Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 4 (of 7)

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I trust that it is not necessary for me to say what a pleasure it is to meet you and how very earnest and hearty my sympathy is with your purpose. I owed my first interest in the playground question, among a great many other things, to Jacob Riis when he spoke of the poor children who were not allowed to play in the streets, but had to play in the streets as they had no other place to play. I have felt very keenly the need of playgrounds, and of course as the children grow older, the need of athletic grounds. In expressing my adherence to what you have said, Dr. Gulick, as to the need of helping adapt the plays, and of course the playgrounds and athletic grounds, to the needs of the citizenship of city life, let me add just one thing, which, I am sure, it is hardly necessary for me to say; and that is to remember that in trying to shape the plays for the children you must previously consult the children’s wishes. You must try to take advantage of their initiative and simply help in shaping it in the proper direction. One of the chief difficulties that all of us have encountered who have tried to help, whether in establishing playgrounds for children, or in establishing hotels for young women, or houses where working girls could live, or clubs, which instead of being saloons should be coffee clubs, for men, has arisen from the fact that philanthropists often establish such excellent but minute and overprecautionary regulations that nobody will inhabit them. As far as possible let the children work out their own salvation in their own way; simply exercise such supervision as to see that they do not do harm. Remember that in the last analysis the play has to suit them and not us.