Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
Page 410
| Superintendent Snyder, who knows. Isn’t enough to make a man believe the millennium has come, to find that there is at last some one who knows? Not necessarily all at once. |
| In a copy of Charities which just now came in (did I not say that it goes that way all the time?) I read that the Chicago Small Parks Commission has recommended nine neighborhood parks at a cost of a million dollars,—wise City of the Winds! we waited till we had to pay a million for each park,—but that the playgrounds had been left to the Board of Education, which body was “not certain whether school funds may be spent for playgrounds apart from buildings.” However, they are going to provide seventy-five school yards big enough to romp in, and the other trouble will be got over. In Boston they are planning neighborhood entertainment as a proper function of the school. Here we shall find for both school and settlement their proper places with one swoop. The kindergarten, manual training, and the cooking school, all experiments in their day, cried out as fads by some, have brought common sense in their train. When it rules the public school in our cities—I said it before—we can put off our armor; the battle with the slum will be over. |