The public parks, playgrounds, and recreation centers, and the social
settlements, constitute the main community provision for the social
and recreational activities of immigrant groups living in the
congested sections of industrial cities. Certain problems in the
adaptation of the services and resources of such agencies to the needs
of an immigrant neighborhood have been brought out in our
consultation with representative men and women from various
nationalities living in different sections of Chicago.
The history of Dvorak Park may serve to indicate the nature of some of
these problems. Established when the population of the district it was
designed to serve was almost exclusively Bohemian, this small park was
given its distinctively Bohemian name, and the district chosen was
Bohemian. It became at once a popular recreation center for the
neighborhood, as the facilities provided in the playground and field
house were admirably suited to the needs of the people. Representative
men and women who have kept in touch with the later immigrants of
their nationality speak with greatest enthusiasm of the value of the
park to the Bohemian community. Its services in relieving the monotony
of the lives of immigrant women, and especially of mothers of large
families, is noteworthy.
For those to whom it is accessible it provides a type of entertainment
which they really enjoy. It is said, in fact, that women who begin
going to the park take a new interest in life. The moving pictures are
especially popular. The director, a man thoroughly familiar with the
lives of the families of the settlement, has sought to adapt the
service of the park to their needs. Special entertainments for women
with little children are given in the afternoon while older children
are in school, and mothers are encouraged to bring the babies. Mothers
who have begun going to the park themselves feel greater security in
allowing the older boys and girls to go to the evening entertainments
and dances because they learn that there is trustworthy supervision.
During the last few years, however, there has been a great change in
the character of the neighborhood surrounding Dvorak Park. Bohemians
have moved away, and their places have been taken by Serbo-Croatians.
The newcomers have found churches, schools, and public halls
established by the Bohemian people, and the impression has gone out
that the public park also is a national recreation center for
Bohemians. No criticism of the management of the park has been made by
leaders among the Croatians, who believe the director has earnestly
sought to meet the requirements of the two groups impartially,
frequently asking the advice and co-operation of well-known Croatian
men and women. They do feel that it is unfortunate that the popular
idea that the place is intended for Bohemians only is too deep to be
easily eradicated.
In Chicago some of the older immigrant groups have made provisions for
their recreational needs by building national halls, auditoriums, and
theaters; and in groups representing later immigration, funds are
being raised for the same purpose. In many instances it is admitted
that the public recreation centers in the immediate vicinity of the
settlement afford adequate space and facilities for the requirements
of the group. The reasons given for failure to take advantage of such
opportunities or for duplicating such splendid community resources are
varied. When analyzed, they are on the whole indicative of
shortcomings in park management, which might be overcome if park
supervision could be made a real community function.
In a Polish district, for instance, the people in the vicinity of one
of the most completely equipped parks in the city have come to regard
it with suspicion as the source of a type of Americanization
propaganda too suggestive of the Prussians they have sought to escape.
In a Lithuanian district, officers of societies which make use of
clubrooms in the recreation centers say they prefer the rooms to any
they can rent in the vicinity, but they often feel in the way and that
their use of the building entails more work than attendants are
willing to give. The Lithuanians, too, speak of feeling out of place
in the parks. There has been little evidence that in any section of
the city people of foreign birth feel that as community centers these
parks are in a sense their own.
The social settlement, which shares with public recreation centers the
functions of providing for the social life and recreation of immigrant
communities, is confronted by many of the same problems, often
rendered the more difficult from the fact that it is usually regarded
as even more alien to the life of the group than the park, and its
purposes are less understood. Members of Polish, Lithuanian, Italian,
and Ukrainian groups, who have expressed their own appreciation of the
aims of the social settlement, and the highest personal regard for
settlement residents whom they have known, believe that the "American"
settlement can never reach the masses of people most in need of the
type of service it offers. Repression under autocratic government in
Europe and exploitation in America have made them suspicious, and they
are apt to avoid whatever they cannot understand.
It is believed that these types of service, undertaken with a more
thorough knowledge of the point of view of the immigrant and with the
indorsement and co-operation of recognized leaders of the groups to be
served, would much more nearly meet the needs of the people least able
to adjust themselves to the new situations.