Fifty years of growth; A fascination for leisure

Lol. I was around all the boys who are even more out of order in goal. And I'm off at the pass. Parker on he'll change channels. TV cowboys competing with books to stage sports and all leisure activities with the attention of audiences and participants. The American character accommodating them with a fascination for leisure. Machines which change the role of working men give time as a product of their use and time enough to spend away from work depends

upon progress progress in the working world and in the life of cities. Time is scarce so many things to do. And yet we sit before the television set watching and wasting time. Free time mounting. And yet scarce its uses and amount the interdependency of technology and time. This document of major changes in leisure time was produced and recorded by the University of Southern California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. You are. Probably both as a as a function of both the productivity of the individual. And the average productivity of the individual. And the function of the increase of the availability of

information. You have a greater proportion of far greater proportion of the day to day. Are devoted to use of the mass media than you did 50 years ago but that doesn't mean you're communicating more or less. Probably the place of reading a lot of newspapers are listening to a lot of radio programs or seeing a lot of television programs today was taken in the past by personal conversation. You talk with your neighbors or with your family in the time that you now use for use of these other mass media. So one effect might be a depersonalization. Of media intake by the individual. The use of more and more less personal information. Why do you think you had a right to run the

greater less personal community of signals demanding more time insisting that people use time competing for attention time not spent in earning a living is valuable time. The needs of the individual should determine its use. And yet this time is wasted. Misuse every day. Around here imagining that we do need a pretty good training program for the use of leisure time. I say this because so much leisure time is now available. And. People are not spending that leisure time to the best of their advantage. I think that most of the servers on the scene well say that people are spending too much time very

far of their television savvy which means probably sheer amusement not. Recreation. I think that we need to have this program extended from the elementary school through the junior high through the senior high and even more into the. Colleges and Universities in the ballgame. Woman with Colonel rank both of the guy. However they don't tell the new who they want even though they are brothers. Elements of technology decreasing the length of the working day. Additions to the amount of leisure time. Efficiency accuracy and speed. The revolution in work making possible more time to spend at home. On the golf course at the beach. Also.

Newer developments are more street and technology rather than in the machinery sounds. Same basic machinery and machinery is generally your. Day with the advent of the printed circuit. Of the star battery which one of our. Subsidiary companies is working on developing. Today. And other technology. Technological advances. I defend what you're going to force the electronics industry. Had. More necessarily than machinery. All there have been some new developments in sheen are you. Which we are also working on and these are in the art of magic it searching. For our. Components such as resistors capacitors to sockets. Transformers etc. get to the printed circuit boards. I mean it's an automatic machinery set up an automatic line rather than the old conventional hand. It's. No big make it with the American people finding more time to argue

around the house demanding more time to indulge in work play pulling weeds in the garden cleaning out that closet building barbecue pit. Raising garden vegetables and making decorations for the house. It's Christmas time. Well I actually can't afford to spend any money on it. So I started about a couple of months ahead of time gathering up scraps of material. Most of the stuff I mean even the big cardboard so I go to go around to the furniture stores and ask them to save me. Mattress boxes and from them I cut out her Pate whatever on whatever we decide to have. Last year we made a big Christmas card and on a turntable that turned around. It sort of collapsed on Christmas Day when all the children decided it was a merry go round and

tried to get on it. I did. Next year I shall have to build it a whole lot stronger so that when six grandchildren or maybe I'll have seven by then that it can hold seven children still can't go and. The technology of work changing the amount of available free time people with more time to play to recreate experiences to amuse themselves. And increasing dedication to more production with less labor. I think probably. We have for a long time in our culture pattern looks always forward to spending as much leisure as possible. Note that the workers are always looking

forward to the end of the day. And are always looking forward to the end of the week. They're always looking forward to a vacation period that they have. Ever since we've left the days of the Pioneer struggle behind we've been looking forward to periods of rest. It seems rather interesting that almost every religion for instance has a far way. Promised in the end to yes as parents some fact take area complete rest and therefore I think that we are all looking forward to a. Good time in our daily living or shall we say a forecast that rests.

Mechanisation creating the desire for leisure time. The crushing monotony of the production line giving the worker reasons for dissatisfaction. Even the promise of automatic relief unable to stem the demand for more free time. One of the advantages of automation would be to decrease the amount of. Attention that a worker might have to give to a machine and thereby relieve him of stress and strain and tension I should say that probably another advantage of out of our nation would be to leave them somewhat free in a matter of hours so that if he

felt crushed by mechanization leisure hours we would offer him less time in which to fulfill some of his creative impulse. It's another thing that I think may come up about would be an extension of the suggestion box form of activity in which workers would be given rewards for suggesting improvements in the handling of machines or even the machine itself. Changes in the use of leisure time reflecting the new technology. Throughout the century. Recreational activities changing to conform to community demand. Rural activity and urban passive ity. The role of the machine mechanization a vital force in leisure

time. Well since the beginning of the century most people have had more time. Never before. As a matter of fact the working week has been reduced from about 70 hours per week to about 40 which means that workers have more time and their families have more time. As a matter of fact nearly every group has a little more time. True or a half a century ago. And what has that done to the uses of leisure. Well we have you. We're using measuring them in a different way than we used to use least half century people did a lot of visiting and they care.

Leisure was in the community. Now we use the radio and television and the automobile and we go to movies. In other words leisure has been making nice to machines have produced more leisure but machines also supply the means of the uses of leisure. Feel. Changes in the nature of the leisure class. A typical Henry James hero devoting his life to leisure time. He was an expert at the little house I magine that was the. Birth of. Considerable wealth. Probably I did have had no.

Regular occupation. He'll either have his money given to him are who simply had an easy means of firing. Well what I described you might describe the typical member of the leisure class today in Paris along the lines of we all may become well the meanest. We shall all be subjected to so much to the used to so much leisure time that I'm to describe your average American. Well I rather imagine that when we encounter the full effects of automation and that probably the

six hour day may be involved not the six hours a day happens to be involved we certainly have to do something with the other shall we say. There are 12 hours that we're going to get. In addition probably we ought to devote some of this new do you use of leisure time to be part of a show of good. Physical Health indulging in. Gymnastic work. So I was playing our group games. Anything that might aid the human body to attain that degree of physical perfection that is so essential for health. These might be called methods of mastering the art of spending leisure time. It's what I would call them.

Change is in the play time of the American character. Changes in the amount of time for recreation the uses of that time. The type of people who spend the time tying the scarce resource machines that tell us how to spend free time. People who demand that you spend it with your. Basic needs of the American character is personality affected by this time. This needs your time and the demands of it. The natural activity of the American affected by passive work. The American if a hustler. But he is a hustler there's no doubt about that. In contrast to people say in Europe or in Asia where either opportunity is not great enough or

where the rewards are not great enough to find the American is out to improve. Not only is financial but his educational background his opportunities in general and particularly to improve the opportunities for his children ahead of the rushing character of American life. The scurrying about to get things done. Business of working at work and working at play this pressure to achieve things. Place people in a position of working too fast and sometimes working too hard and feeling that they're always rushing the rushing quality of American life because a probably most notable noticeable to aliens when they first come to the country if sometimes they get caught up in the stream is that sometimes they fight hard to resist it. The rushing aspect of American life is going. I like to think for instance of the very present time one has to say in a

British country at 3:30 in the afternoon when the doors are locked. The Tea Party is brought out and you have a nice lively cup of tea for 20 30 minutes. It makes the last hours of the day as productive as the first one is you feel that life isn't quite pressing in on you the way it does here. I think perhaps with the development of the coffee break here we may be moving towards that idea although we usually catch the cup of coffee on the run along with a donut and have a little stomach distress because we take it too fast. The value of workplace integration seeping in to displace the traditional view of work the natural desire of Americans to have fun. The routine nature of work making it imperative that changes be made. The American and self-expression creativity and the re-evaluation of work well work has changed a great deal in this country at one time certainly been seen at the turn of the century. It was more like a

European day of work it was a long one was a hard one is rewarded but not too great. But with the improvement in the standard of living the improvement in wages the shortening of the working day. Businesses had to go ahead and make new arrangements introduce automation reduce the time study make work more efficient in order to make profit and consequently work has changed from a job of work to a career and in practically every field nowadays the career approach to a job is the important thing and a career and the dignity that comes with that his bound to have an influence on the attitude of people towards work also towards their leisure where they use the leisure either to improve their material status or to improve their own intellectual status their get more education so far. I remember my grandfather saying that one should work by the sweat of his

brow This is the only way the justifiers of those I think of those who want the same lawyer answer Well one of the beauties of medical life is that we're always trying to find some way to remove the sweat from it just. Take a look what's happened to the career of the woman in the home with the labor saving devices and so forth she has more leisure there's no doubt about it sometimes she gets into trouble because she has more leisure or at least that's the complaint is often leveled against them. On the other hand it makes home keeping more pleasant. I think the same thing is true in an ordinary job with a man that is more automation that is infused into it the more opportunity he has to demonstrate his ability to organize to make the work more pleasant because he's always got a challenge ahead of me to improve the product he's making to improve the process of the process making it to save money to save

time and in so doing to reward himself and perhaps his employers by producing a better product and less price. The overpowering sameness of urban centers crowding you know in the American character the American becomes stagnant in cities. He needs new and interesting experiences to fill his leisure time. To carry him away from the dull routine of work and the sameness of city living. We've always prided ourselves on our good. I get up and go spirit having to write and I rather imagine the same time that we cultivate this get up and go spirit we look at a lot of people who have not had the advanced American standard of living and they're far. We're very prone to say oh yeah only reason that they haven't gotten off is

that they have no get up and get to them. So lest we fall back to the dismal pool of stagnation that we think very end we are constantly aware of about what activity will bring us. We are far from small children up where urged to. Be Alive be active be full of. And to exhibit a kind of vigorous existence. I suppose one of the men that. Most pollsters mired was Teddy Roosevelt who popularized a phrase called the strenuous life of the American character attempting to escape the overpowering tensions of community life searching for ways to get away from it all justifying the flight.

I think that probably one of the first thing is that the individual should do is to. Modify his value system. I think that probably we're still putting too much emphasis upon the accumulation of money our great value it seems to me should be placed on health. And therefore if we look forward to becoming a healthier nation rather than just merely a wealthier nation all of us might be better off and planning what we could do to get healthier instead. Just mere accumulation. Well I think we in this generation are given over to securing so much money at the very great expense of health. It may be no

nation or individual. Work can play. Change is benefiting people change is reflecting the automatic age. Needs to control the use of leisure time. And tools to provide for freedom. Created more rules but ensure time for intellectual pursuits. Predictions of work and play in the next 50 years changing as we stand at mid century looking in the past and into the future. I suppose that tending to. Tasks that are diversified will enable the worker to shall we say work around different machines.

Perhaps we shall have to cultivate a kind of fascination for our skill with working on different machines. That would be one way to do it another way would be to provide alternating tasks between. I don't I rather imagine that there will be some tasks that will not be subjected to machine orientation and I think that probably some workers will have to alternate between the machine and the machine scales here. 0 0 0 0 or. The need for relaxation but constructive relaxation is a value to be pursued in the place of passivity.

Incoherence and confusion resulting from the misuse of leisure time. Educational institutions attempting to channel people into directions constructive. We think all work is going to occupy you and your family. There should be a lot of play and consequently our physical education is geared towards first while they are in school at many many points here co-educational physical education classes and we are trying to and we've made some studies the Physical Education Department the bear out the fact we've been successful. When trying to influence people who are in physical education when they become family family units to play together have recreation together. Why because we think Physical Education and Recreation should serve the purpose of keeping the home unit

a vital thing in our culture and in fact we think physical education emanating from the home the playing together is important for. The growing strength of the leisure class. People demanding more time away from work and yet not using that time to the best advantage. The educated American hoping to elevate the taste of his neighbors. The hope of education and training for the use of leisure time. Yeah avenues of travel supports community projects home improvement. The real meaning of re creation the needs of people for adventure for new and interesting experiences. Oh yes very good. Very very good for you and I'm

off at the pass partner. I'll watch wrestling the means of amusement competing for attention. The American character accommodating them with a fascination for leisure. Institutions and people cooperating in the program were North American Aviation incorporated Pachmann electronics and the faculty of the University of Southern California. This program was written by Don Price directed and narrated by Edward de Roux and produced by Stuart Cooney a fascination for leisure was recorded by the University of Southern California on direct grants from the educational television and radio centers. This program is distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is me and I am me. Radio Network.