playgrounds, its athletic fields, boating and swimming centers and
recreation buildings, the street will always have to be reckoned with as
the one great all-engulfing factor in the use of the leisure time of the
people.

Surely the possibilities for good or evil are infinite when the spirit of
youth and age play free, willingly receiving impressions on every hand.
Unfortunately, in the majority of cases the ministry in this field of
infinite character-building possibilities has fallen into the hands of men
who for the most part reckon its possibilities only in terms of the
nickels, dimes, and dollars that pass over the bar or counter or through
the box office. Many of them conceive low opinions of the recreation
desires of the people, furnishing the lurid, the _risque_, the bold, the
daring forms of entertainment, or coupling it with other lines of
business, as in the case of the saloon, with unfortunate social results.

Can the city afford the commercial exploitations of so much of this
valuable time? The answer must be that it can afford it only when the
ideals of the men conducting these various forms of amusement are as high
as the best that the community would demand if managing similar
institutions. The saloon proprietor is not interested primarily in the
physical and moral welfare of his patrons or in the general social welfare
of the city. He provides various forms of recreation to increase the
patronage of the bar; it is an unwritten law that those who avail
themselves of the card-tables, of the pool- and billiard-tables, the
moving-picture shows in the saloons, and who hear the music, must
patronize the bar. Thirty-six per cent of the pool and billiard licenses
are held by men holding saloon licenses, and in all the large pool- and
billiard-halls, especially in the center of the city, not connected
directly with saloons, liquor is served upon the demand of the patrons.
The evil of the situation is significant when it is remembered that the
larger percentage of the patrons of those places are men under twenty-five
years of age. Profanity is common, and usually gambling is permitted.
Often these pool- and billiard-parlors are the "hang-outs" of vicious,
depraved young men who live upon the earnings of unfortunate women. This
use of the leisure time of men is physically, morally, and socially
dangerous and should not be permitted.

The public skating-rink is fairly free from objectionable features, but
boys a