Spaces

Since early days America has been another name for opportunity......movement in new spaces has been America's dominant fact. American energy continually demands a wider field for its exercise to satisfy the zest for advancement. İnitially, a vast expanse of fertile and unsettled land became available almost free to those who would cultivate it. Across this new space, a frontier of settlement pushed steadily West, and along this frontier individuals who had advanced ahead of society's usual institutional controls accepted a lowering of standards at the time for the sake of progress in the future. Constantly repeating over again a democratic experience, they reinforced the national democratic tradition.

By exhausting offers of freeland available other frontiers have been explored. A recognition of the adjustment to technological advance, to urban growth, and to the high standards of living all of which contribute to the fluidity and facility of change. The frontier was pioneering stage of grasping spaces and one form of offering abundance. Furthermore, freedom and opportunity is to be created at the edge of the unused. This implies also to science which has its frontiers, and to industry, to technology, and so long to advance standards of living and maintain the fluidity of living and capacity for change along these frontiers........

George Wilson Pierson, The frontier and American institutions, New England Quarterly XV, 1942



Report published by the Public Land Law Review Commission,for advice on what to do about the 755 million acres that were federally owned.

'Get rid of some of the land, but keep most of it. Give commercial interests, like the huge mining, timber, and farming industries, more leeway to make money from the public domain, but make them pay the Government more in doing so. Cut the tax-shy and land-shy states and localities in on more of the public-land benefits, but reserve a goodly amount for outdoor museums and parks.'

The New York Times, June 25, 1970, 26


Source: Kammen, M., People of Paradox, Oxford Univ. Press, 1978