Those which administer to the play and recreation life of their members most efficiently are strongest.  The dances, card parties, lectures, entertainments, and other social activities conducted by such groups are usually under the best kind of social control, far better than any type of commercial amusement and perhaps better than most public-supervised amusements.  The strength is in the comparative smallness of the group, the personal acquaintance of the members, the presence of older people with the young, and the existence of individual and group responsibility and ideals.  Far better social control would result if all public dances and public skating-rinks and excursions were conducted on this group or society basis.

One field of neglected social activity is the home as a recreation and social center.  The day of the “party” seems to be past.  Parents have thus lost one strong hold on the character development of their children.  Thousands of parents in the modern city have lost the social spirit of the home because of crowded living conditions, but there are also thousands, especially in the Western cities, who still have individual homes; every such home should be the primary social and recreation center for adolescent boys and girls.  The revival of the small group social in the home for the young people would be a constructive contribution to some of the moral problems of the young.

In the leisure-time activities of children, the Sunday supplement or “funny sheet” of the newspaper is of importance.  The funny sheet appeals not so much through humor as through glaring color and grotesque pictures which violate every canon of color combination and of art.  Exaggerated types of mischievous children and freakish adults, and equally freakish and unthinkable mechanical devices, are favorite subjects.  Disobedience of children, premature and unnatural childish love-affairs, domestic infelicity, the privileges and advantages of bachelorhood are paraded Sunday after Sunday before the susceptible minds of millions of children.

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Multitudinous as are the private agencies administering to the leisure-time activities of all the people, neither the commercial amusements nor the numerous spontaneous private organizations answer all the requirements of social and recreative needs of the people.  On the one hand, commercial amusements, while used and enjoyed by masses of the people, have been objects of danger and distrust because of their anti-social effects.  On the other hand, the private society, club, order, and organization are essentially narrow, and formed with other purposes and ideals in view than ministering to the social and recreative needs and desires of the people.  The providing of ample facilities for the fullest and most wholesome use of the leisure time of the people is a community responsibility, just as important to the public welfare as a system of public education.