The New Promised Land: Maine's Summer Camps for Jewish Youth ...

What was the essence of camps’ popularity?
When the first camps were founded, few people knew about summer camp.
According to Paris, organizations like the YMCA turned the institution into a
national, mainstream phenomenon. As Paris wrote of these organizational camps,
“By the turn of the twentieth century, hundreds of organizational camps served
many thousands of boys.” 51 Specifically, the YMCA had 167 camps in 1901 and 300
camps in 1905. 52 With so many summer camps to choose from, and more families
being able to afford to send their children to these institutions (YMCA camps
charged between $3.50 and $5.25 per week, still a considerable sum for an unskilled
worker, but affordable for the middle class), it is no wonder that these camps
became increasingly popular. 53
Just as the founders of summer camps were attracted to the idea of getting
out of congested cities and into the natural world, so were the parents who sent
their children to summer camps. As Eells wrote, by the dawn of the twentieth
century, families no longer held Victorian ideals to such strict standards. According
to Paris, the primitive lifestyle “represented an appealing respite from modernity’s
skill and tradition.” 54 Sargent expressed a similar sentiment, and wrote,
Formerly, we looked upon primitive people as savages….Though they
[primitive people] know nothing of clothing, shelter or agriculture, they have
the most elaborate customs, traditions, and rituals, and no lack of virtues.
They are mutually helpful, resourceful, capable of initiative, with a high and
rigorous code of morality. 55
51 Paris, Children’s Nature, 40.
52 Ibid, 42.
53 Ibid, 40.
54 Ibid, 43.
55 Sargent, An Handbook of Summer Camps, 26.
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