ED: But first, we're going to hear from a person who has a very peculiar relationship to leisure. She actually hangs out in resorts and dares to call it research. Cindy Aron is the author of Working at Play, A History of Vacations in the United States. She says that while upper class Americans have been going to luxury spas and resorts for a long time, few Americans of the 19th century associated travel with pleasure. And why would they? The roads were terrible.
There were no budget hotels or motel chains, But then train travel arrived, and railroad companies in need of passengers started building resorts along their lines. By the 18 seventies, tens of thousands of Americans were on the move for pleasure.
CINDY ARON: Now most Americans are still farmers, and farmers can very easily take off time in the summer. But there's a growing population, especially in the cities of people who work at what we have come to call white collar jobs. They work as clerks or they work as professionals or they're school teachers, and they have time off in the summer often with pay. And as the population of potential vacationers increases, savvy entrepreneurs decide, that lake that's, you know, not too far away, put up a few cabins and we could advertise that as a resort. And pretty soon, just little places dotting the railroad, become advertised as vacation resorts.
ED: Well, something I was surprised by that you just said was, people had paid vacations in the 19th century. Mhmm. Where'd that come from?
CINDY ARON: You know, there was a belief that people who worked with their brains rather than with their hands might suffer from something that was called brain fatigue.
ED: Hey. I've been there.
CINDY ARON: Yeah. And that they would wear themselves out. And so they needed I mean, the the best medical evidence said that these people needed time off so they could refresh themselves if they were to be healthy and to be able to go back to their work. Interestingly enough, people who worked with their hands and who worked at hard physical manual labor, those people, nobody believed that they needed time off from work. They did not –
ED: How convenient.
CINDY ARON: – vacation. True. I mean, those people had time off from work, but it was called unemployment. It was not called, vacation time. Yeah. Now, certainly not everybody, but, you know, federal government, state government, corporations, even small businesses give their employees a week's paid vacation.
ED: That's amazing. And this wasn't the result of union activity or struggle. It's just that they read the health reports and decided that they wanna keep these people productive the rest of the year?
CINDY ARON: I guess so. There there there seem to be very little debate about it, where by the 19 tens and twenties, there's a huge debate about whether or not working class people, you know, people who work in factories, or whether they ought to be given paid vacations or not. That becomes a very large debate.
ED: But, you know, so what you just described, it sounds in many ways as if the modern vacation was sort of born fully grown.
CINDY ARON: I think it was. And what I found particularly interesting was the discussion about vacations in the 19th century. People thought that it was a good idea. On the other hand, there was a sort of undertone of fear about dangers of vacations, That vacations in some ways might be harmful for the very reason that they separated people from work and that they, introduced the potential temptations of idleness. The way people in the 19th century resolved this problem was by finding ways to take vacations that would keep them in some ways safe from the temptations that vacations presented, by taking what I call self improving vacations. Going to places like Chautauqua, which was a resort in in upstate New York where one could enjoy the lake and the boating and the swimming and various forms of entertainment, but which also offered lectures and courses so that you could spend some of your time in self improvement. And Chautauqua begin to appear all across the United States. The first one starts in the 1870s. And then they sort of pop up, and they're quite popular.
ED: You know, it sounds to me like, people were doing the closest thing to work they could without actually working.
CINDY ARON: I think that's true. I think that's true. I think, you know, that a lot of the forms of vacationing that were devised in the late 19th century were ways of keeping us close to work or at least, creating places where the temptations weren't too great. There were lots of resorts that grew out of religious campgrounds, mostly Methodist campgrounds. And, you know, these places had rules, you know, which, you know, you couldn't swim on the Sabbath and there were no alcohol and, you know, no smoking. Another example is just tourism, you know, being a tourist.
ED: Which is considered educational by its very nature.
CINDY ARON: Right. And not relaxing.
ED: You know? Right. Right.
CINDY ARON: Tourists are very busy vacationers and they, you know and in the 19th century, they went to places, historic landmarks. People made pilgrimages to the burial sites of famous Americans. So these were the same kind of educational tours that we drag our children on, I think.
ED: I'm sure we don't drag our children. I'm sure the children are delighted to go to burial places of famous people.
CINDY ARON: Yes. Some are. Many of us are –
ED: – appreciate that. Right.
CINDY ARON: I don't wanna give the mistaken impression that everybody was always very good when they were on vacation. And there's lots of evidence about flirtations going on that were suspicious about, you know, women, you know, go going into the into the ocean and coming out with their many layers of bathing clothes clinging to their bodies and, you know, exhibiting themselves in ways that were decidedly improper in the 19
ED: Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. This is a family show!
CINDY ARON: This is a family show. Okay. I'll do my best.
ED: I don't wanna talk about layers of wet clothing clinging!
CINDY ARON: So I can't count the numbers of people who took one kind of vacation versus another kind of vacation. But I think what I can say is that both of these strands have survived. I mean, you know, people who go to health spas and eat abstainously, exercise continuously, and lose as much weight as they can. You know, if you look at things like Elder Hostel and the various people who go on vacations with, often a historian who's an expert, right, who will teach them about the places where they have been.
ED: Who wouldn't wanna do that?
CINDY ARON: That's right. I mean, this is a huge industry. All the places like Epcot or, you know, the the various self improving places that we can take our children, I mean, those places, attract a lot of people.
ED: Yeah. You hear people say, we we went to Disney World, but we spent a lot of time at Epcot.
CINDY ARON: Exactly.
ED: So it was alright.
CINDY ARON: Exactly. So I I think that all that persists. On the other hand, I think the other side of it persists as well. You know, people go on vacation to just kick back. I think it's probably harder in some ways to just kick back today because of the ways in which technology has kept us connected to our work. It's too easy to keep in touch and to keep working, in your traditional work while you are on vacation.
ED: So does this mark the beginning of the end of the process that you've traced since the beginning of 19th century?
CINDY ARON: I certainly hope not. You know, I I think it's important for us to be away from work.
ED: But you know what? I know that you've taken well deserved time off to be with us here on backstory, and I really appreciate it, Cindy.
CINDY ARON: Well, it's always a pleasure, Ed.
ED: Cindy Aron is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia. She's the author of Working at Play, A History of Vacations in the United States.
JOANNE: Earlier, we heard from historian Janet Muren of Trent University in Ontario, Canada. She's the author of Prisons, Asylums, and the Public, Institutional Visiting in the 19th Century.