Side swarmed
over it with shrieks of delight, and carried the mayor and the city
government, who had come to see the show, fairly off their feet. And now
that pier has more than seven comrades--great, handsome structures,
seven hundred feet long, some of them, with music every night for mother
and the babies, and for papa, who can smoke his pipe there in peace. The
moon shines upon the quiet river, and the steamers go by with their
lights. The street is far away with its noise. The young people go
sparking in all honor, as it is their right to do. The councilman who
spoke of "pernicious influences" lying in wait for them there made the
mistake of his life, unless he has made up his mind to go out of
politics. That is just a question of effective superintendence, as is
true of model tenements, and everything else in this world. You have got
to keep the devil out of everything, yourself included. He will get in
if he can, as he got into the Garden of Eden. The play piers have taken
a hold of the people which no crabbed old bachelor can loosen with
trumped-up charges. Their civilizing influence upon the children is
already felt in a reported demand for more soap in the neighborhood
where they are, and even the grocer smiles approval.

The play pier is the kindergarten in the educational campaign against
the gang. It gives the little ones a chance. Often enough it is a chance
for life. The street as a playground is a heavy contributor to the
undertaker's bank account in more than one way. Distinguished doctors
said at the tuberculosis congress this spring that it is to blame with
its dust for sowing the seeds of that fatal disease in the
half-developed bodies. I kept the police slips of a single day in May
two years ago, when four little ones were killed and three crushed under
the wheels of trucks in tenement streets. That was unusual, but no day
has passed in my recollection that has not had its record of accidents,
which bring grief as deep and lasting to the humblest home as if it were
the pet of some mansion on Fifth Avenue that was slain. In the Hudson
Guild on the West Side they have the reports of ten children that were
killed in the street immediately around there. The kindergarten teaching
has borne fruit. Private initiative set the pace, but the playground
idea has at last been engrafted upon the municipal plan. The Outdoor
Recreation League was organized by public-spirited citizens, including
many amateur athlet