5 essential attitudes are rivalrous, enjoy in their leisure hours games of rivalry. Men whose essential attitudes are intellectual devote their leisure hours to amusing mechanical inventions, or to amusing combinations of ideas in social intercourse. Among children play is more spontaneous and has a wider range. A wide range of spontaneity is advisable in adults as well, that impulses denied satisfaction in the work of life may be brought into action. The play is for the satisfaction of these impulses as they arise and not for the corroboration of a leading idea, so that, in play, the individual becomes conscious of the joy of free action. Hence the spirit of play is vivacious, and this spirit adds much to the charm and effectiveness of social intercourse.8 The stimulus to play springs from the original nature as distinguished from institutional stimulus; it develops especially impulses not habitual in work, as the sympathetic 10 and the intellectual,11 impulses that are not satisfied under existing institutions, but the increased action of which is essential for institutional development. 12 The play of children in the school should be directed to these social ends.18 Under wise direction play may be used to prepare the child wisely to act his part in the adjustment of conflicts of interests in his various social relations after he leaves school.14 5 Taussig, Inventors and Money-Makers, 30-31. Spencer, Autobiography, II: 509-510. 7 "As immigrants to America work together in factories, every effort is made that they should conform to a common standard; as they walk upon the street they make painful exertion to approach a prevailing mode in dress; only on the playground or in the recreation center do they find that variety is prized, that distinctive folk-lore and national customs as well as individual initiative are at a premium. They meet together and enjoy each other's national dances and games, and as the sense of comradeship and pleasure grows, they are able to express, as nowhere else that sense of being unlike one's fellows which is at the basis of all progress . . . 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." (Addams, Recreation as a Public Function in Urban Communities, Amer. Jour. Sociol., March, 1912, 616-617.) 8 Curtis, The Practical Conduct of Play, 123. Lee, Play in Education, Chs. I-IX. 10 Curtis, Education Through Play, 80-86. 11 Ibid. Ch. III. 12 Curtis, Education Through Play, 74-77. 13 Curtis, The Practical Conduct of Play, Chs. VIII, XVI. 14 Bogardus, Essentials of Social Psychology, 62. CHAPTER XXVI PROCESSES OF SUPPRESSION AND REACTION HE analyses o. the preceding chapters have disclosed a suppression of impulses throughout social organization. When an impulse is suppressed, there is resentment, which may express itself in uncious reflexes, or in the margin of consciousness, or in the intense pression, when it tions that induce tions. Suppressi itable in an econom ciousness of baffled rage or depression. Supsciously felt, gives rise to secondary explanaation or justify resistance to the baffling condisentment and secondary explanations are inevhere man's wants outrun the means of satisfacse outruns intelligence. Suppression is due, also, to class domination and the inequitable distribution of wealth. Class epressed the intellectual impulses of the masses and fear, restlessness and resentment. tion, and where im control ha has itens The slav leade. opm Class man. of suppression from class oppression is suffered under mere experience of emancipation from slavery in the red anticipation, even among the most kindly treated .oused the more intellectual among them to become. movement for the advancement of the freed race.1 on gave the right to the satisfaction of the instincts that 1 in the preservation of one's own life (the right to life),2 e that stir a desire for liberty of action and to acquire and ty. But equality of opportunity to acquire and own is not under the law of any civilized nation. Control of the lawhinery by the propertied classes has prevented this develhe law of private property. trol has narrowly limited the opportunities of the common Ts limitation has stimulated the action of certain of the strongest original tendencies and has weakened others. One of the tendencies thus stimulated has been the sexual. To be sure, in early America, the sexual disposition was little restrained, without class. 1 Washington, Up from Slavery, 7-22, Chs. III-XII. 2 Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, I: 433. domination. But there was a reason for the large families. The more sons a man had the more land he could clear and till. Many of the descendants of those same families, now living in the new conditions where large families mean an added expense instead of prosperity, have small families. Contrast with these families the large families of poverty-stricken immigrants who, in Europe, have lived hopelessly under the oppression of landlords, where a man "could not be worse off no matter how many children he had." The domination and exploitation practiced by landlords has there bred a condition of hopelessness that conduces to recklessness in the satisfaction of the strongest dispositions. Large families may even appear to the brutalized peasant to be advantageous. On the other hand, when these same peasants emigrate to the United States, they tend to lose gradually the hopelessness and brutal habits ingrained by centuries of oppression; the size of the family, especially of immigrants who settle in cities, is, in many cases, diminished for the sake of raising the standard of living. It is possible to over-emphasize this tendency, however, and to fail adequately to recognize the more conspicuous tendency, that is, the lack of restraint, which is "natural" and determines behaviour unless there is an exercise of intelligence, and which persists after conditions have become favourable to the exercise of restraint." The force of habit, supplemented in this case by the force of the strongest instinct of original nature, and supported by the subjection of woman to male force and her dependence on the male property owner, the same habitual lack of restraint endorsed by ecclesiastical sanction, and by the sanction of universal usage and ancient custompersists and thwarts the suggestions of prudence. A considerable experience of resentment due to balked impulses is the normal experience of all men and women. It is frequent among children. The anger of children is usually due to the thwarting of some impulse." In cities where street children. are are constantly thwarted in their play, they develop a pugnacious attitude toward the restraining agents, so that playgrounds are needed where play can be so directed as to train the original nature of the child for social 8 Hupka, op. cit., 56-60, 71-79, 190-193, 368-399, 435. Ibid. 368-371. See also Krauss, Sitte und Bräuche der Südslaven, 398, 546-547. 5 Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, 151-153, Ch. IX. 6 • Thompson, Population: A Study in Malthusianism, 159. 7 O'Shea, Social Development and Education, 171. 8 O'Shea, op. cit., 309; Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Street, 52-53; Goldmark, West Side Studies, Boyhood and Lawlessness; True, West Side Studies, The Neglected Girl, Chs. I-V; Curtis, Education through Play, 77-78, |