esent enroll
thousands of young people. These same parks are provided with
beautiful halls which are used for many purposes, rent free, and are
given over to any group of young people who wish to conduct dancing
parties subject to city supervision and chaperonage. Many social clubs
have deserted neighboring saloon halls for these municipal drawing
rooms beautifully decorated with growing plants supplied by the park
greenhouses, and flooded with electric lights supplied by the park
power house. In the saloon halls the young people were obliged to
"pass money freely over the bar," and in order to make the most of the
occasion they usually stayed until morning. At such times the economic
necessity itself would override the counsels of the more temperate,
and the thrifty door keeper would not insist upon invitations but
would take in any one who had the "price of a ticket." The free rent
in the park hall, the good food in the park restaurant, supplied at
cost, have made three parties closing at eleven o'clock no more
expensive than one party breaking up at daylight, too often in
disorder.

Is not this an argument that the drinking, the late hours, the lack of
decorum, are directly traceable to the commercial enterprise which
ministers to pleasure in order to drag it into excess because excess
is more profitable? To thus commercialize pleasure is as monstrous as
it is to commercialize art. It is intolerable that the city does not
take over this function of making provision for pleasure, as wise
communities in Sweden and South Carolina have taken the sale of
alcohol out of the hands of enterprising publicans.

We are only beginning to understand what might be done through the
festival, the street procession, the band of marching musicians,
orchestral music in public squares or parks, with the magic power they
all possess to formulate the sense of companionship and solidarity.
The experiments which are being made in public schools to celebrate
the national holidays, the changing seasons, the birthdays of heroes,
the planting of trees, are slowly developing little ceremonials which
may in time work out into pageants of genuine beauty and significance.
No other nation has so unparalleled an opportunity to do this through
its schools as we have, for no other nation has so wide-spreading a
school system, while the enthusiasm of children and their natural
ability to express their emotions through symbols, gives the securest
poss