This booklet addresses the need to reform the celebration of the Fourth of July. It includes a letter from President William Taft to Luther Halsey Gulick, the president of the Playground Association of America; a report from the Conference of Municipal Representatives of the Third Annual Playground Congress titled “A Safer, Saner Fourth of July”; and an essay by William Orr, principal of Central High School in Springfield, Massachusetts, titled “Independence Day: A Civic Opportunity.”

This booklet is reprinted from Chapter 117, Session of 190,7 of the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (revised at Session of 1908, Chapter 108). It presents New Jersey’s playground law, which permits the mayor of any city in the state to appoint three people from that city to a Board of Playground Commissioners for that city. It goes on to discuss the duties of the board.

This booklet contains two articles reprinted from The Playground. The first discusses the obstacles to developing playgrounds in social centers—namely, the narrow views of taxpayers, the clash of selfish interests in playgrounds’ location and distribution, and the hostility of immediate neighbors on account of the noise and disturbance of so many children at play. The second discusses the importance of playgrounds in cities generally.

GEORGE M. FORBES was president of the Board of Education in Rochester, New York.

HIRAM H. EDGERTON was mayor of Rochester, New York, from 1908 to 1921.

This booklet, reprinted from The Playground, includes two articles: one about how the commissioners of Rochester, New York, inaugurated playgrounds in both larger and smaller parks in the city, and one about the value of playgrounds in cities generally.

ALEXANDER B. LAMBERTON was president of the Board of Park Commissioners of Rochester, New York.

HIRAM H. EDGERTON was the mayor of Rochester, New York, from 1908 to 1921.

The text of this booklet was originally published by the Massachusetts Civil League and the Playground Association of America. It discusses an upcoming vote at the next municipal election on the question of providing adequate playgrounds. It provides the text of the proposed act creating such playgrounds, discusses the reasons for having playgrounds, and provides quotations from playground advocates, including President Theodore Roosevelt, Hull House founder Jane Addams, and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson.

JOSEPH LEE was a social worker and philanthropist.

This booklet provides a general review of the work of the Public Schools Athletic League and discusses the Athletic Badge Test, a test given to boys requiring them to run a certain distance,  jump a certain distance, and pull themselves up to a bar a certain number of times.

This booklet, reprinted from Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Congress, discusses what the New York City Board of Education has done to provide facilities for children’s play outside school hours, what additional facilities for recreation might be provided, and some suggestions for the administration of children’s recreation.

WILLIAM H. MAXWELL was the superintendent of schools, New York City.

This booklet covers the development in the United States of schools for the training of guards and other prison officers modeled on one in England. Topics include the U.S. Training School at 427 West Street in New York City, the Keepers’ Training School on New York’s Welfare Island (now Roosevelt Island), and the British Training School in Wakefield, England. The booklet also contains forms relating to candidates for prison service in England and Wales.

HASTINGS H. HART was a consultant in delinquency and penology at the Russell Sage Foundation.

This text was presented at the 51st Congress of the American Prison Association in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1921. It addresses the high proportion of African American criminal offenders in the United States, considers how such offenders should be treated, and offers suggestions for decreasing crime in this population.

G. CROFT WILLIAMS was the secretary of the State Board of Public Welfare, Columbia, South Carolina.

This article, from the Woman’s Medical Journal of January 2013, is a reprint of a 1912 report by the Russell Sage Foundation. It deals with infant mortality and the means of combating it by the instruction and care of expectant mothers. It provides a summary of characteristic features of certain cities personally investigated by the author.   

ELLEN C. BABBITT worked in the Child-Helping Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.