The Adventure of Being Human

By ZONA GALE

WONDER of the day is that the social instinct—the instinct for getting together for wholesome recreation and talk—should for so long have been left to satisfy itself by chance and mischance. It has been left to the more idle folk in the community, and has become a silly passion or a stupid paying of obligation, or, for the young people, a stolen thing, subject to reproof and "correction." Only of late has the truth grown to recognition that the health of the community depends largely on the wholesome satisfaction of this wholesome need, and that the way to that satisfaction it is the province of the community to work out. And Social Centers have arisen.

I have a friend who says:

"When I saw the Oriental rugs of the professor of our new red brick high school building's wife, hanging on the line, I says to myself, 'No. Not that woman. I won't never vote for her for president of the Ladies' Aid. She ain't one of us.' And while they was votin' that day I set over in one corner, feelin' mean, and thinkin', 'No. You don't get no ballot out of me. You ain't folks.'

"And then the next mornin', while I was gettin' breakfast, she come walkin' acrost the yard between our houses, and she says:

"'Oh, Mis' Arthur, I'm makin' johnnycake, an' I can't tell whether you put in soda or baking powder. Which do you?'

"And when I'd told her how, and she'd started back, I stood inside the screen door just looking after her. And I thought:

"'Why, my land! Underneath your Oriental rugs you was like that all the time! Why, you're folks!" …

And once in a little town a team ran away, dashed across a trim lawn, overturned the latticed well-house, injured a young catalpa, and came to a standstill by a flower-bed. The householder emerged furiously from his castle, unhitched the team, and led it into his stable. And to his assembling neighbors he breathed out the threatening that he would be paid by whoever owned that team, and paid well, for this damage, before the owner should ever have back his horses.

A while later a tired man came hurrying up the little street and saw his wagon marooned by the householder's tulip-bed. He came to the man's door. And the neighbors who were thereabout heard what the owner of the injured property said. It was:

"Why, hello, Cal! Was them your colts? Never recognized 'em. Oh, they're all right now. I've got 'em in my barn. Dinner's just ready. Come on in!" …

In these incidents lies a part of the rationale of the Social Center Idea. Namely, that, if you know people, things look different. We have always felt this. We have agreed that the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin, and that a touch of nature makes the whole world kin. But we have never institutionalized that universal feeling. The Social Center does that. It consciously seeks to express and to develop the common humanhood. For this, it says, is the basis of democracy.

Here and there among the people who watch life and help it to live there is the spirit that rejects the conscious notion of clearing up the world. Perhaps more people have this spirit than ever may show it, because the stress and conflict of things most worth while constantly make the talk take to itself terms more or less militant. But deep within the insufficient things said about right and reform and improvement lives this spirit which knows that unless the thing done is done for its own sake, for the joy of the doing, and as a spontaneous expression of the human being behind it, then it is born without wings.

It is precisely this spirit that the Social Center Idea expresses. It says that the common thing about people is that they are human beings and want to be with other human beings. It says that to bring this about in right relations, and to let people act upon it and express it spontaneously, is to let more result for humanity than can result from the conscious nurturing of specific "reforms." It instills, not the rules of democracy, but the zest of the game.

In more than one hundred cities and towns in the United States social centers have been developed within the last few years: in Rochester, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, and Toledo. Now the University of Wisconsin has a Department of Social Centers and Civic Development, in charge of Edward J. Ward, who was director of the Rochester social centers and who instituted the movement. That is, the Wisconsin University has created an office whose duties are to develop neighborhood centers throughout the State, and to assist in their activities. One result of this has been the recent National Convention at Madison, with delegates from sixteen States, and the formation there of the National Association of Social Centers and Civic Development, with headquarters now established in New York City. And the University of Virginia has followed Wisconsin in the establishment of a Social Center Department; and other universities have afoot similar plans. It is felt to be eminently the province of the universities, since their occupation is the making of citizens. Thus the little towns and villages are growing into the movement, too. And it is as if the adventure of being human were something new. It is not new. It is the ancient and simple way to accomplishment.

The Social Center, then, is the place in any community where the people of that community meet, discuss, enjoy, co-operate upon a common ground as citizens in a democracy, as members of a neighborhood, as human beings, without regard to party, creed, class, or difference of possession.

With the need for such a place as this arises the realization of citizens that they have made a certain investment which could pay more than it is paying. The public schools are open only about six hours a day. The rest of the time they lie useless, making no return on the billion-dollar investment which taxpayers have made in them. The schoolhouse is the logical place for social center activities. It is giving the citizens the use of their own property, long subject to the "permission" of school boards. The Legislature of Wisconsin lately passed a bill granting the use of all school-houses for free discussion and recreation purposes, on application by an organization of citizens. Wisconsin is the first State to write such a bill on its statute-books, thus recognizing its function as a State to minister to the social needs of its citizens just as it ministers to their other vital needs.

The idea having arisen and the place having been opened, the development everywhere proceeds along the same natural lines: the organization of a Recreation Department in the school or in the town, the engaging of a salaried civic club organizer or director who helps with the various club meetings, with the public lectures, the motion picture entertainments, dramatics, orchestras, choruses, and the gymnasium. The spirit of the social center is the spirit of neighborhood, and its method is the method of Christmas and Thanksgiving extended to take in the family of the neighborhood, of the town.

As in every other movement, the appeal varies with the community. In one the need is recognized as the demand for social life. In another the need is for recreational life for the young people, "to keep the young people off the streets," they say. In another it is to satisfy the instinct for organization. In another too many organizations have rent the life of the town, until a common meeting-place is needed to win back the town's dignity and its unity—its sacred unity. And in these days of social readjustment the blunders committed because some folk are the first by whom the new is tried and some are the lingering last by whom it is laid aside would be far less frequent, the Social Center Idea maintains, if there were some place for general discussion of new community and State measures besides saloons and partisan political meetings—if there were a citizens' forum. But, whatever the specific appeal, always the starting-point is everybody's starting-point: being human, needing to meet as citizens, as neighbors, as human beings, for wholesome recreation and talk.

Being human is everybody's starting-point. And, some relevant—or irrelevant—cycle having been run, being human is, of course, the great goal. Only children and sages know that folks are folks. The relevant cycle is simply the course of the Great Adventure.