cally a real philanthropist a worker for the common good.

After almost 17 years of practically daily contact with Mr. Lee, I think he had a better conception of democracy and of the individual in a democracy than any other man I ever encountered. He held that every citizen should advance by all processes everything in which he had a substantial interest, and that the man who had no such interest wasn't much of a man. He believed that the great and General Court of Massachusetts was a judicial rather than a legislative body, because it rarely initiates legislation but appraises and adopts or rejects legislation proposed by citizens, organizations and public bodies. He believed strongly in the need for and efficiency of legislation, saying that legislation was a tool like an axe. You can cut down more trees with an axe than you can with your teeth. You can accomplish more with sound legislation than you can with no legislation. In spite of this, he had no sympathy or use for needless or meaningless legislation and always energetically fought pernicious legislation.

Convinced as he was of the importance of the energetic activity of all citizens towards constructive ends, not only because of the desirability of the ends themselves but because of the effect on the citizens, he once said—and I quote it because every American should be forced to read it at least once a week-". . . The sovereign people have asserted their intention of hereafter attending to this business of lawmaking for themselves. The trouble is that, having taken upon his own shoulders the direct work of legislating, King Demos has then proceeded to go about his own private business, exercising his sovereign power only on great occasions, and for the rest of the time leaving upon our hands that most dangerous article of furniture, a vacant throne. Our king feels, and justly feels, so strong in his power to take up the reins whenever he chooses to come back, that he has become careless as to who shall hold them in his absence. Private corporations and other persons with interested motives, and the paid lobbyists who represent them, have climbed into the va

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He then expressed wonder, not so much at bad legislation but at the amount of good legislation which was procurable, even through a democracy which is notably inefficient. At times he was amazed at the number of physically, mentally and morally efficient citizens coming out of our slums where they grow up under almost every type of handicap.

Mr. Lee was never a bluffer and he would undertake no task where he thought failure was the only possible outcome. Mayor Peters asked him to do a piece of work, and he refused. I was then asked to try to persuade him, and did so. His reply was: "It is useless. If I go in and play with the gang, I am hamstrung. If I go in and fight the gang, I will be hamstrung. Nothing can be done now."

The simplicity of Mr. Lee's habits, which characterized his whole life, may be illustrated by the following: At a committee meeting he illustrated a point by telling about being out on the ice the day previous and using his coat, spread by his hands, as a sail to send him across the ice. He was out all day. One of the committee members asked him what in the world he did for something to eat. He replied, "I had a slice of raw beef and some bread in my pocket." He was then asked how he cooked it. He replied, "Over a fire. You'd be surprised what a good sandwich you can make out of a piece of beef burnt on both sides and frozen in the middle." Statements like that were sure to break up any frigidity that might have developed in a committee meeting. Numerous examples could be given, illustrating this; and the fine point of it all was that it was always an unconscious act on the part of Mr. Lee. He simply was being himself.

Mr. Lee, who worked as hard as any man I ever knew, lived always on the frontiers of social thinking. He is justly recognized as the

father of the American playground system. He advanced all new movements of a constructive nature and new methods (Continued on page 583)

'N those days if there were not giants there were at least men of large mould, and Joseph Lee was of their number. He was a layman whose qualifications were like those of an expert. In the accurate sense of the term he was an authority on play, on the educational value of recreational activities in infan

cy, childhood, adolescence, and adult life. He had patiently observed and recorded the principles applicable to the several stages of human life. He was a scholar in knowledge and interpretation, a statesman in matters of public policy, a propagandist for what he believed to be sound ideas and measures, a hard fighter and a generous one, a critic of friend and enemy, willing to acknowledge an error, even if it were one of long standing when the evidence clearly established that he had been in error.

My acquaintance with Joseph Lee, while not so intimate as that of his Boston neighbors and his colleagues in the Playground Association and National Recreation Association, was nevertheless of long duration and close enough to warrant this attempt at a discriminating tribute. It did not begin with the creation of the Charities Publication Committee although he became a member of that committee when it was created in 1905, a few months before the consolidation of Charities and the Commons, and after Lend a Hand, Jewish Charity and the Charities Review had already been absorbed in the magazine which is now The Survey. Three years before this Philip W. Ayres, as director of the summer school conducted by the Charity Organization Society, had assembled a remarkable body of students, and instructors to match them. Five of the lecturers were from Boston. The subject of play was treated by Joseph Lee. Paul Kellogg was one of those who listened to him as a member of the school. Without consulting the records Paul Kellogg was willing to "bet a hat" that his first contact with Joseph Lee was at this summer School of Philanthropy where in his year as a student, Robert Woods,

Mrs. Glendower Evans and Joseph Lee had certainly brought to the school the salt and savor of New England. From that fifth session of the summer school in 1902 dates not only the long and fruitful association of The Survey with one of its most stimulating and irrepressible critics and one of its most loyal friends in New England, but also Paul Kellogg's own connection with the magazine of which he succeeded me as editor. I am speaking for both of us in this statement of the impressions which we gained in our conferences with Joseph Lee when he came to see us and when we went together to see him in Boston. We found that when he took a minority position, as about Community Chests or birth control or the restriction of immigration-in the minority sometimes only among social workers-this did not in the least imply sulking in his tent. He could differ and still cooperate and he liked to have others do the same.

The Survey found Joseph Lee generous in his financial support; but he was even more helpful in his suggestions, his remonstrances and his general advice. He wrote articles, letters for publication over his signature, and others not for publication. His social philosophy embraced a sturdy individualism, a belief in education, a preference for local initiative and responsibility over distant bureaucratic planning. He held that people should have what they earned rather than what some official body thought they needed. To base income on needs rather than on earnings, might, he conceded, sometimes be good morals, but it was certainly bad psychology. He dreaded the demoralizing effect of doles. In his own field, that of recreation, he was ready enough to encourage municipal, state, and Federal expenditures in appropriate and tested ways, just as he heartily supported public expenditures for education. Probably he would not have held out against guarantee of security in illness, invalidity, and old age or against a gradual recogni