MILWAUKEE RECREATION SYSTEM

Dorothy Enderis, Assistant to the Superintendent, Milwaukee Public Schools

The main part of my story has been put into your hands. I am sure you will appreciate having some of the convention speeches put into your pockets, thus to be read on the train going home.

Each fall about 100,000 dodgers announcing the winter activities of the Extension Department of the Milwaukee Public Schools are distributed in the schools and factories. Fifty thousand of the vacation announcements went to the children the last week of school. The small folders are copies of annual reports issued by two of our social centers at the close of the past season. We plan to open three more schools as social centers next September. That the patrons of these schools may know the possibilities of the wider use of their schoolhouse, we are going to distribute throughout the neighborhood of each of these schools four thousand reprints of the reports you hold in your hands. The challenge on the back page has been added to suit each school.

This literature tells you nothing new. As far as a program of activities is concerned, "social centers is social centers." The activities of most of them are much the same. The methods of administration and conduct, however, may vary. Often when speaking about our social center activities we are questioned with awe and wonder, "And you do all these things in the schoolhouse? How did you get in?" And then follows greater amazement of some who once upon a time have been in, "How did you stay in ?"

Possibly the most vital message we can contribute is a brief account of how the Milwaukee system was made possible. "How did we get into the schoolhouse?" It was really not a case of getting in-there was an opening of the door from the inside. How was this accomplished? Through state legislation—a very far-sighted piece of community legislation enacted in 1910.

Briefly, the law provides this: If a city of the first, second, or third class desires to take up the question of municipal recreation, it may put the question before its voters at any general election. If the vote results in favor of the issue, the school board of the community may ask the common council to levy a special tax, not to exceed four mills, on all taxable property, said fund to be used to establish and maintain for children and adults in school buildings and school grounds, evening schools, vacation schools, social centers, playgrounds, and similar activities. The law further provides that this fund shall be administered by the board of school directors as are other school funds, but is to be used only for activities stipulated by the law. The school board is further empowered to conduct recreational activities in co-operation with other municipal commissions or boards, said boards or commissions furnishing the equipment, the school board the instruction and supervision. On the strength of this phase of the law we are conducting playgrounds, amateur athletic contests, and games in the parks.

You who have followed the "off again, on again, gone again" history of social centers, evening schools, and playgrounds in many of our cities will recognize financial stability as one of the most apparent values of this law. The law settles the question of funds once and for always. If it has been the privilege of the Milwaukee School Board to do a rather intensive piece of social center work, it has been due largely to the fact that we have known from year to year upon what funds to plan.

The law establishes the schoolhouse as a community center. You will hear expressions of doubt regarding the feasibility of this wider use of the school plant. Nine years of experience convinces us beyond doubt that the schoolhouse is the ideal community center. The schoolhouse is geographically the central point of the community. Why not make it the focal point of the social and civic activities of the community? Children are enthusiastic advertisers. The school social center has at its command hundreds of boosters to carry its messages out into the community. Of course, you hear the complaint that adults will abuse the building. This misgiving is grossly magnified. If this be true, is it not a challenge-a problem in civic education? How will these people learn to respect public property if they are never given an opportunity to use it?

You may ask, “Are schoolhouses suited architecturally?" There will need to be changes in future schoolhouse architecture to make our buildings of greater allround use. However, we have succeeded with comparatively little expense in remodeling some of our oldest schoolhouses to meet all the demands of our social center activities. Should any of you be interested in our schemes of remaking our buildings to suit social center needs, I will be very happy to point out some of them on the Extension Department pictures exhibited on the second floor of the Auditorium, or take you to the buildings.

After all is said pro and con regarding schoolhouse social centers, comes the great economic question: Is a community justified in spending funds to erect special community center buildings when it already has millions of dollars invested in buildings and equipment with which to meet the need?

The law places the responsibility for organization and conduct upon the school board. Analyze the list of social center activities, and you will find that most of them are semi-educational in nature and can therefore be fostered best by a board thinking and working along educational lines.

Many of the unpleasant experiences which marred the wider use of school plants in different cities were due to the fact that the evening activities were conducted by outside organizations who naturally were regarded as strangers within the gates. It stands to reason that the evening activities will be accepted with greater tolerance by the day-school corps if conducted by their own board. It is this fact which I had in mind when saying that the doors of our schoolhouses were opened from within. May I repeat that the progress of the recreation program in Milwaukee can be attributed largely to our state law, which assures a definite annual appropriation by taxation, establishes schoolhouses as community centers, and places the administration of the same into the hands of the school board.

Our appropriation for this year is $258,500. The department is conducting eight social centers, two part-time centers, seven evening schools for foreigners, three evening high schools, English classes in four tanneries and two settlements, twelve playgrounds, four elementary summer schools, one summer high school, and a department of amateur games and athletics. The latter work is one of the most far-reaching contributions we are making to the recreational life of our community. It is a story all by itself; the mimeographed sheet will give you a brief summary of it. This season we have a soccer league of eight teams, ten different baseball leagues with a total membership of 252 teams, every player in them registered in our office, and all but the 95 teams of the Saturday Public School League having paid a franchise fee. The advertising matter will tell you what we are doing. I have tried to tell you what makes it possible for the Milwaukee School Board to support these activities;

to tell how we conduct them would prolong this meeting into a watch night. That part of the story I think would best be handled in an aftermeeting. I shall be very glad to answer questions of any who are interested in the details of organization and administration.

THE LIBRARY'S RELATION TO NEIGHBORHOOD AND

COMMUNITY WORK

Delia G. Ovitz, Librarian, State Normal School, Milwaukee

In considering this subject with you in the ten minutes at my disposal I shall neither generalize nor theorize but shall try to give you the results of my own experience.

The term social work has come to be the accepted designation for a large group of specialized activities in the field of social betterment in neighborhood and community. Social work may be regarded as almost identical with the promotion of common welfare, and the social worker, as I understand the term, is the individual of any occupation or profession whose life is actuated by a definite purpose. Dr. Devine's Spirit of Social Work is dedicated "to social workers, that is to say, to every man and woman, who, in any relation of life, professional, industrial, political, educational or domestic; whether on a salary or as a volunteer; whether on his own individual account or as a part of an organized movement, is working consciously, according to his light intelligently, and according to his strength persistently, for the promotion of the common welfare-the common welfare as distinct from that of a party or a class or a sect or a business or a particular institution or a family or an individual." With this broad conception of the social worker in mind, you will, I feel sure, agree with me that the library is essentially one of the social agencies of the community, and should be in active co-operation with every form of social work carried on in the community. In fact all forms of social work will be greatly handicapped if the public library is largely a liability rather than an asset in the community.

It might be well for us to pause before discussing how we may co-operate and take a backward look over the road we have traveled. Libraries have existed for centuries. Formerly it was only the clergy who knew how to use these great collections of books. Even after the invention of printing the books remained chained to their shelves. Until within a few decades the librarian's creed seemed to be: Select the best books, list them elaborately and expensively, and save them forever. We are all familiar with the story of the Harvard librarian who, when his friend inquired how he fared, said, "Very well. I have all my books on the shelves but one, and I am now on my way to Professor A's to get that." Today we are concerned not so much with keeping books on the library shelves as with getting them out-not only in getting books out but in collecting and making available the vast flood of pamphlet material. For if the library does not make all material accessible it will fail in what is a library's chief function, that of adding to a community's efficiency by keeping it informed on whatever of importance may be doing in the world.

The library of today, then, "collects, sifts, preserves, classifies, and makes available the world of print." I will go a step farther and say that the library should be an information bureau and a directory not only of written information but of unwritten information as well. In short, every citizen should turn to the library for ideas and help in work and play. Our library ideals have risen, our horizon has broadened, and

our work has increased both in extent and in depth. The librarian of one hundred years ago, yes, even of fifty years ago, would not feel at home in an up-to-date library of today.

How does the up-to-date library co-operate with the social workers in neighborhood and community? Let me say at the beginning, I do not propose to discuss the library as a social center. Literally scores of articles have been written on this subject during the past ten years. I shall confine my remarks to a discussion of the relation of the library to the social workers. First, there is the obvious service of making available books and periodicals which the social worker needs to consult. The foundation of such service, of course, is the possession by the library of as complete a collection of relevant material as possible. In making such a collection the social workers of the community should be consulted. There are sure to be local interests for the social worker which should determine to some extent what books, pamphlets, reports, and periodicals would be most useful. This would vary in different communities, and the selection made by the library in one city would not necessarily be an entirely satisfactory guide for a library in another. The library should keep available: The Survey, The Family, Social Hygiene, the Social Service Review, American Child, Child Welfare, Red Cross Bulletin; should become a member of perhaps a halfdozen national organizations which have to do with big problems-organizations such as the National Conference of Social Work, the National Child Labor Committee, the National Housing Association, and the Playground and Recreation Association of America, and should secure annual reports of state conferences of charities and correction, annual reports and bulletins of state boards of charity and welfare, etc. These and others are the tools of the social worker's trade. They are as necessary as a telephone and typewriter.

People engaged in social work have, for the most part, big demands made upon their time. They do not work on a definite hourly or daily schedule, and their reading frequently is one of the things which is sacrificed. A very important service that the library can perform is to call their attention to publications and articles which bear directly on the work they are doing. This takes but a very few minutes of the librarian's time each morning as she is checking over the new material, and it will serve to stimulate professional interest in the workers. Not one of us can continue our growth intellectually except by coming into contact with new material, new information, new ideas. This is the library's business, to make the proper contact between the library and the public. The library is the continuation school for each one of us individually; it is the university for all adults.

The library should also furnish short concise book reviews. These may either be mimeographed and distributed or be printed in the local papers. As a rule the local press is glad to publish notices of such books, especially if their relation to current social questions is attractively presented in the notices.

One of the great needs in social work at present is a better understanding, on the part of the general public, of the agencies in existence and of the work they are doing. One of the big things for the library in this connection is to do educational work with the public and stimulate all people to do some reading along social lines. This can be done through bibliographies, posters, and exhibits. The exhibit in its simplest form may be very effective in stimulating interest in work of this kind. If local resources have not been developed an exhibit of what is being done in other communities of corresponding size is sometimes effective in arousing interest. The Depart

ments of Surveys and Exhibits of the Russell Sage Foundation can be very helpful in this direction. Right here let us pause to pay tribute to Mr. Jenkins and his staff for that most helpful tool for librarians and social workers published by the Russell Sage Foundation. I refer to Social Workers' Guide to the Serial Publications of Representative Social Agencies, a checklist of the publications of 4,000 institutions and organizations arranged alphabetically and by subject. We wonder how we have managed to do without this tool for so long.

The library should know the organizations of the town or city-the police department, the fire department, department of health, the charitable organizations, and any and all institutions which are for the purpose of human betterment-know what they are doing and find out by personal interview how the library may be of more service to them and more service directly to the neighborhood.

The library should have on file bulletins concerning pending legislation, state and federal, which would be of interest to social workers; know what other towns or cities of approximately the same size are doing and pass the information on to the social worker. There is nothing that furnishes a greater incentive for work than to know that your town is being surpassed by another in a particular field of work. If there is any special survey being undertaken in the community, or if some problem is engaging a particular amount of attention, the library should collect from its shelves and other available places material bearing upon such topics and should notify the general public as well as the social workers that it is available.

The librarian has an opportunity to meet young people who are interested in a general way in matters pertaining to community service and to acquaint them with the possibilities for definite training for social work and the field which is open to professional social workers. There should be on file in the library bulletins from all the schools of social work and from the universities which have added a department of social work.

So far I have spoken only of the informational side of the library. There is the inspirational side which we must not forget. Social workers, probably more than workers in any other professions, come in contact with the sordid and seamy side of life and in hours of relaxation need to be lifted out of this state of mind. Too often we forget:

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.

Is it biography, travel, poetry, the essay, drama, fiction, or books on the great out-ofdoors you favor? Each and all may be had for the asking. You have but to step upon the magic carpet to be carried to all the world there is and some there never was. You will come back from these excursions stimulated and refreshed and better able to "carry on."

Above all the library must be a human organization, interested in the human side of librarianship, and anxious to take its place in the community. If the library staff has not this spirit, no amount of money spent on equipment will ever make it a living factor in the lives of the community. For the secret of creating interest is to be found in being interested. It is the personal equation of the whole library staff that makes the books a living force, or not, in a community. Our libraries must reach out and give wider service. They must co-operate in all new fields of work. There is no such thing as standing still. The instant the forward movement ceases, death begins, Working together we can create conditions that make human progress inevitable.