The memorandum proceeds to lay down a constructive program by which this wider use of all public properties can be put into effect in line with the social center idea. Its program involves neighborhood organization, the shaping of public amusement according to local needs. It involves equally self-government in the use of public properties for leisure purposes. It goes further and argues that local self-support is necessary before self-government can become a reality.
It urges, in the first place, that public recreation cannot be generally developed unless this be done in a partially self-supporting way, through dues, entrance fees, or the method of private concessions operated on public property. The tax burden would be impossible by any other plan.
It urges also that local self-government in social centers will be a mere pretense unless it be accompanied with the power to disburse funds. Self-government is desired primarily because it means that the local center will, through self-government, begin to take on individuality, to develop a neighborhood policy, to seek the fulfillment of neighborhood needs.
For all these purposes a budget will be necessary, and the most direct, obvious and disciplinary way to raise the budget is through local effort. The natural method, as already demonstrated in several New York schools, is to charge an entrance fee to a few popular features of the center, preferably those which compete directly with the commercialized amusements. Moving pictures and public dancing are illustrations. These features, and others such as amateur theatricals, athletic meets, sociables and bazaars, the renting of rooms in the school building, club dues, etc., can be made not only self-supporting but profitable and the surplus can be applied to other non-profitable activities. At present, even in New York, some social centers, such as the well-known center in Public School 63, Manhattan, meet all local expenses, including supervision and janitor service, by such means as these.
The following paragraph from the memorandum is suggestive:
“Those men and women who are members of private clubs, insist on being allowed to spend their social hours with their own group, among people who want what they want in the way they want it. The great mass of the people, who have no private clubs, are entitled to these same privileges. They too are entitled to pay for their own recreation, to govern their own recreation, and to spend their leisure hours with their own social group. The social center, whether it be on school property, park property, or other public property, is such by reason of the very fact that it gives this kind of right to the average man, woman or child.... The aim of the social center is that public money shall provide simply the basic physical opportunity for recreation, while the people themselves, through the effort of organized voluntary groups, shall make their own recreation, govern it and pay for it. The social center is not a form of paternalism, for it merely provides the channels through which the social life can flow, just as the street provides the channel through which the physical city is able to move.”