Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/861

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 845

Public Guardianship of the Natural Rights of Children.— The social guarantee which insures the protection of life and liberty and the orderly pursuit of happiness to mankind in general also includes a pledge to preserve to cliildhood its inalienable right to the enjoyment of pure air, pure water, sunshine, and a fair part of the use of the sand, clay, and loam which Mother Earth holds in store for all her children.

In the stress of city living, and the permissive municipal neglect which breeds greed in the plans of tenement-house construction, the children loo often have just cause of complaint because of the fact that they are deprived of these natural inherit- ances, which are God-given, and may not be hindered or abridged by aught in con- stitutions, laws, ordinances, customs, lack of intelligence, or neglect in any quarter. Thus is laid a claim in equity that the child who has been deprived of his ray of sunshine to play with, m a well-ventilated domicile free from the company of disease microbes which lurk in the darkness and damp, his little plat of ground to dig in, and the pure water for which he contracted when he consented to live in the world, has an undoubted right of action, in equity, if not in law, against the municipality which has permitted his despoilment.

The compensation to be made is not in the substitution of other benefits, but in the dedication of public play-grounds, where children may enjoy the blessings denied them in the home, and also be afforded the intelligent supervision which insures education in play.

The public play-ground for children, with its equipment in all essentials, has larger claim upon the ta.x-paying public than any which may be argued in support of the public-park systems and drives, which are so creditable to many large cities of the world. The establishment of public play-grounds by any municipality which exhibits their need is simply an act of restitution, which insures to the children natural inherit- ances in association, of which they have been individually deprived through the plain neglect of the duties of guardianship imposed by the social compact. There is no doubt but what the symphonies of distress with which mother ears are so familiar are often the vain effort of babyhood to disturb the slumbers of neglectful aldermen and health officers residing within their jurisdicti(m, in the equally vain hope of so destroying their peace that they may awaken to a sense of duty neglected.

But just as soon as baby is able to walk, he may go out into the world in search of his lost privileges. Not to face the peril of the street where he may be run over by horses or automobiles, nor to be pushed off the sidewalk by the skurrying seniors who neither note nor heed ; but to discover a vacant plat of ground convenient to his boarding place, which may be converted into a play-ground for himself and his asso- ciates, and be set apart under the operation of the law of eminent domain constituted in equity for his relief.

The hope of the children must come through an awakening of the public con- science and the persistent activity of their friends in endeavor to provoke municipal action to establish public play-grounds.

So long as this great wrong remains unrighted, so long must agitation continue. — C. E. Faulkner, President National Conference of Charities and Corrections.

Society and the Individual. — 1. The past century has been characterized by its devotion to the study of nature. The coming century bids fair to be characterized by its interest in the study of society ; for social utility is today seen more clearly than ever to be the ultimate reference of all scientific investigation.

11. Theories of the nature of society have historically taken the two radically opposed forms which we may call individualism and communism. The former takes the individual as the dominating factor, and society is adjusted to it by being con- sidered its mere creature. The latter takes society as the dominating factor, and the individual is adjusted to it by being sacrificed.

I. This individualistic theory of society involves an atomistic conception of the individual, viz., that there is in each person a core of selfhood — "powers" or "facul- ties" — not constituted by relation to anything else outside. In the theories of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers these " powers " and " faculties " of each person were voluntarily limited by him, by his allying himself with other persons in a society for his " individual " convenience.