SUMMER COLONIES FOR CITY PEOPLE
(Condensed from the Annual Report of the U. S. Department of the
Interior of the Commissioner of Education. Vol. 2, now out of
print.)
BERLIN has not been boastful of a new sociological feature which it
has developed within the last fifteen years, a feature so
revolutionary in its bearing upon education and upon the general
health of future generations, that it should be made known to the
world. As yet little has been said about this new agency. It may be
because it is not a governmental institution, but the result of
self-help and of the recognition of a plain necessity. It may be
assumed that if the summer colonies had been instituted by the
government for the great majority who are poor it would not have
succeeded so well as it has.
The teachers, seeing that the horizon of their pupils was limited by
brick and mortar (for open park spaces are rare in Berlin), came to
the conclusion that only by giving their pupils opportunity to live
in the open air could they lay a sound foundation of knowledge of
natural objects and processes as a basis for school studies. The
teachers of themselves, however, could apply only palliative
remedies, such as having sent to them, from the botanical gardens,
thousands of specimens of plants, twigs, flowers, fruit, etc., for
nature study in the schoolroom; planting flower beds around the
schoolhouses; also, brief excursions into parks, and hanging up
before the class colored pictures of landscapes and rural scenery.
While in many cases, especially in large cities, the necessity was
recognized of getting the children out of the great desert of brick
and mortar into the open air and into companionship with life in the
field, the garden, the brooks, and the woods, it had nowhere
resulted in a systematic effort to aid the children of an entire
city in that way until it was tried in Berlin. Of course it is well
understood, not only abroad, but in New York and in other large
cities of this country, that something must be done to alleviate the
want of space and fresh air, and so recreation piers and roof
gardens are provided, excursions of schools into parks are
undertaken, open-air playgrounds are instituted, and similar efforts
are made tending to mitigate the evil effects of city life; but all
these efforts are merely sporadic or temporary; they do not attack
the evil at the roots; moreover they are only drops in the bucket
when compared with that which is necessary.
This tendency to cooperative and collective action has resulted in
this particular case in thousands of the children's _"Arbor
Gardens"_ round about the city. It is an experience "en gros," one
of such dimensions that cavil ceases and admiration rises supreme.
The German poor are very poor indeed, but parents were induced to
rent, at a price of 4 marks ($1) or about 20 cents a month from May
to October for the summer season, a patch of land in the suburbs of
Berlin unfit for farmland because cut up by railroad tracks and
newly laid-out streets. On one of these patches a family might erect
an arbor, or a small structure of boards with a wide veranda and a
corrugated iron roof, for housing themselves and children during the
summer months. The dwellings are of the most primitive kind and
rather flimsy; no permanent structure can be allowed, for at any
time the owner of the land may give notice to vacate for the purpose
of erecting a row of houses, railroad buildings, or other permanent
structures. The tenants themselves build fences of wire or plant
hedges to keep the different plots apart. On these patches the
children, under the guidance of teachers, parents, and appointed
guardians, began to sow flower seeds, plant shrubs, vines, and
trees, or raise kitchen vegetables, each group or family according
to its own desires and needs. Since the "arbors" are small they do
not decrease the arable land of the allotments much, and there is
still room left for swings, gymnastic apparatus, and similar
contrivances, as well as bare sandy spots for little tots to play
in. The various allotments are mostly uniform in size and are
reached by narrow three- or four-foot lanes, on which occasionally
are seen probationary officers or guardians who keep the peace and
settle cases of disturbance.
The "arbor gardens" are established on every square rod of unused
land round about the city, on vacant lots, far out to the borders of
the well-trained woods and royal forests. Small tradesmen, laboring
men, civil officials of low degrees, etc., have found it profitable
to forsake their tenements in the city and move kith and kin into
those "arbor colonies." The tenements in Berlin are as bad as in our
own big cities, only better policed.
Not all of these arbor gardens are occupied by families during the
night. Thousands return to their city homes evenings. Some parents,
unable to free themselves from toil in town, send their children
under guidance of servants, and spend only occasional Sundays and
holidays with them.
The people, especially the children, getting some information
concerning the treatment of the crops from competent advisers in
school and out in the arbor colonies, derive great good from their
horticultural and floricultural work. Families who are aesthetically
inclined devote their space to flowers and trailing vines
exclusively; others, utilitarians from necessity, plant potatoes,
carrots, turnips, beets, beans, strawberries, and the like. The
feeling of ownership being strongly developed in the children in
seeing the results of their own labor, the crops are respected by
the neighbors and pilfering rarely occurs, except perhaps in a case
of great hunger.
Several hundred or a thousand of such patches of land, or gardens,
situated in close proximity to each other, form an arbor colony,
which has a governor, or mayor, who is an unpaid city official. He
arranges the leasing of the land, collects the rents, and hands them
over to the gratified landowners who don't even have to collect
them. There is always a retired merchant or civil officer to fill
the office, to which is attached neither title, emolument, nor
special honor. He is assisted by a "colonial committee" of trustees
selected from the colonists, who act as justices of the peace, in
case disturbances should arise. If colonists prove frequent
disturbers of the peace or are found incapable of living quietly,
their leases are not renewed. Of course there are such cases, but
they are rare.
Since the size of an "arbor garden" is from about two sixteenths to
three sixteenths of an acre, say two or three New York City Lots,
those forming a colony make a considerable community, in which the
authority of the committee, or board of trustees, is absolute, and
the few cases they have had to adjudicate have generally been caused
by nagging women. It is claimed in the press that these colonists
are literally without scandals, and that the life led by young and
old is a most peaceful and happy one. People who are hard at work
are not likely to be quarrelsome: good wholesome food, much exercise
in play and labor, and an abundance of fresh air and sunshine are
conducive to happiness, especially as the clothing may be of a
primitive kind, or need not conform to the dictates of fashion.
A teacher remarked: "It is noticeable that since these school
children are engaged in lucrative work which does not go beyond
their strength, and since they see with their own eyes the results
of their labor, a sense of responsibility is engendered which has a
beneficial influence upon school work also. Respect for all kinds of
labor and a decrease in the destructiveness so often found among
boys are unmistakable effects of the arbor gardens. It is not easy
work which the children perform, for spade and rake require muscular
effort; but it is ennobling work, for it leads to self-respect,
self-dependence, and respect for others, as well as willingness to
aid others. The most beautiful sight is afforded when, on a certain
date agreed on by the members of a colony, a harvest festival is
held. Then flag raisings and illuminations and singing and music
make the day a memorable one."
Most of the families had not the means to buy the lumber and
hardware to erect an "arbor," and yet they were the very ones to
whom the life in the open would be of the greatest benefit. Hence
philanthropy erected the structures. The Patriotic Woman's League of
the Red Cross built half of all the "arbors" of the colony found on
the "Jungfernheide." Many colonies reach into the woods, and
naturally are of a different character from those in the open, for
there tents are used instead of wooden structures. For protection
during the night watchmen pace up and down the lanes; this before
the war entailed a cost of 7 1/2 cents a month to each family. The
season lasts from May 1 to October 1.
The school-going population meanwhile attend their schools, which
used to be reached by means of the elevated cars or surface tramways
for 2 1/2 cents and much cheaper if they have commuters' tickets. Many
schools are near enough to be reached on foot. The children do not
loiter on the way, but when school is out they hurry "home" to begin
work in the garden, or to sit down to a meal on the veranda, which
is relished far more than a meal in a city tenement house filled
with fetid air and wanting in light. Nearly every one of these
gardens has a flagpole, and at night a Japanese paper lantern with a
tallow dip in it illuminates the veranda. These, with flags by day,
make a festive appearance. The teachers find that city children who
spend the five months in the open air are well equipped with
elementary ideas in physical geography and astronomy. Their mental
equipment is better, indeed, in all fields of thought, their
physical health is improved, as well as their ethical motives and
conduct.
To realize the full extent of these wholesale efforts (for put
children into close contact with nature and they will improve in all
directions), it is well to take a ride on the North belt line
(elevated steam railroad), the trains of which start from the
Friedrich's street depot and bring one back after a ride of an hour
and a half. Then one may do the same on the South belt line. On
these two trips one will see, not hundreds, but tens of thousands of
such "arbor gardens" full of happy women and children at work or
play. The men come out on the belt line when their work in town is
done. The writer was riding through the city on an open cab, and
seeing hardly any children on the streets and in the parks, he
asked, "How is it that we see no children out?" "Ah, sir," was the
reply, "if you will see the children of Berlin you must go out to
the arbor colonies outside of the city. There is where our children
are." Subsequent visits to these colony gardens showed that Berlin
is by no means a childless city. To judge from the multitudinous
arbors to be seen from the windows of the belt line cars there must
be 50,000 to 75,000 of them. As far as the eye reaches the
flagpoles, the orderly fences, and the little structures can be
seen; and since the city has 2,000,000 inhabitants, it is very
likely that an estimate made by a city official of several hundred
thousands of children thus living in the open air, is not excessive.
The most beautiful and best-arranged gardens are not found in the
vicinity of railroads, but several miles out toward the north and
the south of the city. Here, where the soil is better, fine crops
are raised.
If we turn our eyes homeward and contemplate the many thousands of
small efforts made in this country toward the alleviation of city
children's misery, we can say truthfully that we in America are
perhaps fully alive to the necessity which has prompted the people
of Berlin to action; we only need to be reminded of Mayor Pingree's
potato patches on empty city lots, our children's outing camps, our
occasional children's excursions, and the like. Still, there is
nothing in this country to compare with the thousands of Berlin
"arbor gardens" and their singularly convincing force. Like a
circus, all this is supposed to be for the children, though it
usually seems to need about two grown people to escort each child.
The elders enjoy the gardens even more than the circus.
The arbor gardens of Berlin should not be mistaken for the numerous
"forest schools" (Waldschulen) in Germany. These schools "in the
woods" are for sickly children, both physically crippled and
mentally weak. The pupils have their lessons in the open, and the
teachers live, play, and work with them; long recesses separate the
various lessons and a two-hour nap in the middle of the day out in
the open is on the time-table of every one of these schools. These
special open-air schools for weaklings and defectives are now found
in many parts of Germany, notably in Charlottenburg, Strassburg, and
the industrial regions of the Rhineland.
The example of Berlin has been followed in other German cities, such
as Munich, notably in Dusseldorf on the Rhine, where the arbor
gardens are called "Schreber gardens" in honor of the man who
promoted their establishment. There is a large colony of such
gardens along the Hans-Sachs street, where Lima beans, peas,
lettuce, cucumbers, potatoes, and many other garden vegetables are
raised; even strawberries, raspberries, and fruit trees are found
here. But the city being more lavishly provided with parks and open
spaces than others of its size, the necessity for open-air life has
not made itself felt as forcibly as in Berlin.
And think of the cleansing influence of all this. Light and air and
labor--these are the medicines not of the body only, but of the
soul. It is not ponderable things alone that are found in gardens,
but the great wonder of life, the peace of nature, the influences of
sunsets and seasons and of all the intangible things to which we can
give no name, not because they are small, but because they are
outside the compass of our speech. The God that dwells in gardens is
sufficient for all our needs--let the theologians say what they
will.
"'Not God! in gardens? When the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign--
'Tis very sure--God walks in mine.'"