Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/40

33, strong, noble citizenship can be developed only by building upon childhood. Play is a part of childhood, and only upon a foundation of play and childhood can such a superstructure be erected.

To grow in mind, the child must play. He must construct and evolve; at first houses of blocks; then whistles; then games; then school problems; and finally engines, and books, and theories, and truths. The child who sits for eleven hours a day and guides a piece of cloth as it rushes past him on the machine, neither constructs nor evolves; his mind sleeps—and too often it is the sleep of intellectual death.

Play is the first step in the constructive work of a man's life. "Education, perhaps, should really begin with directing childish sports aright. Fröbel thought it the purest and most spiritual activity of childhood, the germinal leaves of all later life. Schooling that lacks recreation favors dullness, for play makes the mind alert and its joy helps all anabolic activities.… Johnson adds that it is doubtful if a great man ever accomplished