| CHARITIES A Review of Local and General Philanthropy | ||
| Published Every Saturday | Two Dollars a Year | |
| Vol. XIII | December 31, 1904 | No. 14 |
School Playgrounds in San Francisco.The San Francisco Local Council of Women has recently urged the Board of Education to open the yards of the public schools as children's playgrounds after school hours. The old idea by which school grounds were considered sacred to lawns and bard-wire fences is giving way on every hand to gravel and common sense. "The play as well as the study of the children must be considered when plans of architects are submitted," says the San Francisco Call. And in discussing the situation that journal calls attention to the fact that, prior to the Spanish American War and the impetus it gave commerce and industry in California, there was no lack of open space in San Francisco, even in the more thickly settled districts, where boys and girls could play without danger from vehicles. Since then, there has been a gradual filling of the empty lots until now every available foot of ground within convenient distance of the business center is occupied. The yard of one San Francisco school, the Hamilton Grammar, has been free of entry throughout the afternoon, so that the idea of open school yards is not entirely new in San Francisco, and the results at that school emphasize the position the Call takes in maintaining that the fact that a majority of existing school yards are disproportionately small, only makes imperative resistance that adequate playgrounds be attached to the school buildings of future construction.
Standard of Immigration Exclusion Higher.A visit to Ellis Island, the Nation's Gateway, through which more than half a million aliens were admitted in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904, involves so little formality and such a trifling expenditure of time for the New Yorker that the uppermost feeling of one who is interested in the problems of immigration and who makes the visit, is one of surprise that he has not made this sooner and oftener. Another impression made upon the mind of one who has seen the immigration station under previous administrations is that the present standard of exclusion is higher than in earlier years and that, however much remains to be done, there is no doubt of the positive value of the tests which are now applied.
The enormous contrast in the mere physical appearance of those who are in the one enclosure awaiting deportation, and in another where emigrants who are likely soon to be landed, or temporarily detained awaiting friends, or to meet some merely technical and trivial requirement, furnishes a useful object lesson in the value of the exclusion laws. The most disquieting feature of the situation is the very large proportion of assisted immigrants who are, nevertheless, not excluded by any positive requirements of the present law. There is, in the existing statute, provision that an assisted immigrant must show affirmatively that he does not belong to one of the excluded classes. If the assumption underlying this provision were extended to the exclusion of all whose passages are paid by others except members of their families, the result would be very drastic and very wholesome reduction.
A suggestion contained in the annual report of Commissioner Williams in reference to the physical condition of emigrants, is also an excellent one. His suggestion is, "that in all instances in which the United States Marine Hospital surgeons who conduct the medical examination at the immigrant stations certify in writing that the physical condition of an immigrant, dependent for support
311
