All forms of leisure-time consumption are offshoots of the one great common meeting-place of all the people, the street. The street is more than an avenue for traffic. It is the social meeting-place of many of the inhabitants. It is the playground of nearly all the children. Its glitter and glare, its lights and shadows and care-free spirit, attract boys and girls. They come as moths flutter about the candle flame and often with equally disastrous results. The call of the street is irresistible. It is the simplest, most convenient avenue for the satisfaction of that hunger for pleasure, excitement, amusement, and recreation, common to all ages, all races, and both sexes. It is the avenue for the spontaneous outpouring of the spirit of democracy. No matter how thickly the city may scatter its playgrounds, its athletic fields, boating and swimming centers and recreation buildings, the street will always have to be reckoned with as the one great all-engulfing factor in the use of the leisure time of the people. Surely the possibilities for good or evil are infinite when the spirit of youth and age play free, willingly receiving impressions on every hand. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases the ministry in this field of infinite character-building possibilities has fallen into the hands of men who for the most part reckon its possibilities only in terms of the nickels, dimes, and dollars that pass over the bar or counter or through the box office. Many of them conceive low opinions of the recreation desires of the people, furnishing the lurid, the _risque_, the bold, the daring forms of entertainment, or coupling it with other lines of business, as in the case of the saloon, with unfortunate social results.