Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/472

 458 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

churches and settlements have their reading-rooms. Yet in only a very limited sense are they substitutes. Men, the vast majority of the laboring men, are too exhausted when they return from their work to do any work in the reading-room. Thousands cannot even read English at all. Simply companion- ship and some light form of entertainment, such as is left to the saloon to provide, is all they are fitted for. They are not in the condition to pore over books, nor to keep the absolute silence necessary in reading-rooms. Those of the railroad Y. M. C. A. and the Salvation Army, allowing more freedom and smoking, more nearly approach the needs of the people.

SPECIAL SUBSTITUTES. Y. M. C. A. AND Y. M. I.

The work of the Y. M. C. A. has already been alluded to. The magnificent building of the central department is in the heart of the business district. Its gymnasium, one of the finest in the West, draws daily large numbers of young men. Its educational features are especially valuable. Clerks and office-men of the middle classes make up the larger portion of its membership. It is adapted to Christian young men, but little attempt being made in its arrangement to make it a social gathering place such as would draw young men who find the saloon the convenient loafing place. It is poorly situated for this, being among men who in the daytime are busy and at night miles away. As a social substitute it is of minor consequence.

The value of its railroad department, viewed from this stand- point, has been mentioned in a previous paragraph. The four branch departments in the residence districts are doing good work as Christian organizations, but large numbers of young men are not found gathered there in the informal manner so attractive to them, and which they find in the hundreds of brilliantly lighted saloons of the same district. Several young collegians in these districts have stated that from their acquaintance among the young men there they believed the value of these Y. M. C. A. buildings would be greatly enhanced if rooms were set apart for billiards, and perhaps smoking.