Leisure a Suburban Study 9780231885515

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LEISURE A SUBURBAN

STUDY

LEISURE A SUBURBAN

STUDY

BY G E O R G E A. L U N D B E R G MIRRA

KOMAROVSKY

MARY A L I C E M c I N E R N Y

New York: Morningside COLUMBIA

Heights

UNIVERSITY 1

9

3

4

PRESS

COPYRIGHT

I934

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

PUBLISHED

PRESS

1934

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS ' GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

Preface

T

HIS study was first planned almost three years ago. No one realized at that time that the subject with which it deals was destined so soon to be forced into the foreground by a great industrial upheaval. During the intervening period from ten to thirteen million people have been continuously unemployed. As a result, the problems of leisure, as well as of economic insufficiency, have caused special concern in thousands of communities. A series of national industrial codes have definitely prescribed drastic reductions in working hours. The comprehensive attempt to plan the nation's work carries with it a correlative interest in the uses of leisure. In dealing with the leisure and recreational behavior of a suburban people we have necessarily become involved in the whole sociology of the suburb. Considerable space has therefore been devoted to the major social institutions and social conditions as they exist and operate in a suburban area. The special relationship of these institutions to leisure has, however, been kept in the foreground. The bulk of the field work was carried out between January, 1932 and April, 1933. While the authors have collaborated closely on nearly all parts of the project, all except three chapters of the final manuscript is by Mr. Lundberg. Chapter V is by Miss Komarovsky and Chapters V I and V I I are by Miss Mclnerny. We have proceeded on the assumption that what people do with their leisure is a matter of practical social concern as well as of scientific interest. Consequently we have not confined ourselves rigidly to a mere reporting of observations and the conclusions which follow directly from certain concrete data. It is true that the greater part of the volume is devoted to such data as they exist in a specific community. But we have taken the liberty of including not only the facts, but conclusions which flow from thought about the facts in relation to existing standards and valuations. In this respect our attitude has been admirably summarized in a

vi

Preface

recent statement {Social Forces, May, 1933) by Charles A. Beard: Science can discover the facts that condition realization and furnish instrumentalities for carrying plan and purpose into effect. Science without dreams is sterile. Dreams without research and science are empty. The deed of ignorance is perilous; deedless information is futile. United, idea and deed may create a civilization. A revolution in thought is at hand, a revolution as significant as the Renaissance: the subjection of science to ethical and esthetic purpose. Hence the next great survey undertaken in the name of the social sciences may begin boldly with a statement of values agreed upon, and then utilize science to discover the conditions, limitations, inventions, and methods involved in realization. COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

March 1, 1934 GEORGE A . LUNDBERG MIRRA KOMAROVSKY MARY ALICE McINERNY

Acknowledgments

T

HE present study has been conducted under a two-year grant of the Council for Research in the Social Sciences of Columbia University with the assistance of the American Association for Adult Education and Mrs. Eugene Meyer, Chairman of the Westchester County Recreation Commission. Our primary obligation is naturally to these sponsors. We take pleasure also in acknowledging the constant encouragement of the advisory committee representing these sponsors, namely, R. M. Maclver, R. S. Lynd, M. A. Cartwright, and Mrs. Eugene Meyer. Among others who have made helpful suggestions, Professor Read Bain, of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, deserves special mention for his critical reading of the whole manuscript. We also acknowledge the courtesy of Teachers College Record, Sociology and Social Research, and the Journal of Adult Education for permission to reprint portions of the manuscript which originally appeared in these journals. To the thousands of citizens of Westchester County who have cooperated with us through interviews and by filling our schedules of information, we desire to express our appreciation. We can make only general acknowledgment, also, of the hundreds of organizations and officials who have so generously supplied us with various data and otherwise facilitated our work. We must, however, indulge in the privilege of mentioning specifically the members and personnel of the Westchester County Recreation Commission, especially its chairman, mentioned above, and its superintendent, Mr. George Hjelte. It is impossible adequately to acknowledge their innumerable courtesies and constant helpfiilness. COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

March i, 1934 GEORGE A . MIRRA

LUNDBERG

KOMAROVSKY

MARY ALICE

MCINERNY

Contents INTRODUCTION

T h e machine and leisure; Definition of leisure; Subjective aspects; Increasing amount of leisure; Disruption of traditional leisure pursuits; Resulting problems; Neglect of subject by social scientists; Reasons; Traditional attitudes; T h e new situation; Leisure as an object of scientific study; T h e relation of wealth to welfare; The relativity of needs and wants; The economist's preoccupation with production; Competitive consumption; Social and economic coercion in modern leisure pursuits; Characteristics of true leisure; The relation of leisure behavior to other aspects of life; Problems; Approach of the present study. T H E SUBURBAN SOCIAL SETTING

Physical and historical aspects of Westchester County; Suburban migration; From wilderness to the richest suburb in the world; The communities of Westchester; T h e principal types of suburb; Transportation; Commuting; The population; Income, occupation, nativity, age composition, marital status, etc.; The wealthy residential suburb; The relatively poor residential suburb; T h e mixed suburb or satellite city; Dependence on parent city; Is the suburban dweller a special sociological type?; Westchester as a community; The basis of community consciousness; Economic and political factors; Wealth; Multiplicity of governmental units; Resulting overlapping and costs; Political control; Public administration and policy. T H E ORGANIZATION OF LEISURE

Introduction; Outdoor leisure pursuits; The park system; Hiking clubs; Camping; Gardening; The motoring complex; Aviation; Golf Clubs and golf; Plebeian encroachment upon golf; Tennis; Soccer, cricket, and football; T h e wide appeal of athletics and sports; Boat and yacht clubs and water sports; Fishing, hunting, and shooting;

Contents

X

Horse and dog shows; Children's organizations and play-grounds; Organized play; Indoor, intellectual, artistic, and ceremonial leisure pursuits; Commercial recreation; Eating and dancing; The movies; Pool, billiards, and minor indoor sports; The amusement park; Conclusions on the organization and pecuniary basis of leisure; Satisfactions and needs in current leisure; The influence of public provision for leisure. IV.

T H E AMOUNT AND USES OF LEISURE

87

The pattern and rhythm of work and leisure; Standardization; Method of study; Difficulties; The diaries of 2,460 individuals; The distribution of leisure activities during 4,460 days; The yearly pattern; The weekly pattern; The daily pattern; The non-leisure activities; Work and sleep; Variations among white-collar classes, housewives, school children, unskilled labor, professional and executive men; The principal leisure activities; Time devoted to each by different groups; The relationship of amount of leisure to its distribution among different activities; Qualitative differences; "Good time" patterns; Summary and conclusion. V.

SUBURBAN ORGANIZATIONS AND LEISURE

The increasing importance of voluntary organizations as leisure-time institutions; Number of organizations and extent of participation in a well-to-do residential suburb; Is the suburb over-organized?; Overlapping of membership; Who belongs to suburban clubs?; Economic, racial, and sex factors in the extent of participation; Club membership and social stratification; The sharp contrast between the well-to-do and the poor residential suburb in the extent of organization; Some suburban-rural comparisons; Aims and activities of suburban clubs; The wellto-do and the poor suburb contrasted; Case studies of principal types of suburban clubs; The women's club, the pride of suburban women; The literary club, the cultural tradition; The Service League, philanthropy and social service; The country club; The village club, suburban gentlemen politicians; Conclusion.

126

Contents VI.

T H E SUBURBAN FAMILY A N D LEISURE

xi I "JO

Composition of the suburban family; Size of family, marital status, and number of children in three types of suburb. The houses of suburbanites; Home ownership by income groups and by commuters and noncommuters; Grounds and recreational equipment of suburban homes; Mobility of suburban families; The leisure of the suburban father, mother, and child in the home; Attractions which take the family out of the home; The family as a unit of leisure time pursuit; Private homes more popular than public places to the suburban family; Holidays still family days in the suburbs; Hobbies; Extent to which family members play together in the home and outside the home. Summary. vn.

T H E SUBURBAN C H U f t C H AND LEISURE

igo

Religious facilities in Westchester County; Denominations and membership of churches; Attendance at churches; Program of the church; Change in importance of traditional religious services; Religious education: the church's vision of adult education; Social and recreational activities of the churches; Clubs and facilities of the churches; Ambitions of clergymen for enlargement of their churches; Attitude of the church on the "new leisure"; Methods by which the church would provide for the "new leisure"; Future of the church and leisure. Vm.

T H E SUBURBAN SCHOOL AND TRAINING FOR LEISURE

2l8

The prominence of the school in the suburb; Costs, equipment, progressive policies; Educational objectives; Curricular training for leisure; Music; Other arts; Extra-curricular activities; School clubs; Athletics; The school and the leisure of the community; Uses of school equipment by adults; The strategic position of the school in the leisure of the community; Growing recognition of avocational training; Basic problems. IX.

T H E ARTS AND LEISURE

Introduction; The arts in primitive and in modem society; Effects of the machine; The artistic significance of advertising and commercial design; Architecture; Music;

253

Contents

xii

Home music; The radio; Who belong to amateur musical organizations; Sex, age, education, occupations; Informal music making; Effects of the radio; The music festival; Painting; Sculpture; The crafts; Facilities and participation; Westchester Workshop; Reactions of participants; The drama; The motion picture; The little theater; The dance; Relation of the Recreation Commission to the development of art as leisure pursuit; The "fine" arts as "useful" arts; The therapeutic and socializing value of the arts. X.

A D U L T EDUCATION AND R E A D I N G

307

The expansion of literacy and reading; The importance of reading as a leisure pursuit; Library facilities and patronage; What is read; Books; Newspapers; Periodicals; Organized adult education; Clubs; Night schools; Extension and correspondence courses; Extent and content; Inadequacy of public provision; Obsolete methods of instruction; The purpose of adult education. XI.

COMMUNITY RECOGNITION OF T H E P R O B L E M S OF L E I S U R E

.

345

Conditions making leisure a community problem like education or public health; Reasons for the lag in public provision for leisure; Traditional attitude toward leisure; Glorification of work; Individual wealth no longer insures major satisfactions; Need of social inventions and community effort; Changing attitude as to proper sphere of governmental activity; The police power; "Private" community action; History of public provision for recreation; Present extent; The problem of finance; The nature of public economy, xn.

CONCLUSION

363

APPENDICES

A. Methodological Note B. Tables and Charts on Population SELECTED INDEX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

373 379 387 391

Charts

and

Tables

Charts 1.

The Workers' Week over Ninety Years

2.

Population Density of Westchester County, 1930 .

26

3.

Daily Number of Trains between Westchester County and New York City, 1932

28

4.

The Uses of Land in Westchester County, 1930 .

29

5.

How the American Recreation Dollar Was Spent, 1929

357

6.

Estimated Expenditure for Commercial and Private Ree reation in the United States, 1919-1930 . . . .

358

7.

The Place of Recreation in Our 1929 Expenditures .

8.

Population Increase in Westchester County, 1920-1930

5

.

359 379

Tables I.

The Mean Number of Hours per Day Devoted to Leisure and Nonleisure Activities

92

The Mean Number of Hours per Day Devoted to the Principal Nonleisure Activities

97

The Mean Number of Minutes per Day Spent on Certain Leisure Pursuits

100

Place, Companionship, and Activities on Occasions Considered a "Good T i m e " by High School Students

112

Comparative Distribution of Club Membership in Six Communities

141

Comparative Distribution of Club Membership of Men and Women

143

VII.

Average Number of Minutes per Day Spent on Reading

311

VIII.

Newspaper Circulation in Westchester County by Types of Suburb and on Commuters' Trains . . .

320

II. III. IV. V. VI.

CHAPTER

ONE

Introduction

T

HE more machines we have the easier will be the work, the shorter will be the working day, the lighter and happier will be the lives of all." 1 This wistful statement comes out of a land which is just beginning to be remade by the machine. To it millions are looking for release from centuries of bondage. In view of what has occurred in countries where mechanization is more complete, what hope may one reasonably entertain for the realization of this dream? True, it is Ilin's main theme that only under a socialized régime will these results be obtained. But even assuming that the full product of the machine goes to the workers themselves, is the fond expectation justified? It would perhaps be futile to deny that many types of work have been made easier, in a certain sense, by the machine. In some cases the change may consist chiefly of a substitution of nervous for muscular energy. But let us grant that on the whole work has become easier. Let us grant further that the machine has shortened the working day and that it could be much further shortened in an intelligendy organized society. When we have made these concessions, we are, unfortunately, still far from having insured the conclusion that then "the lighter and the happier will be the lives of all." There are, unhappily, many reasons why mere freedom from vigorous physical toil and long hours of labor will not in itself insure men against heavy and unhappy lives. Some of these reasons we shall consider later. A few random illustrations will suffice here. There is the enforced leisure of the physically handicapped —the blind, the deaf, and the convalescent. They are frequendy far from happy even when no economic worries are present. There are prisoners whose wretchedness may be increased by lightness of work or lack of work. Millions of unemployed find 'M. Ilin, New Russia's Primer (1931), p. 16.

2

Introduction

their leisure more burdensome than their work ever was. Some "retired" people, having abandoned the occupations of a lifetime while they are still in good health, to engage avowedly in the business of enjoying life, find this pursuit the most burdensome and unsatisfying of all. It was perhaps alternatives like these that Mahatma Gandhi had in mind when he said that modern machinery would leave India's millions with "too much leisure." Clearly, something more than a short and easy working day, even with economic security, is needed before we have any assurance that the lives of men will be happier and lighter. It all depends on what we do with the additional leisure and our attitude toward these activities. Leisure is popularly defined as the time we are free from the more obvious and formal duties which a paid job or other obligatory occupation imposes upon us. It is in this sense that we have used the term. Tentatively, and for practical purposes, we shall accept this definition because it is relatively objective. In so doing, we shall not overlook the important subjective differences which distinguish mere idleness, rest, or loafing, from relaxation, recreation, or a certain mental release or exaltation.2 In this more limited sense, leisure is primarily an attitude, a state of mind, a process of pleasurable adjustment to one's situation. Leisure in this subjective sense will always depend upon personality, temperament, education, and the activities that have preceded. An activity which is recreation to one person is onerous labor to another. '"No one discovers what leisure can be entirely from someone else's discussion of it. In all this region of life, the frontier of experience cannot ever be completely explored; and even what is seen there by anyone can never be adequately expressed. Leisure is the time for going beyond what men knew of life or can say of it." (C. D. Burns, Leisure in the Modem World, p. 356.) "There are not infrequently refreshing intervals when thoughts pass over the deep as white birds over a calmed sea, when the mind gives forth spontaneously, beautifully bright, unexpected treasures from its store." (G. B. Cutten, The Threat of Leisure, p. 135.) "Let us not confuse leisure with rest, which is merely the south pole of work, nor with recreation, which is a form of action... Leisure is too deeply imbedded and too broad in compass to be disciplined or confined. It is the free port of the imagination. It is the natural stir and growth of a man's being and it must be generously indulged. For when the body and mind are truly at leisure the growth of the tendrils continues serenely, and vagrant impressions expand into thought, and impulses become ripe for action." New York Times (Editorial), Dec. 18, 193a.

Introduction

3

The same activity may be either labor or relaxation to the same person at different times. But by the same reasoning it would be impossible to define work objectively on the basis of overt activity, for it is frequently largely interwoven with recreational elements. Yet for many purposes we find such broad classifications of activity useful. The ideal to be sought is undoubtedly the gradual obliteration of the psychological barrier which today distinguishes work from leisure.* In the meantime, it remains a fact that nearly all people can and do classify nearly all their activities according to these two categories in a way that is deeply meaningful to themselves. Furthermore, the activities of a given culture area and the individual's attitude toward these activities are so uniform that it is possible to classify them with a fair degree of objectivity into the categories of work and leisure. At the same time we are not overlooking their interdependence. Such terms as work and leisure are merely pragmatic ways of designating aspects, rather than separate parts, of life. As such the categories are meaningful and useful for our purpose. Accepting this inclusive definition of leisure as time during which we are not actively engaged in making a living, we may say that the machine and the shorter working day undoubtedly can give us more leisure. But they cannot guarantee us any increase in relaxation, recreation, freedom, or happiness. These states depend not upon mere increase in leisure time, but upon our use of the vacant hours at our disposal. This raises the question, How •Whatever may be said of the possibility of ultimately breaking down the barrier between work and leiiure (as, for example, is already the case on the higher levels of art and science), the {»«sent tendency is rather in the opposite direction. Specialization is increasing, with the result that work is more and more ministering to less and less of the personality. Says a well-known psychiatrist: "Well may he [the specialist] chuckle at our own fine theory of integrating the personality when success would land most of our patients in the poor house." J . S. Plant, "Social Factors Involved in Personality Integration," American Journal of Psychiatry, I X (July, igag), 113-20. See also on this subject Goodwin Watson, "Making Work Cultural," New York Times, Nov. 96,1933. Also L . P. Jacks, The Education of the Whole Man, p. 76. It is undoubtedly true that an intelligent social utilization of present trehnical knowledge might reduce practically to the vanishing point the more tedious and uninteresting occupations. At the same time there is no immediate prospect of the development of the degree of social intelligence necessary for such adjustments.

Introduction

4

much leisure do people now have and what are the conditions which govern their use of it? THE

NEW

LEISURE

The problems of leisure have come increasingly into the foreground in recent years for two principal reasons. First, the amount of leisure time has been constantly increasing and seems destined to even more rapid increase in the near future. Secondly, urban civilization and mechanical devices, such as the automobile, the motion picture, and the radio, have disrupted traditional leisure pursuits and the individual's control over his own spare time, thus compelling community recognition of the subject. Aside from the tremendous amount of enforced leisure which the economic depression has brought in its wake, leisure resulting from the constantly shortening working week and working day is now receiving much attention even during periods of prosperity. Labor leaders exhibit charts showing the reduction of the working week from eighty-four hours in 1840 to fifty hours, or less, in 1930. Since that time the forty-hour week has, in theory at least, been accepted.4 In addition, more than one-third of our population consists of children, from 40 to 50 percent of whose waking hours is leisure time.5 Another fifth of the population, engaged as housewives, has been largely released from the drudgery of long hours by the changing role of the home, as well as by the revolution in the technique of housekeeping. Not only has the number of children per family decreased but the mother's responsibility ' A n analysis of the first sixty-four codes established under the N R A yielded the following information as to the length of the working week: (From New York Times, November ' 3 . '933): Hours

37 35 36

40 40-48

No. of codes

1

3 5

50 3

44

1

48

2

'Estimate by E. T . Lies, The Leisure of a People, p. 56. See also F. C. Rosecrance, " C h a r acter Building, A Community Enterprise," Journal of the National Education Association, Feb., 1933. Also chapters iv and vi.

166 mo

0

IMO

J650

CHART

I.

l&foO

/Ô70

mo

THE WORKERS'

/Ô90 WEEK

/900 OVER

1910

1920

NINETY

J930

YEARS"

"From an article by William Green in the New York Times, August 9, 1931. Reproduced by permission.

6

Introduction

for education and rearing has been largely assumed by the community. Household conveniences (gas, electricity, water supply, and sewers) as well as simplifications in methods used in the preparation of food and clothing have greatly lessened the labor of millions of women. Add to this large number of women and children, the "retired" and the "leisure" classes, and some idea of the enormous amount of leisure which exists in a modern community may be secured. The production of the material necessities of life, which has for centuries been the dominant concern of nearly the whole population, including women and children, is today carried on by a relatively small number of people. The "gainfully employed," a class which includes the producers of luxuries (in goods and services) as well as of necessities, today comprise only about twofifths of our population. In the face of such facts and with even more striking prospects for the future, it is not surprising that Nicholas Murray Butler declares that "guidance in the right use of leisure is vastly more important than what is now known as vocational guidance." The great increase in the amount of leisure for the masses of men is, however, only one aspect of the new problem. The very changes which caused shorter working hours also disrupted to a large extent traditional leisure pursuits. The technological revolution and the resulting drift to the city resulted in profound physical, institutional, and sociological changes in customary leisure opportunities and activities. For example, spontaneous and informal neighborhood life, which formerly provided a chief use of leisure, has largely disappeared as a result of the tremendous mobility of modern urban society. Neighborhood life depends upon relative stability; it cannot flourish where a substantial part of the population moves every year or two. In the city, furthermore, occupation tends to supplant geographic location as a basis of fellowfeeling and association. Congested living quarters and the disappearance of the yard and other outdoor facilities have further shifted recreation to the school, the club, and the commercial recreation place.

Introduction

7

These new conditions under which spare time is spent have also altered profoundly the uses of leisure. Home and neighborhood games and sports are supplanted by billiard "parlors" and public dance halls. Huge stadia offer a vicarious satisfaction for the urges which conditions no longer permit us to fulfill directly. Instead of singing around the piano, we turn on the radio. The innumerable petty activities of barn, pasture, and garden, many of them heavily mixed with recreational elements, are foreign to the apartment dweller. Even the "job" of the ordinary man was formerly often fraught with variety and high adventure and therefore had its own recreational aspects. There is litde possibility of dramatic developments or variety in the operation of a punching machine. The former type of work might leave one tired, but not taut; restful sleep was its remedy. The latter type results in a craving for explosive stimulation as a relief. Add to these considerations the exploitative aspects of advertising, salesmanship, and the modern facilities of communication, and we secure some idea of the altered conditions of leisure. Professor Jacks has summarized the situation of the modern city dweller as follows: On every side he is surrounded by artful operators who have studied his weak points, often with the aid of psychology, and beset him with the offer of ready-made pleasures to be purchased at a price . . . Even those of us who are immune from the attractions of the cinema, the race-course and the public-house are not masters of our leisure time, at least to the extent we should like to be. We are largely at the mercy of our neighbors, who have facilities of getting at us unknown to the ancient Greeks or even to our grandfathers. Thanks to the telephone, motor car and such-like inventions, our neighbors have it in their power to turn our leisure into a series of interruptions, and the more leisure they have the more active do they become in destroying ours. Nor are we less active in destroying theirs. We spend a great deal of our leisure in mutual botheration. In whatever conditions you place a man, the use he can make of his own leisure will always be limited by the use that other people are making of theirs.* 'L. P. Jacks, Tht Education of It* Whalt Man, pp. 56, 57.

8

Introduction

These are some of the conditions which have made leisure a community problem. W e are confronted, then, with radically altered conditions under which to spend our leisure and a greatly increased amount of leisure to spend. What will people do under these conditions? O n e student of the problem has stated the question in this way: Will they take as the model for their leisure the sort of life now most favored by the "idle rich" and get as much of that sort of thing as their means enable them to procure—display, luxurious feeding, sex excitement, gambling, bridge, golf, globe-trotting and the rest? Or will they spend it in the way the idle poor—by whom I mean the unemployed— are now spending the leisure forced on them by the industrial crisis, which consists for the most part, in just stagnating, physically, mentally, and morally? Or will it be a mixture of the two—stagnations relieved by whatever doses of external excitement people may have the cash to purchase?7 W e do not know which possibility is being chosen, although the problem has been with us for some decades. Yet these are questions which are at least as challenging as any now occupying the attention of social scientists. They are questions which can be answered only after a careful observation of what is actually taking place. This will provide a clue as to the direction in which we are moving, and may furnish a basis for conclusions as to what is practicable and desirable in this field. LEISURE

B E H A V I O R SOCIAL

AS

A

SUBJECT

FOR

THE

SCIENCES

T h e problems of leisure have not, as yet, received serious consideration in the social sciences. Moral philosophy, from which the social sciences are only beginning to free themselves, treated leisure for the most part as an evil, and correspondingly exalted hard work as a virtue. The reason for this glorification of work is, of course, not far to seek. We have emerged only recently from ages during which the production of material necessities was the over7 L.

P.Jacks, "Leisure: a New and Perplexing Problem," New York Times, Magazine Section, July 5, 1931, p. 6.

Introduction

9

whelmingly predominant concern of man. If famine was to be averted, hard and constant work by the great masses of the adult population and a large proportion of the children was an imperious requirement. Religion adopted and espoused the doctrine which already enjoyed full social sanction, and by so doing added divine support and approval to it. 8 T h e demonstrable correctness of this doctrine under the self-sufficient type of economy which prevailed until the technological revolution, further accounts for the wide acceptance and persistence of this theory. Today, machines and power supplies have removed the necessity for our age-long fear of being unable to wring from the earth the means of subsistence. Y e t the ghosts of this bygone era still pursue us and dominate our social thought as well as our public policy. Economic theory, reenforced by moral philosophy, has centered its attention on production rather than on consumption, and the doctrine of work as a civic and religious virtue has been accepted without question. T h e topics of leisure and recreation have, consequently, for the most part been regarded as sentimental subjects for intellectual dilettantes, and not subjects for serious philosophic thought or scientific investigation. Likewise, we find recreation workers regarded somewhat patronizingly by other social workers. This attitude is not entirely unjustified, for recreation workers have their principles, techniques, and procedures even less adequately formulated and standardized than do social workers in some fields. In any case, it is those who judge the fatherless and plead for the widow that constitute the aristocracy in social work at present. They sometimes take the lofty attitude that "nobody should have cake until everybody has bread." But since bread now presents a problem of distribution rather than of production, it is all the more important to keep alive the taste for cake, for it is through a development of this taste that the problems of distribution are most likely to be solved. But the traditional attitude is perhaps inevitable as long as the problem of poverty dominates the field of social work. The same •C/. H. P. Fairchild, "Exit the Gospel of Work," Harper's Magazine, C L X I I (April, «93'), 566-73.

IO

Introduction

preoccupation accounts for the dominant interests of social scientists; under present conditions it could hardly be otherwise. The importance and close interrelationship of economic conditions with all aspects of community life, is a commonplace and needs no elaboration here. The amounts and uses of leisure will of course be greatly conditioned by the quantity and distribution of wealth. But the central problem now before us, namely, the prospect of long hours of leisure for the masses of men, remains, regardless of whether in the future we shall succeed in solving the problem of distribution as effectively as we have already solved the problem of production. All of the proposed or prospective renovations of the social order definitely accept this fact. The problems of leisure would not disappear as a result of any currently proposed reforms of our present economic order. The details of the problem might be different according to whether the leisure was the free time of educated and well paid people with steady employment, or that of unemployed laborers subsisting on charity. But these different possibilities do not alter the fundamental fact that the masses of men will, to an increasing degree, be relieved, and indeed prevented, from occupying a substantial part of their working hours in certain traditional or conventional ways that have hitherto obtained. The consideration of ways and means of the profitable spending of this new increment of time, whether by the wealthy or by the poor, under any given conditions, is the problem before us. From this point of view, the problems of leisure are in no way secondary or subsidiary to other aspects of social life now much in the foreground of public attention. The social sciences are devoted to the study of group behaviour —what people do. Now it happens that among the various activities (political, economic, etc.) in which man engages are certain activities which we call play, recreation, artistic, or more generally, "leisure" pursuits. These activities are engaged in as universally, have as long a history, and presumably have behind them as deep-seated biological drives as any of the others. All behaviour consists in the struggle of the organism to make an adjustment of some sort. Leisure pursuits, whether they be play,

Introduction

ii

painting, dancing, singing, or any others, are basically just as truly responses to organic needs as are hunting, gregariousness, or withdrawing one's hand from the fire. From this point of view, leisure, play, and artistic behaviour are as proper subjects for scientific study as any other phases of human activity. It is true that perhaps the most conspicuous and dramatic behaviour of man during the last century has been his wealth-getting and wealth-using activities. The study of these activities is called Economics. Likewise, the study of man's governmental activities has been called Political Science. If the conditions which have made these activities conspicuous should in some way be mitigated so that they would occupy a relatively small part of man's time and attention, and if the importance of man's leisure activities should become increasingly apparent, why should not the leisure-getting and leisure-using activities of man become as legitimate an object of scientific study as his wealth-getting and wealth-using activities? This field of behaviour is subject to the same type of inquiry with reference to the patterns and sequences which it exhibits, the factors which condition it, and the principles which govern it. The fact that such study would in many instances involve economic considerations should in no way prejudice its status as a science on a par with economics, for the latter just as frequently involves the phenomena of leisure activities. The divisions of the sciences were determined by the problems uppermost in our minds and the point of view from which we chose to consider those problems. Whether the study of leisure activities and the knowledge derived therefrom is classified as a branch of consumption economics, as social psychology, or under any other rubric is, of course, unimportant in itself. The important thing is the study of leisure behaviour, and the solution of problems arising out of it. It is from this point of view that the present study was undertaken. THE

RELATION

OF

WEALTH

TO

WELFARE

Because of the prevalence of the idea that the present problems of leisure are merely by-products of economic problems, we may here digress for a moment to consider the actual relationship of

12

Introduction

these phenomena. One of the chief reasons for the present preoccupation of the social sciences and social workers with economic problems is the assumption that a mere increase in the purchasing power of the masses will achieve the end sought. It is a question, in fact, whether increased purchasing power, instead of being regarded as a means to an end, has not come to be regarded as an end in itself. Certainly such confusion is not unknown in individual lives. The notorious preoccupation of economics with wealthgetting, or production, rather than with wealth-using, or consumption, and distribution is but a reflection of this tendency. The attitude is quite general that if a minimum budget of some two thousand dollars could only be insured to all families, then certainly all would be well. Yet there is every reason to believe that if all who are now below that standard should be allowed this minimum, and the income of other classes remain where it now is, or could be correspondingly increased, the net happiness of men and certainly the solution of the leisure problem would not be measurably advanced. Man's physical needs are inextricably interdigitated with his psychological wants. The insatiability of the latter in a society where conspicuous and competitive consumption is the basis of prestige is self-evident and has frequently been pointed out. Now poverty is properly defined not in absolute terms of goods and services consumed, but in terms of the gap between wants and "necessities" of all kinds and the capacity to satisfy them. In short, poverty in modern society is fundamentally a state of mind rather than a state of stomach. It follows as a matter of logic that a proportionate increase in the purchasing power of all classes would leave everyone relatively as rich or as poor as before. Attempts to arrive at minimum budgets are all hopelessly entangled in factors of competitive, invidious consumption for status or prestige. Even attempts to arrive at a subsistence minimum, not to mention physical efficiency, health and decency, and other such standards, all become inextricably involved in the fatal difficulty of a shifting and relative norm. The threshold of mere biological survival as seen among simpler peoples is extremely low. It is

Introduction

13

surprising w h a t simple fare will maintain healthy existence if the g r o u p norms are correspondingly low. I t does not follow that this m i n i m u m w o u l d represent a survival or subsistence threshold in a g r o u p w i t h other standards because the strain, primarily mental b u t ultimately physical, of l i v i n g at w i d e variance with the g r o u p standard w o u l d p r o b a b l y preclude survival.* I t is futile to a t t e m p t a f u n d a m e n t a l separation of so-called m e n t a l a n d psychological wants f r o m biological wants. Biological survival must in the last analysis b e defined in terms of the ment

of a given

organism

to the environmental

pressures

adjust-

to w h i c h it is

susceptible. T h e sociological a n d psychological conditionings of a n organism are as truly part o f its biological nature (response c a p a c i ties) as a n y other adjustment mechanisms, including the so-called inherent ones. I t m a y b e that if a m i n i m u m yearly income o f t w o thousand dollars were guaranteed

to all families in this country at

present time, so-called physical w a n t — m a l n u t r i t i o n ,

the

inadequate

'Consider, for example, the following somewhat extreme illustration from a current news item: " C O S M E T I C S A N E C E S S I T Y , W O M E N MAINTAIN—Philadelphia Group Holds Bill to Tax Preparations as Luxuries Is Unjustified—Philadelphia, Nov. 29—Society leaders and business women insist cosmetics are necessities, although a bill has been introduced at the special session of the Legislature to tax sales of cosmetics 10 percent on the ground that such preparations are luxuries. 'Cosmetics are as much a necessity as toothpaste,' says Mrs. Pauline B. Peters, president of the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women. 'They are a necessity because a good appearance is a necessity—a business necessity.' 'Rouge, powder and lipstick are psychological necessities,' asserts Mrs. H. Maurice Snyder, former chairman of juniors for the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women. 'I think the importance of a woman's looking well lies in her looking well to herself. Her morale is boosted 100 percent when she does.' Mrs. William L. Van Leer of the Junior League calls cosmetics an essential 'part of a woman's physical hygiene.' Dr. Gladys Ide, director of special education in the Philadelphia public schools, dissents, holding 'cosmetics out-and-out luxuries. The world has always used them as a part of the equipment of sex allure, but the bulk of the people in the world have always got along without them. You can't make a necessity of something that most people can get along without.'" (New York Tutus, Nov. 30, 1931.) Under the latter criterion, what would become of most of the items of the minimum budget of the so-called "American standard'? The relationship between poverty and such phenomena as juvenile delinquency about which so much has been written has also been found to depend not so much on absolute poverty as upon the amount of income of the delinquent's family relative to the incomes of others in the environment and upon the economic situation of the family in the recent past. See Aimee Racine, "Les Conditiones economiques de la famille comme facteur de la delinquenne juvenile," Revue de I'Inst. de sociologie, X I I (July—Sept., 1932), 539-63.

»4

Introduction

clothing and shelter—would temporarily disappear. But it certainly does not necessarily follow under current social standards and ideals. There is no guarantee that the increased income would not be absorbed in purely competitive, conspicuous, and honorific consumption. Take, for example, the well-known fact that a family in this country will sometimes prefer to cut down on the food item in the budget than go without an automobile. Even more striking and to the point are the well-known cases in which people will endure privation and self-denial of physical necessities in order to "throw a party" involving conspicuously wasteful consumption because of its prestige value in bringing or maintaining social status. Or take a striking case from present-day actual life: Before us lies the front page of a daily paper of an industrial city. It carries reports of two suicides. One is a laborer, confronted with starvation; the other is a banker who has lost heavily in the stock market, and whose losses have been so appalling, says the report, that his fortune has shrunk to a quarter of a million dollars. T o the latter the larger fortune and its standards have become so intertwined with what on other levels is considered the merely biological aspects of life that he can no more live apart from it than can the laborer apart from physical sustenance. The one organism is as inadequate in its environment as the other. The present attempts to salvage, civilize, or adjust men by the sole method of increasing his purchasing power is therefore certainly foredoomed to failure. The significance of any change in this factor will be determined entirely by the degree to which they are accompanied by a certain conditioning of the organism— education in wants, tastes, and ideals. The ultimate objective is the adjustment of the individual to a desired social order. This can be achieved by a process which has two phases: (i) the manipulation of the environment, (2) the conditioning of the individual. Which approach is to be relied upon is perhaps to be determined finally by the known limits of both approaches at the present state of knowledge. No conditioning of the organism, no educational, psychological, or sociological devices at present known

Introduction

15

can be substituted for certain basic animal needs essential to survival. Conversely, the extension of purchasing power has its limits under present conditions. The efficiency of, or resistance to, each method increases as these limits are approached. Between these limits, a certain purchasing power with a corresponding education in wants, standards, and tastes would appear to achieve the most economical and efficient adjustment. In conditioning the organism to the wants and tastes compatible with the known limitations of other factors, leisure-time wants are destined to play an increasingly important part. Under present standards and ideals, there is reason to believe that conspicuous and competitive consumption of leisure would become even more dominant than consumption of other things. For the consumption of leisure lends itself especially to the achievement of status. As leisure increases, therefore, competitive consumption may increase correspondingly. It is in the face of this possibility that we may ask: Are the goals to be attained by constantly increasing purchasing power and competitive consumption worth while, and what are the limits to which this approach should be pushed? Nearly all discussion today is directed to a consideration of how existing standards may be attained and further raised. May it not be wise to examine the standards themselves? Let us consider briefly some aspects of the present situation. COMPETITIVE

CONSUMPTION PURSUIT

AS

A

LEISURE

"It began to be recognized," says the President's Committee onRecent Economic Changes, "not only that leisure is 'consumable' but that people can not 'consume' leisure without consuming goods and services, and that leisure which results from our increasing man-hour productivity helps to create new needs and broader markets." Here we have very excellently revealed thev current preoccupation of economists with the productive aspect of their subject. From this point of view the problem of leisure is a problem of increasing man's consumption of material goods so that business and profits may be bigger and better. This, appar-

i6

Introduction

ently, is the highest and final object of endeavor. Increased sales bring increased employment and higher wages. Purchasing power is thus increased, which in turn makes possible still bigger business. If as a result of big business, improved methods of production are devised by which a task that used to require four days now requires only two, the chief significance of this development, in current theory, is that in the time saved, the laborer will be able to consume some goods and services for which he has hitherto not had time to develop an appetite. Herein we have the modern version of the fascinating experience of growing more corn to feed more hogs, to make more money, to buy more land, to grow more corn, to feed more hogs, and so on. This exhilarating round, at an ever-increasing tempo, represents, apparently, the highest aspiration of Western civilization. There is no denying the hypnotic centripetal power with which the increasingly rapid swirl of this circle is capable of holding man. As a method of bridging the gap between birth and death, keeping occupied, it has much to be said for it. It undoubtedly keeps many out of mischief. The people most completely in its sway are not infrequently the pillars of society. Among other things, it prevents philosophic meditation and other morbid reflections which tend to afflict some preachers, professors, artists, and others who won't work according to the formula. Nevertheless, the charmed circle is unpleasandy suggestive of a squirrel cage and its activities suitable rather to the brain of a squirrel than to that of man.10 What is the alternative? It is conceivable that under another system of ideals and education men might prefer to utilize at least part of the leisure which the machine has won for them in some 10Prof.

C . C . Zimmerman, after an exhaustive canvass of studies of standards of living throughout the world, remarks: "It seems evident that a large part of the total population of the globe is interested principally in securing most of its standards of living, other than bare necessities, through intangible satisfactions of a non-economic nature. Are these families in a deplorable state? Are we justified in using public resources to stimulate these families to substitute market goods for these non-economic intangible satisfactions? This is a serious problem. It is where sociology and economics meet on a value basis. Probably either extreme in the standard of living has its disadvantages as well as its advantages." ("Ernst Engel's Law of Expenditures for Food," Quarterly Journal of Economics, X L V I I [Nov., 1932], 100-101.)

Introduction

17

form of self-activity which would not greatly affect economic production of profits. We might, for example, hold up what men are rather than what they buy as a standard of worth. On this theory the greatest satisfactions of life, as well as the best balanced personalities, come from the acquisition and exercise of skills and activities of various sorts not necessarily of economic significance. The consumption of blue sky, sunshine, and sylvan solitude, or the amateur dabbling in the fine arts is of this nature. Merely as a method of killing time and consuming energies it may be no more absorbing than the frantic game of keeping up with the Joneses. The justification for this substitute, therefore, must be based on other grounds. We must show that this substitute is in some way more compatible with man's biological nature and that its indulgence contributes more to that balance and integration of personality which is generally recognized as desirable. The value of leisure-time activities, play, and recreation is usually conceded to lie in the nervous release which they afford from the customary and coercive activities which the social order imposes upon us. To the extent, therefore, that the pursuits of our leisure time tend to become organized under conventional patterns determined by competitive consumption they lose their unique and primary value as recreation and so become merely another department of activity devoted to the achievement of prestige or status. Is it true that at present a great many leisuretime activities, dictated as they are by the dominant economic motive of the age, partake of this nature? Says Joad: "If the business man plays golf, it is, as he will tell you, to keep himself fit for business; if he takes a holiday he is submitting to boredom for the same reason."11 Is it true that an increasing number of people find themselves coerced by such considerations into a meaningless round of "recreational," leisure activities, which they heroically endure but which are devoid of capacity to minister to release of nervous tensions and to the development of personality which constitute the true purposes of recreation? Explosive and orgiastic "parties" are the pathological substitutes for the leisure pursuits "C. E. M. Joad, Diogenes; or, The Future of Leisure, p. 65.

i8

Introduction

which are the normal release of the tensions resulting from the job. Orgies have almost become a social obligation. As one girl put it, "Without cocktails the pleasures of life would be insupportable."12 While on a visit to Coney Island Maxim Gorky remarked: "What an unhappy people it must be that turns for happiness here." What shall we, in fact, say of a civilization which has so encumbered life that one of every twenty of us is destined actually to be committed to a hospital for mental diseases? How shall we appraise a prosperity which insures that one out of every ten of us will suffer such mental impairment as to make us eligible for psychopathic institutions?11 It is considerations of this kind which justify us in turning our attention to consumption of the products which might minister to the enrichment of life. One of the chief of these products is leisure. The indictment of current leisure-time activities, then, rests not upon the mere fact that they are different from what they used to be or that they tend to be increasingly commercial. Nor should our criticism rest upon the a priori generalizations of artists and aesthetes regarding "higher" and "lower" forms of activity. The charge is that leisure or recreation of a certain type is neither leisure nor recreation in any basic biological or psychological sense.14 Slavish pleasures and mechanical leisure are contradictions in terms. That the shorter working day necessarily means more leisure of a desired or desirable kind is a non sequitur which is almost universal but is palpably false. All it necessarily means is more time for other pursuits, or for simple boredom. Boredom is receiving increasing attention as a factor in mental disease. As Edman has said, "Leisure is an affair of mood and atmosphere rather than simply of the clock. It is not a chronological occurrence but a spiritual state. It is unhurried pleasurable living among one's native enthusiasms." " L . P. Jacks, Tht Education of the Wholt Man, p. 60. "W. F. Ogburn and Ellen Winston, "The Frequency and Probability of Insanity," American Journal of Sociology, X X X I V (March, 1929), 832-31. lt Cf. F. H. Allport, "This Coming Era of Leisure," Harper's Magazine, C L X I I I (November, 1931), 641-52.

Introduction

»9

Accepting the above conclusions as to the nature of leisure, we may now formulate provisionally a summary description or definition of this aspect of life. There appear to be four criteria which distinguish leisure, whether regarded as an activity or as a passive state. In the first place, leisure has, in a relatively high degree, both its original incentive and its fulfillment, in the individual himself rather than in coercions of the social and the economic order. Secondly, leisure must possess the capacity of being relatively permanently interesting. This implies such qualities as variety, and suggests, thirdly, that true leisure should involve activities or states as different as possible from those which are consciously forced upon us by our station in life. Finally, leisure should at least be compatible with, if not conducive to, physical, mental, and social well-being. These characteristics may, from another point of view, also be regarded as criteria of "desirable" leisure with reference to its capacity to serve such biological and sociological ends as have been suggested above. In any case, they may serve as points of reference for the interpretation of the various activities which we shall discuss in future chapters under our more inclusive definition of leisure as all time not directly devoted to work and activities directly incidental thereto. THE

PROBLEMS

OF

LEISURE

We have taken for granted in this study that what people do with their leisure is a question of social importance both from a scientific and a practical point of view. We have consequently not recounted the well-known historical relation between leisure and the artistic and scientific development of man. Neither have we included the extensive data bearing upon the relation of recreation, or lack of it, to juvenile delinquency, crime, demoralization, and nervous disorders. Nor have we attempted any direct and systematic treatment of the sociology of play and the socializing, educative, and character-building aspects of various forms of recreation. These aspects of the subject have been the object of most inquiries that have been made, and their importance is

20

Introduction

obvious. A t the same time, a more adequate understanding of these practical phases of recreation waits upon a fuller inquiry into the actual amounts and uses of leisure which exist among different groups and the conditions of life which determine or condition this leisure behavior. A more adequate understanding of the whole culture pattern of which leisure activities are only a part, is basic to the intelligent development of practical programs in the field. Otherwise we are prone to take our own prejudices on the subject as a criterion and resort to agitation and exhortation as the chief means of attack upon the problem. If the present situation with respect to leisure and its uses is deemed unsatisfactory the reasons for that situation must be sought not in the moral perverseness of people but in the general conditions under which they live. It is this relationship which we have in the present study attempted to keep in the foreground. We are rather taking for granted the social importance of leisure and its uses. From the above point of view a suburban residential area such as we have selected for our study is of especial interest. In the first place, the trend of recent decades indicates that the suburbs are growing much more rapidly than are their parent cities. 15 A n increasing proportion of our population seems destined in the future, therefore, to live under suburban conditions. In the second place the suburb is a new type of social aggregation and there is reason to believe that it possesses sociological peculiarities unique to itself as compared with either the city or the rural community or a mere mixture of the two. While the suburb represents a migration of city elements to the country, only some of the elements of the city tend to become thus transplanted. The suburban movement, furthermore, probably represents a selection of population "based on a peculiar psychology and motivation." 18 These differences plus the peculiar situation which grows out of the dual allegiance to the community in which one lives, on the one hand, " H . P. Douglass, The Suburban Trend, p. 40 ff. During the last decade (1920-30) the population of the principal suburban areas of New York City increased more than twice as rapidly as the city. See Information Bulletin, No. 7 (March 28, 1932), The Regional Plan Association, Inc. 'Ibid., p. 34.

Introduction

21

and the community in which one makes a living, on the other, produces a new type of society which cannot be adequately defined as merely an intermediate type between the older and more familiar city and rural communities. A final reason for the selection of the area concerned in the present study is the fact that it was already conspicuous as a playground for the city and has accorded unusual public recognition to the problems of leisure and recreation. Since the problems of leisure are an inextricable part of the whole culture pattern of any society, the questions to which we might legitimately devote ourselves in the following chapters are almost unlimited. To what extent is it true that the masses of men now have more actual leisure than formerly? Has the shortening of the work day been counterbalanced by other conditions inseparably connected with work, such as commuting? Is it true that the dominant pattern of leisure is an oscillation between night clubs, motoring, and "outlines" of culture? If so, what proportion of the participants are merely caught in the rush of the traffic, find little satisfaction in what they are doing, and are looking for a quiet side street into which to escape? To what extent are leisure activities merely a competitive striving for status? These are questions of fact to which we really do not know the answers. However plausible the hypotheses raised in this paper and in an increasing literature on the subject, the fact remains that they are based on very casual observation. The subject has never been seriously studied. The relation of all of the above questions to the whole subject of personality development, community integration, and mental hygiene is another important field for social research. The relation of inadequate relaxation and recreation to the phenomena of orgiastic compensations and other pathological behaviour is still a largely untouched subject. Occupational, recreational, and artistic therapy has already suggested important relationships in this field. Finally, the very definition of a subsistence standard of living with reference to leisure, amusements, and luxury consumption

22

Introduction

for different ages, sexes, and classes is still open. To what extent does the maintenance of mental balance and personality in the current pattern of life require the larger, conspicuous, and competitive consumption of goods and services? Does the solution lie in (i) a constant increase in the present type of consumption, (2) consumption of a different type, or (3) in the substitution of activities which have so far as the economic system is concerned, both their beginning and their end in the individual himself? The last question raises the whole problem of the evaluation of the objectives of human striving. This involves setting up criteria of human well-being and social desirability, which in turn seems to take us directly into the time-honored subject of the sumum bonum. The latter is hardly, in its traditional form, at least, a scientific quest. But it is scientifically possible to determine the scale of values that exist in a community. The higher values are merely those experiences in the history of the race which, on the whole and in the long run, have been found to be relatively permanently satisfying. On this basis we may appraise the objectives of striving as well as estimate the degree to which present activities are likely to achieve the goals sought. The rugged individualism which was well adapted to the material subjugation of a continent may be simply a nuisance in a necessarily cooperative era. If it appears that we are now pursuing goals incompatible with present and future social conditions, then we must reeducate people to other wants, other tastes, other ideals. The solution of any one of the problems mentioned above might, of course, be an adequate task for a study such as ours. It goes without saying, therefore, that many of the problems here raised can receive little further attention in the pages that follow. Since research in this field is only beginning, however, it is quite probable that the mere formulation of significant questions which will tend to direct subsequent inquiry into profitable channels is a more important contribution than the routine tabulation of local data. While the bulk of our field studies are necessarily of a local character we have nevertheless attempted to keep in mind at all times their relation to the larger and remoter problems which can

Introduction

23

be approached only by a large number of specific local studies of the kind constituting the bulk of this volume. Again, since the problems of recreation and leisure are inseparably interwoven with the general fabric of social and economic life we have not hesitated to include material bearing on the general conditions of existence in the area studied, even when their immediate bearing on the central problem of leisure is not apparent. Such, for example, are questions of mobility, community organization, social stratification, and family life. The problems of leisure have meaning only against this background of life in general.

CHAPTER

The

Suburban

TWO

Setting

HE leisure behavior of a people is necessarily conditioned by the physical conditions under which they live, by the demographic characteristics of the people themselves, and by their social and economic organization. Before proceeding with the consideration of our main subject, therefore, it is necessary to consider in some detail the general characteristics of the area and the people under study. PHYSICAL

AND

HISTORICAL

ASPECTS

Some fifteen miles north of New York City where the Hudson River and Long Island Sound converge to form the northern gateway to the city lies a triangular area of 446.2 square miles which is the locus of the present study. The authentic history of the region begins with Henry Hudson's voyage up the river in 1609 in his quest for a passage to China. At this time the area was a wilderness. The earliest white settlers were Walloons who established themselves along the Hudson. Huguenots later setded in the southeastern part, in what is now the city of New Rochelle. The English in the meantime settled along Long Island Sound in what is now Rye, Mamaroneck, and Eastchester. Quakers later occupied the central part. In 1683 the region was politically organized as one of the twelve original counties of New York under the name of Westchester County. Its eastern and southern boundaries have changed since that time. T h e former was for years the subject of dispute with the Colony of Connecticut; the southern boundary has been gradually pushed northward by the growing pressure of New York City which has made successive annexations of territory originally a part of the county. A t the time of the Revolution the area was still somewhat of a wilderness. The census of 1790 records a population of some 22,000 for the county as then defined which included, however, all of what is now known as the Bronx borough of New York

The

Suburban

Setting

25

City. The area included within the present county borders was almost entirely devoted to farming, with a few hamlets scattered here and there. Its population grew slowly (about 4,000 per decade) until the railroads were built into the area in the 1840's. The New York and Harlem Railroad (now the Harlem Division of the New York Central) which serves the central section of the county reached White Plains in 1844 and Croton Falls on the northern border in 1847. Stage communication from the villages east and west of this line was immediately established, and the modern history of the county really began. Until that time the original character and life of the people as it existed through colonial and revolutionary times had not changed greatly. Men engaged in active daily business in New York had not yet become regular inhabitants of the county, although an increasing number of them built country residences in Westchester where they lived for part of the year and to which they retired in later life.1 With the opening of the three principal railroads a new era began. The Hudson River line reached Peekskill in 1849; the New York, New Haven and Hartford along the eastern border of the county had been built the previous year. During the first decade following the opening of these new avenues of transportation the population increased 51 percent. While a number of villages2 existed before the railroads came, new towns at once began to appear along the railroads. Real estate developments for theexpress purpose of escaping city rents now first made their appearance. In 1850 the New York Industrial Home Association No. 1 founded Mt. Vernon. The subsequent history of the county is largely the repetition on an ever-increasing scale of this first real estate project. As the metropolis rose into the air its outward pressure increased. Population poured into the surrounding country. Annexations to New York City in 1874 deprived the county of some of its most densely populated areas, but even after such transfers the census of 1880 showed a population of 108,988. By the turn 'F. Shorn) ard and W. W. Spooner, History of Westchester County (1900), pp. 565, 566. •Yonkers, Tarrytown, Sing Sing, Peekskill, New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, Rye, Port Chester, White Plains, and some others.

The

26

CHART 2.

Suburban

P O P U L A T I O N D E N S I T Y OF COUNTY, I 9 3 O

Sttting

WESTCHESTER

of the century it had reached 184,257 in spite of another annexation to New York in 1895 of some forty-five villages and localities along the southern border. The phenomenon of commuting was now in full swing; there was lacking only the automobile for completion of the picture as it exists today. Since 1900 the population

The

Suburban

Setting

27

has about tripled, and the entire southern end of the county has become an urban area. Even under the impact of this rapid increase, we find that about three-fourths of the area is still surprisingly untouched by the transformations of urban civilization and especially of industry. The tree-covered hills and numerous lakes retain for the most part their native charm. Indeed, the extensive parks and parkways testify to unusual positive measures for retaining and enhancing the natural beauties of the area.* If we add to these features a temperate climate,4 it is not surprising that the county has become a favorite home and playground for the city. The hills along the Hudson, with their impressive panoramic view, have from the earliest time been a prized location of the great estates and residences of the very wealthy. In more recent times the interior of the county has likewise become to a large extent the home of the rich and the well-to-do. Perhaps both the physical and the socioeconomic aspects of the area are well reflected in the appraisal of an official of the local Poetry Society when he says: "Westchester County is one of the beauty spots of the United States. We admit it and are willing to back our conviction by writing poems with one hand and checks for real estate assessments with the other." 6 For the present chapter, at least, we must concern ourselves with some aspects of the economic rather than the artistic factors. The suburban character of this area is perhaps first betrayed by the network of highways covering the county. For the most part these empty into three main arteries or parkways converging toward the south. Along these channels thousands of automobiles T h e Westchester County Park Commission, established in 1933, has spent some sixty million dollars in the development of parks, parkways, and recreation facilities which now aggregate over 17,000 acres. (See Report of the Westchester Park Commission iggs, P- 9 ) «Temperature: Mean maximum, 60.0; minimum, 39.3. Highest (in 95 yean), 103; lowest, 17. Annual mean relative humidity, 71. Average length of season between frosts, 179 days. Sunshine, about 59 percent. Precipitation: Annual mean (30 years), 46.37 inches. Average (33 years) annual snowfall, 39.1 inches. (Set U. S. Weather Reports.) •Anthology of the Westchester Poetry Society (1939), Introduction.

28

The

Suburban

Setting

glide daily in an almost uninterrupted stream to and from the city. In addition, four main railway lines extend through the area like the spokes of a great wheel converging on the city. From four o'clock in the morning until midnight 670 electric trains8 daily speed back and forth along these paths carrying all together some one hundred thousand passengers.7 Thus, during eighteen hours of the day a train bound for New York City leaves some point in Westchester, on the average, every three minutes. With about the

CHART

3.

DAILY

CHESTER

NUMBER

COUNTY

AND

OF

TRAINS

NEW

YORK

BETWEEN CITY,

WEST-

1932

same average frequency trains leave New York for Westchester and points beyond. Actually, of course, the majority of these trains go in two great pulsations, morning and evening—the tide in the affairs of commuters. (See Chart 3.) Another evidence of the suburban character of the area is the almost continuous corporate settlements in the southern part and along the railway routes. (See Chart 2.) Although the bulk of •Not including trolley service from Yonkers, or holiday trains. 'Passenger estimate from Progress Report on Suburban Transit, Suburban Transit Engineering Report (1929-30). Perhaps two-thirds of this number are regular Westchester commuters.

The

Suburban

Setting

29

the population lives in some twenty-eight separate cities and villages, the entire southern end of the area forms a continuous city thrusting out its fingers along the principal transportation routes. Even so, these urban areas and fringes (including the more scattered villages and cities in the central and northern parts, in which live seven-eighths of the total population) occupy less than

INCORPORA TEDA REAS 22%\ ESTA TES lO-lOO ACRES &3,OD*. ACRES 30,000 ACRES DENSITY OF POPULATIONDENSITY OF POP. = it- TO ACRE Z2 TO ACRE

Metes AND PARKWAYS (,% WATCHS HEOS 77i CEMETERIES * R.0. Z YGOLF 4COONTRY CLUBS l.+ X IG.4%. -*4.7S7 ACRES NO POPULATION

, ESTATES IOO-5OO ACRES * 10T. ZB. OOOACRES s^yDENSITr OF POR'3.5 TD A.

'over 500 a. PLOTS UNDER IO ACRES - 21 % ijbr. 6O, OOO ACRES ^ooAcets DENSITY OF POP •.-*•£ TO ACRE MISCELLANEOUS 1.57. TOTAL AREA • -444.2 54. MIL ES OR 266,. 720 ACRES TOTAL POPULATION - 5ZO,347 (I330) CHART 4.

T H E USES O F L A N D IN COUNTY,

WESTCHESTER

I93O

one-fourth of the total area. Nor is the remaining three-fourths of the area in any usual sense rural. For the non-urban parts are almost entirely occupied by large estates, parks, and golf clubs dependent upon the neighboring urban population of Westchester

3°

The

Suburban

Setting

and of New York City. Specifically, about 40 percent of the total area consists of estates from ten to five hundred acres in size.8 An additional sixteen percent of the area consists of other open spaces of a public or semipublic character such as parks, parkways, watersheds, cemeteries, golf and country clubs, and railway property. The incorporated towns and villages of the county, as already noted, occupy less than one-fourth of the area. The remainder of the land consists of plots under ten acres, many of them in unincorporated village clusters. We find, therefore, that even in its physical aspects our area is essentially different from the customary pattern of a city with a surrounding rural district of mutual dependence. On the contrary, both the rural and the urban sections reflect their dependence upon a larger urban complex which is the distinctive characteristic of suburban areas. While the suburb is the result of a city overflowing into the surrounding country, the result is not, as Douglass has pointed out, a compromise of equals. The country town surrounded by a rural area is more nearly an intermediate type. It partakes somewhat of the nature of both the city and the country. But the suburb is primarily a part of urban civilization. " I t makes physical compromises with country ways, but few compromises of the spirit. It is the city trying to escape the consequences of being a city and still remaining a city. It is urban society trying to eat its cake and keep it, too."* Nevertheless, while the suburb is primarily urban it has important characteristics which distinguish it from the city to which it is tributary. One of these is the lesser density of population. "That belt of population," says Douglass, "which lives under distinctly roomier conditions than is the average lot of city people, but under distinctly more crowded conditions than those of the adjoining open country, is suburban whether lying within or outside of the city." 10 Another important characteristic is, as T h e largest aggregate land holding by any individual is 2,227 acres, divided into eight separate parcels. There are only a few such holdings of more than 500 acres (A total of 4,660 acres). See Chart 4. "H. P. Douglass, Thi Suburban Trend, p. 4. "Ibid., p. 6.

The

Suburban

Setting

3i

already stated, the economic dependence of the suburb on a neighboring city rather than on a surrounding rural area. The most objective evidences of this dependence is the suburb's highly developed communication system and the phenomenon of commuting. The true suburb must have convenient, quick, and cheap access to the heart of the city. These may be said to be the general characteristics of all suburbs. But within this characterization, we may distinguish clearly different types of suburbs. In the first place there are the so-called "satellite cities" which are not really suburban at all but are frequently mistakenly considered as such. These are merely independent cities, usually larger than the true suburb, which happen to be located near a larger city, but which otherwise do not possess the essential characteristics of suburbs as set forth above. That is, they are frequently as congested as the main city, of which they are often mere extensions under separate political control. Aside from these non-suburban cities near the larger cities, Douglass distinguishes three principal types of suburb: (1) residential, (e.g., Bronxville, N. Y., East Orange, N. J . ) ; (2) industrial, (e.g., Passaic, N. J . , Gary, Ind.); and (3) mixed (e.g., Orange, N. J . , Yonkers, N. Y.). The distinguishing criterion in this classification is the percentage of industrial wage earners in the total population. That is, those suburbs which have a higher percentage of industrial wage-earners than the parent city are called industrial. Those which have a lesser percentage are called residential. Those with an equal percentage of industrial wage earners are called mixed. There are, of course, an almost unlimited number of possible classifications on the basis of social and economic characteristics which cut across each other in various ways. Thus there are rich suburbs and poor suburbs; foreign, and negro, suburbs; children's suburbs and old people's suburbs; workers' suburbs and bosses' suburbs; suburbs with long histories and community traditions and suburbs which as mere city overflow have neither; successful and unsuccessful suburbs on the basis of the extent of realization of expected developments in this direction; planned and

32

The

Suburban

Setting

unplanned suburbs; and perhaps an unlimited mixture and gradation of all of these. With reference to the three main types, we find that most of the suburbs of Westchester County are of the residential, rather than of the industrial, type. The chief reason for this fact is, to state the negative side, that industry has found in New Jersey a more hospitable area of expansion. As we have seen, Westchester early became the home of the wealthy. Resulting land values, taxes, and restrictions of all kinds operated to discourage the expansion of industry into this area. Such industry as located there before these disadvantages to them became apparent has been subsequently to a large degree forced out. A few of the larger cities can at most be classified as of the mixed type. But the residential character of the county is everywhere evident and is being increasingly emphasized by private enterprise as well as by public policy.11 Within the broad classification of "residential" suburbs a considerable variety is possible. We find, consequently, in Westchester a considerable range of types with regard to such factors as economic condition, density, rate of population increase in the last decade, demographic characteristics, marital and family status, housing, and percentage of the population commuting. On the basis of these data and of other data available we have selected fifteen villages and cities in the county and classified them into three general groups which tend to preserve the homogeneity and distinctiveness of each class in the respects relevant to our purpose. (Tables X - X V Appendix.) These fifteen communities contain more than sixty percent of the whole population of the county. The remaining thirteen incorporated villages show gradations " T h e unregulated and unplanned influx of population from New York City in the years following the war was prevented in Westchester by government intervention in the form of zoning regulations prescribed a n d enforced by local zoning and planning commissions working in close cooperation with the Regional Plan of New York and its environs and the county authorities. T h e highly unified governmental control of both local and county government under the leadership of William L. Ward has made possible a remarkable degree of unified planning and systematic development ol public resources and programs. For a brief account of the nature of the political situation which has made this enlightened development possible see Allen Raymond,

The

Suburban

Setting

33

in type, consisting chiefly of the first two classes.12 But the three types will serve as an adequate portrayal of the general social situation with which we have to deal. Before characterizing these types in greater detail, however, we must consider a few major characteristics of the population of the county as a whole. THE

POPULATION

In the area which we have just described there lived in 1930, 520,947 people. We have already noted that seven-eighths of this number live in twenty-eight incorporated cities and villages. Nearly all of the rest Uve in some fifteen additional unincorporated villages ranging in population from a few hundred to several thousand. What are the characteristics of these people and what are their activities? T h e detailed answer to this question constitutes the chief subject matter of the rest of this book, especially regarding the uses of leisure. But since the activities of a people are so highly conditioned by such factors as their demographic, occupational, economic, and social characteristics and the conditions under which they live, it is desirable to attempt to describe a cross section of the population as a whole before proceeding with the more detailed analysis. For this purpose let us indulge in the magic by which statisticians reduce large and heterogeneous masses of data into representative miniatures of the whole. Let us pour the entire population of the county through a gigantic horn so that from the small end there will issue only a thousand persons, with such characteristics as to be in every way representative of the whole population. Into what "Boss-Built Westchester," Outlook (Jan. 20, 1932). This work is now carried on through some thirty-two local planning bodies organized into a County Planning Federation in addition to the Park Commission, the Sewer Commission, the Transit Commission, and the County Engineers' Office. (See Westchester County and the Regional Plan. Pamphlet, The Regional Plan Association, Inc.) "About 15 percent of the population of the county is classified by the Federal census as "rural non-farm" and less than 1 percent as "rural farm." The former group lives for the most part in little, unincorporated villages and on the country estates. The characteristics of the "rural non-farm" (Class D) group and their conditions of life are not greatly different from those of the residential villages classified as Class A and B (Tables 10-15) and will not be considered separately.

The

34

Suburban

Setting

categories could the thousand be divided with respect to age, sex, marital condition, nativity, race, and occupation? First of all, we find that the actual demographic make-up of our community of a thousand is very similar to that of other suburban areas and of the state as a whole. For example, more than a third (339) are children under twenty years; a little more than a tenth (112) are fifty-five or over; and the remainder (541), between twenty and fifty-five years of age. The sex ratio shows only a slight preponderance of women (527 women to 473 men). Of the 746 people of our thousand' who are over fifteen years, 436, or about three-fifths, are married, 233 are single, 70 are widowed, 4 are divorced, and the marital status of 3 is unknown. O f our whole group 723 are native-born whites and 231 are foreign-born whites. Of the latter, more than one-fourth are Italians; Germans and Irish, about equally divided, make up an additional one-fifth of the total foreign-born population. There are 44 negroes and 2 members of other colored races. When we consider the trends and recent changes in the birth and death rates of these people we find again that characteristics and tendencies that have been noted for larger areas are present here also.13 The birth rate for the county is considerably lower than for the surrounding areas and for the state as a whole. The rate of decline in birth rate for the past decade is also greater than in the city and in the state. As a result we find a decreasing percentage "VITAL

RATES FOR WESTCHESTER A N D OTHER A R E A S ,

I92O-3O

(Westchester and Nassau are suburban counties; Putnam and Rockland are rural.) WEST-

Birthrate" Rate of decrease of birth rate 1930-30 General death rate (1930) Rate of decrease of death rate 1920-30 Infant mortality rate (1930)' Rate of decrease of infant mortality rate 1920-30

PUT-

ROCK-

CHESTER

N.

CITY

Y. NASSAU

NAM

LAND

STATE

48.2

54-6

49-0

390

5«-4

53-2

29-1% 9-2

28.5% 10.8

32 0 % 8-5

41.8% 12.8

21.2% 12.3

26.4% 12.8

24.0% 48.0

16.3% 57-o

19.0% 49°

20.0% 78.0

16.9% 70.0

7-3% 60.0

39-2%

33-o%

30.0%

...

"Number of births per 1,000 women 21 years and over. ' N u m b e r of deaths under 1 year per 1,000 births.

3°-3%

The

Suburban

Setting

35

of the population in the age groups under ten. Both the general death rate and the infant mortality rate of the county are lower than for surrounding areas and for the state. Again, these rates have fallen considerably during the last decade. When we turn our attention to the social groupings of our thousand population we find that the overwhelming majority live in family units of from two to twelve persons. There are 236 such units in our sample group with a median size of 3.44 persons per family. Eighty-five percent of the families consist of five persons or less and about half of them consist of two or three persons. Thus the great majority of the population live in small groups consisting of husband, wife, and one or two children. Somewhat more than half of these families live in one-family dwellings and about one-half of these one-family dwellers own their homes. Most of these homes are above $10,000 in value. The great majority of the rest live in apartment houses and pay from fifty to one hundred dollars monthly in rent. When we compare the family structure of a suburban area like Westchester with a strictly urban area on one hand and a strictly rural area on the other as reflected in the census figures, we find that in certain respects it occupies an intermediate, and in others an extreme, position.14 For example, the family is a more prevalent institution in the suburb as measured by the proportion of married men over fifteen than in either the city or in the country. With respect to the proportion of women married, the suburb occupies an intermediate position but is about like the city. The median " U R B A N , SUBURBAN, AND R U R A L

COMPARISONS URBAN

Percentage of men 15 years and over married . Percentage of women 15 years and over married Median size of family Percentage of families with 3 or more children under 10 years Percentage of homes owned Sex ratio Percentage of families with radio

SUBURBAN

RURAL

50.0 500 a.8

69.00 52.00 3-47

55-00 67.OO 3-65

5-0 3° IOI.O 45°

6.00 60.00 80.00 85.00

8.00 84.OO II7.OO 48.OO

(Urban = New York County; Suburban = 5 Westchester residential suburbs; Rural = rural portions of Delaware County.)

36

The

Suburban

Setting

size of family and the proportion of families with children under ten years likewise place the suburb in an intermediate position. T h e same is true of the proportion of homes owned, which in the suburbs is greater than in the city, but less than in the country. A pronounced preponderance of women in the suburbs, due chiefly to the large number of domestic servants, is reflected in the sex ratio. O n the whole, the outstanding feature of the suburban family is the frequent presence of young children. T h e above indicates roughly the composition and elementary groupings, social and physical, of our population. We must now consider briefly the major occupations of these people so far as the Federal census enables us to do so. W e may first classify our sample population of a thousand into three general groups as follows: children under ten years, 169; persons ten years and over not gainfully employed, 396; gainfully employed, 435. Since the census does not consider the housewife as gainfully employed, somewhat more than half of the 396 in the group "not gainfully employed" doubtless consists of housewives. 15 T h e majority of the children between the ages of ten and twenty (inclusive), of which there are 189, are also no doubt included in this total of those not gainfully employed. It also includes the retired and others who for one reason or another are occupied with no gainful employment. 18 T h e 435 of our thousand which the census lists as gainfully employed are distributed among the various occupations as indicated in Table X V I (Appendix). For comparison this table also shows the corresponding figures for a rural and an urban county. From this occupational distribution, perhaps the most striking indication of the suburban character of the county is the small proportion of farmers and the high proportion employed in trade, manufac"Special studies of individual villages in the county show that about two-thirds of the nongainfully employed adults are housewives. " T h i s does not include the unemployed. T h e census figures refer to occupations at which people usually work. Regarding unemployment it is estimated that about 78 of the 435 listed by the census as gainfully employed were unemployed at the time this is written. (Based on a canvass of the total number registered at all public unemployment offices in the county Jan., 1933.)

The

Suburban

Setting

37

ture, industry, domestic and personal service, and professional and semiprofessional occupations. Thus, Westchester County excels New York County in the proportion of its population engaged in the building industry, professional and semiprofessional occupations, public service, the metal, textile, and automobile industries, and insurance and real estate. The proportion of the population of Westchester engaged in banking and brokerage is also nearly as high as in New York County. This occupational distribution varies greatly, of course, within the different types of suburbs already mentioned. We shall do better, therefore, if we proceed now to a more detailed characterization of the three principal types of suburbs to be found in Westchester, instead of scrambling the characteristics of radically different communities and thus obscuring the very differences that we wish to emphasize. THE

WEALTHY

RESIDENTIAL

SUBURB

This type of suburb is a comparatively small and wealthy residential community. Thus the five suburbs in Westchester which clearly fall in this class are all below 10,000 in population. (See class A, Tables X - X V , Appendix.) This type of suburb is usually carefully planned from the beginning, restricted, and landscaped. There is here an absence of congestion, high buildings, or other indications of the city. Nearly the whole area consists of private dwellings on spacious grounds. A small and unobtrusive business district near an area of high-grade apartment houses constitutes the only urban suggestion. Rigid restrictions as to architecture, both of private residences and business and public buildings, prevent any incongruities. Some of these restrictions are formal and official, but others are enforced by common consent of the real estate agencies and the population itself. "Undesirable" population elements are excluded by refusal to sell or lease property to them even if they have the money. Thus in one such suburb the real estate leases provide that the prospective tenants or purchasers of property must first be approved by the neighboring property owners. The physical aspects of these suburbs savour of the peace and quiet of the prosperous countryside. Urban

The

38

Suburban

Setting

characteristics are kept in the background as far as possible. T h e bulk of the population in these suburbs is usually native white of native parentage. A large servant class consisting of negroes and foreign white women frequently constitutes most of the remainder. A relatively high proportion of the population is found in the middle- and upper-age groups and a correspondingly low proportion in the age groups under twenty-five, especially in the group under five. A n unusually high proportion of unmarried women is found in this type of suburb and a correspondingly high percentage of married men as compared with other types of suburbs or general populations. A relatively high percentage of the adult population is not gainfully employed but a large proportion of those who are employed are working locally, largely in domestic and personal service. A n unusually high proportion of the remainder of the working population is engaged in executive and professional occupations. T h a t is, there is a conspicuous shortage of the middle-class occupations. T h e political and social life of this type of suburb is dominated almost entirely by the commuters. Prominent professional men from the city constitute its government and there is very little clash or excitement over politics. T h e school tends to have decided "progressive" leanings, sometimes receiving special dispensations from the state as to curricular and other requirements. T h e church is usually of the "community" type and cultivates extensively extra-religious activities. A great number of social clubs and organizations occupy the attention of the large nongainfully employed population. Ease, dignity, and social selfsufficiency are the dominant characteristics of this type of suburb. Beneath this calm exterior, however, there is frequently an intense struggle to "keep up with the Joneses." 17 THE

MIDDLE

CLASS

AND POOR SUBURB

RESIDENTIAL

A t the other extreme there is the relatively poor residential suburb. Sometimes it has an industrial history the basis for which has 17See

below, p. 82.

The

Suburban

Setting

39

disappeared. Sometimes it is in large part subsidiary to a neighboring city or to a suburb of the wealthy type just discussed. In either case, it tends to be the home of the servant and industrial classes from neighboring suburbs or the city. Its better or more advantageous sections strive hard to emulate the wealthy suburb in both its physical and social characteristics. But between these sections there are shambles of congestion, bad housing, and dilapidated buildings and streets. Apartment houses and the business district are of the type designed to cater to the lower or middle classes. A few industries employing considerable numbers are likely to be found here, with a large number of smaller trades and businesses. The general atmosphere is more nearly like that of a small independent city than of a suburb proper. Usually there was no planning for the original pattern of this type of suburb, and subsequent zoning and restriction are only very imperfectly carried out on account of the heterogeneity and conflict of interests and tastes. Many of the suburbs of this class have large foreign or secondgeneration populations (See Class B, Tables X - X V , Appendix) ; a high proportion of negroes is also common. Hence we find here also a relatively high birth rate, a large proportion of the population in the younger age groups. As compared with the wealthy suburb, we find in this type of community a larger proportion gainfully employed but a smaller proportion of the working population commuting; a larger proportion of women but a smaller proportion of married men. The bulk of the population in the middleclass suburb is engaged in the lower- and middle-class occupations, whereas in the wealthy suburb the professional class is predominant, the lower class next most numerous, and the middle class least in numbers. The poorer suburb also shows an absence of that homogeneity and unity which characterizes the physical aspects, the population, the attitudes, and the organization of the rich and restricted suburb. As a result, political strife, factions, and social climbing of the cruder type is more evident in the poor and middle-class suburb. The politician, the boss, and other "friends" of the lower classes

The

4°

Suburban

Setting

are in evidence here. Community undertakings lack the unanimity and adequacy of support which characterize the wealthy suburb. The public schools tend to be of inferior grade both because of the more limited wealth and because the "better" factions here feel the need for patronizing and supporting private schools and hence are indifferent or actually opposed to the improvement of the public schools. Organizations of the same kind or with the same function tend to duplicate themselves in large numbers because of the social distance between different groups in the community. The "upper" groups are constantly on guard against the social, political, and residential encroachments of "lower" elements. The inferiority complex with its various forms of compensation is often evident in the attitudes and behavior of people in this type of suburb. Sometimes the better portions seek to be annexed to an adjoining suburb of the wealthy type; or they may seek to secede and establish an independent village. Again, they play up prominently in conversation and publicity the presence of the relatively few wealthy or distinguished citizens which happen to live within their borders. Still others assert the superiority of their own village and their preference for it even when they are secretly hoping to move to a suburb of the other type. THE

SATELLITE

CITY

OR

MIXED

SUBURB

The two types of suburb already discussed are different chiefly in the matter of wealth and the numerous physical, demographic, and social aspects that tend to be the concomitants of economic status. They represent about the same degree of urbanization and are largely similar in that they are primarily residential and economically dependent on some outside community. When we come to the satellite city or mixed suburb, therefore, the basis of our distinction of this type is no longer primarily economic, although the mixed suburb tends to take, as might be expected, an intermediate position in this respect. The mixed suburb is more adequately distinguished from the other two types discussed above on the basis of its higher degree of urbanization rather than because of a purely economic gradation of suburban life. Being a

The Suburban

Setting

4i

mixture of the other two types of suburbs, plus a third urban and industrial element, they cannot be so distinctively characterized as can the purer types. (See Class C , Tables X - X V , Appendix.) The most obvious features which distinguish satellite cities and mixed suburbs from the other two types are (1) their relatively large size; (2) their central congestion and other conformity to the city pattern; and (3) their relatively self-sufficient business, industrial, and community life. They tend to have all the population elements and to resemble the large city in its demographic and occupational composition. None of the cities in Westchester is of the distinctly industrial type. On the contrary, the purely suburban sections of these cities are becoming increasingly important and seek rather to take on the characteristics of the exclusive, restricted suburb described above. Where such suburbs adjoin important residential areas of these cities there is occasionally agitation for secession from the city and incorporation with the adjoining residential suburb. The psychology, attitudes, and community organization of this type of suburb cannot be characterized as units because, as its very definition indicates, the mixed suburb is a combination of all the more distinctive types of suburban communities. There are, for example, fairly well defined sections of Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, and other mixed suburbs to which the characterization given above of the wealthy residential suburb would apply almost without qualification. Such districts tend to identify themselves psychologically, at least, with the neighboring suburb of Bronxville which is an example of the first type discussed. The desire of parts of Mt. Vernon and Yonkers to be included in the Bronxville telephone exchange and to be served by the Bronxville post-office is significant in this connection. In the public estimation Bronxville stands for a distinct social elevation and even if there were no other consideration involved, this is quite sufficient reason for eertain portions of Yonkers and Mt. Vernon to wish to identify themselves with Bronxville rather than with the cities with which they happen to be politically organized. Likewise, there are sections of Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, and other

The

42

Suburban

Setting

larger cities which would be comparable to the second type of suburb discussed above. In addition, we ñnd in the mixed suburb completely urbanized sections and a business and industrial district comparable to those of an independent city without any suburban aspects. Such sections will have distinctive urban characteristics with respect to physical, demographic, political, and social patterns. T h e bond between these diverse elements in a mixed suburb is often purely political with a resulting lack of interest in the larger community affairs. T h e three types here described are sufficient for an adequate classification of the communities of Westchester County. It must be remembered, of course, that the various characteristics assigned to each type, existing as they do in various degrees in each community and in varying combination with all the other traits, give each community some distinctive personality traits of its own. But the dominant configuration of its physical features and social life usually permits classification under one or another of the three types mentioned. T h e activities, attitudes, and problems in each of the communities within a single class will be sufficiently similar so that the results of the study of one or two of each type will almost certainly hold for others in the same class. THE

S U B U R B A N I T E

AS

A

S O C I O L O G I C A L

T Y P E

T h e physical characteristics and occupations of the population which we have considered above are basic considerations which fundamentally condition the leisure of a people. Likewise, the type of a suburban community is an important factor in determining the facilities and opportunities of its inhabitants for the uses of leisure. But perhaps of even more immediate importance in this connection are (i) certain psychological and sociological characteristics of the people, and (2) certain special conditions under which they live. T h e first concerns the selective influences which are at work in determining the inhabitants of the suburb; the second consist mainly of the comparative absence of congestion, the phenomenon of commuting, and the cultural concomitants of these conditions.

The

Suburban

Setting

43

Since it is obvious that many people of exactly the same demographic characteristics, family composition, and occupations which we have found in the suburbs are also to be found living in the city we must assume that those who choose to live in the suburb have, on the whole, certain tastes or preferences which distinguish them from otherwise similar people who live in the city. The suburbanite apparently finds in suburban living certain compensations which fully repay him for the time, trouble, and expense of commuting. The city dweller apparently values these advantages and disadvantages differently. Being a matter of subjective valuation, it is difficult to determine objectively what considerations appeal to different individuals. But some of the more obvious ones may at least be inferred from the testimony and behavior of suburban dwellers. Before attempting to summarize the pros and cons of suburban and urban living and from them drawing conclusions as to the personality types to which each is likely to appeal, we may consider a few excerpts from the literature on the subject as well as some reactions from our own interviews and questionnaires. Since commuting is perhaps the most inevitable and conspicuous concomitant of suburban living it is natural that this should be among the most prominent objections. Consider the following outbursts: A commuter is a man whose life is divided into two principal parts: coming and going. He is a goat in antelope's clothing. He feeds on time-tables, asterisks, and footnotes. He thrives on duplicated scenery. His life is one long series of two-hundred yard dashes. I am tired of having to dress, shake down the furnace, take out the ashes, put on coal, adjust the drafts, wash, shave, have breakfast, find my rubbers, look for the umbrella, read the headlines of the morning paper, start for the station, realize I have forgotten something, return to the house, look for what I have forgotten, find it and breeze for the station again, all between 7:42 and 7:58. I am weary of missing trains by the length of my forearm. I am tired of freezing in a day coach in winter and sweltering in one in summer. I am tired of fretful looking fellow-beings toting rakes, lawn mowers,

44

The

Suburban

Setting

evergreen shrubs, snow shovels, spades, bulbs, paint, wire netting, young chicks, radio parts, and garden truck. 18 The commuter who spends a good part of his day, from an hour and a half to three hours, in wandering, like Tomlinson, between Heaven and Hell, presents a spectacle much more humiliating than a man without a country: he is a man without a city—in short a barbarian. Small wonder that bathtubs and heating systems and similar apparatus play such a large part in his conception of the good life. These are the compensations that carry him through his perpetual neurosis—and heaven help him when Yankee ingenuity and salesmanship give out! Having failed to create a common life in our modern cities, we have builded Suburbia, which is a common refuge from life, and the remedy is an aggravation of the disease!1' T h e positive side of the same attitude finds expression in such considerations as the following:

As the city man walks briskly to his office in the morning or strolls leisurely uptown in the afternoon; as he saunters over to his club after dinner, or drops into the theater, he may be pardoned for being proudly conscious of the fact that his daily course is not hedged about with threatening time-tables; that he has easy access to the best that the rich, resourceful city offers in the way of music, and theaters, and lectures, and preaching, and libraries; that night and day, converging streams that take their rise all over the world, are depositing their ample cargo at his very door. He is a dull fellow indeed if his heart is not stirred by the mighty beat of the city heart, by its wonderfully variegated human life; by the tremendous forces for good and ill that in the cities, as nowhere else in the world, maintain perpetual battle.20 In addition to this case against the suburb there is frequent complaint against the troubles of maintaining a separate house, the invasiveness of suburban neighbors, and the lack of selective friendships which is involved in association with neighborhood as against interest groups. 21 "H. I. Phillips, "The 7:58 Loses a Passenger," Collier's, Apr. 11, 1925, p. 11. "Lewis Mumford, "The Wilderness of Suburbia," New Republic, X X V I I I (Sept. 7, >920.45"H. A. Bridgman, "The Suburbanite," Independent, L I V (Apr. 10, 1902), 862-64. "Christine Frederick, "Is Suburban Living a Delusion?" Outlook, C X L V I I I (Feb. 22 1928), 290 ff.

The

Suburban

Setting

45

O n the other hand, the defenders of the suburb not only find the above conditions tolerable, but find ample compensation for them in other satisfactions. T h e defense of suburban living tends to be dominated by two notes, namely, the emphasis on family and child life and the enjoyment of nature. For example: It is all well enough for bachelors and elderly couples and people who like crowds, to reside in town, but if you want to bring up a family, to prolong your days, to cultivate the neighborly feeling, to get acquainted with the stars and the birds and the flowers, leave your city block and become like me. It may be a little more difficult for us to attend the opera, but the robin in my elm tree struck a higher note and a sweeter one yesterday than any prima donna ever reached.25 We moved so that the children might be near the grass and the trees. . . . I rake the leaves myself from our seventy-five by one hundred and twenty-five foot garden. My small son builds a hut with packing boxes in the sumach bushes of the vacant lot next door; my daughter wrestles with a cigar box which will presendy appear as a bird house meant to lure a bluebird to our garden. The children romp around the neighborhood unsupervised. In the city children cannot be permitted to go far from home alone, a state of affairs which hinders the development of the spirit of independence, so essential to the complete development of the child. With the suburb as a base, we have rediscovered the out-of-doors. We have tramped the countryside for miles about. We have grilled steaks on wooded hills and have built our campfires in the snow, and we have thanked Heaven that the suburb gave us the chance to do so. We look back on those days in town when a day in the country . . . was preceded by a long train ride or by hours of driving by car along roads even then overcrowded, and we thank our stars that our lot is now cast in pleasanter places . . . We have known the delight of sleeping under blankets in the open air in the shadow of the Hudson's Palisades with a smudge to keep the mosquitoes away, and of waking to see the sun rising over the Westchester hills . . . At night the sound of the neighbor's gramophone floating across shrubbery and through a high lilac hedge is infinitely less noisy than the combined sound from the radio above us and the piano below us when our rooftree was an apartment house. No one dances to jazz music over our heads when we want to dream by our log fire . . P BH.

A. Bridgman, op. cit., p. 363.

"Ethel L. Swift, " T h e Defense of Suburbia," Outlook, C X L V I I I (April 4, 1928), 543 ff.

46

The

Suburban

Setting

T h e representative nature of these attitudes seems to be corroborated by the replies of 301 commuters to a questionnaire which included the specific question " H o w does commuting affect your family life?" Those who were sufficiently conscious of the problem to become articulate stressed with considerable regularity the time factor involved and the resulting limitation on the husband's time with his family; the reduced time available for recreation; the necessity of rising early in the morning and the late dinner at night; and the fatigue of constant travel. If people continue to live in the suburbs in spite of these handicaps, it must be assumed that they find the advantages more than sufficient to balance the disadvantages. This is also borne out by our questionnaires. Says an accountant living in the central part of the county: It enables me to live and spend my leisure in the country although my business is in the city. Enables wife and daughter to spend all of their time in the country. Enables us to bring up daughter in healthy and clean atmosphere, without undesirable associations and contacts in city if child is allowed freedom of play and action. The only detriment is loss of time travelling between home and office. This is not a total loss as time is mostly spent in reading daily news. T h e last point is corroborated by a librarian in the same location with the remark that "the commuter reads the paper on the way to New York and sleeps on the way out so the time is well spent." O u r study of the activities of some 6,800 commuters on commuting trains amply substantiates this view. 24 A professional man went "Activities of 6,806 Commuters between New York City and Westchester ACTIVITY

Reading Newspapers 82 % Magazines 10% Books 8% N o activity Talking Smoking (only) Sleeping Miscellaneous Set also pp. 319, 320.

PERCENT

49

25 11 8 3 3

The

Suburban

Setting

47

further and emphatically declared that the half-hour spent commuting morning and evening was the most restful and pleasant part of his day. " I look forward to it as a refuge and a relief," he said. He has since been divorced and moved into the city, however. Several persons rather dismissed the problem as not being peculiar to suburban existence in any case, as living in Westchester involves no more time and inconvenience than living in uptown New York, if one's work is downtown. The fact is that commuting facilities to the suburbs tend to be very much more comfortable than subways or other transportation within the city. The latter point suggests that perhaps too much has been made of commuting as a phenomenon unique to the suburb. As a matter of fact, comparatively few people in a large city live within walking distance of their work. From this point of view a great number of people living in the city are also commuters. The chief difference between the two types of commuting would be at most a matter of degree. The average amount of time consumed in commuting to the suburbs would usually be somewhat greater. But commuting can certainly not be stressed as a unique feature or a fundamental distinction of suburban life as contrasted with urban. The real differences must be sought rather in the psychological effects of dual community loyalties which tend to be present in the suburban commuter as well as in his different temperament and set of values. In the first place, if we consider a whole suburban area such as Westchester County we find that probably not more than a tenth of the adult population can be regarded as regular commuters. An analysis of Polk's directories (1930) of fifteen cities and villages including 76 percent of the population of the county, indicate that only 9.2 percent of the adult employed residents commute to New York City. Since this sample is based on the entire southern portion of the county where the bulk of the commuters live, the percentage would be even lower for the county as a whole unless we assume that the directories are biased in favor of noncommuters. As a check on the directory figures the

48

The

Suburban

Setting

average number of commuters' tickets (monthly and sixty-ride, 1930) of all the railroads in the county were tabulated and calculated as a percentage of the total adult population of the county (nineteen years and over) as listed in the Census of 1930. (Polk's directories aim to include about the same age group.) This method shows 12.6 percent of the adult population to be commuters. But the railway figures obviously include people who live in New York City and commute to Westchester, as well as vice versa. Also they include a certain number of commuters between various points within Westchester. It is not possible to determine accurately the percent of railroad commutation tickets which are used for commuting between different points in the county, or which are used by people living in New York and working in Westchester.26 But allowance for these commuters would undoubtedly reduce the percentage based on the railroad figures to somewhat below those based on the directories. On the other hand, the railroad figures do not include those who commute by automobile, bus, and other nonrailroad means, which would tend to balance the other factor. Altogether, the two methods of estimate agree closely in their results and the conclusion that only about 10 percent of the adult population (in 1930) commute to New York City is very nearly accurate. It is true that in selected villages and districts as much as 29.4 percent of adults have been found to commute. A more significant way of stating that case is to consider what percentage of the gainfully employed are commuters. We then find that in certain districts as much as 68.3 percent of the gainfully employed commute to New York City. It is also true, as we shall see later, that the commuting population sometimes wields an influence in their suburban community quite out of proportion to their numbers. But the fact remains that the large majority of the people in most suburbs are not commuters. Commuting cannot, consequently, be regarded as either unique to the suburb or as involving the bulk of its population. For a more detailed consideration of com" O u r analysis of directories indicates that both of these groups together constitute about 5 percent of all commuters.

The Suburban

Setting

49

muting and mobility especially in its effect on family life we must wait until a later chapter. (Chap. 6.)M When, on the other hand, we consider the suburban dweller as for the most part a selected temperamental, psychological, and sociological type there would appear to be considerable logical and factual data to support us. The pros and cons of suburban life as indicated in the above excerpts obviously indicate the reactions of different types of people to the same situation. Some of the very points which are urged against the suburb by one, constitute an argument in its favor by another. The raking of leaves from the lawn, shoveling snow from the walk, and tinkering with the furnace and the screens actually constitute diversion, recreation, and relaxation to one temperament; they constitute intolerable and menial drudgery to another. Neighborhood life and some of the associations and familiarities which it involves are obnoxious to some; they are congenial to others. But even when we do not find such diametrical opposites in tastes, we have to reckon with the different value scale which the suburban dweller applies to the conditions of his life in balancing the advantages and disadvantages of his position. He recognizes, for example, the disadvantage of commuting; but he finds that a house and a garden of his own more than compensate for the inconvenience of daily travel. These compensations do not so impress the urban dweller. The suburbanite may not be uninterested in the theater, the opera, and the club; but he finds it worth while to neglect them in favor of his home, his children, and the outdoors. Conversely, the urban dweller may not be unappreciative of houses, gardens, and the outdoors; but he is not willing to pay the required price for them in terms of other satisfactions. There is obviously no point in attempting to assess the validity or the objective lightness of these attitudes. Their significance lies in the index which they afford to personality characteristics which become the basis of suburban selection. They represent traits of temperament and personality which are of great significance with reference to leisure behavior. "Set tsptciaUy pp. 183-85.

The

5°

Suburban

Setting

If we should attempt to set down in general terms the two principal characteristics of the suburban type we should have to impute to him, first, a greater sensitivity to nature and the outdoor life. We might venture in this connection to suggest as a hypothesis, although we have no data on the point, that the rural heritage is a little more recent and vivid in this type. Second, and perhaps even more important, is the suburbanite's comparatively deep attachment to neighborhood and domestic life and the traditional family pattern. He is ill-adapted to apartment house living, city noise, and the major aspects of the urban pattern of life. These differences, allowing for all their degrees of intensity and variety of combination, would appear to be the distinctive qualities of personality and temperament which characterize the suburban dweller. They are the qualities which presumably condition his needs and desires with respect to leisure and recreation, as well as other aspects of his existence. WESTCHESTER

AS

A

COMMUNITY

At first glance it appears that the area we have described is merely a segment of suburban society rather than a community or culture area in any sociological sense. The boundaries of the county have been, as we have seen, largely determined by natural barriers on the east and the west, and by historical and demographic factors on the south and the north. Sociologically, the chief basis of community consciousness has been, and is, the county government. There are within the area in addition to the county government and some twenty-five school boards, forty-six separate governmental units, including eighteen town governments surviving from colonial and rural days, twenty-four incorporated village units, and four city governments. In at least one case the boundaries of a village coincide exactly with the boundaries of the town, and in this case two separate governments carry on similar functions within an identical area. The formal political organization of the county is, therefore, a chaos of overlapping governments with the resulting duplication of functions and lack of coordination. As a result there is considerable sentiment among some

The

Suburb

an

Setting

5»

county leaders for substituting a municipal government for the whole county and eliminating most of the local units.*7 Superimposed upon all of these local community organizations is the county government. As was inevitable under modern conditions, it has become the chief basis of community consciousness within the area as a whole. Especially has this become true during recent decades. The incapacity of small local communities to provide adequately for transportation, sanitation, planning, zoning, and cultural and recreational opportunities soon became evident with the rapid influx of population from the city. A strong and unified county leadership was under these conditions to be expected and welcomed. Such leadership appeared in the person of William L. Ward, county leader of the Republican Party. 48 Under his initiative and guidance the county, as well as the local units, has through the regular governmental machinery of the Republican Party carried out a highly unified program of community activities departing in numerous progressive ways from the traditional functions of county government. This unity of leadership and the conditions which made a centralized program highly desirable has produced a community consciousness of the county as a whole which would otherwise probably not obtain at all in an area where the population is so heterogeneous and mobile. Thus it appears that community spirit in the area as a whole has developed from above in connection with the county government rather than from an expansion of neighborhood association. There are many types of common interest which individually, or in conjunction, give rise to community consciousness. Race, religion, language, other common cultural bonds, or a common economic "For the best current discussion of this whole problem and possible solutions see Merriam, Parratt, and Lapawsky, The Government of the Metropolitan Region of Chicago (1933). M A New York journalist characterizes this leader as follows: "Mr. Ward is a millionaire manufacturer of nails and bolts. He is a Quaker, an inventor of sorts and a gay dandy whose wardrobe contains about 200 suits of clothes of amazing color combinations. He is a golfing, bridge playing, sociable, lovable old millionaire, seventy-four years old, bursting with energy, brimming over with the love of life, and a fondness for politics and people." See Allan Raymond, "Boss-Built Westchester," Outlook, C L X (Jan. 20, 1932), 79 if.

The

52

Suburban

Setting

dependence have all figured prominently throughout history in producing the social cohesion, the "we-feeling," or the group consciousness which is the essence of the community. But in a modern suburb we find that other highly derivative conditions may produce the same effect. Thus, rapid and frequent transportation to the city is a very vital concern to the Westchester area. Any attempt on the part of each local community to solve this problem for itself would encounter almost insuperable obstacles. The establishment of a County Transit Commission and a County Engineer's Office to plan and deal with this need for the area as a whole at once makes these organizations the nucleus of a very natural and strong community dependence, as the problems with which they deal are directly related to the means of livelihood. Opportunities and facilities for comfortable community living are found to be beyond the control of local groups except in a very limited way. Such bodies as the County Planning Federation, the Park Commission, the Sewer Commission, and the Recreation Commission minister directly to aspects of life highly appreciated by the suburban dweller. The activities of these county bodies and the state of these public services are largely responsible for the chief residential advantages of the county, the value of property therein, and the prestige of the area in the outside world. The park system, the parkways, the public recreation developments, the music festival—these have given international publicity and prestige to the county. It is around these features that community consciousness and pride tend to center. Thus the sociological backbone of the area is not the racial, cultural, or industrial homogeneity but a certain social situation which has proved a congenial atmosphere in which to develop the county administration of the public services mentioned above. These in turn have become the objective framework around which conscious community feelings tend to cluster. ECONOMIC

AND

POLITICAL

FACTORS

The services in question deal largely with county planning, zoning, park and highway development, and recreation. Extensive

The

Suburban

Setting

53

public attention to these amenities of life is, under the prevailing cultural scheme, at least, usually a sure sign of a relatively ample and secure base of material culture. It is the mark of a relatively wealthy community. That this is true of Westchester is evident in numerous ways. We have already referred to the fact that it is the country seat and playground of large numbers of wealthy and well-to-do people. A comparison of Westchester County with other areas with respect to assessed valuation and the value and rentals of homes indicates a relatively high per capita wealth.1* The leadership under which the existing developments have taken place is that of a wealthy man and the presence of large numbers of the wealthy on county commissions and village governments has for the most part operated to raise the tone of the public service to a very high point. This has resulted from the fact that public service under the circumstances has frequently been undertaken in a spirit of philanthropy, social work, or as a hobby or social outlet. A sense of public duty to the local community and a desire to maintain and promote its desirability as a home are also common motives for participation by the wealthy in the public affairs of the county. One village government consists of five prominent New York City lawyers serving without pay. In caliber "the

WEALTH OF WESTCHESTER AND VARIOUS OTHER AREAS

wmrrSTATE

Per capita assessed valuation* Value of owned non-farm homes Under 85,000 $5,ooo-$9,999 J10,000 and over . . . . Rentals of non-farm homes Under $50 S50-J99 $100 and over Not reported Percent of families with radios Percent of gainfully employed filing income tax returns (av. 1927-30).'

CHESTER

DELAWARE

N. Y .

NASSAU

$2,341 Percent

«3>»37 Percent

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94

The

Amount

and

Uses

of

Leisure

The Nonleisure Activities

For our purposes in the present study we have separated all activities into the two main categories of leisure and nonleisure. We have included in the latter category those activities which are usually considered in a high degree obligatory or necessary to the maintenance of life and which are on the whole instrumental to other ends rather than ends in themselves. Also, they are the activities which general current attitudes do not regard with that peculiar emotional tone with which they regard leisure. Each specific activity has, however, been separately tabulated so that anyone who disagrees with our classification of them by these two main categories may recombine them according to any plan which he considers more relevant to his own purposes.4 Proceeding on this basis we find that work and sleep are for the great majority of people still the two major, as well as the most stable, individual items of time expenditure. We may at the outset, therefore, consider what part of the twenty-four hours are devoted to each of these activities. If one drives through almost any residential area of Westchester between the hours of midnight and 6:00 A. M., it will be apparent that for large numbers of people those hours are set aside for sleep. This conclusion is corroborated by a detailed study of the time diaries.7 The time spent in sleep and the activities incidental •Our original tabulations of leisure activities contain 17 categories as follows: active arts, church, club, correspondence and telephoning, cards, dancing, idle, meals, miscellaneous, motoring, public entertainment, radio, reading, sociability (visiting), sports, study, unaccounted for. O n account of the negligible relative amount of time devoted to some of these activities they have for the most part been thrown into the "miscellaneous" category in our tables. Cards, dancing, and sociability have, however, been classified under "visiting." 'According to our diaries, over 90 percent of the adults of all classes and both sexes arise on week days between 7:00 and 8:30 P.M. and retire between the hours of 10:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M. The modal hour of arising is between 7:30 and 8:00 A.M. (Housemaids indicate half an hour earlier.) The hour of retiring is more varied, but 65 percent retire between 11:00 P.M. and 12:30 A.M., most of them in the last half hour of this period. O n Saturday the peak for retiring is still between 12:00 and 12:30, but 20 percent retire after 1 too A.M. as against 1.5 percent retiring after this hour on work days. Furthermore, about a third of those who retire after 1 :oo A.M. do not get to bed until after 3:00 A.M. This tendency is especially evident among the white-collar class which in our records include disproportionately large numbers of young people. There is

The

Amount

and

Uses

of

Leisure

95

thereto are for the population as a whole not only the most stable single activity with regard to amount of time consumed but also with regard to the uniformity in the time of day devoted to it. We may say that in any general study of human activity in Westchester we may eliminate at the outset the hours 10:00 P. M. to 7:00 A. M. With slight variations at either extreme, these are the hours set aside by the overwhelming majority of the population for sleep. Individual parties, small groups, or transients at an occasional road house or lunch wagon, a policeman here and there, represent the chief exceptions. On Saturday night and Sunday morning there is a tendency to advance by an hour or two the schedule given above. But for most purposes one-third of the twenty-four hours are accounted for at the outset as indicated above. The amount of time devoted to work and its distribution is not so uniform. For the gainfully employed (about 36 percent of the whole population at the time of this study8) a high degree of uniformity obtains. Thus the peak load of traffic to the city occurs between the hours of seven and eight. (Chart III.) Before this hour several trains have already taken a certain number to their work. In addition to this index, time diaries covering over two thousand working days for the gainfully employed revealed that in general the work day begins around g:oo A. M. and that the preceding half-hour is mainly occupied by transportation to work. Even more pronounced in uniformity is the hour of closing at 5 :oo p. M. By far the greatest peak load of the day on commuting trains is between 5:00 and 6:00. (Chart III.) Thus the hours 9:00 to 5:00, interrupted by an hour for lunch usually between 12:00 and 1 :oo, from Monday to Saturday noon, represents the standard work time for the gainfully employed. Another large group of the population for which the work day is standardized with high uniformity is the school children (about a corresponding skew upward in the rising hour on Sunday when the peak c o m « between 9:00 and 9:30 A.M. The hour of rising on Sunday is also more varied than on week days. Retiring hours on Sunday night are practically the same as on work days. 'According to the Federal Census of 1930 about 43 percent were engaged in gainful occupations. However, at the time of this study about 8 percent were unemployed.

96

The

Amount

and

Uses

of

Leisure

20 percent of the population). From approximately 8:45 to 4:00 Monday to Friday, inclusive, during the months of September to June, inclusive, this group is in school. The gainfully employed and the school children constitute together about two-thirds of the population. For the overwhelming majority of these two major elements of the population we may say that the hours from midnight to 5:00 in the afternoon on week days are occupied by sleeping, eating, and work (classifying school attendance as work), together with the activities incidental to each, such as dressing, washing, and transportation. Leisure pursuits tend to fall during the hours from 7 :oo to 12 :oo P. M. for the gainfully employed and from 4:00 to 11 :oo P. M. for the school children on work days. The remaining third of the population consists for the most part of housewives. Their hours of work and leisure are very much more irregular than that of the classes we have just considered. Their work, consisting principally of preparation of meals and care of the house and children, tends to fall into two periods, namely, from 7:00 to 10:00 in the morning and from 5:00 to 8:00 in the evening. Their diaries designate an average of thirty hours per week devoted to household and children (the principal item of work for this class) as against about forty hours work per week indicated by gainfully employed women. A great deal of irregularity is present in this pattern for housewives, however. The combination and overlapping of activities among this group also makes difficult any accurate classification of the various activities and the time devoted to each. We may then summarize the quantitative aspect of nonleisure activities of the 2,460 individuals from whom we received records as follows (See also Tables I and II): 1. Of the approximately seventeen hours a day consumed by the nonleisure activities, all classes spend on the average from eight to nine hours in bed. The laboring man and the unemployed of both sexes indicate the largest average time devoted to sleep. But the differences are not great. (See Table II.) 2. The gainfully employed according to their own testimony devote from seven and a half to eight and a half hours a day

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Adult

Education

and

Reading

321

with residents of New York City who commute to Westchester,16 we find some differences in favor of the Times, as against the Herald-Tribune, and a striking preference for the Daily News on the part of city residents. Only 3.8 percent of the Westchester residents were reading the latter, as against 22.6 of the New York City residents. Also, the latter group does not show the preference for the Sun evidenced by Westchester residents. In the case of the other papers no striking differences appear. The conclusion is that the more prosperous residents of Westchester, including the bulk of the commuters, prefer the HeraldTribune and the Times for their morning paper whereas the simpler folk prefer the Daily News. Among the evening papers the Sun leads for Westchester residents, although the World-Telegram shows greater prevalence among people returning to the city between five and six in the evening. In addition to the enormous diffusion of newspapers among the people of Westchester, there is the extensive circulation of periodicals. Again, the circulation figures are somewhat complicated by the fact that large numbers are purchased in the city. The great majority are, however, sold locally or delivered by mail, so that the figures furnished by the magazines themselves are perhaps relatively, if not absolutely, correct. T o get a complete total of the circulation of all periodicals in the county would be a difficult task. The dozen periodicals here considered have an aggregate circulation of well over 100,000. The grand total must amount to several times this figure. The diffusion of some of the better known magazines in the different types of communities in the county is given in Table I X . The outstanding conclusion from these figures is that in the wealthy suburbs periodicals have more than twice the per capita circulation which they have in the Class B suburbs and the cities. This relation holds for the "movie" magazines as well as for the " I t has been assumed that passengers on commuting trains from the city between the hours of eight and nine in the morning and to the city between the hours of five and six in the evening are New York City residents commuting to Westchester. (See T a b l e VIII.)

Adult

322

Education

and

Reading

Literary Digest and the Woman's Home Companion. For the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal, the proportion is nearer three to one. For Fortune, House and Garden, and the New Yorker, the ratios are about ten to one, nine to one, and seven to one, respecTABLE

IX

CIRCULATION OF SELECTED PERIODICALS IN WESTCHESTER BY TYPES OF SUBURB-

COUNTY

CIRCULATION PER 1 , 0 0 0 ADULT POPULATION Class A Suburbs (Villages)

Class B Suburbs (Villages)

Collier's

39

23

Fortune

35

4

Periodicals

142 20 70 169

Good Housekeeping Harper's House and Garden Ladies Home Literary

Journal

Digest

73

46 22 22 129 2

Liberty Motion

Picture

Movie

Classic

National Geographic New

.

Republic

New Yorker Readers' Digest

52 .

.

.

Saturday Evening Post Woman's Home Companion

.

36

176 78

Class C Suburbs (Cities)

The County

26 2

26

55

42

51

5

3

4 11

10 61 40

68 25

50

42

9 9

48

7

56

27

8 8 26

1

8 12 64 46

5

33 •4

6

0.6 9

75

12 61

55

52

9

"Figures furnished by each magazine on request.

tively. Money with which to buy magazines, and time and ability to read them seem to be the considerations which determine the circulation of periodicals. In summary, then, we find that reading of some kind is one of the most common leisure pursuits of the great majority of people in Westchester. Only 3 percent of the population ten years and

Adult

Education

and

Reading

323

over are illiterate according to the definition and figures of the Federal census. Doubtful as that definition is17 from the standpoint of effective or significant reading, we should probably have to accept this degree of literacy as sufficient to read a tabloid newspaper. If we add to this number the 8 percent under the age of five, we find that probably less than 12 percent of the population are not in some degree potential consumers of the printed word—or of forms of picture-writing. This estimate that 88 percent of the population are readers is an extreme maximum, and a more discriminating definition both of reading and illiteracy would undoubtedly make it more nearly correct to say that 75 percent of the population of Westchester read something with some regularity as a leisure pursuit. This figure must again be greatly reduced if we wish to consider only such reading as can be considered of significance in adult education. When we reflect that many high school graduates are definitely unable to read effectively elementary text books in the social sciences and history, there is ground for the fear that probably less than half the individuals in our population possess the reading ability assumed by most adult education projects. This is clearly one of the most serious obstacles to adult education, however important reading of some kind may be as a leisure pursuit. Research as to the actual vocabularies and other aspects of reading ability among the masses of adults is obviously an essential condition for any effective program of adult education. While reading is not the only form of adult education, it is overwhelming in importance both for itself and as an adjunct to other activities. Whatever may be the actual amount of inability to read about current affairs, the existence of such inability to any extent among normal people who have passed through our elementary schools must lie against these schools as an unpardonable failure. If the elementary school is to justify its existence at all, it should do at least two things: (1) it should stimulate the desire to read; (2) it should impart the ability to read. If it fails in either of these, " T h e census regards as literate anyone who can read and write some language.

Adult

324

Education

and

Reading

or both, it has failed in its major function, whatever eke it may succeed in doing. If it succeeds in these two respects, the problem of adult education is largely solved. ORGANIZED

ADULT

EDUCATION

We have considered at some length the subject of reading. Adult education in the modern sense is undoubtedly, directly and indirectly, more dependent upon reading than upon any other single factor. Reading must be taken for granted as a necessary prerequisite to any formal direction from the outside. There are, however, in most communities a number of organizations which are in whole or in part concerned with the formal advancement of adult education. We turn now to a brief consideration of such organizations and their activities in Westchester. Perhaps the oldest, and still the most prevalent institution of adult education in most communities is the church. While it does not confine its activities to adults, it is very largely concerned with adult activities. From any point of view the greater part of the church program, religious as well as extra-religious, must be regarded as a form of organized adult education. In the more conservative sects, that education consists perhaps mainly of esthetic, emotional, and ethical elements, plus liberal installments of folklore and superstition. Other sects specialize in the interpretation of current events from the ethical standpoint. Both types have large followings and no doubt exercise a wide influence. An account of the church as an agency of adult education should consider, in addition to such factors as the number of members and the extent of their participation, the content of the church program both religious and extra-religious. This can most conveniently be done through a consideration of the subject and content of sermons and through a description of the extra-religious activities. In addition, it is desirable to get an appraisal of the institution, its activities, and the communities it serves by the pastors themselves. Since this is an undertaking of some size and since it cuts across the whole problem of leisure and its uses we have devoted a special chapter (Chapter VII) to the church, not

Adult

Education

and

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325

only as an agency of adult education, but also as an organization interested in, and related to, the whole problem of leisure. For the same reasons we have discussed in a special chapter (Chapter V) the various clubs, which, while devoted in part to more or less formal adult education, are primarily concerned with other pursuits. Organized adult education in Westchester clubs can be classified into three types. First, there are formal courses in such subjects as French, appreciation of poetry, beauty culture, parliamentary procedure, and history and appreciation of art, under a paid instructor. Then there are lecture series on a variety of topics, frequently by well-known professional lecturers. Speeches before the various luncheon clubs have become almost as common as eating. Most of them are of doubtful significance to adult education. As in the case of most lectures, they are of importance chiefly as diversion and entertainment. 18 Finally, there are study groups maintained by the club members themselves, consisting usually of the preparation of papers on selected topics by individual members in turn. The scope and content of these courses and programs as well as the numerous other social and educational activities of private clubs have been discussed in Chapter V. Deserving of special mention in connection with the subject of clubs and adult education is the parent teachers association. This organization is represented in nearly every community in Westchester and has a total membership of between thirteen and fourteen thousand in the county. Local chapters usually meet once a month from October to May. As the name implies, the membership consists of parents and teachers and the program tends to deal with parent-child-school relationships. The most significant project conducted at present by the Westchester Parent Teachers Association is a course in parent education. 19 'Tor example, such subjects as the following were discussed before one luncheon club during 1932. "Radio Broadcasting," "India and Its Effect upon the World," "Enrollment and Disarmament," "Armistice Day," "The Making of Sugar" (movie by the National Sugar Refining Company), "Manners and Customs of Old New York," "The Empire State Building" (movie on the erection of the Empire State Building), "Single Tax." "The Westchester-Rockland Parent Education Council reports 59 groups with a total enrollment of 990 in parent education courses; the majority of these are in Westchester

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The Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. and the Y.M.H.A. and Y.W.H.A. are to some extent institutions of adult education although they are perhaps usually thought of as devoting themselves chiefly to recreational, and especially to physical, activities. These organizations are not extensively developed in Westchester. The Y.M.C.A. has branches in the four cities with a total membership of 3,4x5, of which about 40 percent are boys under eighteen. The program is largely recreational and social, with emphasis on physical activities, which have been considered in another chapter. The Yonkers " Y " offers classes in lip reading for the hard of hearing and Americanization courses for foreigners who are preparing to become citizens. Glee clubs, dramatic clubs, stamp clubs, and a variety of other "hobby" clubs are also maintained in some of the " Y ' s . " The Y.W.G.A. likewise is primarily engaged in social, advisory, and athletic activities. Classes in cooking and dressmaking have been organized from time to time. Dramatic clubs exist and group singing is fostered. Speeches and lectures to the numerous groups are common activities. In addition to the city Y.W.C.A.'s, there is a county organization with several hundred members working primarily with girls of high school age in the rural and outlying areas. A large number of clubs with a variety of activities and a summer camp is maintained. Somewhat similar activities are carried on by the Y.M.H.A. and Y.W.H.A. Night Schools, Extension, and Correspondence Courses We have already remarked on the fact that early adult education was chiefly of a remedial, evangelical, and vocational character. It was, furthermore, designed for the poor, the alien, and the under-privileged rather than for the general population. But with the increasing rapidity in social and industrial changes the need County. The content of these courses is drawn from the large contemporary literature of child psychology and child care. For details see the syllabus issued by the State Education Department on Child Development and Parental Education—The Adolescent in Our Changing Civilization (Albany, 1931) and also the syllabus issued by the WestchesterRockland Parent Education Council (2518 Webb Avenue, New York City) entitled Needs of the Child at Home and in School (October, 1932).

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for constant readjustment of all individuals as a requisite for successful living became increasingly apparent. The regular public schools and colleges were in no position to offer the desired instruction; their inaccessibility, their curricula, their requirements, the manner of their organization, and their traditions generally, prevented them from offering the desired range of courses, at times of the day when people with jobs could attend. The result was a vast development of extension divisions and correspondence schools. Today there are in the United States some 450 private correspondence schools, 82 colleges and universities, 44 state normal schools and teachers colleges, and 28 theological seminaries offering over 25,000 correspondence courses on almost every imaginable subject.20 The total enrollment in these courses is over 750,000 people, who spend over twenty-five million dollars annually in this way.21 In short, there are probably about as many people enrolled in correspondence courses as there are in regular attendance at all the colleges, universities, and professional schools in the United States.22 A sum equal to the combined educational budgets of several states is spent by individuals for the privilege of learning things for which our system of public education makes, on the whole, little or no provision. In many cases nearly all of this expenditure goes for salesmanship, promotion, and profits of private correspondence schools. In the better private correspondence schools only about 60 percent of the cost goes for selling and collection. This situation raises the question as to why the public school KRecent uThe

Social Trends, I, 344.

National Home Study Council estimates that for the current year (1932) somewhat more than 500,000 students were enrolled in bona fide correspondence courses with personalized instruction and about 250,000 additional enrolled in institutions which primarily merely sell textual materials. The total tuition fees collected by the former group was slightly over 825,000,000. At least 100 of these institutions are private profit-making schools. Another 150 are colleges and universities giving home study courses. See Stuart Chase, "Job Improvement, Inc.," Fortune, June, 1933, p. 98. a A study of the situation in 1925 by the National Home Study Council reported two million enrolled and a total expenditure of seventy million dollars. These figures are, however, based on a more inclusive definition of the term "correspondence school."

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system has not taken over a field so obviously within its proper province. The answer is largely in terms of tradition, legal limitations, and a peculiar notion of economy. Traditionally, organized public education was only for children, and was mainly concerned with teaching them the three "R's." With the changing times we find ourselves in need of education for adults as well as for children and also in need of a greatly expanded subject matter including provision for leisure and recreation. Nevertheless, the older tradition tends to dominate. This tradition is frequently incorporated in laws imposing limits upon school expenditures and upon the use of school buildings. While the New York laws now permit great freedom to local communities not only in using school equipment and school money for adult education, but also for purely recreational activities,23 the traditions regarding the proper sphere of public education, and especially a curious notion of civic economy, persist. The prevailing notion of economy is one derived directly from private business. It is a commonplace that under this system individuals and special groups may profit at least temporarily through various forms of sabotage, such as the disuse of equipment, the withholding of efficiency, or even the actual destruction of useful products. Such sabotage frequently effects certain savings to the individual and yields certain private profits. But these savings and profits are always a loss to the community as a whole. In short, however valid this theory of economy may be from the private and individual standpoint, it is clearly disastrous when applied to public affairs. Yet this is a notion of economy which tends to carry over into public expenditure so that frequently a community thinks it is practicing economy when it neglects to use its most vital equipment or to keep up its most vital services. Thus we see thousands of school plants standing idle while the people spend fabulous sums on commercial places of recreation and instruction. There are, however, signs of a breakdown of this traditional view of education. The responsibility of the public school system for a comprehensive program of adult education is becoming "See Chapter VIII.

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increasingly clear.24 Sporadic lectures, discussion clubs, forums and other similar activities under the auspices of private organizations, however excellent in their way, can never make adequate provision for the full need. The public school system already has the organization and the equipment for a widely increased scope of activity. Night school and extension instruction in connection with the public schools have as a result rapidly expanded in recent years. The main provision for adult education by the public schools of Westchester is in the form of evening schools offering courses chiefly in commercial subjects, industrial, and other, arts, and "Americanization." With the decrease in immigration, the last type of instruction is disappearing. The vocational, and especially the commercial, subjects are chiefly patronized. O n the other hand, cultural and artistic subjects are beginning to be introduced —somewhat apologetically, at times, but none the less surely. There bar fine riculum meeting

are some [says the annual report of one school] who would arts and other cultural subjects from the evening school curbecause they are not essential to economic growth or to the of every day problems. When it is recalled that the present

"Consider, for example, the following statement by H. O . Berg, Supervisor of the Extension Department, Milwaukee Public Schools: (From a mimeographed article " A Municipal Neighborhood Recreation Center.") "This wider use of the school plant was achieved on strength of the state law which authorizes school boards to establish and maintain special activities such as evening schools,social centers, library branches, etc., by means of a special 2/10 mill tax,providing the question has passed at a referendum of the people. Milwaukee adopted the policy of using its schools for social centers believing that supervision of recreation is an educational problem and that civic economy demands a more open use of the public schools. The school house is usually the neighborhood center from a geographic standpoint. It ought also be the focal point of the neighborhood from a civic and community standpoint. This can easily be accomplished through a social center housed in the school building and run in connection with it, for such a center has at its command hundreds of the world's best advertisers—children." [Italics ours] The trend in this field is further indicated by the fact that in 1932, 19 states in addition to the District of Columbia reported that they have an active state supported program in adult education with 1,245,124 students enrolled and a combined budget of Si 1,61 g,760. Enrollment in evening schools, high schools, colleges, universities, extension classes, etc. has also increased more than four times as rapidly as population in recent years. See J. S. Noffsinger, Director, National Home Study Council in Fortune, June, 1933. p. 98.

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day tendency in the industrial and commerical world is to lessen the number of hours to six and the number of days of work to five, it is readily seen that the problem of using leisure time is becoming more pressing. Following a course in cultural subjects in the evening school is a logical and satisfactory solution. Educators, economists, and sociologists should recognize this at once and lend their influence in helping the ordinary individual to see the course he should pursue. Music, painting, drawing, sculpturing, pottery, basketry, and interior decoration are a few of the fields which may be profitably introduced in the evening school.18 Evening schools are as yet chiefly confined to the larger cities. Altogether, about five thousand students26 are annually registered in the evening courses offered through the public schools of the county. Most of the courses are vocational—commercial, artistic, and mechanical. Classes for foreigners are decreasing in prominence and there are signs, as noted above, of greater emphasis on avocational subjects. In the meantime the Adult Education Bureau of the New York State Education Department is launching a more extensive program in the county in cooperation with the public schools and the various agencies for the unemployed. Regular academic work is offered and it seems likely that the immediate future will see a greatly augmented program of adult education through the established public school system. While it is not possible to say exactly how many residents of Westchester County take extension and correspondence courses in a given period, we may get a representative picture of the situation through a study of the courses and clientele of the two large metropolitan universities carrying on extension work in the area. New York University not only maintains late afternoon and evening courses in downtown New York, which are within the reach of Westchester students, but it also maintains an extension center in White Plains for the special accommodation of Westchester. a

Annual

Report, M t . V e r n o n Public Schools, 1932, pp. 5 3 - 5 5 .

" T h i s is the approximate total for the five cities during 1932-1933. T h e figures fluctuate considerably from time to time a n d the number attending regularly is perhaps not more than half o f the above total.

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Columbia University likewise offers a large number of extension classes on its campus, and in addition offers an enormous variety of correspondence courses. An analysis of the records of these institutions indicates the extent and type of adult education which Westchester receives through these sources. Between them, these two universities probably have, because of their proximity, convenience, and standing, virtually a monopoly of this type of education in Westchester. During the year 1932-33, 1,918 students from Westchester County registered at New York University. Of these, 403 were registered in extramural courses offered by the School of Education. These courses are similar in content to those given to the resident students and are definitely professional. Most of them are given at the White Plains Collegiate Center, and the rest at Port Chester and New Rochelle. At the White Plains Center are also offered courses in accounting, banking and finance, business English, economics, and marketing, which together had an enrollment of fifty-six in 1931-32. In addition there were courses in elementary composition, the short story, social problems, and general psychology, drawing a total registration of sixty. All of these classes meet two hours per week for fifteen weeks and carry regular college credit. When we turn to "General Extension" and "Adult Education" courses offered by New York University we find a total of only thirteen students from Westchester scattering their attention among lecture courses on literature, law, French, German, radio speaking, public speaking, psychology today, and history and appreciation of art. These courses do not carry college credit and represent adult education as usually understood. In addition, there are about a dozen Westchester students registered in the precollegiate courses of New York University which are secondary school courses conducted in cooperation with the New York State Board of Regents. The extension classes on the campus of Columbia University had in 1932-33 an enrollment of 365 Westchester students registered in 62 of the 84 different courses offered. These courses include

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all the usual college subjects and many which are not so usual. There are Westchester students taking Persian, Japanese, Chechoslovakian, and Chinese, as well as Latin, Greek, and modern European languages. Astronomy, phonetics, and photoplay composition also have a few registrants from Westchester. English is by far the most popular subject; it accounts for twenty-one percent of the total number of course registrations from Westchester. Next in order of popularity are architecture, history, psychology, French, economics, mathematics, chemistry, stenography, and philosophy. While college credit may be secured through these courses and while they are perhaps chiefly taken by students in pursuit of a degree or for vocational reasons, there are no doubt a considerable number of students who are merely engaged in "adult education" in the purely cultural sense. Participation in such a variety of courses reflects the diversity of interests among the population of an area such as Westchester. In addition to the above 365 students attending extension classes at Columbia, there are 102 residents of Westchester taking correspondence courses.47 English again leads the list with 40 percent of the registrations. Accounting, mathematics, and business law are next in order, reflecting mainly vocational interests. The remainder are scattered among psychology, economics, history, the languages, and various vocational subjects. The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from these figures, so far as our present interest is concerned, is the negligible significance of extension and correspondence study as a leisure pursuit. Certainly less than a thousand adults in Westchester are engaged in such study.28 In short, less than one percent of those adults who are probably eligible for such study take advantage of the opportunities offered. If this means that nearly all who have intellectual interests prefer to satisfy themselves through independent reading, this is all to the good. Formal courses of any kind are very wasteful "Figures compiled from original registration cards by courtesy of E . J . Grant, registrar. " I t is, of course, not possible to say with certainty how many Westchester residents may be taking courses from commercial correspondence schools, as well as private schools and private instruction of all kinds; but it would appear safe to say that the two large universities here considered probably include at least 90 percent of the total.

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in their elaboration of the obvious and in other ways. Especially is this true of lecture and "recitation" courses. Not only is there prodigious waste of time in going to and from the meeting place, but there is also great slowness in any oral instruction. An hour's lecture can be read in ten minutes or less. In this respect, as in others, the correspondence course and independent reading are, of course, very much more economical. In view of the inefficiency of formal classroom and lecture instruction, and in view of the availability of libraries it is in fact amazing that the lecture method of adult education should have so large a following as it has. This survival of a method of instruction from preliterate times, or at least from times when the scarcity of books made such a method necessary, must be explained largely on the grounds of the satisfaction it affords to the gregarious impulses, the inability of large numbers of even our high school graduates to read effectively, and the very general folk belief that all reliable knowledge must be obtained through some formal school, preferably by word of mouth. If the schools as vested interests had deliberately fostered this belief, they could not have been more successful in its propagation. Thousands of people spend their lives lamenting their inability to go to college or to "take courses" in some vocational or avocational field. That a little intelligent reading would yield vastly more acquaintance with the subject than the average course gives, seems to occur to very few. Indeed, such a suggestion is regarded with suspicion. One of the most mischievous by-products of the great expansion of schools and formal education has been the spread of the notion that education and learning are exclusive functions of the school. "Selfeducation" (as if there were any other kind!) is regarded with great skepticism and condescension not only by the general public but by the products of our schools and colleges, including a large number of professors and administrators of institutions of higher learning. A good deal of the blame for the failure of adult education to spread more generally must be laid at the door of the academicians. For centuries they have fostered the belief that the major tools of knowledge must be acquired in youth or not at all,

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a belief which is still general. The demonstration by Thorndike only a few years ago of the falsity of this notion, created something of a sensation even in circles where the truth should have been suspected. Today the cloistered fraternity is consciously or unconsciously fostering a suspicion of all learning acquired outside its own walls—a ludicrous and inexcusable superstition, which finds expression in preposterous requirements of a purely formal nature, such as sitting the required number of hours in the soporific atmosphere of class-rooms under droning lecturers—a method as obsolete as much of the subject matter so communicated." The attitude of the average cloistered educator toward all extramural and correspondence instruction represents a colossal conceit regarding the oracular power of his personality, if not a defense mechanism designed to protect a vested interest. One of the best evidences of this boycott of extramural learning is to be found in the generally accepted assumption of the inferiority of extension students. " T h e teaching of extension students," says President Coffman, "is frowned upon by many college instructors as being unworthy of their intellectual mettle and teaching skill." He goes on to show that as a matter of fact, extension students are consistently better than regular freshmen and 50 percent of them are superior to juniors and seniors in education. Since students are not admitted to the College of Education until they are juniors and not then unless they have maintained a high record, these findings indicate that the best of the extension students are really very superior. Whether that accounts for the unwillingness of some college teachers to teach them, far be it from me to conjecture.'0 "There are some signs of an impending breakdown of this stupid tradition, notably at the University of Chicago, which was also a pioneer in the extension and correspondence school movement. The University of California has more recently made provision for the recognition of independent study. See School and Society, Dec. 9, 1933, pp. 76263. In the meantime thousands of students of the highest ability throughout the country are denied the privileges of the institutions of higher learning because of irregularities in their formal elementary or secondary school record. " L . D. Coffman, "Why They Study," Journal of Adult Education, June, 1930, pp. 260-64. For a complete report of the study to which this article refers, see H. Sorenson, Adult Abilities in Extension Classes. The study consists of a detailed analysis of over 5,000 students in late afternoon and evening classes at the University of Minnesota.

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As to the motives, personal characteristics, and abilities of extension students in Westchester, we may perhaps assume that they are not greatly different from such students elsewhere. If so, the most reliable and exhaustive study of the subject81 shows that the dominating motives are economic and occupational. Two-thirds of the women students and over four-fifths of the men of a group of some 5,000 included in the Minnesota study declared vocational objectives. Advancement in their present work or preparation for a different job were the motives of two-thirds of the whole group. Social, cultural, and leisure objectives, are proportionally more frequent among the older students. The abilities of extension students, as measured by their success in their courses, increases consistently with age to about fifty years, thus further supporting Thorndike's findings. There is positive evidence also that students who spend from five to nine years in completing their high school or college work rate quite as high in ability as students who finish in four years. Among the different occupations, it is interesting to note that housewives stand higher in their college work than clergymen, or college presidents, or professors, or dentists, or lawyers. A miscellaneous group including plasterers, cement workers, and chauffeurs stand at the bottom of the list.32 The vocational courses which have figured so prominently in adult education in the past are perhaps destined in the future to be supplanted to a large degree by the humanistic and so-called cultural courses. More limited opportunities and more rigid selection will dispel the current notion that nearly all can become wealthy doctors, lawyers, writers, and executives. The need of training people to live when they are not gainfully employed will increase as the amount of leisure increases. To provide this training is the main task of adult education. That extension courses, and especially reading and correspondence courses, will figure more and more prominently in the adult education of the future seems inevitable. The residence institutions of adult learning do not, and cannot, reach the great masses of people. The 11

Adult Abilities in Extension Classes, op. cit. «Ibid.

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tremendous growth in extension and correspondence courses during recent decades are symptomatic of a growing recognition of the incongruity of an educational system which makes the main cultural resources of man the special privilege of a small percentage of the population who by virtue of economic ability, geographic location, and conformity to absurd and irrelevant requirements are able to crash the gates of our colleges. Unless we are to abandon entirely the idea of general education we must resort to methods by which the adult population at large can be reached, rather than rely upon a limited number of cloisters or country clubs infested with a few thousand badly selected college students.33 We have already referred to the obligation of the public schools regarding this situation. More drastic measures than the fuller utilization of present school equipment and methods are called for, however, if we are to make real headway with the problem of adult education. The problem calls for a far greater differentiation of courses than is possible without prohibitive cost under a residence school system. Continuing education for continuing readjustment demands curricular offerings as broad as individual needs. The necessary enrichment of the curriculum under classroom conditions is prohibitive from all points of view. Classroom courses cannot be given unless the local demand is considerable, which means that they cannot be given at all in the smaller and poorer communities. While these difficulties are not so great in a densely populated area like Westchester, a really extensive program of adult education cannot, and should not, rely upon classroom instruction. As already indicated, the main function of the school should be to equip individuals to take care of their own adult education, with such guidance and facilities as are provided " T h e r e is, of course, no objection to maintaining such institutions for advanced study as advocated by A. Flexner in Universities, American, English and German. The point here stressed is that such institutions are of little or no importance from the standpoint of general adult education. T h e question of whether extension courses should be offered in connection with such institutions, to which Flexner objects, is a matter of administrative convenience and should be decided on this basis. As for Flexner's condemnation of correspondence study because of the exploitive character and offensive advertising of some of the schools, this is a fine illustration of throwing out the baby with the bath and a further example of the persistence of the traditional attitudes discussed above.

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by librarians or correspondence courses. Otherwise, education beyond the grades will for reasons of excessive cost and unsuitable curricula, remain beyond the reach of the majority of our population.84 The correspondence course, made widely available throughout all educational levels, supplemented by the library, the soundmovie, and perhaps the radio, represents the only feasible approach to adequate education in the modern world. Classroom instruction as currently practiced must, beyond the first six grades, be regarded as obsolete as well as economically, psychologically, and pedagogically unsound.36 It should be the business of the elementary school, above all, to teach people to read effectively. With this achieved the correspondence course furnishes all desirable guidance without causing the student to confuse intellectual achievement with the irrelevant folkways of an educational system of a bygone age. The development and wide diffusion of the radio has opened enormous possibilities of adult education. It is very difficult to estimate its present significance. Furthermore, the field is changing so rapidly as to make estimates out of date almost as soon as they are made. The amount of time spent on educational broadcasts is perhaps the most direct indication in this field.14 We have already "Cf. A . W. Castle, "Enrichment of Secondary School Courses of Study by the Use of Correspondence Courses," in N. E. A . Proceedings, 1931, pp. 331-39. The University of Nebraska has established a system of supervised correspondence study through the local high schools which provide space, equipment, and general supervision for students. See Knute O . Broady, " A New Correspondence Service," Journal of Adult Education, April, 1933, pp. 182-84. The development is of vast significance in its implications for adult education. " T h e implicit assumption by the vast majority of students that their learning is a responsibility of the teacher and the school rather than of themselves, must be directly attributed to present methods of classroom instruction. Something may be conceded to the stimulating affect of face to face discussion, but such stimulation is likely to be more common outside of classrooms than in them under present conditions. With adult education very much more common than it is today, informal discussion among groups with common interests would perhaps take care of itself. In small groups not exceeding five or six such discussion may be very stimulating. The value of the type of discussion current in the average class or large seminar not to mention numberless ¡forums and "discussion groups" has undoubtedly been grossly overestimated. -"The Wilbur Committee concludes that "an average of one thousand hours a day on 1 the six hundred or more broadcasting stations in the United States is a conservative

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noted the prevalence of radios in Westchester and the time spent in listening to them; further analysis of the diaries might yield some data as to the relative popularity of educational programs. The most comprehensive attempt to get at the extent of educational broadcasts and the amount of time devoted to them by listeners was made by the American Association for Adult Education in 1929." This survey secured reports of 1,169 programs of definite educational significance from September 3 to December 31,1929. In order of popularity the subjects of these broadcasts were: health, home economics, English, music, history, religion, business, child training, sociology and community advancement, science, agriculture, drama, political science, sport news, languages, fine arts, library and museum service and use (by the government).38 The field of educational broadcasting is developing very rapidly and its full significance can only be guessed at present.89 In the meantime "schools of the air" are appearing in increasing numbers, some of them with definitely registered students. Thus the Annual Report of the Metropolitan District Parent Teachers Association (including Westchester) announces "Forty-Seven Registered Listeners for Radio Health Talks." University extension divisions are beginning to give regular courses for credit over the radio,40 and it seems likely that this form of education will largely supplant or at least supplement the present extension and correspondence courses. The invention of the radio in any case solves one of the principal problems of adult education, namely, the problem of reaching large numbers without prohibitive cost. estimate of the time devoted to programs of an educational nature, including courses of instruction, lectures, informal talks, and concerts with interpretative remarks." L . Tyson, Education Tunes In, p. 93. "Ibid., Ch. 10. -Ibid. "For the most recent developments in this field see Education on the Air (Proceedings of the Institute for Education by Radio, published annually). «"For example, the Extension Division of the University of Utah is giving its regular course on the Technique of Teaching over the radio through lectures supplemented by reading, printed instructions, discussion of students' questions and regular examinations. See Journal of Adult Education, April, 1933, p. 207.

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Whether society will employ this resource for its own benefit and service or turn it over to special groups for exploitation of the public for private profit remains to be seen. The means of an adequate adult education are undoubtedly in our hands. Unfortunately this fact does not of itself guarantee the attainment of the end, any more than an abundance of means of economic security has assured our economic welfare. Apparently, what we most need to know is the means by which the masses of men may be induced to take possession of, and operate, their own heritage. SUMMARY

We have seen that about five hundred adults in Westchester spend part of their leisure in attending extension courses of formal instruction in a great variety of subjects; more than a hundred more are taking correspondence courses. From the nature of these courses, and from other data, it seems clear that the great majority are spending their time in this way for ulterior motives, namely, in the hope of pecuniary, professional, or occupational advancement. These activities are not, therefore, really leisure pursuits at all, in a strict sense. They express the prevailing philosophy and urge to "get ahead." Indeed, economic insecurity, increasingly severe competition, and rapid change in occupational demands frequently make vocational study necessary in order to hold one's own, not to mention advancement. Then there is a somewhat larger number (four or five thousand) who attend continuation and evening classes offered by the public high schools. Another group who find themselves unable to go to college attend courses especially arranged for them by the State Department of Education in cooperation with local authorities at the so-called "College for the Unemployed." The motives of both of these groups are mixed; some are directly interested in vocational pursuits, others indirectly similarly interested by way of college graduation, and still others are attending because of interests in the work itself and because they have little else to do. In this group should also be included the regular students in several private colleges in the county, as well as a labor college.

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A still larger number spend some of their leisure in attending more or less regularly lectures, discussions and study groups. These include general public lectures, a multitude of speeches to special clubs, courses in self-improvement, and courses of general cultural interest. In this group also are the parental education courses of the Parent Teachers Association, the lecture and study courses of the women's clubs, and most of the public lectures. Extensive reading of books, magazines, and newspapers by a large proportion of the whole population completes the picture of adult education in the county. T h e general evaluation of these activities depends, as do all evaluations, upon what we consider to be the purpose of adult education. As a diversion and a way of spending time, the activities we have described must be regarded as very important. Most of them, especially reading, are apparently found interesting in themselves. Much leisure is spent on these pursuits. As for their possible value to the individual in better equipping him for the problems that confront him in every walk of life, this would be a very profitable subject for intensive research on selected groups. Educational measurements are among the principal guides to educational methods and policies. As the adult education movement gains headway, demand for some tangible appraisal of results will be heard. What is the net effect on the average mind of the avalanche of print and vocalization to which the individual in an area like Westchester is exposed? What are the resulting interpretations and appraisals of the world in which they live? A reliable determination of the respects in which the knowledge and attitudes of different groups are at variance with relatively well established truth, would furnish important indices both to the effectiveness and needs of adult education. In the absence of such intensive study we can indulge in only tentative conclusions based on very casual data. Those who have high hopes that such activities as have been described in this chapter will achieve civic, political, and economic wisdom for the great mass of Westchester citizens are perhaps

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indulging in wishful thinking. In spite of the variety and diffusion of the activities described, only a small minority are reached by any of the courses, and clubs, and lectures. Nor is there any reason to believe that the popular reading of the great majority gives them much grasp of the intricacies of tariffs, currencies, and international policy. A sampling of their public lectures, and conversations with even some of the most enthusiastic believers in this form of adult education (especially for other people) do not indicate that even the club and lecture clientele will presently catch up with the problems with which democracy assumes they should be conversant. In the first place, the original content of their lectures, books, magazines, and newspapers is frequently biased and warped. Again, the dilution which popularization of an intricate subject requires frequently amounts to corruption. Finally, the conclusions which the recipient of even reliable information draws are very frequently of doubtful validity. Logical reasoning is not a process in which the masses of even so-called educated men excel. In so far as the adult education program aims at equipping the individual for political functions delegated to him by a system adapted to the New England rural township of a hundred years ago, it may be said to be in Westchester, as elsewhere, grossly inadequate. Indeed, no education could possibly equip anyone with the many types of expert knowledge and information which would be necessary for an intelligent opinion on most current affairs. The solution here lies not in attempting to evaluate complicated campaign propaganda, and in "get-out-the-vote" campaigns, but in simplifying the citizen's task to such proportions that he can reasonably be expected to perform it with some degree of competency. It may as well be recognized that public business has reached a degree of complexity where only expert professional administration should be tolerated in municipal and state, as well as in national, affairs. At present, the most profitable civic adult education is that which will convince people of their own incapacity to grasp many of the matters with which they are now

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struggling. For they would then take, with reference to these questions, the same attitude which they already take toward technical questions involving the physical sciences, namely, that it is the function of the citizen to indicate the general ends desired and to leave to experts the problems of means. Again, much individual adult education aiming at strictly vocational ends, especially as regards advancement, is perhaps doomed to disappointment. Obviously, the kind of success promised by many advertisements could in the very nature of the case, be achieved only by a few, or when every field of activity was expanding. Not everyone can be President, an Edison, or a Rockefeller, much educational propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding. Our schools may as well admit this, and even suggest that life may be worth while short of such attainments. The selection and training of all persons for the performance of some function in society is undoubtedly an obligation either of the schools or of the industry, trade, or profession concerned. There are indications that the latter are in a better position to provide much of the technical vocational training now attempted by the schools. In the first place, there is some evidence that many employers would prefer to hire people who have a broad general education rather than the vocational training given in the schools. The latter frequently does not fit the specific requirements of a particular job, and consequently a growing number of corporations prefer to train their own employees for the specific work for which they are employed. Furthermore, the rapid development of improved mechanical techniques and machinery renders much specific vocational training obsolete by the time the student gets a job. The real difficulty with vocational education is that we have failed to define the term sufficiently broadly. This point of view has never been better expressed than by a Westchester resident who writes: We think that being practical consists in spending our time at the immediate job of managing a business, earning a livelihood, making a profit. If we had a more realistic view of practicality, we would give less time to this immediate personal job and much more to understand-

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Reading

343

ing larger human affairs. It is these larger affairs, apparently not connected with our personal jobs, that throw us out of jobs entirely. . . . If we took time to understand and manage the larger affairs, personal jobs might be run with a great deal more smoothness. The modern world is like a machine with all the parts made by specialists, and not enough people who can fit them together and make the contraption work.41 For all of these reasons, adult education will probably not in the future be primarily vocational in the limited sense of that term. There remains the adult education which aims primarily at the enrichment of life through knowledge, skills, and means of self-expression. That such satisfactions exist is conceded. One of their peculiar values lies in that they do not fluctuate with the stock market, the seasons, or the years. They persist with relative stability over comparatively long periods, while empires rise and fall and economic upheavals come and go. These more permanent values appear to have been associated in every age to a high degree with certain esthetic and emotional experiences usually finding their expression in the arts. The tremendous sway of religion must be interpreted largely in these terms. The esthetic and ceremonial appeal of religious exercises, not the theological rationalizations of the priesthood, gave religion its hold upon the masses. The church was for centuries almost the only major source of artistic and esthetic experience. As in the case of any monopoly which serves very deep-seated needs, its product could command, under these circumstances, a high price. With the decay of the monopoly, many people have sought substitute satisfactions in highly unstable and ephemeral pursuits. Having devoted their lives to nothing except "getting ahead," and having staked everything in this one "faith," with the collapse of a superficial economic structure their tragedy is complete. They have no treasure whatever laid up in an integrated personality capable of readjusting itself on the basis of a more abiding system of values. These values lie in the broad underlying cultural products of the race. They have surU G.

Hambridge, Time to Live, pp. 92, 99.

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vived because of their capacity to support men psychologically through the most difficult straits of their age-long march from cave-man to contemporary. Adult education will, therefore, probably devote a greater portion of its time in the future to those subjects which minister more directly and in themselves to the enrichment of life.

C H A P T E R

Community

ELEVEN

Recognition of of Leisure

the

Problems

considerations set forth in the preceding chapters should _ ive some indication of the nature and present proportions of the problems of leisure and recreation. It should be clear that recreation is not a luxury nor merely an expression of a beautiful sentiment. It is a part of normal, healthy life. For all ages and conditions of men it is as necessary as any other activity without which mind and body suffer. The significance of the problem itself has, as a matter of fact, always been recognized. The great philosophers have all remarked upon the satisfactions of creative leisure and upon the degenerative effects of mere idleness. Modern leaders have taken the same view. "There is no problem before the world today," says Elihu Root, "more important than the training in the right use of leisure." Traditionally, the problem has been left largely in the hands of the individual himself or with private, informal, and non-official agencies. It is only comparatively recently that the question of governmental and community responsibility for this activity has arisen. LEISURE

AS

A

PUBLIC

PROBLEM

The earliest public recognition of the problem of recreation came simply as a result of the fact that children were being deprived of their playgrounds by the increasing congestion of the city. Secondly, the transition to urban civilization resulted in important institutional and sociological changes which, together with the changed physical opportunities for play, disrupted traditional leisure pursuits. These changes in turn gave rise to commercial provision for the use of leisure. Much recreation was, as we noted in the first chapter, thus removed beyond the control of family, church, and neighborhood, with resulting demands for public

346

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control. Some of the results of these changes we have indicated in the preceding chapters. The essential point in the present connection is merely to note that, as a result of the course of events during the last half century, most individuals are no longer masters of their own leisure in the sense that their forefathers were in a rural or handicraft age. Much has been written of the effect of the monotony of the modern job. It is unnecessary here to elaborate the vast difference between the conditions of work or of the differences in the recreational situation of modern urban life as compared with these of an earlier rural or handicraft age. Protection against the leisure activities of our neighbors as well as recreational opportunities and facilities for ourselves can be attained only through community action. It is this transition in the conditions of life which has made recreation a public interest of the same basic character as education and health. Recreation as a public concern is, however, a much more recent development than public education or public health. The position of recreation as an item in public budgets, as well as in governmental programs, is consequently much more uncertain and irregular than are the items of health and education. Public budgets are notoriously tradition bound. Customary provisions frequently become vested interests. New items are always regarded with suspicion merely because they are new. Underlying these facts as they affect the provision for recreation, however, is the powerful individualistic bias which pervades thought and action in the western world and perhaps especially in the United States. One of the most ancient, respectable, and widely accepted tenets of this viewpoint is the doctrine that more work (diligent individual application to one's job) is the chief, if not the only, means of individual prosperity. Sages and moralists of all ages have emphasized the virtue of hard work and its infallibility in achieving personal welfare. Song and story yield their homage to the solid merits of work, however romantically they may extol the delights of indolence, while essay and biography axiomatically acclaim work as the sure means to per-

Community

Recognition

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sonal success and social esteem. The more prosaic and academic discussions of contemporary life, in their exaltation of work as the great social panacea do but reecho the words of Carlyle who describes it as the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind. The Rotarian mind makes work co-equal if not identical with service. Nowhere has this doctrine been better summed up than in the words of that past master of pious platitudes, Calvin Coolidge: "To provide for the economic well-being of our inhabitants, only three attributes, which are not beyond the reach of the average person, are necessary—honesty, industry, thrift." 1 The reason for this glorification of work is of course not far to seek. Until the last fifty years it was the one imperious demand on nearly all adults and a large proportion of the children if famine was to be averted and survival assured. Religion adopted and espoused the doctrine which already enjoyed full social sanction and by so doing added divine support and approval to it. The substantial correctness of the doctrine under the self-sufficing type of economy which prevailed until the technological revolution, further accounts for the prestige of this belief even at present. Governmental, or other collective, interference of any kind with this good old rule and simple plan has consequently been regarded with corresponding suspicion. But in recent years it has become increasingly apparent that the principal things for which men strive are no longer to be attained by mere individual exertion. The practical absurdity of exhorting men to hard work when they do not have jobs is causing some doubt as to the validity, under modern conditions, of the time-honored doctrine. Even the idea that the unemployed could all find comfortable jobs if they would only search for them with sufficient diligence is under grave suspicion. T o anyone at all informed, of course, it is obvious that under current conditions prosperity for large classes depends not on working more, in the sense here considered, but on working less. If the farmers of the country worked only half as hard and produced only half as much, their prosperity would be greatly increased, however temporarily. 'H. P. Fairchild, "Exit The Gospel of Work," Harper's Magazine, Apr., 1931.

348

Community

Recognition

Thus it has come to pass that the proverb "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings," is true only if "business" is taken to include intelligent cooperation. This is indeed the business most neglected at present. As a result we have failed miserably to convert our remarkable technological and productive progress into elementary human satisfactions. When the full history of human stupidity is written, there will surely be no chapter to equal that which recounts unemployment, poverty, and starvation among millions in the midst of abundant natural resources and adequate means of converting them into all the satisfactions of life. The same chapter will record that while mechanical techniques had reached a remarkable perfection, the technique of social organization remained essentially as it was in the day of the hand loom, the scythe, and the oxcart. T o correspond with the mechanical inventions which have caused the present situation, we need a set of social inventions which will enable us to convert our material gains into community satisfactions. It is in this field we now need work of the kind extolled by the sages. Exactly the same need now exists for work on the practical solution of social problems as formerly existed for the production of material goods. Indeed, man is perhaps today as seriously threatened by social disasters as he ever was by physical tribulations. If the social malorganization which today prevents the masses from realizing the fruits of technology is ever to be corrected, men will have to work at these problems as seriously as they ever worked at the problems of physical production. The invention of the techniques by which we may become masters of the social world will probably in this field, as in that of physical science, be the product of experts—the results of social research extending over decades and centuries. But the adoption of these inventions as substitutes for antiquated traditional institutions will depend upon the individual's informed intelligence regarding the world in which he lives. This means work of a kind hitherto quite unfamiliar to the masses of men. Citizenship under these conditions would be more than an occasional residual interest. Diligent citizenship, rather than material production,

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Recognition

349

may become the chief job by which man, in a broad sense, makes a living.2 It may be, too, that this job will, for some time to come, absorb much of the leisure which the machine has won. Nor will a mere increase in individual purchasing power greatly facilitate the solution of the problem. An increasing number of the chief objects of human striving are to be attained, if at all, through community effort rather than through individual wealth. Wealth, health, security, beauty—name any you choose—how many of them are today to be secured by the masses of men through mere individual efforts? We have already referred to the demonstrable fact that the salvation of the farmer, or the wage earner, or the business man is not necessarily insured by producing more, but by the exercise of greater control over market relations and other aspects of the economic system which effect their interests. These are matters not of private diligence in individual jobs, but of collective, community, and public action. When we turn to questions of health, personal security, and beauty we find the individual equally helpless to secure them by his own efforts. These objectives, it is generally assumed, are at least assured to people who possess wealth. Yet it can easily be shown that under modern conditions mere individual wealth is increasingly unable to purchase these goods. Unsanitary conditions, impure food and water, polluted air, and nerve-racking noise are conditions of existence in a modern city against which private personal wealth is largely helpless. The advantages of personal wealth, not only in guarding oneself against some of the grosser impacts of these conditions, but also in avoiding their consequences through expensive medical advice, need not be denied. But in a world where the articles of a single meal may come from the ends of the earth and pass through the hands of thousands of individuals, even the wealthiest individual must rely largely upon public safeguards for the purity and safety of the food he T h i s transition is fraught with serious possibilities. The appearance of militant political groups like the "brown shirts" of Germany, springing directly from the craving of large masses of the unemployed for some constructive use of their leisure (as well as from the hope of economic improvement), is of great significance from the standpoint of what may occur when the masses begin taking citizenship seriously.

Community

35°

Recognition

consumes. The same is true of his personal safety. Wealthy individuals can, and do, engage private police to guard them. But what safety could this guarantee them in the absence of traffic regulations and other laws enforced by community police? The power of personal wealth to purchase the esthetic satisfactions of life deserves special consideration here because of the close relation of the arts to leisure. Also, it is usually assumed that in this department, at least, personal wealth is all-sufficient. Yet there is ample evidence that both the production and the enjoyment of the finest esthetic objects and activities rest upon community foundations. Individual income undoubtedly sometimes enables an artist to indulge his impulse for creative effort, but the real incentive for his effort lies in his desire for the approbation of some real or imaginary public. Personal wealth obviously enables the millionaire to collect art products and thus to enjoy the indulgence of his acquisitive and exhibitionist impulses. But esthetically he could probably enjoy them equally well in a public gallery. Would his enjoyment of a great orchestra be materially enhanced by the fact that he was the sole auditor? When we consider that even under the present distribution of wealth there are very few individuals who could afford as a private possession even the most modest of our public art galleries or symphony orchestras our dependence upon community provision for our chief esthetic enjoyment must be apparent. Such considerations have gradually given a secure place in public budgets to health and sanitation programs, to police and fire departments, and to public education. The same recognition is only beginning to be accorded to recreation, esthetics, and the provision for ennobling uses of leisure. THE

FUNCTIONS

OF

GOVERNMENT

Political history reveals a tremendous variety of functions which have at one time or another been regarded as desirable and proper objects of governmental action. It is neither necessary nor possible here to review in full the various functions which have at some time or other been regarded as proper functions of government. To

Community

Recognition

35«

do so would be to review the whole history of political science. For our present purpose it is sufficient merely to note what general principle seems from time to time to have governed the deliberate extension or discontinuance of governmental functions. It is recognized, of course, that many of these changes have not been deliberative at all, but the result of the impact of new cultures and other factors of a more or less nondeliberative or accidental nature. At any given time the functions of government are largely determined by tradition. But the fact remains that the assumption of a new function by a government is usually accompanied by a rationalization of such action in the form of statutes or court decisions tending to show that the new departure is really merely a special case of functions already conceded to be within the acknowledged sphere of government. The tremendous expansion of governmental activities in the name of the police power, for example, has been of this nature. The principle on which new governmental activities tend to be adopted is this: Whenever it appears that some vital interest of the community can better be protected and advanced through formal organized support and direction from the public authority, such an activity tends to be recognized as within the proper sphere of government. Conversely, when it appears that the government exercises functions of chiefly individual concern, these tend in the long run to be dropped from the common functions of government. The present transition from governmental control of religion seems to be of this nature. Thus, while constitutions, laws, and institutions frequently become objects of almost superstitious attitudes both as to their origin and their function, they are merely the means through which man attempts to achieve certain necessary or desirable adjustments which because of their nature cannot, under the circumstances that exist, be adequately achieved by the individual alone or by informal cooperation with his neighbors. In a rapidly changing world the functions of government may, therefore, also be expected to change rapidly. Indeed, the responsiveness of government to such changes is the best index of its vitality and capacity to serve the chief purpose for which it exists.

35«

Community

Recognition

Governments which succeed in maintaining this flexibility and adaptability to changing conditions tend to survive. Governments unresponsive to these changing demands tend to become extinct, in conformity to the law of all life. Thus, the proper sphere of governmental activity at any given time, can be defined only in terms of the social conditions which obtain at that time. Now it is true that some community needs tend to be relatively stable under nearly all times and conditions. The governmental activities designed to supply these needs therefore come to be regarded as the proper ones. Such for example is the community's need for protection against its enemies, outside and inside its borders. When transportation within a community became vital to it, the construction and management of public highways was recognized as a proper governmental function. With the discovery of the relation between sanitation and epidemic disease, public health measures became a legitimate sphere of government regulation. In the same way, we might catalogue a large number of activities which by tradition and common agreement are nearly everywhere regarded as "proper" governmental functions. The important thing is to note that they all achieved that status purely because the ends desired—security, communication, health, etc.—could not be adequately achieved by individual effort or by sporadic informal cooperation among casual groups. This, therefore, is the criterion by which the proper sphere of governmental activity has always been defined in the past. It is also the standard which must determine these activities at present and in the future. When changing conditions compel the government to undertake new functions, this departure from the customary always gives rise to the question as to whether the proposed new activity comes under the criterion stated above. Thus, public education was at first vigorously challenged (only about a century ago) as a proper governmental activity. Traditionally it was an activity belonging to the home or at most to private institutions. The right of the government to tax bachelors, for example, for the support of public schools was seriously debated. For a long time public schools were regarded as charity institutions to which no self-respecting person

Community

Recognition

353

would send his children except in the direst extremity. Today public education is the major item in the tax bill of nearly every community and private education is rapidly becoming proportionately less and less important. The right of the government, not only to expend money for public education, but to compel general attendance at public schools is today practically unchallenged. The reason for this transition has been the recognition that the community was vitally concerned in the development of a desirable type of citizens, and that this end could not be adequately served through individual or informal group effort. A similar story could be told for practically every addition to the list of "proper" governmental activities. Every advance, for example, in public health programs has come as a result of the recognition of (i) the vital concern of the community in healthy citizens and (2) the incapacity of private agencies to safeguard or serve the community in this respect. More recently there has been similar recognition of the problems of recreation. It will occur to some that the demonstrable need of community attention to the problems of leisure still does not necessarily establish the case for government action. Why should not these problems be handled by private community organizations of the type now largely supported by community chests and by other forms of public subscription? The more or less formal organization of groups for recreational purposes is one of the commonest forms of association, and certainly no one contemplates the abolition of these organizations and the substitution of governmentally controlled units. On the other hand, in so far as these organizations are, for whatever reason, serving less than the whole community on account of economic, religious, or other restrictions the propriety of their appeal to the general public for funds, whether in individual or community chest "drives," becomes extremely dubious. Either an agency is a public agency or it is not. If it serves a recognized community need and depends on general public appeals for funds, then to that extent it classifies itself as a truly public agency. Now the recognized method of controlling public agencies is through the

354

Community

Recognition

established government, and the recognized method of raising public funds is through formal taxation. Community chests and other organizations and funds of this kind can be regarded only as temporary and experimental devices supplying certain services until these functions are assumed by the regular government. They are therefore to be distinguished from the private associations maintained on a purely voluntary basis by informal groups who make no pretense at general community service. While private community agencies usually originate as experiments or as the means to supply needs not yet recognized by the government, these organizations frequently develop vested interests of their own and become obstacles to the normal and proper growth of governmental responsibility. Thus we hear of all manner of absurd argument as to the advantages of conducting the community's business through private agencies rather than the officially accredited organs of the established government. Much is made of the allegation that many desirable activities would be neglected if they should wait upon government support because of the "unresponsiveness" of government. If this accusation is true, the proper objective of community "drives" would be not to establish extra governmental agencies for the performance of public business but to make the government responsive and responsible. If the organized enthusiasm, education, and propaganda which today are expended on community chest drives were directed toward securing adequate governmental provision for community responsibilities, there is no reason to doubt that more adequate support of community agencies of every sort could be secured through governmental action than is now attained through private agencies. If these extragovernmental public agencies are superior devices for conducting public business, then let us abolish formal government and let these agencies take over the functions of police and fire protection, highway construction, education, and the rest. If not, let the functions now performed by these agencies be taken over by the government. Let private associations of any kind flourish among such special groups as find participation in them

Community

Recognition

355

worth while. If they are interested in making that participation, especially as regards financial support, community-wide, let them expend the enthusiasm of their drives in making the government of a community in fact what it is supposed to be in theory. As it is, public attention is frequently distracted from the community's duly accredited organ of adjustment, namely, the government, while the most valuable community forces are being diverted in support of extragovernmental agencies for performing public business. The present method of financing what is properly public business by community drives simply results in taxing the publicspirited and the socially sensitive for purposes which are the legitimate burden of all.* Furthermore, these psuedo-public organizations have only to be confronted by a crisis to fail utterly in the performance of their functions, because of their fundamentally illogical position. If, as we have reasoned above, recreation is a public concern, the proper agency for making public provision for it is the established and accredited organ of public business, namely, the government. THE

DEVELOPMENT

OF

PUBLIC

RECREATION

Before 1850 there was practically no public provision for public recreation. During the last half of the century there was considerable development of city, state, and national parks. But the more definite provision for playgrounds and supervised play is a development of the present century. Since 1900, however, there has been extensive and increasing recognition of the legitimacy of public taxation to provide, supervise, and stimulate public recreation and afford desirable opportunities for the use of leisure. Indeed, sporadic legislation, looking in this direction, began to appear soon after the middle of the last century. This legislation was optional, rather than mandatory, and dealt largely with legalizing the use of school houses for extra-curricular activities, and allowing the use of public money for such purposes. As was to be expected, it was the larger municipalities which were first forced to make 'J. L. Gillin, "Gifts to Charity, Religion, and Education Compared with Income in Two Wisconsin Counties." Social Forces, X (Mar., 1932), 364-70.

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Community

Recognition

public provision for recreation and leisure both for children and adults. The first vacation school in the United States was started in Newark, N. J., in 1899. The Newark Educational Association, a women's organization, secured permission from the Board of Education to establish playgrounds in school yards. The playgrounds were operated at the association's expense for six weeks during July and August. In 1902, the Board of Education took over the work.4 In New York City eight schools were opened in 1901 through the efforts of private citizens who furnished the necessary funds to provide evening recreation. During 1902-3 there were registered in the evening and vacation schools almost one-fourth as many students as in the day schools.5 We see then, that while play and recreation is as old as the race, the conditions which have made it a public problem are comparatively recent. Between 1899 and 1906 only twenty cities made provision for recreation.4 The founding of the Playground and Recreation Association of America in 1906 marks the beginning of nation-wide attention to the problem. Since that time a rapid extension of the work has taken place. By 1910 fifty-five cities had provided for recreation through public playgrounds, park recreation houses and schools. In the meantime, university extension departments and the community center movement greatly extended the facilities for recreation, not only in cities, but also in smaller towns and rural areas. In 1932 the 917 cities reporting to the Playground and Recreation Association as having supervised recreation programs spent $36,078,585.37.7 Approximately 90 percent of this total was derived from taxation. The leading county-wide organization (the Park Commission of Westchester County, New York) spent during its first ten years approximately seventy-three million dollars. Federal and state governments have not, of course, spent proportionately, but if we consider the value of gifts by individuals and organizations for state and Federal 4E.

T. Glueck, The Qmmumity Ust of Schools, p. 16. 'Ibid., p. 17. 'Ibid., p. 18. 'Monthly Labor Review, X X X I V (June, 1932), 1369.

L7% CHART 5.

HOW THE AMERICAN RECREATION WAS SPENT,

DOLLAR

I929

Source—The Business Week, July 13, 1932. (Reproduced by permission.)

Community

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Recognition

•4.000 3,000 -l I - I C O

Tf r— cd **

m to q_ •