THE SALOON IN CHICAGO 443
substitution) were comparatively few, only six. The silence of over five hundred indicates inactivity, due either to opposition or to sympathy that has not yet sufficient energy to take tan- gible form. Those hoping to enter such work were seventeen. Those having already made some advance along this line were seventy-nine. Of these seventy-nine, fifty-four are largely liter- ary and religious, having no recreative features, and having only now and then a social occasion. Eighteen have outdoor sports, such as bicycle, baseball, football, and tennis clubs. Some of them spend from one to two weeks in camp in summer, and in winter part of these have billiard halls and smoking-rooms. Six have gymnasiums, more or less fully equipped, and two have occasional theatricals, having a stage and scenery at one end of the club-room.
While, then, these reports reveal the fact that the church is doing little in the way of substitution, they are, on the whole, rather encouraging. They show that a start, at least, has been made, and that the church is beginning to realize that less is to be gained by frowning upon all sorts of amusements than by encour- aging the best of them and consecrating them to its own pur- poses. Ten years ago a billiard hall in connection with a church would have been scandalous. Today billiards and theatricals are being appropriated, stolen from the arsenal of his satanic majesty. There are in all 751 churches. A large number of these are stately edifices, yet too often they are but magnificent monuments erected over the grave of buried opportunities. Few there are among the masses. Few there are in places of greatest need, of greatest temptation. Closed during the greater portion of the week, as social substitutes they count for very little. Seldom does one find so large a sum of money put to so little advantage as that invested in these buildings, used on compara- tively so few occasions.
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS.
The twelve social settlements in Chicago are located in the most congested districts in the city. The following quotation from the articles of incorporation of one of the settlements expresses in general the object for which they are formed: "To
