Zona Gale

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”