This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V THE CONTROL OF LEISURE While it is true that civic education is primarily the work of educating citizens for the next generation, there is a sense in which all the people are the city's children. It is one of the extraordinary results of city life that the steadiness of mature life and the placidity ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V THE CONTROL OF LEISURE While it is true that civic education is primarily the work of educating citizens for the next generation, there is a sense in which all the people are the city's children. It is one of the extraordinary results of city life that the steadiness of mature life and the placidity of old age play a comparatively unimportant part in urban society. Cities are gay. Pleasure is their watchword. And so it happens that in cities the functions of the government reach out beyond the training of the youth and include to a considerable extent the care of the morals and amusements of adults as well. This work is accomplished primarily through the direct or indirect control of leisure. The difference between virtue and vice as characteristic of a community, which means the difference between the success and the failure of democracy, lies principally in the use that the people make of their leisure. Work, even under disagreeable conditions, causes few moral wrecks. It is pleasure-seeking run amuck that threatens the integrity of a race or the permanence of free institutions. The changes that are being wrought in modern life emphasize more and more the importance of the right use of leisure, for with the shortening of the hours of industry, the minute division of labor, and the transformation of workmen into machine-tenders, the real significance of work in the formation of character and the development of citizenship is becoming less. When men work for themselves, having control of their own plans and activities, exercising judgment, and wrestling with nature or society in the effort to produce some useful commodity or render some useful service, they can better afford to work long hours, for in their work itself they are...
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