156 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

adolescence are so vile. " These cities," said
Jane Addams, in course of a conversation I
had with her one day in Chicago, " are great
mills for the destruction of children," According
to the statistics of the National Recreation
Association only two out of every five of the
children in the great cities " have a chance to
play." I vividly recall a group of forty or fifty
whom I saw one day grubbing about in a heap
of rubbish in the " band box " district of Phila-
delphia, one of the worst slums to be found
anywhere on the face of the earth. More miser-
able and wicked-looking children it would be
impossible to imagine: it is a nightmare to
remember them. And again in a New Orleans
paper I found a statement by a medical authority
that 74 per cent of the children attending the
public schools of the city were physically defective.
Public playgrounds admirably laid out and
organized are to be found, but in the greater
cities they are inadequate, and often too far
away for the swarms of children that need them.
Multitudes play in the streets, some of which,
in many cities, are closed to through traffic for the
purpose on Sundays and at certain hours on other
days.

Among cities with ah ample provision of super-
vised children's playgrounds—and there are many
such—Springfield, Massachusetts, is noteworthy.
One of the finest of these playgrounds'—one of
the lest I have ever seen—was the gift to the