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IV. THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL CONTROL

The foregoing discussion may perhaps serve as a tentative appreciation of the social value of spectator psychology. Here ends my allotted task. Yet may I venture a concluding word as to the social control of this neglected aspect of crowd-mind?

1. There must be fostered a powerful sentiment in favor of the public support of all proper forms of the newer recreational education. By Nature's law recreative pleasures are essential to sound body, sound mind, sound character, and sound social living. Why longer suffer them to be monopolized for commercial exploitation— often for vicious ends? Why not co-ordinate them into an efficient division of social education? When that goal is reached, we may be ready to demand the creation of a federal bureau, perhaps even a federal department, of popular recreations.

2. Meantime before we can reap the harvest the seed must be sown. Organized and persistent effort is the price of success. The splendid foundation already laid by the Playground Association of America, backed by the college departments of physical culture must be strengthened and broadened until every city in the land shall have ample facilities for the recreation of its people as an important part of public education. To reach this end, an efficient modern scientific training in school and in college must be provided. The elaborate courses of study outlined in 1909-10 by the Committee of the Playground Association should be installed as fast as practicable. In addition, the psychology of the emotions and social psychology are of basic importance. No studies are of more practical value to the social welfare. Especially, for scientific guidance in evaluating crowd-suggestion, a textbook on the psychology of the spectator is required.

3. To unify and harmonize efforts, the problem of "play for all" versus “intercollegiate contests" must be rightly solved. The contest between regulation or entire abandonment must be fought to a finish. The consciences of educational authorities must be enlightened and quickened. Sometimes I trust rarely-the advertising motive tips the scale in the administrative policy. What a crop of future evil deeds this sinister suggestion may bear.

The academic ethics that sacrifices the common student

welfare in the expectation of bigger attendance may beget the civic ethics which calls back the saloon in the expectation of bigger trade.

4. The socialization of dramatic recreations is a hard task; but there is good reason to believe that it may be accomplished. The firm basis of the social control of the theater must be laid in the intelligent education of the dramatic instinct of the child. Here is a precious faculty sadly neglected by the teacher. Happily we are coming to appreciate its meaning in the expansion of personality. The true nature and the real value of the dramatic instinct are being revealed to us by such excellent studies as those of A. T. Craig, E. W. Curtis, and Alice M. Hertz. That this instinct may readily be educated and thus become a potent factor in mental growth is made clear by recent experiments. By "doing," suggests Miss Barney-referring to her successful experience in the dramatic training of sixth grade pupils-the child learns "to understand" as well as "to do"; for the "essentials of every process and action which the child sees in the heavens above and the earth beneath are made familiar to him in his dramatic imitations."

Especially convincing is Miss Hertz's seven years' work in the Children's Educational Theater of the Educational Alliance in New York. The intense interest shown by young boys and girls in producing such plays as Burnett's The Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy, Clemens' The Prince and the Pauper, even Shakespeare's Tempest and As You Like It, demonstrates how very much youthful taste and mental capacity are commonly underrated. Miss Hertz has proved, urges President Eliot, "that a strong educational force, for the most part unutilized in American schools, can be exercised through the wise training of the strong dramatic instinct in children."

Decidedly, even as a form of spectator-recreation, the juvenile drama has great possibilities. It is amazing that as yet it has hardly at all been commercially exploited. Yet who can doubt that it would pay better than the penny arcade or the brainenfeebling vaudeville ?

When the dramatic taste of the mass of school children shall have been properly trained, the elevation of the theater will already

be far advanced. Furthermore, it is quite possible to educate the taste, the choice of the existing spectator-crowd. There is no contrast between the pleasing and the good. The plain people, even of the so-called "slums," enjoy real art when they can get it. The enthusiastic reception of Olcott's Little Women, Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back, Zangwill's noble moral drama, The War God, the success of Dr. Löwenfeld's "People's Theater" in Berlin, and of New York's "municipal" music, all bear witness to this truth. On the piers and in the parks of New York, testifies Arthur Farwell, high-class symphonies are preferred to "rag-time."

Even more convincing is the five years' experience of the supervisor of music in the schools of St. Louis, beginning with the seventh grade. Among the eighty thousand school children of that city says the supervisor, "there are few advanced pupils who would not much rather sing fine music than rag-time." No doubt, in like case, children would prefer something better than the hideous colored supplement of the Sunday newspaper. For example, in its Easter number the New York Times reproduced Abbey's great series of Holy Grail paintings. As a result, the Times had a call for fifty thousand copies after the edition was exhausted.

Then why not start an organized plan to increase the supply of elevating dramatic recreations? Indeed, there are distinct signs of healthful insurgency. Such is the meaning of the "drama leagues," organized in the four great cities of the country, boasting an aggregate membership of more than thirty thousand; while the Toy Theater in Boston and the Little Theater in New York are not without significance as revealing a novel craving for a worthier drama. Since the hour seems auspicious, why should not private endowment join with the municipality in providing the new education? Let the children's educational theater and the juvenile recreative drama be generously fostered. The motion-picture show, in particular, seems to have a great future. Under present conditions, it is the people's favorite theater; and morally, at least in the great cities, it is the best low-priced dramatic spectacle. Why not municipalize it as an integral part of the public-school system? Its relatively high grade in the large cities is in part due to the censorship of the films. There is need of much more

intelligent censorship and of extending such censorship to the small towns. May we not go one step farther? Why not create a national committee for the voluntary censorship of all classes of dramatic recreations? It might publish lists of accredited plays and spectacles.

Dare we hope that sometime the educational theater, the refined motion-picture spectacle, and the new moral drama shall replace the burlesque, the vaudeville, and the penny arcade; and that the new historical pageant shall reveal to the American people nobler emblems of patriotism, finer symbols of national glory, than the din and carnage of the existing Fourth of July celebration ?

We have more wealth, more knowledge, and more leisure than had the Greeks: would that we might add the noble ideal of sane living which made possible the age of Pericles.

BURKE'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

ARTHUR K. ROGERS
University of Missouri

Burke's chief claim to a permanent place among thinkers lies in his critical rejection of eighteenth-century rationalism in political philosophy, and the general character of this I may assume to be sufficiently familiar not to need exposition. The true virtue in politics, according to Burke, is not metaphysical reasoning, but practical tact and prudence. Go slow, build on the past, avoid sweeping changes, take the "precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility"-this is the substance of his teaching. As my purpose is largely polemical, I should make it clear at the start that I have no quarrel with such a position in a general way. As a controversialist, Burke must be allowed to have had considerably the better of the argument. Indeed, were it not that overconfidence in reasoned theories of society running far ahead of practice continues to be much in evidence, one might consider it hardly necessary to raise again the question of the validity, within certain limits, of his justification of expediency versus theory. But the limits would still remain to be determined. For however valid in itself, Burke's doctrine may become the starting-point of very opposite social attitudes according as it is held.

The difference of emphasis may be suggested by the two words experience and experiment. The one of these looks chiefly to the past, the other chiefly to the future; but it is not unnatural to take them at times as interchangeable. Now the major part at least of what is most valuable in Burke's philosophy is covered by the word "experiment." To say that politics should be experimental is to imply that it should never "entirely and at once depart from antiquity." But a philosophy of "experience" may also have the sense, not that we should

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