Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/672

 656 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and church schools. The assumption of such a prerogative creates the obligation to provide the best education for as many people as possible. The increased use of public-school property is the logical implication of the policy of free public education.

The movement is the actualization of some of the implications of the industrial spirit and methods of the age that have taken so many activities from the home to public places, to shops and factories. If the education of the children has been taken from the home to the school, the mother has not been left behind ; her interests go with her children. Women have become the school- teachers. If the canning and preserving of fruits have been taken from the home, the women have tended to follow them. If weaving and sewing are now done in shops and factories, there the weavers and sewers are found. Other things have less evi- dently, though no less certainly, been taken from the home by this publicizing tendency. Machino-facture has greatly acceler- ated concentration of capital and industries, and congestion of population. These have taken women from their homes, and have crowded families into smaller quarters. The dwelling whence the mother goes for work, and where she spends only her tired hours, has become less a home. Social life and play have been taken away. And the public that has taken them away must return them to these people. The public playgrounds, the recreation centers, and the schoolhouse as a social center are the community's conscious effort to supplement the changed home.

As a corollary of the above should be mentioned the convic- tion that has taken hold of many men, that the large amount of untaxed property represented by the school buildings, grounds, and apparatus was not being used in anything like the degree in which the successful business man uses his property. The argu- ment took the form : either tax the property or put it to larger use.

Among the less direct causes of this movement should be men- tioned also the educational philosophy now prevailing in this country a philosophy that may not inaptly be called that of the integral self. Time was when an educated man was one who knew a great many things, who studied so hard that he was weak