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Voting for Play: The Democratic Potential
of Progressive Era Playgrounds
Sarah Jo Peterson
University of Oklahoma1
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For Massachusetts children, including
those in the city of Lynn, December 8, 1908 was a date of particular
importance. That day their fathers voted whether their city would
accept the new state playground law. The law required cities and
towns with over 10,000 residents to provide and maintain playgrounds
for the "recreation and physical education of minors."2 In Lynn, as in other cities, a high
level of publicity surrounded the referendum. Editorials and front-page
advertisements ran in the local papers, and posters hung in business
windows. Even children participated. On election day, members
of the Lynn Boys' Club paraded the streets wearing banners that
proclaimed, "Vote for playgrounds for me." The triumphant "yes"
vote of 11,122 to 1,083 set a Lynn record for the first time the
citizens had ever turned in a vote that reached five figures.3
By March 1909, thirty-nine Massachusetts cities and towns had
held referendums; all but two agreed to impose the new law on
themselves.4
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The Progressive Era witnessed a
flowering of positive attitudes towards play for both children
and adults. Contentions that play promoted "idleness and incorrigibility"
and social theories that had led to the spread of "no-recess"
policies after the Civil War lost popularity.5 Upper-class philanthropists, middle-class
reformers, and working-class groups appear to have agreed who
most needed playgrounds: children who had nowhere else to play
but the streets. This meant the children of the urban, working
classes living in densely constructed housing.6
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From their modest American beginnings
in Boston and New York in the 1880s, playgrounds spread rapidly
in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1900, only eleven
of the United States' 100 most populous cities provided playgrounds.
By the end of 1907, fifty-seven of them did, with thirty-eight
receiving at least partial municipal funding. By 1909, seventy-seven
of the top 100 cities provided playgrounds, with at least fifty-five
supported by some municipal funding. Playgrounds had moved into
smaller communities as well: 259 cities over 5,000 residents,
but not among the top 100, had been converted to playgrounds.7
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