This is the first half of an article that appeared in the October
1921 Journal of
the American Institute of Architects. The last half can be found
here. (There is also a link at the end of
the current file to the second half of the article.)
[For biographical information on Mackaye, see this article on
the ATC
page. It also has a link to a .pdf version of the MacKaye article.
See also James Neil's page The
Vision of Benton MacKaye.]
Something has been going on these past few strenuous years
which, in the din of war and general upheaval, has been somewhat
lost from the public mind. It is the slow quiet development of the
recreational camp. It is something neither urban nor rural. It
escapes the hecticness of the one, and the loneliness of the other.
And it escapes also the common curse of both - the high powered
tension of the economic scramble. All communities face an
"economic" problem, but in different ways. The camp faces it
through cooperation and mutual helpfulness, the others through
competition and mutual fleecing.
We civilized ones also, whether urban or rural, are potentially
helpless as canaries in a cage. The ability to cope with nature
directly - unshielded by the weakening wall of civilization - is
one of the admitted needs of modern times. It is the goal of the
"scouting" movement. Not that we want to return to the plights of
our Paleolithic ancestors. We want the strength of progress
without its puniness. We want its conveniences without its
fopperies. The ability to sleep and cook in the open is a good
step forward. But "scouting" should not stop there. This is but a
feint step from our canary bird existence. It should strike far
deeper than this. We should seek the ability not only to cook food
but to raise food with less aid - and less hindrance -from the
complexities of commerce. And this is becoming daily of increasing
practical importance. Scouting, then, has its vital connection
with the problem of living.
A New Approach to the Problem of Living
The problem of living is at bottom an economic one. And this
alone is bad enough, even in a period of so-called "normalcy." But
living has been considerably complicated of late in various ways -
by war, by questions of personal liberty, and by "menaces" of one
kind or another. There have been created bitter antagonisms. We
are undergoing also the bad combination of high prices and
unemployment. This situation is world wide - the result of a
world-wide war.
It is no purpose of this little article to indulge in coping with
any of these big questions. The nearest we come to such effrontery
is to suggest more comfortable seats and more fresh air for those
who have to consider them. A great professor once said that
"optimism is oxygen." Are we getting all the "oxygen" we might for
the big tasks before us?
"Let us wait," we are told, "till we solve this cussed labor
problem. Then we'll have the leisure to do great things."
But suppose that while we wait the chance for doing them is
passed?
It goes without saying that we should work upon the labor problem.
Not just the matter of "capital and labor" but the real
labor problem - how to reduce the day's drudgery. The toil and
chore of life should, as labor saving devices increase, form a
diminishing proportion of the average day and year. Leisure and
the higher pursuits will thereby come to form an increasing portion
of our lives.
But will leisure mean something "higher"? Here is a question
indeed. The coming of leisure in itself will create its own
problem. As the problem of labor "solves," that of leisure arises.
There seems to be no escape from problems. We have neglected to
improve the leisure which should be ours as a result of replacing
stone and bronze with iron and steam. Very likely we have been
cheated out of the bulk of this leisure. The efficiency of modern
industry has been placed at 25 percent of its reasonable
possibilities. This may be too low or too high. But the leisure
that we do succeed in getting - is this developed to an efficiency
much higher?
The customary approach to the problem of living relates to work
rather than play. Can we increase the efficiency of our
working time? Can we solve the problem of labor? If so we
can widen the opportunities for leisure. The new approach reverses
this mental process. Can we increase the efficiency of our
spare time? Can we develop opportunities for leisure as an
aid in solving the problem of labor?
An Undeveloped Power - Our Spare Time
How much spare time have we, and how much power does it
represent?
The great body of working people - the industrial workers, the
farmers, and the housewives - have no allotted spare time or
"vacations." The business clerk usually gets two weeks' leave,
with pay, each year. The U.S. Government clerk gets thirty days.
The business man is likely to give himself two weeks or a month.
Farmers can get off for a week or more at a time by doubling up on
one another's chores. Housewives might do likewise.
As to the industrial worker - in mine or factory -his average
"vacation" is all too long. For it is "leave of absence
without pay." According to recent official figures the
average industrial worker in the United States, during normal
times, is employed about four fifths of the time - say 42 weeks in
the year. The other ten weeks he is employed in seeking
employment.
The proportionate time for true leisure of the average adult
American appears, then, to be meagre indeed. But a goodly portion
have (or take) about two weeks in the year. The industrial worker
during the estimated ten weeks between jobs must of course go on
eating and living. His savings may enable him to do this without
undue worry. He could, if he felt he could spare the time from job
hunting, and if suitable facilities were provided, take two weeks
of his ten on a real vacation. In one way or another, therefore,
the average adult in this country could devote each year a period of
about two weeks in doing the things of his own choice.
Here is enormous undeveloped power - the spare time of our
population. Suppose just one percent of it were focused upon one
particular job, such as increasing the facilities for the outdoor
community life. This would be more than a million people ,
representing over two million weeks a year. It would be equivalent
to 40,000 persons steadily on the job.
A Strategic Camping Base - The Appalachian Skyline
Where might this imposing force lay out its strategic camping
ground?
Camping grounds, of course, require wild lands. These in
America are fortunately still available. They are in every main
region of the country. They are the undeveloped or under-developed
areas. Except in the Central States the wild lands now remaining
are for the most part among the mountain ranges - the Sierras, the
Cascades and the Rocky Mountains of the West and the Appalachian
Mountains of the East.
Extensive national playgrounds have been reserved in various
parts of the country for use by the people for camping and various
kindred purposes. Most of these are in the West where Uncle Sam's
public lands were located. They are in the Yosemite, the
Yellowstone, and many other National Parks - covering about six
million acres in all. Splendid work has been accomplished in
fitting these Parks for use. The National Forests, covering about
130 million acres - chiefly in the West - are also equipped for
public recreation purposes.
A great public service has been started in these Parks and
Forests in the field of outdoor life. They have been called
"playgrounds of the people." This they are for the Western people
- and for those in the East who can afford time and funds for an
extended trip in a Pullman car. But camping grounds to be of the
most use to the people should be as near as possible to the center
of population. And this is in the East.
It fortunately happens that we have throughout the most densely
populated portions of the United States a fairly continuous belt of
under-developed lands. These are contained in the several ranges
which form the Appalachian chain of mountains. Several National
Forests have been purchased in this belt. These mountains, in
several ways rivaling the western scenery, are within a day's ride
from centers containing more than half the population of the United
States. The region spans the climate of New England and the cotton
belt; it contains the crops and the people of the North and the
South.
The skyline along the top of the main divides and ridges of the
Appalachians would overlook a mighty part of the nation's
activities. The rugged lands of this skyline would form a camping
base strategic in the country's work and play.
Let us assume the existence of a giant standing high on the skyline
along these mountain ridges, his head just scraping the floating
clouds. What would he see from this skyline as he strode along its
length from north to south?
Starting out from Mt. Washington, the highest point in the
northeast, his horizon takes in one of the original happy hunting
grounds of America - the "Northwoods," a country of pointed firs
extending from the lakes and rivers of northern Maine to those of
the Adirondacks. Stepping across the Green Mountains and the
Berkshires to the Catskills, he gets his first view of the crowded
east - a chain of smoky bee-hive cities extending from Boston to
Washington and containing a third of the population of the
Appalachian drained area. Bridging the Delaware Water Gap and the
Susquehanna on the picturesque Alleghany folds across Pennsylvania
he notes more smoky columns - the big plants between Scranton and
Pittsburgh that get out the basic stuff of modern industry - iron
and coal. In relieving contrast he steps across the Potomac near
Harpers Ferry and pushes through into the wooded wilderness of the
southern Appalachians where he finds preserved much of the primal
aspects of the days of Daniel Boone. Here he finds, over on the
Monongehela side the black coal of bituminous and the white coal of
water power. He proceeds along the great divide of the upper Ohio
and sees flowing to waste, sometimes in terrifying floods, waters
capable of generating untold hydro-electric energy and of bringing
navigation to many a lower stream. He looks over the Natural
Bridge and out across the battle fields around Appomattox. He
finds himself finally in the midst of the great Carolina hardwood
belt. Resting now on the top of Mt. Mitchell, highest point east
of the Rockies, he counts up on his big long fingers the
opportunities which yet await development along the skyline he has
passed.
First he notes the opportunities for recreation. Throughout the
Southern Appalachians, throughout the Northwoods, and even through
the Alleghanies that wind their way among the smoky industrial
towns of Pennsylvania, he recollects vast areas of secluded
forests, pastoral lands, and water courses, which, with proper
facilities and protection, could be made to serve as the breath of
a real life for the toilers in the bee-hive cities along the
Atlantic seaboard and elsewhere.
Second, he notes the possibilities for health and recuperation.
The oxygen in the mountain air along the Appalachian skyline is a
natural resource (and a national resource) that radiates to the
heavens its enormous health-giving powers with only a fraction of
a percent utilized for human rehabilitation. Here is a resource
that could save thousands of lives. The sufferers of tuberculosis,
anemia and insanity go through the whole strata of human society.
Most of them are helpless, even those economically well off. They
occur in the cities and right in the skyline belt. For the
farmers, and especially the wives of farmers, are by no means
escaping the grinding-down process of our modern life.
Most sanitariums now established are perfectly useless to those
afflicted with mental disease - the most terrible, usually, of any
disease. Many of these sufferers could be cured. But not merely
by "treatment." They need acres not medicine. Thousands of acres
of this mountain land should be devoted to them with whole
communities planned and equipped for their cure.
Next after the opportunities for recreation and recuperation our
giant counts off, as a third big resource, the opportunities in the
Appalachian belt for employment on the land. This brings up a need
that is becoming urgent - the redistribution of our population,
which grows more and more top heavy.
The rural population of the United States, and of the Eastern
States adjacent to the Appalachians, has now dipped below the
urban. For the whole country has fallen from 60 per cent of the
total in 1900 to 49 per cent in 1920: for the Eastern States it has
fallen, during this period, from 55 per cent to 45 per cent.
Meantime the per capita area of improved farmland has dropped, in
the Eastern States, from 3.35 acres to 2.43 acres. This is a
shrinkage of nearly 28 percent in 20 years: in the States from
Maine to Pennsylvania the shrinkage has been 40 per cent.
There are in the Appalachian belt probably 25 million acres of
grazing and agricultural land awaiting development. Here is room
for a whole new rural population. Here is an opportunity - if only
the way can be found - for that counter migration from city to
country that has so long been prayed for. But our giant in
pondering on this resource is discerning enough to know that its
utilization is going to depend upon some new deal in our
agricultural system. This he knows if he has ever stooped down and
gazed in the sunken eyes either of the Carolina "cracker" or of the
Green Mountain "hayseed."
Forest land as well as agricultural might prove an opportunity
for steady employment in the open. But this again depends upon a
new deal. Forestry must replace timber devastation and its
consequent hap-hazard employment. And this the giant knows if he
has looked into the rugged face of the homeless "don't care a damn"
lumberjack of the Northwoods.
Such are the outlooks - such the opportunities - seen by a
discerning spirit from the Appalachian skyline.
The article
continues here.