13. Control of Housing.—At the beginning of this article it was pointed out that the very recognition of the necessity for the incorpora tion of a city is pregnant with the idea that unrestricted individualism must give way to social control invading what many regard as the sacred domains of personal liberty and indi vidual property rights. Perhaps there is no branch of municipal activity that illustrates this tendency so well as the control which comes to be more and more necessary as cities grow, over the character of the houses built for the people to live in. This control is embodied first in the building code; then in the tenement house law ; then in the adoption of districting plans and limitations upon the height of build ings. The exercise of this control brings the city government, representing the public inter est, into direct conflict with the most powerful individual motives. The passionate greed that seems to be developed most readily in the soul of the landlord class where the growth of a community is pouring riches into its lap, op poses with almost fanatical persistence the re strictions upon housing which are absolutely necessary to provide for every living apart ment enough sunshine and fresh air, with safety from fire and disease and sufficient space for the children to play in.
14. Under whatever conditions people may live, their children in a democratic country have to be educated. The ((little red schoolhouse') is one of the traditional symbols of the freedom and intelligence of America when it was a predominantly rural nation. Nevertheless, the characteristics of urban life are such as to place upon the public school system an infinitely greater burden than it has to bear in the country. With the curtailment of the opportunities for both work and play in and about the home, the functions of the public school system multiply. It is no longer suffi cient for the school to teach the three R's, leav ing the children to get all of their education other than book learning from other sources, but in addition to a much more complicated book learning t:ian that deemed necessary in the little red schoolhouse of the past, the mod ern city school has to take care of the health of the children, to give them physical training, to control and direct their play and to teach them how to work. The school even has to assume the burden of teaching the girls how to sew and to cook and the boys how to drive nails and saw wood. Under the conditions of American city life, other educational functions are thrust upon the public schools by reason of the presence in the community of large num bers of foreign-born adults who need to be taught the English language. This involves the establishment of evening schools. Moreover, the absence of opportunity for the wholesome employment of children during the vacation periods leads to the establishment of school gardens and summer schools. Cities also have
to provide great libraries with local branches and elaborate organization for the stimulation and direction of the reading tastes of the chil dren and the young people. This multiplicity of activities comprised under the general term education places upon municipal government one of its heaviest financial burdens. The schools are always calling for more money and the importance of education, which may be termed the process of reproducing citizenship, assumes constantly a greater and greater place in the public mind. In fact, the school system in a great city becomes so overwhelmingly im portant through the accumulation of the subtle influences which the conditions of city life bring to bear upon children that it is hard to give adequate expression to the significance of this function.
15. For children recreation is a necessary part of education and the play grounds that become necessary under city con ditions are often connected with the public schools. But the alchemy of congestion has such a strange and far-reaching effect upon hu man beings that it becomes necessary for the community a3 a whole to provide and regulate in large measure even the amusements of the adult population. All cities provide public parks; many provide open air concerts; many maintain public baths and bathing beaches; some maintain athletic fields and recreation centres, provide public auditoriums and operate municipal theatres. Museums, zoological and botanical gardens, aquariums and art galleries are frequently maintained at the expense of the municipality. City life is characteristically gay. The hours of labor are relatively short and the amount of available leisure relatively great. It is a common adage that ((the Devil finds mischief for idle hands to do?) and every urban community organized as a municipal corpora tion finds that it cannot afford to ignore the Devil's activities. Thus more and more the problem of the control of leisure presses in upon the great city for solution. The recent stupendous development of the °movies') as a means of recreation in cities and the obvious need for some community control over the char acter of the films exhibited, have led some ad vanced thinkers to propose the municipalization of recreation as the next most important step in the development of municipal functions. The advocates of this program maintain that recre ation is a necessity of life for urban populations and that it should be provided as a community function and thus be removed from the realm of private greed and exploitation. Foremost among the specific measures proposed by this group of reformers is the intensive use of the public schoolhouses as meeting places and com munity centres.