the largest area of playgrounds, nearly 200 acres. In each of the new playgrounds of New York, which were opened in seven of the smaller parks in 1903, there were gymnastic and kindergarten instructors in charge. These are for children under fifteen; Chicago has five or six such playgrounds, and ten more were to be opened in 1903. The new municipal playground, in Seward Park in New York, is probably the best in the world. It cost the city $2,500,000. There are from two to three thousand children playing there most of the time when the schools are not in session, and at 7 P. M. from 6,000 to 7,000 are there, practically every day. A philanthropist has offered to spend $4,000,000 in laying out and equipping a playground, bathing pavilion and beach on Staten Island, and providing a steamboat to take a large number, probably a thousand, poor children from New York to the beach and back every day. So long ago as 1902 there were ten roof gardens provided in New York City, at each of which the average daily attendance was 2,000. There were besides twenty play centers and seven recreation piers. Swimming-baths were also provided and fifty swimming teachers. In Glasgow were the first municipal playgrounds, and be it observed in passing, this was one of the first cities in the world to adopt municipal ownership of public utilities.
As playgrounds are gradually being established all over the civilized world, so opportunities for proper personal cleanliness are gradually being provided for the humblest citizen. In Munich a public bath house has just been opened. A gift to the city from a private citizen. It cost $500,000, twice as much as the complete gymnasium at Yale. Public baths have been opened in London and other foreign cities. In Boston, of the American cities, probably the best bathing facilities are provided for the common people. It is estimated that each inhabitant of the city may enjoy five baths a year, whereas in the densely crowded districts of New York, Baltimore and Chicago, the Department of Labor found only two to three per cent, of the houses supplied with baths in 1894. Now, however, in Seward Park in New York, and presumably in the other new parks, excellent public baths are provided in addition to a number of floating baths.
There has been a strange awakening in the Empire of China in these latter days; we can scarcely believe the reports that China is now turning to the light, and that the conservatism of centuries is at last yielding to the influence of modern ideas. But it is so. And one of the best evidences of real advance toward the liberation of man from the moral and physical bondage of generations is that an imperial edict exhorts "parents to refrain from binding their daughters' feet," and declares that men who wish to hold office must not have wives or
