Ways and Means 



If we do not allow a democratic government to do the things which need to be done and 

 hand down to our children a deteriorated Nation, their legacy will not be a legacy of abun- 

 dance or even a legacy of poverty amidst plenty, but a legacy of poverty amidst poverty. 



Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an address May 22, 1939. 



PAYING GUESTS . . . We come now to a difficult question, and deli- 

 cate. If, as has been here maintained, the final crop of a land is the spirit of 

 its people, some account must be taken of psychological changes that follow 

 when a piece of country running short of soil, timber, minerals, and other 

 natural resources begins more or less frantically to seek transient paying 

 guests; to sell them space, sun, air, and service. 



The changes that follow are no less real because they are for the most 

 part intangible. A continuing, and at times overwhelming, influx of summer 

 or seasonal visitors may do more harm than to run up store prices and rents 

 and raise local standards of living to peaks from which most of the natives 

 can only stand afar and envy. 



A restless tide of relatively rich outsiders, continually ebbing and flowing, 

 maintaining separate standards as to habitation, costume, and social mores, 

 may disrupt the spirit of a rural or forest neighborhood, wound local pride, 

 and in the end demolish native values. However intangible the forces at 

 work, no discussion of public recreation in a democracy can ignore their 

 rapid spread. 



Walls of pride between pleasure buyers and pleasure vendors seem 

 especially likely to rise around the private pleasure grounds of very rich 



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