Postwar planners feared idleness would turn to destructive use of leisure

Evidence

Here is one of the knottiest social problems of our age. How shall we dispose of these mounting surpluses of idle time? It must be employed in ways that will help promote the general welfare. Otherwise the dead weight of it will begin to pull us down. If it can not be used constructively, it must inevitably be used destructively. The devil can find work for idle hands and idle minds in more ways than our ancestors imagined were possible. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 588

Categorization

• CANDY: The enduring proverb that idle time becomes destructive, voiced as a mid-century policy worry about recreation, is a light conversational fact.
• XREF: connects to: Ungoverned leisure historically degenerated into civic decay and instability — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 584; Mass amusement reproduces the mechanized work process in leisure — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 107; Twentieth-century thinkers widely predicted technology would produce abundant leisure time — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 57

Broader Connections

• Mass amusement reproduces the mechanized work process in leisure #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 107