Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
It is not by spasmodic effort that full provision can be made for the
gratification of the common instinct for recreation under wholesome
social conditions. Social centers in abundance and embracing a multitude
of recreational features are therefore an essential in modern cities.
They have not been easy to secure, however, except by private
philanthropy. Indeed we still have to have social center conferences and
carry on a publicity campaign, to demonstrate and argue in order to gain
the general consent for the use of school buildings and other public
property as evening social centers for neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the
movement does have real vitality now and most of the larger cities have
taken definite steps to make greater use of their schools and other
plants, like libraries.
In describing its entrance into the field of activity for social
centers, the Women’s Municipal League of Boston, through its Social
Center Chairman, Mary B. Follett, says:
Because it is our endeavor to make our city a true home for the
people, it is not enough that we should merely make it a house,
though it be clean and healthful to live in; for even health, though
essential, is not all-sufficient. We must also insure that there
shall be within it recreation, enjoyment and happiness for all. In
our great house—the city—a great need exists and it is to supply
this that our Committee for Social Centers was formed.
In Boston there are 56,000 young people between the ages of 14 and
18 who are earning their living, working all day, craving amusement
in the evening, and with no home to provide it. Our committee
organized, as an experiment, this winter, a social center in the
East Boston High School, by permission of the Boston School
Committee, which allowed us the use of the building in the evenings.
Our aim was to offer educational recreation, and at the same time to
provide for the working young people an environment which should
help to prepare them for their future life.
The League engaged a skilled director and his wife to organize this
work. They settled in the district three months before the social
center was opened, making friends of their neighbors, young and old,
and when October came they were thus enabled to begin work with 14
clubs already organized. These clubs have continued with a
constantly increasing membership; there were 300 young people
enrolled at the beginning, and now, after six months, there are 500
members. The clubs are called the East Boston Opportunity Clubs and
are self-governing. The membership consists almost entirely of young
wage-earners, but one club, the Games Club, is made up of high
school pupils at the request of their teachers, in order to suggest
to the girls some other occupation than stenography; they are being
taught kindergarten work for use in vacation schools or with their
own future children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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