USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 31
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appointed to the Board of Health in the city, and to the state commission for the investigation of drunkenness in Massachusetts, serving as secretary of the commission. His popularity coupled with his experience in public serv- ice won him his first election, although he had not held a position on the Board of Aldermen, from which a mayor was expected to graduate. During the sixteen years of his mayoralty he saw the city expand and grow strong, and helped it to do its part in the World War. He concluded his term with the esteem of the whole city.
Newton was proud of the reputation which it had won in public education. There were parents who did not feel satisfied with the progress which their children made, and not a few such children were transferred from public to private schools, but frequent visitors from other com- munities testified to the reputation for general excellence. Ulysses G. Wheeler came from Passaic, New Jersey, to be superintendent of the school system, an office which he has filled acceptably since that time. The kindergartens celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary as a part of the public school system. A safety measure was introduced when the fire department placed a box for calling an alarm in every school building in the city.
The most impressive development of the period was the expansion of the high schools. The number of pupils who were planning to go on to the colleges and the tech- nical schools was increasing steadily, but there were more who did not wish the classical and literary education as much as training in the fine and mechanical arts. They crowded into technical school until the new school had more pupils than the old. The experiment with the indus- trial school at Nonantum had shown conclusively that there was room for vocational training of a directly prac- tical sort which would appeal to those who did not wish to continue in school much longer. The location of the Voca-
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tional High School in the Technical building at Newton- ville was the signal for a rapid growth under the director of activities, W. W. Murray, until the original fifteen pupils increased to four hundred. The industrial and household arts were no longer left to the rule of thumb, but were treated as subject to order and regulation. Nu- merous school teams and clubs existed, for athletics, debat- ing, and musical development, and it was almost as if the high schools constituted a community by themselves, linked with institutions of higher education in the country outside and with the grammar grades inside the city.
The high schools were affected, of course, by events that stirred the city. With the coming of the World War there was a new interest in military drill among the boys, and the girls found their place in war work. In 1916 an epidemic of infantile paralysis delayed the fall opening of the schools throughout the city, and all the schools were affected two years later by the outbreak of influenza in virulent form.
Men and women who were busy with private schools during the school year often occupied themselves in the long summer vacation with carrying on summer camps for boys and girls of all ages. The summer camp solved the problem of many parents. Summer hotels were far from ideal places for children, and the earlier practice of a whole family going off to board at a farm did not now appeal to most Newton people at least. The camp offered freedom for overburdened mothers and at the same time supplied a new kind of experience to the youngsters. Most of the camps were healthfully located near the shore or by lake and mountain. Directors and trained councillors gave continual oversight. Some of them tutored backward children who needed to be coached in anticipation of the fall term at school. Camps became popular rapidly among the school children of the city until scarcely a reputable
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camp in New England failed to include one or more boys or girls from Newton.
The Newton Young Men's Christian Association fos- tered a camp for those who could not afford the money or time to go to a distance. The camp was located on Lake Quacumquasit in East Brookfield. At first nine boys lived in tents, which were erected among the pines. Baseball, tennis, boating, and hikes, alternating with woodcraft and nature study, socials and entertainments, proved very popular and the camp was filled to capacity by those who were eager to enjoy its privileges. Among its assets was a bequest of five thousand dollars from Frank A. Day that it might not be handicapped by lack of funds.
Newton people were prolific of their charities at home and abroad. No need was too small for attention; no age or condition was overlooked. With the greater attention paid to the health of school children it seemed desirable to start a dental clinic, and an office was opened in the Claflin School at Newtonville for pupils who could not afford to go to an expensive dentist. The Social Service Committee of the Newton Federation of Women's Clubs was the spon- sor of the undertaking. With praiseworthy public spirit twenty dentists agreed to give the necessary attention to the children without charge, and the school committee supplied the rooms. Clinics were held on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
At Upper Falls, where an industrial community in- cluded some families which especially needed counsel and occasional assistance, Twombly House became a welcome centre of social work. Settlements had found long since a place of usefulness in the large cities; a less ambitious mis- sion might be undertaken even in a small village. It was at first under the auspices of Saint Paul's Church, Newton Highlands. Later it was able to add to its service a dis- pensary, which was made possible by Doctor H. T. Hutch-
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ins of Dudley Road and his neighbors. With a nurse and the necessary work of following up those who received assistance, six hundred and fifty cases were taken care of in the second year of the dispensary.
At Upper Falls was the Newton Home for the Aged, but limited accommodations had prevented the reception of men, and only fifteen women had been given a home up to 1914. In that year a new building was started, to be erected by degrees as funds made it possible. In the fol- lowing year the John A. Andrew Home was established at Washington Park, Newtonville, for veterans of the Civil War and their wives. The John A. Andrew Association was responsible for the inauguration of the enterprise, but it was expected that the public would come to support the Home when need arose.
Modern methods of organized charity were introduced into the United States in imitation of experiments in Eng- land. The large cities had their charity organization socie- ties in the seventies. The smaller cities did not feel the need so soon and in Newton there was relatively little poverty; but in 1889 the Associated Charities was organized on the principle of trying to help the poor to help themselves. Its inception was due to a group of women who felt the need and believed that it was possible to do something to satisfy it. They made a study of the organization in Boston, and followed the pattern in their method of investigating, registering and friendly visiting in the homes of the poor. The organization was intended to be a clearing house for other agencies, including the churches; more than to be itself a relief agency, though it kept an emergency fund. It had the usual officers, representatives of the city govern- ment and friendly visitors who made personal contacts with the beneficiaries. The directors, elected for three years, represented the different wards of the city. The ministers of the churches were honorary members. In 1890
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the organization leased a room in Central Block, Newton- ville, as headquarters. The expenses of the office and the secretary were met by voluntary gifts.
In 1891 the Associated Charities made its report for the year, which showed that there were twenty persons listed as officers or directors, and as many as two hundred and seventy-eight persons had made friendly calls during the year. The directors assembled every month to con- sider the affairs of the organization. Public lectures were given in all the wards of the city to educate the public to the importance of the agency. Departments and commit- tees had been organized. A labor bureau helped to find work for the unemployed, a provident branch gave aid in emergencies and collected clothing which it sold at a nomi- nal sum to the poor. A penny saving system was intro- duced to encourage thrift, especially among children. In 1896 the Associated Charities added a garden department to its organization. It had three acres of land available on California Street, which it divided into twenty-four lots and prepared for planting. For that purpose it solicited money and seeds.
The Associated Charities had served its purpose in bringing into cooperation such agencies as were trying to meet social need. But it seemed best to reorganize as the Newton Welfare Bureau in 1915. During its first year the Bureau received applications for aid from two hundred and twenty-nine families of eleven nationalities. Work was found for seventy-eight persons. The Bureau had to deal primarily with family problems, as every charity organiza- tion is first of all a family welfare society, but it also under- took to become a clearing house of information. It organ- ized a confidential exchange in touch with sixty agencies which dealt with seventy-five hundred family and social problems in Newton. Twenty volunteer visitors were busy with the work of the Bureau during the year, and two
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thousand three hundred and thirty-eight calls were made. Churches, physicians, the Hospital, the city government and the public gave assistance from time to time.
The Bureau has tried to help families to solve their own problems as far as possible through careful study of their difficulties and an attempt to remove the causes of the trouble. Through its health committee it has coop- erated with the Board of Health, the school department, and the playground department of the city government in promoting health clubs; it has worked with children who are under weight or threatened with tuberculosis; it has taken the responsibility of spending the money which is raised annually from the sale of Christmas seals. It acts in the capacity of a traveller's aid society, and maintains a free employment service.
In order to bring about still wider cooperation between social and civic as well as relief agencies the Newton Cen- tral Council of Social Agencies was organized. It gathered into its circle nearly forty different organizations, hoping to eliminate unnecessary duplication of endeavor, greater efficiency, and a fuller understanding of community needs and the efforts that were being made to meet those needs. It attempted to unite its constituent bodies in surveys of specific problems, greater publicity, more frequent consul- tation, and the promotion of higher standards and better coordination. Some of the organizations included in the Council originated years before, like the improvement societies, the Mothers' Rest Association, the Hospital, and the Playground Commission; others were recent.
Among the social service agencies of recent years are the Bowen School Centre, which was started under the auspices of the Social Service Committee of the New- ton Centre Woman's Club to develop community life in Thompsonville. That hamlet on the edge of Newton Cen- tre was originally of German stock, but the Irish and then
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the Italians took their place. The houses were on Langley Road and connecting lanes. Along Boylston Street ran the Boston and Worcester street cars, and at one point a camp of the Stanley tribe of gypsies was alive with horses and children every summer. It was confidently believed that a community spirit was possible through the chil- dren, and social gatherings were held among them and friendly talks and instructive lectures for the elders. Knit- ting and social clubs were organized for girls, and sloyd and games for boys. Girl and boy scout troops also were formed.
Other agencies engaged in social service included the Americanization Service of the School Department, the New England Peabody Home for Crippled Children at Oak Hill, the Swedish Charitable Society of Greater Bos- ton with headquarters in West Newton, and the Welfare Service of the Saco-Lowell Shops at Upper Falls. This last provided a first aid room, a nurse for the homes of employees, legal advice, and cooperation with the schools and social agencies of the city.
No institution in the city rendered greater service than the Newton Hospital. Great as had been its advance in twenty-five years, improvements were still needed. Ex- perience taught that one serious hindrance to the best results from the treatments given was the inability to fol- low the patient after his discharge and see that home con- ditions were favorable to recovery. This lack was reme- died by the establishment of a hospital social service with a secretary whose care it was to forge a link between the hospital and the home. This improvement became popu- lar at once, and added greatly to the efficiency of the serv- ice. In 1918 an outpatient department was opened. In the same year a portable building was provided for those ill with diphtheria, with the expectation of receiving cases from the Naval Hospital. William Claxton Bray of New-
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ton Centre, who was president of the Hospital, made avail- able the house of his late father, Mellen Bray, at Newton Centre, as an annex to the Nurses' Training School. The nurses observed the regimen of the Hospital and kept up their daily attendance there. The Hospital provided one hundred additional beds for soldiers and sailors, and in the influenza epidemic of that year all available space was crowded with patients. A happy device adopted to raise money for the Hospital was the inauguration of the cus- tom of an annual May Day breakfast in the different vil- lages. The women of each village prepared to serve such a breakfast to the public in the social rooms of one of the churches, and business men were generous patrons on their way to the railroad trains. Citizens generally were glad to make an annual contribution to the Hospital either directly or through a church collection.
Meantime the city kept up the agencies that catered to those who were in health. The facilities of the main library at Newton were increased by the addition of more space in the rear of the building. A new stack was built with room for one hundred thousand books on the shelves, and space for an upper floor which would be needed some time in the future. Upon completion of that undertaking a general rearrangement took place, giving more room for reference books and newspapers, and making it possible to provide ample quarters for children's books with a read- ing room in the basement. Shortly afterward Harold T. Dougherty, a graduate of Harvard and librarian at Paw- tucket, Rhode Island, became librarian. Not long before a reading room and branch library had been opened in the Thompsonville section of Newton Centre, and the Newton Theological Institution gave five acres rent free for five years for the use of the children as a playground.
Through the enterprise of public-spirited citizens the parks and playgrounds of the city were extended gradu-
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ally. Certain land on Elm Street, Webster Street, and Oak Avenue, known at West Newton as the Common, was obtained for a playground through individual contribu- tions, the first playground to be entirely presented to the city. At Newton Highlands the Improvement Association turned over its accumulated funds and raised more to pay for a playground. The Grove Street playground was pro- vided at Lower Falls. The Newton Social Science Club arranged for school and home gardens and awarded prizes for the best results. The Newton Centre Playground Social Service League presented an historical pageant to the pub- lic at the Mason School, and it was proposed to erect a building on the large playground in that village. This proved to be unnecessary after the transfer to the Play- ground of the old chapel of the Episcopalians. When this was remodelled and equipped, the young people of Newton Centre were well provided with a building suited to their needs in athletics.
A stimulus was given to the playground movement in Newton when an act of the Legislature in 1910 gave the city authority to establish a playground commission of five unpaid members, to be appointed by the mayor. Thereupon the aldermen appropriated five thousand dol- lars for supervision of playground activities. Ernest Her- mann of Cambridge was appointed superintendent of play- grounds, and William C. Brewer became chairman of the appointed commission. Most of the playgrounds were pro- vided with supervisors, several of whom were teachers; the principle of supervised play was part of the creed of the playground movement of the period. It was thought best to transfer six of the city playgrounds at once from the Forestry Department to the Playground Department, and four more playgrounds and parks were added soon after- ward. The permanent commission exercised official con- trol of the playgrounds, including development and main-
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tenance. The improvement societies helped out with the expense of equipment.
Thus organized the playgrounds became the theatre of organized sports. A grammar school baseball league was formed, and eight teams played through the spring season on Thursday afternoons, in which the Peirce School team won the championship. Girls as well as boys had a baseball league schedule. A grammar school athletic meet was arranged with various events on the Young Men's Christian Association field at Newton, when the Stearns School won. A picnic and field day made a red letter occa- sion in August, 1913. Even the small boys had their midget league, in which the blue ribbon went to Lower Falls. Football was scheduled for midgets, juniors, and inter- mediates, and the honors went to Highlands, Upper Falls, and West Newton respectively. The Stearns School won the championship of the soccer league. These interplay- ground contests stimulated a spirit of wholesome rivalry, and doubtless aided in producing the high-class teams which represented the high school in athletics. The play- grounds were used for a variety of sports. Tether ball, volley ball, drive ball, and basket ball were enjoyed. The girls had field hockey and the boys planned and executed hikes. Forty children received instruction in archery. During one summer the smaller children had sandboxes and story telling, singing and folk dancing, and doll house construction. The tennis courts were in frequent use. The most princely playground gift to the city was from the heirs of Isaac T. and Ann F. Burr, who offered to convey to the city a five-acre plot near the Bigelow School, to remove the buildings which were on the land and prepare the grounds, and then to erect a suitable building. The Young Men's Christian Association took the initiative in many sports. There were swimming meets at the "Y" pool, interchurch athletic meets on the Newton Centre
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playground, and intercommunity skating carnival at Crys- tal Lake, and various outings.
Athletics were not restricted to the boys and girls. The Newton Catholic Club and the Young Men's Chris- tian Association contributed to the enthusiasm over base- ball, football and soccer by maintaining strong athletic groups, and there were clubs for athletics at Upper Falls and Lower Falls. The Newton Athletic Association was organized and held its first outdoor meet on the Newton Centre playground in 1911. The Newton High School won the baseball championship of the Preparatory School League, taking fifteen out of twenty games played. With the coming of Alfred Dickinson as teacher and athletic coach Newton began to win consistently in football as well until Newton had a well-established athletic reputation among the high schools of Massachusetts.
People generally enjoyed watching sports, even if they never participated in them. The boys and girls eagerly joined in such events as were characteristic of the Fourth of July celebrations of fifteen years ago. The programs of 1913 included various races and a tennis tournament on the Newton Centre playground, horribles, sports and a baseball game at Upper Falls, similar outdoor events and an indoor entertainment at Lower Falls, and fireworks and band concerts at Nonantum and Newton. The newly organized Newton Business Men's Association sponsored the sports on the grounds of the Young Men's Christian Association. West Newton had an elaborate program which included Auburndale. In the forenoon the boys had a baseball match while the girls and women enjoyed an entertainment in Players Hall; in the afternoon various sports were run off and Punch and Judy shows and a horse race supplied plenty of excitement and color.
These village events in midsummer were matched by the introduction of the practice of erecting or appropriat-
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ing a community Christmas tree, and increasingly the people fell later into the beautiful custom of illuminating family trees and homes in recognition of the winter holi- days. The natural pageantry of the seasons was enhanced by special days on the river, and on one occasion the fire fiend provided an illumination in the burning of the Metro- politan boathouse at Norumbega. Local pride prompted a community day at Newton Highlands, Newton Centre had its village "pops," and Auburndale tried a village night. The Auburndale Woman's Club featured a Garden City Fair at Norumbega with a pet stock show, candy and food sales, arts and crafts exhibits, and a baby parade. The Mothers' Rest Association conceived the idea of imi- tating a Belgian pushcart market for the purpose of in- creasing its funds, and for days held food sales, children's dances, and a halloween party in Bray Hall. The Newton Federation of Women's Clubs staged an historical pageant given by more than five hundred children on the grounds of the Claflin estate at Newtonville, when Indians, colo- nials, and western pioneers combined to give thrills to young and old. Chestnut Hill had its horse show; the women of the Congregational Church at West Newton arranged a county fair with horse and pet stock shows, and various entertainments and athletic sports; and Waban had its pet stock show. During the war West Newton pre- pared a pickaninny show for the benefit of the children of Belgium.
Not all of these events occurred in a single season but they are samples of the recreation and amusement which were supplied by various organizations. Besides such gen- eral occurrences were the entertainments and assemblies of the club members, and the unorganized social gatherings at hospitals, halls and churches. New England people had learned how to play in the process of the decades, and they were not ashamed to relax from the dignity which business
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or profession might demand when they were on dress pa- rade. In these ways the spirit of sociability was evoked, loyalty to club or team cultivated, and the weight of every- day cares lightened.
Organization for recreation extended to the boys and girls of the community. The Boy Scout movement crossed the ocean from Great Britain and captured the imagina- tion of those who had at heart the welfare of the boys, and the Boy Scouts of America were incorporated in 1910. Scouting began in Newton almost immediately in several of the villages, and presently the separate troops were formed into the Eighth District Council of Greater Bos- ton, with Edward R. Kimball of Newton Centre as District scout commissioner. By 1914 there were one hundred and sixty-nine scouts, and within the next two years the number doubled. After three years James C. Irwin of New- tonville succeeded as district commissioner for life. Locally the boys were organized into troops and patrols, with a scout master over each troop.
The Boy Scout organization was intended to build character in the boy and to promote good citizenship. He was taught to live a clean life, to do a good turn to others, to know and appreciate nature, and to become efficient with hands and brain. Several incidents have proved their usefulness in public service. At the time of the destruc- tive Salem fire in 1914 the Newton scouts collected a large amount of clothing and bedding and delivered them at Salem, where some of the older scouts did patrol service in the devastated area. During the World War they made themselves abundantly useful. Recently after a trial test the city entrusted traffic direction at certain street cross- ings near schools to forty-five trained scouts. They took their task seriously and so efficiently as to receive much commendation. As a body the Norumbega Company, as the Newton troops are named, outranks in accomplish-
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