A hundred years ago, most people in America worked from daylight to darkness. Of course, this sad condition - nearly all work and no play - no longer exists in most places in America. We have so perfected our mechanical slaves that we can make enough of everything - hats, shoes, automobiles, movies, and so on - by working only five days in the week. As a result, the majority of Americans seldom work more than forty-four hours a week.

America's use of mechanical slaves may some day be called one of the wonders of the world. The saving of labor is not confined to the factory and the farm. Such tasks as preparing food and cleaning and heating the house have been made so much easier that we have more leisure. Millions of houses are now cleaned by vacuum cleaners and lighted by electric lights. Some of the food is prepared for the stove by an electric mixer. Often a gadget, attached to the pilot burner, enables the housewife to light a gas stove by merely pressing a button. If the stove is electric, the production of heat can be accomplished just as easily.

At last we have created one country, the United States, where many millions of people have time in which to have fun. We have leisure. And our leisure can contribute to our happiness. In this country we are manufacturing happiness almost as fast as we make concrete roads. The object of this book is to assist in creating happiness out of leisure.

Recreation is closely associated with leisure, but it is by no means the same. Leisure means time to do what you please; recreation means enjoyable activity during leisure hours. A friend once asked an old man what he did in the evening. He said: "I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit." Most of us want to be a little more active in our leisure. We want recreation. Hence this book is for those who do not want to "just sit."

Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between play and work. It certainly is hard work to dig a quarter-mile trench in deep snow on the side of a hill for a toboggan run. But it is very good fun to do it for the enjoyment of your friends and yourself.

When we think of recreation we usually mean such things as fishing, playing basketball or football, or going to the movies. To many men in the past, recreation meant travel, or exploring distant lands.

Marco Polo crossed Asia during the last quarter of the thirteenth century and came back to tell the people of Venice about the great Chinese Empire. His stories were true but they were too amazing for those days, and at first no one believed him. Perhaps the most famous explorer was Columbus. The explorer who proved that the earth is round was Magellan. One of his ships sailed around the globe, proving that there are no edges or precipices off which a man could fall into unlimited space.

Labor-saving Devices. These helpful inventions aid in making leisure.

Now the world is almost completely explored or discovered. There are still some areas in the world about which we know almost nothing. For instance, there are unexplored territories in Greenland, South America, Asia, Africa, the islands of the Pacific, and the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Just recently a mountain range, which no one had ever seen before, was discovered in Canada. Strange as it may seem, there are regions between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada which have never been explored by modern Americans. There is evidence that ancient Americans called Cliff Dwellers lived there long before Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere.

To enjoy exploring does not mean that one must climb over a fallen tree no one has ever before seen. To explore a near-by state park, to follow the bed of a stream, or to climb a neighboring mountain is fun - recreation. This kind of exploring is now done by millions of Americans. Several million tourists visit our national parks each year.

When we stand on a hill and look off over the country, we see the sky apparently stretching down from above and meeting the land on which we stand. Of course, we know that the sky and the land do not meet, yet we must have a name for that imaginary meeting place. We call it the horizon. In very ancient days, our ancestors were always hoping that they could reach the sky by going far enough in one direction. No matter how much land they explored, they always found the horizon just as far away as ever.

If we wish, we can say that explorers like Marco Polo, Columbus, and Magellan, when they increased the area of the known world, were pushing the horizon even farther away. Some people today are always pushing their horizons away, while others are content to have their limit close, as though they were living under a bowl.

Not many hundreds of years ago men thought the world was flat. There were some who thought otherwise, but most people believed that if you sailed in one direction long enough you would fall off the edge of the earth. One reason for this belief was that they had never traveled far. Even if they had troubled to go the whole length and breadth of the world known to man, they would not have covered many hundreds of miles. We know that the known world was small. Look at the accompanying map. It shows the known world about 1489 a.d. Think of what it would mean to live in a world like that! In addition to the fact that the areas for travel were limited, think of how few things men in those ages knew about the things we use every day. The world was very small for any single individual, unless he was a lord or a king, and even then he could not do what any man in America can do today.