From the beginning the organization grew rapidly and ultimately became a worldwide movement with local YMCAs delivering projects and services focused on youth development through a wide variety of youth activities, including providing athletic facilities, holding classes for a wide variety of skills, promoting Christianity and doing humanitarian work.
One purpose of the YMCA and its counterpart, the Yong Women's Christian Association, was to provide low-cost housing in a safe Christian environment for rural young men and women journeying to the cities. It was associated with industrialization and the movement of young people to cities to work. Even back in the early 1960s quite a few tournaments were held in rickety old YMCAs and a few of us stayed right in the Y itself. The rooms were very small, but clean and they were dirt cheap ($3.00 a night); they had communal bathrooms and showers, but no food was available.
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| 1955 Chess Life announcement |
At one tournament I played in we were informed that unless you had a car, the only place to eat was at the Walgreen drug store's lunch counter down the street.
At the beginning the YMCA combined preaching in the streets and the distribution of religious tracts with a social ministry. Philanthropists saw them as places for wholesome recreation that would preserve youth from the temptations of alcohol, gambling, and prostitution and that would promote good citizenship. In 1997 the World Council of YMCAs changed their mission: they determined to place more focus on gender equality, sustainable development, war and peace, fair distribution, and the challenges of globalization, racism, and HIV/AIDS. Today local Ys offer swimming, gyms, basketball, etc.
According to an article published in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle on June 11, 1928, the Central YMCA in Brooklyn banned the playing of chess and checkers by members and they had removed the sets, locked away the tables, locked the lounge room and members were even forbidden to play on their own sets. However, the Y continued to permit dancing, movies, pool playing and boxing.
One YMCA official stated the reason for the ban was that “chess attracts an undesirable element” and “members stand around with their hats on while watching a closely contested game and sometimes smoke, both of which are forbidden.”
Chess players alleged that the reasons were financial. Chess and checker playing members paid an annual membership fee in order to use the facilities for a chess club whereas the prize fight followers, dancers and pool players paid “regularly, frequently and largely for each game played or prize fight or dance attended.” The checker players didn't complain, but the chess players wrote a letter of protest to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
The YMCA answered the allegations by claiming that the chess and checkers room had been closed for the summer months “just like a lot of other activities due to the summer cutting down of supervisory personnel and in all probability it would be opened again in the fall.” The reason given for banning playing with personal sets was that there wasn't any place to set up a board and play. Some guy named Carroll N. Gibney, the educational secretary, also added that many of the players “can't play chess anyhow”, but complain “just because they can't have their own way.”
Things have not changed much:
West Vancouver chess players defy Park Royal ban
Chess Players Ticketed by NYPD for Using Inwood Hill Park Chess Tables
San Francisco's Downtown Chess Players Relocate to Yerba Buena Gardens
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