A number of curious communities sprang up across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: simulated cities, states, and nations in which children played the roles of legislators, police officers, bankers, journalists, shopkeepers, and other adults. They performed real work—passing laws, growing food, and constructing buildings, among other tasks—inside virtual worlds. In this book, Jennifer Light examines the phenomena of “junior republics” and argues that they marked the transition to a new kind of “sheltered” childhood for American youth. Banished from the labor force and public life, children inhabited worlds that mirrored the one they had left. Light describes the invention of junior republics as independent institutions and how they were later established at schools, on playgrounds, in housing projects, and on city streets, as public officials discovered children's role playing helped their bottom line. The junior republic movement aligned with cutting-edge developmental psychology and educational philosophy, and complemented the era's fascination with models and miniatures, shaping educational and recreational programs across the nation. Light's account of how earlier generations distinguished "real life" from role playing reveals a hidden history of child labor in America and offers insights into the deep roots of such contemporary concepts as gamification, play labor, and virtuality.

Outlines the aim of the George Junior Republic Association.

In 1798, Valentine Cunningham dammed Wolf Creek in a wild Pennsylvania landscape for the purpose of starting a mill. By 1876, when Isaac Ketler came to start the nationally recognized Grove City College, it was a thriving village known as Pine Grove. Flowing outward from Cunningham's mill, the area now known as Grove City doubled in size, and it doubled again during the early twentieth century. Marketing slogans such as "Where Industry and Education Unite" and "No saloons" described the expanding town. Prohibitionist sentiments peaked when local tycoon Edwin Fithian ran for U.S. senator on the Prohibition ticket in the 1920s. All the while in the background, Wolf Creek provided the city with inspiration, energy, and recreation and was even once set ablaze. Grove City looks back at the rich history of this growing Pennsylvania community.