MEANING OF RECREATION

As children grow older, an increasing part of their time must be given to work—­school work, tasks at home, remunerative employment outside of the home.  After leaving school and throughout adult life, work absorbs the major part of one’s time and attention.  But even then, “all work and no play” will continue to “make Jack a dull boy.”  We now call play “recreation,” for by it body and mind and spirit are refreshed, renewed, re-created, after close application to work.  That is why school work is broken by “recesses.”  Recreation is necessary as a means of providing for physical, mental, and social wants; for the pleasure that it affords.  But it is also important in its relation to work, for without it body and mind become “fagged,” people grow “stale” at their work, producing power and power of service are reduced.

THE HABIT OF PLAY

It is very easy to get out of the habit of play, and especially difficult to form the habit in adult life if it has not been done in youth.  People often become so absorbed in work that there seems to be no time for recreation.  In such cases not only is the enjoyment of life narrowed, but there is a risk of damaging the quality of one’s work and even of shortening one’s life of productive activity, or of service.

LEISURE A REQUIREMENT

Every worker is entitled to opportunity for recreation, both for his own sake and for the well-being of the community.  This means, first of all, that he must have leisure for it.  When people have to work hard for ten or twelve or more hours a day, year in and year out, as was once customary in industry, there is neither time nor energy for wholesome recreation.  That such conditions existed, and still exist to a considerable extent, is due to gross imperfections in the industrial organization of the community.  One of the evidences of progress toward “transmuting days of dreary work into happier lives” is the reduction in the hours of toil in many industries, and the consequent increase of leisure for the enjoyment of life and for self-improvement.

One of the things for which labor unions have struggled is the shortening of the working day.  Through their efforts, and through the awakening of public interest and knowledge in regard to the matter, the working day is now fixed by law at eight hours in most industries, often with a half holiday on Saturdays.  Experience has shown that this change has in no way reduced the product of industry.  There are still some industries, however, in which men toil at the hardest kind of labor for twelve or more hours a day, sometimes even including Sundays.

A LIVING WAGE A NECESSITY