SOCIAL CENTRES. The term social centres is specifically applied to the special in stitutions which have quite recently developed this country, but in a broader sense com prises also the wider use for social purposes of existing institutions, such as the school and Church.
The movement in either of these forms rep resents a new and important step in the institu tional life of the United States and one of great significance for the future. It is wide spread and powerful in scope, being active in not only the greater cities and the open coun try, where the need for such is more specially apparent, but is gaining strength in the towns and villages. In general, it expresses and em bodies the growth of neighborhood or com munity feeling and furnishes a common focus for the activities which result. The need for such is well-nigh universal and urgent. Already strictly private and commercial enterprises and interests has sought to pre-empt this social field The function is too vital for such to be allowed. The social centre must be public and affiliated with the deepest and soundest interests of our common social life.
The need for such is apparent when it is seen that American life presents a multitude of social centres for the greatest variety of social activities, religious sects, fraternities, clubs and associations of all kinds. Both the activities and the meeting places are multitudinous. The variety of such is one of the most characteristic features of American life. But they tend to disintegrate the neighborhood and the com munity rather than to draw it together, and only to further enhance the already over-de veloped individualism which lies at the base of so many of our problems of social and civic life.
This general condition is, of course, the result of the eclectic composition of our people, gath ered from all the peoples of the earth, of all religions and languages, traditions and habit. Not only so, but the expansion and numerical growth of our population, ever spreading into new country and building new communities and neighborhoods, with ever coming and going people, has promoted a strong individualism. The break-up of neighborhoods and families, the difficulty of common feeling and interest, alike in the city and open country, has been great. The result has been an astonishing variety of social institutions, which have often tended to further increase, or at least to main tain in existence, separative forces.
The early rise and greatly growing number and form of the fraternal organizations in the United States is one evidence of such a condi tion and the need for social linkages. These
have now attained a membership of more than 16,000,000 adults, mainly men, thus comprising a very large proportion of our adult male popu lation. They include every variety of type and purpose, and the more important of them are practically universal. Their lodges and halls are local social centres of great importance and usefulness.
To these should be added the college fra ternities and the vast number of miscellaneous social fraternities and clubs, with somewhat similar purpose. These latter do not maintain separate quarters, but, therefore, only the more increase the demand for social centres. All such, including the specific fraternal societies, are distinctly social in purpose and exist for the benefit that comes from fraternity in an individualistic and separatistic society.
From an early date the public school has seemed to many to be the most vital embodi ment of the common life of our people. The beginnings of the movement for specific social centres has been closely associated with its peculiar nature and possibilities as such. There are some 280,000 public school buildings (3,000 additional ones each year) and some 12,000 high schools. They are thus practically uni versal, being located at most a few miles, and nearly always not more than as many blocks, from every American home in the land. They are the first public structures erected in new conununitics and neighborhoods, and are more and more liable to be the best building in the community. They are essentially public, sup ported by public taxation to the amount of nearly $750,000,000 per year. They are the daily gathering centre for nearly 20,000,000 children — eall the children of all the people"— of from 5 to 18 years of age. The private school has had only a slight development as yet under our conditions. Much that is best in the common feeling and interest of every American county or neighborhood is embodied in the school and educational policy. There are difficulties, indeed, in the way of making the school into the social centre, but it has always been, and is every day much more, serving as a social centre. The tradition of its wider use is strong, for in the early days in the new com munities it served as church, meeting-house, polling-booth, as well as school and many other social purposes for which with the time special buildings have come into existence.