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Netos of Interest Gathered Here and There
Play and Playgrounds Tor the Nation's
Youth.
Among the multiplying phases of social work
for the masses is the movement to give child play
its duly emphasized part in the education of our
people. This movement is a natural outcome of
a scientific study of the child, and of the study of
those correlated sciences which pertain to the ra
tional development of the soul and body of man.
In Chicago last week met the Playground Associa
tion of America for a three days’ session. There
were delegates present from nearly every state in
the union. Forces conducting this movement may
be, in part, estimated by the association’s board
of officers, which was re-elected as follows: Pres
ident, Dr. Luther Gulick, New York; First Vice-
President, H. B. F. McFarland, Washington; Sec
ond Vice-President, Miss Jane Addams, Chicago;
Third Vice-President, Joseph Lee, Boston; Secre
tary and Assistant Treasurer, Dr. Henry S. Curtis,
Washington. Properly enough the convention was
held in Chicago, for there the creation of public
playgrounds has received its most extensive de
velopment. That this is so appeals in the tribute
of President Gulick, who said: 44 The work done
in Chicago in establishing playgrounds is without
parallel in the world, not only for the extent of
the apparatus used but also for the range 'and
scope of the work.” Some pregnant thoughts were
uttered at this convention, of which these are ex
amples: “The boy without a playground is father
to the man without a job”; “poverty is as much
a germ disease as tuberculosis, it thrives in dark
places and is contagious; it is the playground which
lets in light and air”; “organized amusement
is the best antidote to vice”; “we need a curric
ulum of games in the school; play should consti
tute half the school day”; “in the courtship age
let the city regulate dancing, for by regulation the
vicious tendencies of public dance halls may be
corrected.” —The Standard.
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"You All” as Used in the South.
Philologists claim that some of the most in
teresting phases of a language may be traced
through the medium of so-called colloquialisms and
idioms, and a consideration of the phrase “you
all” as used throughout the South would certainly
seem to make good this assertion.
The subject is treated in Uncle Remus’s Maga
zine for July in a most interesting article by C.
Alphonso Smith, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University
of North Carolina.
Mr. Smith says, in part:
“In almost every discussion ot this idiom the
disputants have confined themselves to the ques
tion, ‘ls it used in the South as a singular?’
Northern writers have generally supported the
affirmative, while Southern writers have defended
the negative. In fact, Mason and Dixon’s line
will have to be retraced and made to make, not a
political, but an idiomatic, distinction. The shib
boleth is no longer, What do you think of slavery
or secession or states-rights? but, On the contested
use of you all, are you fcr the singular or for
the plural?
“Southern people undoubtedly use you all in
a sense particularly their own, and not as the
equivalent of all of you.
“What, then, is the distinctive meaning attached
to this idiom in the South? What makes the phrase
a provincialism as used in the South, but not a
provincialism as used elsewhere? The following
sentences will illustrate:
“1. A mother to her children: ‘lf you all (you
children) don’t make less noise, I’ll send you to
bed.’
“2. A teacher to bis pupils: ‘You all (you
pupils) haven’t half studied this lesson.’
“In not one of these characteristic sentences
would a Southerner ever think of substituting ‘all
of you’ for ‘you all.’ Both idioms are plural but
the distinctive thing about Southern ‘you all’ is not
The Golden Age for July 4, 1907.
its plural sense, but its representative sense, to
gether with the accent on you.
“You all, therefore, with the accent on you,
is not an error for you all, with the accent on all,
or for all of you.
“It is something entirely different. The stan
dard you all and all of you are employed as fre
quently in the South as elsewhere, the distinctive
you all supplying a desideratum not furnished by
either of the other two phrases.
“Mr. Joel Chandler Harris writes as follows:
“ ‘1 ou may say without any hesitation whatever
that “you-all” and “we-all,” “you-uns” and “we
uns” invariably refer to more than one individual.
These locutions sometimes refer to a partner, to
a family, to a settlement, and to a whole com
munity, but never to one individual. I have seen
assertions to the contrary, but you may put them
down as gross mistakes.’ ”
* *
A Nelv York City Undertaking Costing
Tlvice as Much as the Panama
Canal.
The July American Magazine contains an arti
cle on “Manhattan: an Island Outgrown,” which
is the best description yet made of the extraor
dinary transportation improvements now being
made in and about New York Citv.
The transit problem in New York City today has
become the most difficult, complicated and vexa
tious which faces any American city; and twice
as much money is being spent to solve it as is
being expended on the construction of the Panama
Canal. That trans-oceanic ditch will cost $200,-
000,000.
“The Pennsylvania Railroad alone is spending
$100,000,000 to tunnel the two rivers and build a
terminal in Manhattan. The McAdoo tubes under
the North (or Hudson) River will cost $75,000,000
more. The New York Central Railroad is going
to erect an enormous new terminal station and
biing all its trains into the city by electric power.
The Belmont tubes under the East River to Long
Island City and the city subway tubes from the
Battery to Brooklyn represent the expenditure of
millions more. And new subways under the East Riv
er and north through the city itself are being plan
ned, while a new bridge is under way across Black
well’s Island. The creative artists of the twentieth
century are undoubtedly the engineers (the cre
ative instinct is not dead; it is merely working in
another medium) ; and New York City will soon
contain one of the greatest achievements, an
achievement even more radical than at first glance
it appears, for it is made possible by electricity
and represents for the first time on a thorough
going scale the change in motive power on railroads
from the steam locomotives of the past seventy
years to the electrically driven train. In a short
time —probably three years at most —four railroad
systems will bring their enormous traffic into the
very heart of Manhattan Island under rivers and
streets and avenues, without a puff of smoke or a
sound of steam. Underground, in silence and clean
air, they will come and so depart again, while the
Hudson River steamers pass over the Washington
Express and the carriages on Park Avenue roll
above the Bay State Limited. The achievement is
stupendous and unique.” *
The Treatment of Criminality, j
Os all the rapid changes, indi strial and social,
which have taken place during the last century,
there is none so great and so certain to be far
reaching in its consequences as the wide difference
be ween the criminal law and its administration
as it was, and now is, and the point of view of
society toward criminals and its treatment of
them. Capital punishment, before the reforms
brought about by Sir Samuel Romilly, followed nu
merous minor offenses, and a convicted criminal
ceased to be regarded as a human being and was
treated with much less consideration than was
shown to brutes. The idea of making punishment
reformatory scarcely existed, and young and old
men and women were herded together under con
ditions which could not fail to be demoralizing and
degrading. Now, while there is still much to be
desired in the conduct of our pi isons and the gen
eral attitude toward criminals, a great change has
taken place. We have come to recognize the fact
that criminality is to a large extent the result of
mental and moral disease, which, like physical dis
ease, should receive careful and intelligent treat
ment, and that when so treated it may, not infre
quently, be, if not wholly eradicated, greatly al
leviated. We realize at last that, like physical
disease, it often is an inheritance, or the inevitable
result of circumstances and environment, and that
while the protection and safety of society demand
that the criminal be segregated and confined, we
can so little estimate what his real moral delin
quency is that it is impossible to mete out anything •
like impartial justice or due punishment, and that
our efforts should be in the direction of measures
that are preventive and remedial. It is interest
ing to notice how almost identical the theories of
criminality and physical disease and the methods
of dealing with them have come to be. Effort is
largely being directed toward the removal of con
ditions —and often the same conditions produce
both —which produce them. A clean and healthful
environment and occupation, with adequate food
and proper education, contribute to moral and phy
sical well-being in equal degrees, and there is no
doubt that with the disappearance of disease, and
the conditions that cause it, crime will largely dis
appear.
Careful distinction is being made recently by
criminal judges in the treatment of first offenders,
and those who have shown themselves incorrigible,
who should be classed by themselves and perma
nently confined, to prevent not only infraction of
the law, but the contagion they spread. A man
convicted of a first offense is sentenced condition
ally, p it on probation, and given a chance to re
deem himself, which he often does, a single lapse
by no means indicating that he has entered irre
vocably upon a criminal career.
Perhaps the most hopeful feature of the new at
titude is the method adopted and now being put
into effect in most of our cities in regard to juve
nile offenders. Special courts are organized to
deal with them, and the results already reached
have fully justified them. The judge, by kindly
treatment and consideration, establishes a relation
of confidence and good will between the boys
brought before him and himself, learns tlnir indi
vidual peculiarities and wants, and succeeds to a
surprising degree in turning them permanently into
right paths. If we can destroy the slums and head
off the boys from evil courses we shall have gone
far toward drying up crime at its source. —The
Washington Post.
* *
How enormously important are these conversa
tions of childhood! I felt it this morning with a
sort of religious terror. Innocence and childhood
are sacred. The sower who casts in the seed, the
father or mother casting in the fruitful word, are
accomplishing a pontifical act, and ought to per
form it with a religious awe, with prayer and grav
ity, for they are laboring at the kingdom of God.
All seed-sowing is a mysterious thing, whether
the seed fall into the earth or into souls. Man is
a husbandman; his whole work, lightly under
stood, is to develop life, to sow it everywhere.
Such is the mission of humanity; and of this
divine mission the great instrument is speech.
We forget too often that language is both a seed
sowing and a revelation. The influence of a word
in season —is it not incalculable? What, a mys
tery is speech! But we are blind to it, because we
are carnal and earthly. We see the stones and the
trees by the road, the furniture of our houses—all
that is palpable and material. We have no eyes
for the invisible phalanxes of ideas which people
the air and hover incessantly around each one
of us. —Ex.
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