walk on top of their heads; and, though they have no money for anything else, that circus will take away hundreds of dollars. If we had postal savings-banks, I think we could induce them to save this money; but they do not know what to do with the little money they have. Only some institution which will take care of their pennies can teach them to save these. No negro can resist a circus or an excursion. Out of our population of 33,000 in my county, 24,000 are negroes. Until they have learned to save their earnings, they cannot build homes or beautify their surroundings. Yet in our county a negro could buy a lot for fifty dollars, and build a comfortable house on it for $300. I believe the establishment of a savings-bank at every post-office, with the whole United States government's support behind it, would do more to uplift the negro population than any other measure. There are no savings-banks in our small towns; and, if there were, it would be hard to get the negroes to patronize them. But they have great faith in Uncle Sam, and would soon learn to patronize any institution under his special

care.

Miss JULIA C. LATHROP, Chicago. The question of the cleanliness and order and safety and pleasantness of the street is the great material, indeed, one may easily add the great moral question of a town; and the question of the playground is an essential part of it. It would be scarcely possible to exaggerate the need of playgrounds and small parks in the crowded inner circle of all great towns, yet they are in themselves enlargements and elaborations of the street. They are reached by streets. Like the streets, they are public ground, free to every comer. On the other hand, they are not in the utilitarian sense essential to the comings and goings and daily life of a population. The streets are. The child toddles on the street long before he is strong enough to walk to the nearest playground. In a quarter where nurse-maids and perambulators are unknown and where all the work of a household is performed by the same pair of hands which tend and fetch and carry the children of the family, the playground, even if comparatively near at hand, is for tiny children at best the occasional luxury of a "day off." The children must be on the street. In summer, after work and after supper, when people are too tired to stir and it is too hot to go to bed (a condition familiar to those of all degrees of income, I take it), where shall people in a tenement district sit with their little children, who are always lively, save in the street in front of their own living place? I asked a rich woman just now where her children trundled their hoops and played, and she said, "In front of the house, of course"; and that is where all little children are going to play some part of every day, even after we have all the playgrounds and parks we ought to have. We have the old tradition of the viciousness and danger of the street. The street child is a synonym for neglect. We mean the poor street and the poor child. Now the street is the most interest

ing place in the world. Everything goes by, everything happens there. There is always the zest of the unexpected. It is more entertaining than the park, as motion is more interesting than repose. Processions go up and down the street. They only disband in the park. The street ought to be as good as it is interesting. When one thinks of the poor districts of Paris, one thinks of the great boulevards driven through them, so ruthlessly from the antiquarian's point of view, but so courageously in the view of a city sanitarian. Those boulevards adorned with great trees under which old women knit and little children play do not suggest perhaps their exact imitation here, but they do suggest an attention to the streets of tenement districts which should begin with cleanliness and trees. The street is inevitable, it is legitimate, it is alluring. We can do much to make it wholesome and sweet and orderly.

Mrs. LINCOLN.- Tenement houses might be built round playgrounds.

Mrs. KINNEY, Michigan.- The people to-day who live in these wretched tenement houses are not willing to go into the country. A few years ago I had two farms of 80 acres each, offered me by a wealthy young man for two poor families to live upon. He was ready to give deeds of them. There were many poor people in the town where I was living, but I could find no one who would accept the offer.

Mr. DEVINE.- Three of the most successful and active workers from Boston who have spoken here have said they have been engaged in charitable work twenty-two years. It might be interesting to know what happened in 1880 that started so many good things. Adjourned at 11.45 A.M.

SECTION MEETING.

NEIGHBORHOOD AND CIVIC IMPROVEMENTS.

Friday, May 30, 4 P.M.

The section was called to order at 4 P.M., Mr. Robert de Forest in the chair.

Mr. DE FOREST.- I reached Detroit this morning, and one of the first things I noticed was a sign on one of the electric cars reading "To the Wild Flowers." I had never seen a sign like that on a car; and I welcomed it, not for the sake of the wild flowers, but for the sake of the people who are encouraged not only to go out into the small parks, but into the country where the wild flowers really grow. It may be necessary by and by to organize a society for the

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protection of wild flowers, as they have in Switzerland; but here there are plenty yet, and we can well welcome any means of bringing the children of the city into that companionship. It is an appropriate keynote to the sectional meeting of this committee.

There is an historic incident of which I may speak at the opening of this meeting, which has for its main subject the establishment of parks and playgrounds. It is an incident connected with the development of charitable work in New York City.

More than fifty years ago the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, which has had many imitators, was established in New York City, chiefly through the influence of a very far-seeing man, who at that time was easily leading philanthropist of that city, Richard M. Hartley. New York owes much to Mr. Hartley's inspiration. Being what he was, and being as broad-minded and far-sighted as he was, it was extremely interesting to me to read one of the important reports which he made on the subject of overcrowding in New York, and to note his attitude toward public parks. It was at the time when Central Park was being planned,which then was not "central," though it has since become so. a park do not suppose there is a single intelligent person now who is not I an advocate of the establishment of parks in general, and of this park in particular, which is the only bit of nature easily accessible to the dense tenement districts of New York. Nor do I suppose for a moment that Mr. Hartley, were he now with us, would be of a contrary opinion. But he was of a contrary opinion then, and, strangely enough, for the sake of the tenement dwellers he was seeking to aid. This is the part of the report to which I refer.

Here we have the foremost citizen on charitable lines in New York, at that time, protesting against the establishment of parks such as which we without exception are urging. Mr. Hartley and the charitable people of New York had directed It is quite evident that, if municipal policy at that time, we should not have had even the parks we now possess.

Miss ELLEN H. BAILEY, Boston, Mass.- I have just come from the section meeting on Juvenile Delinquents, the children that get into our institutions; and it seemed to be the general opinion of that section that these children are the product of the homes from which they come, the tenement houses such as exist in our large cities. Any one who is familiar with tenement-house life in New York or Boston or London can be sure that that kind of life has a great tendency toward evil in the children. The dark, ill-ventilated, unsanitary buildings in which families are housed together are evidence enough that the children who come from those homes must of necessity learn a great many things that are unmoral and immoral, and that they will drift into institutions and homes and asylums which take such children. Those of us who know these things can but welcome the efforts being made for the improved housing of the

poor. We are glad to see that men and women of money and influence, either as individuals or in combination as corporate bodies, have started a reform in the building of tenements, and that the best architects have been put at work upon this question in New York, so that that city has now some of the finest and fairest tenements that can be found in the United States, at a low rental in fairly good neighborhoods, which will meet the demands of the laboring man who ought not to pay more than one-fifth of his income for his house rent. For that he ought to get well-ventilated, sanitary, and not overcrowded tenements. More than that, the tenement-house block or neighborhood ought to be free from evil influences which tend so much toward the destruction of the children. Here comes in the management of those improved homes. Miss Octavia Hill, of London, showed very clearly, more than thirty years ago, that an immense amount can be accomplished by putting old tenements in good repair, and by putting them and new ones under the direction of ladies well trained in business methods, who are at the same time interested in the welfare of their tenants, and who will interest themselves in their families. If the ladies chosen for the work of managing tenements are wise and just, they will also work for the advan. tage of the landlords as well as for the welfare of the tenants. The Co-operative Building Society of Boston has several blocks of houses managed by ladies; and the buildings have a very different character from other tenements in the same meighborhood, as the workingmen who live in them will tell you. Many men and women might be induced to invest money in this sort of work on a business basis. It is not philanthropic. We do not ask that rent should be given to poor people, only that decent homes should be provided for those who must live in tenement houses. If we could tear down the old rookeries in Boston and New York and build fair tenements, it would be a good business investment; and the result would be a diminishing of poverty and crime to those neighborhoods.

Mr. DE FOREST.—I heard a gentleman from Maine remark that they could not get co-operation there with the Roman Catholics. So far as New York is concerned, we have long since ceased to find that there is any dividing line between Catholics and Protestants; and we are all working together. I will ask the Rev. Dr. McMahon, of New York, to speak on the subject of this meeting.

Rev. D. J. MCMAHON. I should like to call your attention to the superhuman work of the chairman of this meeting when he was chairman of the Tenement-house Commission of New York. If there is co-operation between the Catholics and Protestants there, it is owing to men like Mr. de Forest and men of a similar character who have bridged over the gulf of our Mont Pelées.

I am a product of the tenement house. I have lived there all my life, and I did not see and do not now see in the old tenement houses the faults that are spoken of so much as the result of the tene

ments of to day. One reason is, not that the people were any better then than those living to-day in tenement houses, but that the environment was very much better, both the civic and the neighborhood environment. When I was a child of the tenement in the district where I am now a pastor, we had plenty of vacant lots in which to play; and it was on that account that Mr. Hartley spoke of the impracticability of little parks. We did not plant potatoes nor raise beets; but we had plenty of playground, and we did not need the parks. I think parks are necessary, but I think even more necessary are playgrounds for the children. The parks are necessary for the mothers for places of rest after they have done their cooking and other daily duties; but for the children, who constitute so large a majority of those who would use either park or playground, surely the playground will be of more use. We have just been told in ano'her section meeting that there is very little distinction between the dependent and the delinquent child, that the delinquent. child is ninety-nine times out of a hundred only the one that is caught. The others commit the same little offences. But there will be a great distinction as the child grows up unless we give it a chance to develop what is in it. The child has one hundred and sixty-eight hours in the week out of which it can get about thirty for play, but where can it play to-day in New York? For the last few years we have had asphalt pavements, and they do get some little chance to play on the streets, if they can hide from the "cop"; but they always have to have some one on watch for him. Boston has got ahead of us in this, because the boys in a block have an insurance company; and, when they break a pane of glass, the insurance company pays for it. They have advanced in Boston, as they always do advance there. But in New York we do need playgrounds. I was in Albany, and heard Mr. de Forest make his passionate appeal before the governor, asking him to sign the bill that the Tenement-house Commission had prepared. Coming down on the train were several of the builders who had tried with all the energies of their souls to beat us down, and I said to one of them, "Why can't you build as they did in old times, with plenty of playground in the back yards? "Oh," he said, "property is too high. The city ought to supply those things." The efforts now being made will reach the results that we desire only when we have a determined, strong, and persevering attempt to bring those results about by systematic demands and continued agitation. We must have these playgrounds for the moral and intellectual as well as physical development of the children; but we cannot have them without gifts from wealthy people and with the aid of the city, and we can get these only by continued and persevering agitation.

Mrs. ANDERSON, Detroit.- I am an old reporter, and for fifteen years did all kinds of newspaper work; and I will tell you what one small park did for one small boy. Among my assignments was one