CAMPS 115 



credit side of his accounts. Recreation falls mainly on the cost side in forest 

 bookkeeping, and the entire amount available for recreational use on the 

 whole White Mountain Forest in 1938, for instance, was $25,530. 



IT is by no means the general disposition of professional foresters to hold 

 out their hats for more money to be used for a more elaborate extension 

 of public recreational structures and facilities. Most of them would rather see 

 things kept plain. Foresters in general do not yearn to go any deeper into this 

 socialized recreational business; but the push is on, strongly, plainly, not so 

 much in lobbies, or in the organs of public opinion, or in Congress and the 

 State legislatures, as in an actual pressing swarm of the people, themselves. 



It is only in part a question of planning and preparing for forest guests 

 who are coming; it is more immediately a struggle to care for the throng 

 of guests at hand. To regard wrecked cover distastefully, to push wearily 

 out night after night hunting lost campers, to observe the nuisances that 

 occasional parties (even of college youngsters) commit on Government 

 property and equipment, and to think savage things about "the dear pub- 

 lic" as foresters occasionally do, solves nothing. These are the people's 

 forests. They need and have the right to use them for their pleasure. Foresters 

 make them welcome, and are really glad to have them come. 



And not one forest guest in a thousand abuses the privilege wantonly. 

 The great mass of them are fine, decent people, enormously grateful for 

 any little thing that can be done for their safety and comfort. Most of them, 

 as a later chapter will show, fall within the lower income brackets. The 

 public forests offer the only chance for many of them to get some change 

 and rest. And it is conceivable that the restoration of health and spirit 

 which forest outings visibly produce will be worth as much to the Nation 

 in the end as all the material national-forest crops. 



Present facilities are in most places crucially inadequate; and by the 

 most conservative of forecasts, based on attendance charts, projected 

 recreational use of the national forests seems certain to double, at least, 

 within the next 10 years. 



