SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 275 



see no reason for saving the streams to make the power to run the fac- 

 tories if the resultant industry reduces the status and destroys the heart of 

 the individual. Such is not conservation, but the most frightful sort of 

 dissipation." 



In the February 1940, Survey-Graphic, Albert Mayer: "If we mean to 

 gain and to retain healthful living in pleasant communities for ourselves, 

 our children and our fellow citizens, then we must reckon with the new hot 

 dog stand suddenly erected and noisily operating in our midst, with the old 

 swimming hole being polluted by the new factories being built upstream, 

 with the dust storms making our lives physically impossible. Whether we 

 live in big cities or in small towns or in the country, we are affected by the 

 forces of disintegration." 



The editors of Fortune, in their Tenth Anniversary Issue (February 

 1940) sum up: "The U. S. is faced with problems different from those in 

 almost any country in the world, and these problems have their origins in 

 plenty. . . . These problems involve the land, the population, the national 

 income, the distribution of wealth, the reinvestment of income all of the 

 headaches of our time. . . . 



"The American cannot live effectively and decently without a vision; 

 when the vision fails his whole system collapses. His new vision, his new 

 future, his new project will of necessity be different from the old, both inter- 

 nally and externally. But unless the American is extinct, a project there will 

 be 



"If the dream is reborn, it must have some of the characteristics of 

 maturity: it must relate the present to the future in a realistic way; it must 

 demand a certain amount of planning and sacrifice. ... So long as he is an 

 American, the American will be an idealist. But there is no reason under the 

 sun why he should always remain a wildman." 



Well employed, or out of work, well to do or ill to do; riding high, dead 

 broke and on the road; or rich enough to pay in terms of a couple of gallons 

 of gas for a forest outing, we remain, in the main, a people of some spirit. 

 The spirit of the people is the final crop of any land. The final crop, as well 

 as the intermediate material crops, and the source the land itself need 

 to be conserved. Viewed thus, recreation on the national forests is no mere 



