ABSTRACT
In the play festivals of Chicago sustained in the various small parks, the Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Norwegians meet each other with a dignity and freedom, with a sense of comradeship, which they are unable to command at any other time. The fifteen Small Parks of Chicago, equipped with clubrooms, poolrooms, drawing-rooms, refectories, reading-rooms, gymnasiums, swimming-pools, and much other social paraphernalia, are, centers in which a higher type of citizenship is being nursed. A fair argument may be made for the contention that this provision is a public function. It may even be charged that it is a solemn obligation of the modern heterodox city. There is no doubt that the future patriotism of America must depend not so much upon conformity as upon respect for variety, and nowhere can this be inculcated as it can in the public recreation centers.
