For instance, the South Park area is three times that of either the North or West Sides, but there are three times as many children on the North and West Sides as there are on the South Side. Meanwhile the South Park commission has a surplus in the bank which has frequently been over a million dollars, while the other park commissions often find it impossible to carry on the projects which would mean so much to their constituents. With consolidation, too, would come a reform which it is not now possible to obtain—the standardization of the services which the parks render the public. At the present time, for instance, the South Park system employs only three social-play leaders—who perform a very valuable social function in bringing the various users of the parks together in games and conferences—although it has eleven recreation centers, while on the West Side the social-play leader is considered as necessary an adjunct to the park staff as are the gymnasium directors. Women have a further interest in the parks, however, than in their consolidation, for they see in their administration the need as well as the opportunity for woman’s service. At present the park commissioners are men, although the constituency they serve is largely one of women and children. Were the women represented on every park board—which is an impossibility until there is at least some measure of consolidation—the needs of the women and children using the parks would be more closely studied, the value of the parks in ways now overlooked would be emphasized, and the playgrounds would return to the public a larger dividend than heretofore on the public’s expenditure. As it is hardly practicable to get the voters’ consent in every park district before merging them—as Attorney General Lucey says must be done—the advocates of consolidation are pinning their hopes to the proposal for a constitutional convention. This convention would result in a wholesale unification of Chicago’s present chaotic welter of nineteen separate governments, and the various park boards, thirteen out of the nineteen of those unrelated governing and taxing bodies, would undoubtedly be welded without any legal trouble arising. And then the women of the city will have their chance to put efficiency into the Chicago parks. MUNICIPAL ART