l as in the factory towns labor
is performed by machinery. This means that through the working hours of
the day, from eight to twelve in number, the attention of the worker
must be concentrated upon one task, patiently and steadfastly pursued.
The machine worker exerts himself in the control of great powers, horse
power or steam power, committed to his charge. He has no opportunity for
languor or rest. He has no choice. His job drives him. His movements are
fixed and regulated by the nature of the machine with which he is
working, and of the task to be accomplished. At the end of the day he
has acted involuntarily and mechanically until his own powers of will
and choice are accumulated. Being repressed through long hours of
prescribed labor he is ready for a rebound. His nature demands
self-expression. This self-expression takes the form of play.

The recreation which results is organized. The laborer in a factory or
on a railroad is conscious of organization by the very nature of his
work. He labors with a machine driven by powers unseen but of whose
operation he is aware, in a great plant wherein his own labor is
co-ordinated with that of other workers like unto himself. The hours of
self-devotion and prescribed attention leave him free for sympathy with
the other workers, whose action and whose toil are organized with his
own, and on whose skill and devotion his life and limb and the
continuance of his job are dependent. When he turns to recreation he
naturally seeks to continue the silent communion with his
fellow-workers. The repressed personal energies are already prepared
for team work. He comes out of the factory bubbling over with good
fellowship and seeking for comradeship in the self-expression which the
long hours of the day have denied him.

The result is that in every factory town the open spaces are devoted to
playground uses. Vacant lots, unoccupied fields, and the open street are
used by men and boys for their games.

Exactly the same experience results from school and college organization
of education work. The student in the common schools does not choose his
course; it is prescribed for him by his family and by society. He does
not go to school because he is mentally ambitious, but because the
standards of universal education require it of him. Especially in the
colleges which inherit a great name and attract young men and women for
social advantage, the students are characterized by an involuntary