The Public Recreation Commission of St. Louis has broad advisory powers which include supervision of moving-picture shows, dance halls, poolrooms, steamboat excursions and other “commercial recreation,” as well as holiday celebrations and recreation in public schools, parks and libraries. “It is planned to open public dance halls over the public markets. The school yards are to be used as playgrounds for children under ten years of age in the daytime under paid women instructors. Classes will be sent to the swimming pools every morning and afternoon under the care of teachers. The Public Schools Athletic League will use the public playgrounds. There will be public concerts in the schools and the libraries will have clubrooms and evening lecture courses. The playgrounds in the parks will be open for children in the daytime and for adults at night. It is interesting to note the composition of each of the sub-committees of the Commercial Recreation Committee: one picture exhibitor, one school man, one clergyman, two women and one policeman. Is there not here a tribute to the civic influence of womanhood as such, apart from avocation?”[27] “New York City now has a federation of associations interested in recreation. The widest meaning will be given to the word recreation. Committees will look after both indoor and outdoor amusements from the viewpoints of health and morality. The new federation will act as a clearing house for information gathered by societies working for the same general object, pointing out deficiencies and suggesting plans of work.” FINANCING OF PUBLIC RECREATION Women formed part of a New York group of public-spirited citizens that, in the summer of 1914, presented to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the budget-making authority of the city, an important memorandum dealing with the great problem of financing the urgent recreational facilities such as those we have outlined. _The Survey_ published the following commentary on this memorandum: Beginning with the statement that not more than 5 per cent. of the population is reached daily by all the intensive or active recreations under public control, the memorandum finds that “the mass of the people depend on commercialized amusements, notably saloons, motion pictures, and dance halls, and on the street, which is the demoralizing and dangerous playground of most of the children. We urge that wholesome recreation, publicly controlled, is needed by all the people, not by the small fraction now cared for.”