Government Control of Leisure

A New Phase of Civilization Foreshadowed by a Recent Announcement

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

AS an observer of social developments in the United States I note with interest an announcement which foreshadows the most important step yet taken in our program for mental and moral betterment. It emanates from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which, in its annual report, states that it is about to undertake a survey to determine how the public can use its leisure time to the best advantage.

"Under modern conditions," says the Report, "mankind at large is being provided with more and more leisure time. The question as to what shall be done with this new-found leisure is one of the most vital which faces the world today."

This has the right ring. Here speaks the true reforming spirit, zealous for the improvement of others. More closely defining its aims the Report points out the necessity of leading the mass-mind to a consideration of "aesthetic and cultural improvement." To accomplish this educators, artists, authors, musicians, linguists and others have been asked to make suggestions. This idea has my hearty approval. It is the last step in the taking over of the individual by organization. The wage-earner's working-time is already controlled by a multiplicity of laws. By assuming control of his leisure the ideal of the reformer is reached. In the language of the street, "Every little thing is under perfect control."

LET us look at this idea more closely and consider a few of its possibilities. Two or three things are obvious. In the first place we must aim for the crowds and, in the second, we must know where to find them. The matter of handling them after we get them is a detail. Individual cases of improvement are futile. First, then, catch your crowd.

It is pertinent to ask, therefore, what people do now to amuse themselves. "In what lowbrow and futile pursuits are they wasting their precious leisure and how can we best help them?, for it is we who must do it, Reader, you and I of the educated classes. It is both a privilege and a duty devolving upon us.

THE OUT-DOOR CRAZE

It is evident, at the outset, that a passion for witnessing athletic contests is pre-eminently a national failing. It is obvious, also, that this sort of thing must go. It is distinctly uncultural and unaesthetic. But what a splendid opportunity is offered of caging a crowd at the Polo Grounds, say, and of forcibly feeding them the culture they so greatly need. How simply it could be managed. When the last spectator has been jammed in his place the gates are quietly locked. In place of the umpire's usual announcement that the "battre-e-e-s fo' tuh-day will be," etc.:—one of our most eminent educators stalks to the pitcher's box and megaphones the populace that the program for the afternoon will be The Frogs bv Aristophanes, performed by the combined faculties of Teachers' College and Columbia University. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler would make a fine announcer. Can't you hear the howl of approval that would go up from the mob? Or can't you? Of course a few lowbrows would object. They would call Dr. Butler names and demand that he be taken out, but that happened before and I am certain he would stick.

I suggest The Frogs as a try-out performance because it is a comedy, really a very rollicking one, and it would be unwise to start in with anything too heavy. We might be able to get away with something light like The Frogs or Gammer Gurton's Needle where a tragedy would be a flop. In any case, the cast ought to be fully insured.

In the Fall, during the foot-ball season, the Yale Bowl would be another place where it would be easy to trap 'mankind at large' as the Carnegie Report calls him. The exits to the Bowl are simply controlled and it is a long drop over the surrounding wall to the outside so that the crowd would be at our mercy. And what a crowd it is and what an opportunity for betterment.

Figured conservatively the leisure-hours of a Yale Bowl-ful of spectators, placed end-toend, reach the amazing total of thirty-three years. Think of saving this lengthy period from waste. The close proximity of the University would make it possible to replace the football contestants with two full teams of full professors with substitutes, also full if desired. Instead of gazing at a meaningless struggle between twenty-two loamy lads, the vast audience of eighty-thousand might be improved by Dr. Bailey's thrilling lecture, An Afternoon with the Lesser-known Vertebrates. I have heard this talk several times and it is one of the best I ever slept through. Or, since there are sure to be many ladies in the audience, Mr. Pinkus of the Art School could be rushed on the field to give his jolly discourse on American Lace and Lace-makers.

CIVIC IMPROVEMENT

IN our large cities the Theatre, as an institution, would be a fertile field in which to hunt and capture crowds of leisure-wasters. The amount of time misspent at unworthy entertainments is appalling. It is significant to note that scores of dramatic authors whose plays have failed on Broadway have been among the first to get back of this idea of forcing the public to attend worth-while plays instead of the trash to which they flock when left to their own devices. Such shows as ''The Follies, which make a point of foolishness, are all wrong.

The audiences which crowd this and similar entertainments will be easy to handle and, once assembled, it will be simple to substitute for the glorification of the American chorus-girl a worth-while talk by a really worth-while girl, Miss Essie Nymms of Pratt Institute, who has made a life-study of Early Domestic Architecture in Connecticut, With slides. Do you mean to tell me that any intelligent man would not find as much pleasure in the graceful shapes of Colonial columns as he would in the contours of Mr. Ziegfeld's employees? And, certainly, more profit.

I might add that I have a little talk of my own which would fit admirably in an educational evening. I call it Musical Moments or From Bach to Beethoven and Back to Bach Again. It is illustrated, musically, by the Bindloss Trio, three intelligent women, no longer young, it is true, but charming, who wear 1830 costumes and perform on harp, violin and oboe. I like to think of an audience, all set to enjoy the idiocies of a person like Ed Wynn or to satisfy and, I may say, to vitiate their tastes with the contortions of a pair of sinuous dancers, I like to think of them, suddenly confronted by the well-educated and upholstered persons of the Bindloss sisters whose appeal is to the inward eye of the mind rather than to carnal and material appreciation.

Our present laws relating to compulsory education which at present apply only to young children should be extended to control the actions of adults. It is time that the Tired Business Man realized that leisure time must be spent profitably. Under the new regime he will receive his allotment of home-work to be done evenings. If he neglects this or sneaks away from an improving lecture to attend some unworthy theatrical performance he will feel the hand of the truant-officer on his shoulder while a stern voice will whisper, "Come, my man, you are due at the Academy of Arts and Letters."

WHILE we are at the education of our evening classes, let us also invade the domain of the cabaret and dancing-club for here, certainly, a great deal of leisure is wasted. We all know the picture which these places present at present. They are horrors of wildness and irresponsibility. The gaiety and abandon of many of these so-called clubs verges on the barbaric. The mere hints of costume worn by the young women who entertain the guests are far from the standard set by the Bindloss Trio. In company with a number of other educators I visited one of the gayest of these clubs a few nights ago. We went early and stayed late resolved to make a thorough examination of a field so evidently in need of higher education. After their regular performance we invited several of the performers to sit with us so that we might survey at closer range their mental make-up. The ignorance of these little creature was abysmal yet in other respects, curiously, they were not without charm. It occurred to me at the time that it might be a splendid idea to change the type of program which they offered nightly from a boisterous exposition of jazz to a lecture on anatomy in which the young women could be made to serve a scientific and educational purpose. I tried to interest one of them in this idea but was disappointed to find that her thirst was less for knowledge and improvement than for stimulant, some of which she seemed to think I was concealing from her.

In any case I feel that the cabaret field is too important to be neglected. A single visit is too little to acquaint one with its possibilities and I propose to continue my investigations in the near future and to continue them until I have mastered my subject.

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WHAT IS LEISURE?

I should warn my readers that in looking about them in the effort to discover where leisure is being wasted they should be extremely careful to recognize leisure when they see it. It is not always easy to do this. What appears to be leisure is sometimes business and vice versa. For instance I seriously thought of interrupting a bridge game which goes on uninterruptedly every afternoon in a corner of a club at which I frequently lunch. "Here are four young men," thought I, "who are plainly wasting their leisure time. It is up to me to show them how to improve it." I went up to the club library and ran through the more serious magazines, finally securing an article on The Progress of Negro Education in the South which looked promising. Tucking it under my arm I resought the bridge-table where I found the players effecting a temporary balancing of their accounts before changing partners. It suddenly came over me that far from being leisure time this was in reality a business session. One of the young men particularly impressed me by his financial ability and I realized that this bridge game, from which he was never absent, was the sole support of himself and his widowed mother. How near I had been to cutting the financial ground from under his feet I now realized!

On the other hand I know many men whose only leisure is when they are supposed to be at business. When you call on a man and are told, several times in so many successive days, that he is "in conference", particularly if this is after the luncheon hour, you may be quite sure that he is taking a nap. He is probably lying back in his chair with a newspaper over his face, having given his operator instructions not to call him until four o'clock, when it will be almost time to leave for the day. Indeed, one of my friends once confessed to me that he .went to his office regularly because it was the only place where he could get a decent sleep. This is leisure masquerading as business and should be promptly turned into improving channels.

I have outlined only a few of the possible ways in which those interested in this new movement may help. It is to be hoped that all our citizens who have the education and improvement of the masses at heart will do their bit. For the women especially it is a great opportunity. They have more time than the men and in many ways more ability in the art of showing others how leisure may be spent profitably. If any ladies in the audience have any ideas on the subject which they would like to discuss in the interest of the commonwealth they are invited to meet the author at the close of this article, or as soon thereafter as practicable.