Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-08-01
SUMMER HOMES FREE.
By Frederic ]. Haskin.

A summer home in the country.
owned by one whose business and
regular residence are in one Of the
larger cities, has always been con-
sidered the very hallmark of wealth
Modern industry has brought conven-
fences and luxuries one after another
within reach of moderate incomes. 1t
is not so long since electric lights and
| running water were considered per-
quisites of the wealthy, or at least the
well-to-do. But now tenements are
equipped with the conveniences, and
even an automobile is no more an indi-
| cation of wealth than a straw hat.
The summer home stands almost
alone as a distinctive mark of wealth.
A villa at Newport. a bungalow in
Maine a cottage in the Berkshires,
or place at Bar Harbor Immediately,
and rightly, suggests millions, or some
thing near them. Yet there is nothing
to prevent the chap with a modest
four f1s1ce income from going to Bar
Harbor or Newport-nothing except
that he would have to mortgage his
life insurance and give up smoking for
ten years in order to buy the smallest
lot in the place. All of the most desir-
able summer recreation spots in the
United States have been monopOlized
by the aristocracy of wealth by the
simple process of making them too ex-
pensve for every one else. True, the
man with "A moderate income can easily
get a little place In the country, and
more and more of them are doing so
every year, but the finest beaches and
headlands the mountain country, where
breezes are cool and the fishing is
good-all the more desirable spots
have been closed to the masses by a
door that knows no sesame but gold.
1t is this state Of affairs which makes
the order of the Secretary of the In
terror providing
Summer Homes for free summer
in U. S. Forests n nomes 1 fopns,. the
tremendously important. He has pro-
vided that any citizen may obtain a
tract of five acres upon any national
forest by paying purely nominal
rental in the neighborhood of $40 a
year. The payment of this rental will
give him lease upon the land for
thirty years, so that he can well af
ford to make such permanent improve
ments as will insure comfort for him
self and his family. Neither the land
nor the permits can be bought or sold,
or in any way given a monetary value.
In our great national forests wealth
is to have no prestige. The summer
home-name to conjure with!-is to be
democratized.
The opportunities afforded by this
new executive order are probably not
appreciated by one-half of / per cent
of American citizens. To most of them
the national forests have always been
something rather far away and vague,
as are most things in the far west.
They do not realize that railroads now
reach within striking distance of the
hearts of most of the forests, and that
the forest service has laid out n splen-
did systems of roads and trails which
make the transportation question easy.
There is hardly a western city which
has not a national forest within easy
reach.
But following the Secretary's order
within few weeks, comes the an
nouncement that more than 1,275,00O
acres of wild land in the eastern states
have been approved for purchase by
the national forest reservation COM
mission. map has been issued by
this commission, showing where the
new forest areas are to be scattered
through the eastern mountain chains
from Vermont to Alabama. Within a
few years these areas will be national
forests, and any one who has travelled
over the great forest reserves of the
west knows what that means to the
recreation seeker. 1t means that roads
and trails, well constructed and main
tanned, will be built throughout the
forests; that fish and game and the
scenic beauty will be protected, that
the marring hand of industry will be
properly restricted, and the rights of
the pleasureseeker recognized as of
paramount Importance.