The work of securing playground, for the children is not confined to the few large cities mentioned. According to Baker. Municipal icar Book (New York. 1002). 1ST cities and in the United :states reported utlr1iirip.il play in Of the-c, .51 were in Nev. Eng land, 39 in the Aliddle Atlantic :statt . 11 in the Atlantic, 13 in it nth ( entral, 11 in the North I. entral, 11, in the Noll. 1»esiern, 9 11 the `southwestern, and 7 in the Paei re "-tat, s. Aeuording to t•ie same authorit3 747 eiths and to))ns the United 'states deported the posy s• 'ion of municipal Rtil ?N r f, nu of op. n-air enjoyment has be II provided by .11 eri can cities in tic form I rf Crtaii.i/1 •••• are simply seeond stories to the ordinary sl tl ping piers, fitted up with cam•p? roof-. I In ,1 • • pen day and evening: n tisk is at rt r twin hour, and danchn! en;oyed.
With the advent of the trolley and the hi eyrie, the of cities hate I•ecom• 1 r r • aecessible to the s1.1 that parks r mny miles distant may be reached in a short time and for a trilling -min. Many of t e trolley companies have thcm-eit.•_ taken a 1% :Ai Inge of this tart and lent lithd up purls. on their lines for the sake of tl e tra he w •1iv1t they attract. At the close of the last reniury. tin de scription of more than one bun lred such could be found iu recent minThers of the street railway journals. The n over • mt for park sys tem, on an extensive scale is progressing in the United States, and two such systems are being developed at public expense with consider able success, One in the region about Bos ton. and the other in Essex County. N. .1. At
the beginning of 1902 the Metropolitan Park System for Boston and vicinity included 9243 acres of parks and 23.6 miles of parkways, and an immense ocean-bathing establishment. Be sides this large area in p:u•ks and public reserva tion, the city of Boston alone had 23S9 acres in parks playgrounds, and hundreds of acres of parks were owned by the other cities and towns in the park district. In 1902 the Essex County Park System included 354S acres of land, with a comparatively short length of parkways built, but ninny miles projected. Much of this land lies along the ridge of the Orange Mountain, commamling a view of New York City and Harbor and the intervening coun try. A feature of these two park systems is the providing of large reservations, to be left as nearly as possible in their natural state.
The preceding table gives the population, area devoted to parks, and the percentage of the total area which is in parks, for the 50 largest cities in America. The table was compiled from the Bulletin of the United States Department of Labor for September. 1900, and the column of percentages has been added. It will be seen that Columbus. Ohio. has the largest percentage of its area devoted to parks. It must he remem bered, however. that two factors enter into this proportion, and that where a city has a great area in proportion to its population, like Saint Paul, the need for public parks is not so great as in a densely crowded city like Jersey City. The latter city. crowded as it is, is one of the most poorly provided with parks of the cities of the United States.