforts in their behalf.
! AS a symbolic expression this represents we'll
enough what needs doing. AS a matter Of
fact program 1t is folly and an impossi-
bility. For thousands of families in our
crowded quarters the "home," If constantly
lived in by the normal group of from Ave
to ten persons, must become hotbed of Ill
health Yards gardens, private grounds?
Oh. no! The street and the street alone is
the resource for life.
The Streets as Dooryard
Change the home? Yes by every practica-
BILE measure Of education and of economic
progress The surest method Is to provide
increase and security of income, but that
seems, in view of the unslSilled economic
ton suffer, a silly dream, at least as a thing
to expect today or tomorrow
But why not attack the street as an imme-
date program, while working at other lines
of improvement? Parenthetically, let us urge
that we never practice the fallacy Of chrono-
logical sequence in social improvement mat
ters, thinking and saying, this must be done
first or before that" The law of social i'm
provement Is analogous to the law of the
expansion of gases in physics rather than to
the axiom about the straight line as the
shortest distance between two points in
geometry. We are to welcome pressure at
any one point as a symptom of equal
pressure in every other direction, even
though we may not see these other pushings
and may fail to understand or ike the goaM
toward which they are making.
Now, the streets the dooryards and
play spaces OF millions of children, taking
cities in any number under view, and will
so continue. They are at this moment more
easily within community control and man
agement than the conditions of housing, the
provision of Fairgrounds, the rate of wages;
in short than any of the big general
social reforms which are to alter significantly
the background of child life. No matter what
special provision for Fairgrounds, recreation
centres and so on be made the street Is and
must be part of the city child's home outfit.
Nothing be done which will ever keep
him off the street." except partially as to in
terest and fractionally as to time.
Life in the Jungle
It is probable that child life in the forested
jungles has its own conventions and safe
guards-as we'll as dangers. Even in the
land of the Bandarlog (see Kipllng's Jungle
old
have worked out system Of life for their
young, and by this system little people are
prepared to become elders of quality and
parts fit to conduct the system for the next |
supply of little people-and SO on, and 80 |
on, to the result that the race shall con-
tlnue without deterioration-whlch Is prob
ably the only real business that a race has |
to attend to- At any rate, If 1t fails in this |
business it can succeed in no other, though |
1t may keep its head above water a long
time.
There Is a sickeningly close likeness in
many physical particulars between un- |
pleasantnesses of the primitive jungle life |
and the lives of many people in the crowded,
poverty damaged avoided areas of American |
cities in which we find the real and as yet |
unsubdued frontier of civilized society. And |
here the constructive, socially minded citi-
zen is the frontiersman, cutting down and |
clearing off the obstacles to reasonable liv- |
ing; building up the things which shall re-
main. What can he do with the street? AS
it stands 1t is an active, formative. living and
constant influence. It's interest is vivid, its |
hold tenacious usually unbreakable. Here
are two or three pictures of its work
Fire Worshipers
frosty twilight
A tuppenny hapenny bonfire in the gutter,
hardly larger than might be built on a tea
tray, is tended zealously by a bunch of the
little people who busily feed it with every
scrap OF paper, wood and dry refuse that can
in any way be come by. Not one of the half
dozen fire worshipers counts his age at more
than eight years. They crouch so close to the
blaze that danger seems to clutch at them
from every wavering blaze, Two of them I
know and greet. "Hello. Dominic. How are
you Jimmy2 Does the policeman let you
have a fire like that? It isn't election, you
know"
Out flashes a quick arm in a vivid ges-
ture toward the blue coat a half square
away. "Oh. yessum. we amt allowed to
have 1t. but he's a good cop, He don't do
us nuttin. We like him. We get peanuts
for him."
It's Fight
Christmas Eve-about s o'clock.
Sixteen year old John is driving a grocery
wagon and, with one of his pals, is help
ing two feminine agents of Santa Claus de-
liver Christmas dinner baskets in the mar
row streets and alleys of the -th ward.
Suddenly a peculiar piercing whistle splits
the air. Johns head Jerks to attention and
his answering whistle travels back before
the cleft In the air has had time to close
no,,nd tha corner from the xy3dar atraat