All forms of leisure-time consumption are offshoots of the one great common meeting-place of all the people, the street.  The street is more than an avenue for traffic.  It is the social meeting-place of many of the inhabitants.  It is the playground of nearly all the children.  Its glitter and glare, its lights and shadows and care-free spirit, attract boys and girls.  They come as moths flutter about the candle flame and often with equally disastrous results.  The call of the street is irresistible.  It is the simplest, most convenient avenue for the satisfaction of that hunger for pleasure, excitement, amusement, and recreation, common to all ages, all races, and both sexes.  It is the avenue for the spontaneous outpouring of the spirit of democracy.  No matter how thickly the city may scatter its 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.