Save America First
I
NOT far from Monticello, Georgia, in the Piedmont section, is a deserted plantation, one of many similar relics of the days when this area contained a thriving agriculture. Approaching the plantation by a back road, you come upon a dilapidated manor house. Though the roof has fallen in, the architecture is impressive, and it is easy to imagine the place humming with life. Why was it abandoned ?
The reason can be discerned in the profile of a knoll, still covered with virgin timber, which once served as the family burial ground. That is why the trees are still there. Part of the knoll has been cut away for a state road; and on the other side of the road is the farm land, or what used to be the farm land. On the knoll side of the road the soil formation has not been disturbed. You see two feet of dark brown topsoil, then a reddish subsoil, and then a heavy red clay, the so-called third horizon. Across the road, where the land has been disturbed, soil and subsoil have disappeared. The Negro who tills it can raise nothing worth his trouble. Even after heavy applications of fertilizer, his cotton is short, weathered, and dry.
From the height of the knoll on the burial-ground side of the road, where the original trees hold the original soil, you judge that about eight feet has washed away on the unprotected side. About a quarter of a mile off, you see where much of it has gone. There is a gully, big enough to bury a dozen freight trains. Near by are other chasms similarly large and voracious. Soil erosion has produced an almost lunar desolation. About half the county has been likewise ruined.
As yet the damage done by erosion in the United States, though great, is not catastrophic; but give us time. It took centuries for unrestrained individualism to strip the soil from Northern China and for the breakdown of social controls to make a desert out of the Middle East. In the United States we have been mutilating the soil for only a few decades; but we are using large-scale, typically American methods. Already we have allowed erosion by water to destroy more than 44,000,000 acres outside the arid region. From 88,000,000 acres more, water erosion has stripped practically all the topsoil. It has taken from one fourth to three fourths of the topsoil from an additional 175,000,000 acres. Wind erosion has practically ruined more than 4,000,000 acres, and seriously damaged 56,000,000 acres. Serious erosion is developing on an additional 167,000,000 acres.
When the destruction began in the Piedmont, the United States was still pioneering. The rule was, ‘Exploit and move on.’ With the country barely scratched, a little soil washing here and there seemed of no consequence. The plantation mentioned is typical of the surrounding area, which was hurried into cultivation during the great cotton boom of the 1830’s and 1840’s. Its rich forest soil, with just the right proportion of clay, was cleared within ten years, except around the homes and in the burial grounds; and for many years it raised cotton profitably. But erosion levied toll, and finally came the boll weevil. The double handicap finished matters. Between 1920 and 1925, Jasper County, Georgia, lost half its population; more than half the cultivated area passed out of cultivation. In an adjoining county (Putnam) the annual production of cotton dropped as low as 274 bales; it had previously been as high as 2400 bales. This area had been a seat of culture, and had produced bishops, judges, senators, and literary men (among them Joel Chandler Harris). Harris’s former place is now part of a government rehabilitation project. It is difficult to apportion blame. Few farmers knew that slope cultivation was dangerous, and the government did not tell them.
II
Soil conservation is a social problem; it is vain to wait upon individual action for a cure. Temporarily, indeed, individuals may profit by letting the destruction continue. Individuals often have small incentive to check erosion, because the benefits can seldom be monopolized. In the early stages the individual farmer may do something; but erosion is so insidious that after a time the cost of controlling it may be too much for the landowner. But the government has a responsibility, for the soil is the most irreplaceable asset of the people as a whole. Moreover, the government’s responsibility is unique and in the final resort not to be shared, not to be devolved upon private individuals, and not to be repudiated. Failure to recognize this principle, if not the only cause of soil denudation, is always its accompaniment. We can distinguish the consequences not only in their incipient form in the United States but in their developed form in the Orient and in the ancient world. Civilizations have fallen because they did not recognize, or became unable to fulfill, their responsibility for the protection of the soil.
In parts of the Tennessee Valley and in parts of the Ozarks, farmers are still clearing very steep slopes — which they reckon on having to abandon in from five to ten years. They realize that they cannot retain the soil for long; but they do not realize what damage they inflict on the lands below. In the pioneer epoch, when farmers were occupying the public domain, the government did not ask them to protect it from erosion, because it did not itself appreciate the necessity. No one foresaw that the good free or cheap land would soon be gone, that population pressure would force the cultivation of the hillsides, and that in consequence erosion would become a serious menace. Both law and custom permitted men to use property as they wished; to use and to abuse it; and indeed even to use and to abuse the public property. There was no adequate control of lumbering or grazing. Few saw that, in land utilization, individual and social interests may clash.
In talking about soil conservation it is customary to emphasize the physical rather than the social aspects. Erosion specialists emphasize, for example, the slope of the land; and this is undoubtedly important. Certain soils erode under cultivation even on slight slopes. On steeper slopes it, may be imperative not to grow clean tilled crops; and on slopes yet steeper the control of erosion may make it necessary to cease farming entirely. From a technical standpoint, erosion control depends clearly on slope control. But on what does slope control depend? On what does overgrazing, another serious cause of erosion, depend? The Navaho Indian Reservation in New Mexico and Arizona is in an advanced stage of depletion. It did not erode when the Indians had it before the time of the white man. That it erodes now results from social maladjustments, from all the difficulties associated with Indian life on the reservations, rather than from deliberate misuse of the land. In the basin of the upper Gila River, in Arizona and New Mexico, erosion is very serious, except in the national forests. Applying to the neighboring lands the methods that have checked erosion in the forests is primarily a social problem. Wherever erosion is serious, and wherever it looks like doing further damage, the nation must step in.
Consider the slope cultivators of the Ozarks and the Tennessee hills, whose hard-won soil will vanish within a decade. As it erodes, it will expose other lands below. But what motive have these men to protect the soil? Terracing would be expensive, and might not pay. What happens to other farms, as a result of erosion upon their own, is not their business. The cost of erosion control often exceeds the value of the particular land in question, though it may be small compared with the net benefit to society. In that case the cost should be apportioned among all the beneficiaries — practically throughout the community. There is no other way to get the work done.
Inescapably, under certain conditions, the control of soil erosion, and perhaps also the maintenance of soil fertility, are social responsibilities. Holding the individual responsible simply will not do; for the cost to him may exceed the advantage, just as the damage resulting from the erosion he precipitates may be greater to others than to himself. On many farms, to be sure, the cost of preventing erosion and of maintaining fertility may be returned directly and with interest to the owner or the operator. But this is not generally true. On the contrary, the benefit can seldom be localized; it goes in greater measure to the community than to the individuals directly concerned. When we reflect also that soil conservation is necessary to livestock grazing, to flood control, to irrigation systems, to city water systems, and to river navigation, the social interest is overwhelming.
Though new to us, this story is old in the history of the world. When archæologists trace the decline of ancient civilizations to neglect of the soil, we think it can never happen here. Therefore we take no precautions. It is not science, or knowledge about the behavior of the soil, or awareness of the fact that bare hillsides mean gutted plains, that we lack, but willingness to modify our individualism sufficiently to prevent these evils — because the prevention is necessarily a social act. On reading about the denudation of China, and learning what deforestation and soil erosion have done there, we smile and think we shall never be so foolish. But the Chinese know the consequences of their behavior. They are good farmers and even good foresters. If they have let their country down, it is from necessity rather than from ignorance. They have not been able to develop the necessary social controls. Necessity compels the Chinese to cut their forests, and to cultivate their slopes — though the operation eventually impoverishes them. They regret the necessity. We copy them — without the necessity and without the regret.
III
American and European scientists who study China come back with increased respect for the Chinese. They see that China has not saved her forests, protected her rivers from silting, or prevented disastrous recurrent floods. They know how the land of China came to be largely destroyed. Why is a more difficult question. Vast areas now bare in China were once covered with grass or bore thick forests; wholesale deforestation has exposed the land to terrific erosion. The rapid runoff of heavy summer rains charges the floodwaters with unbelievable quantities of silt. Out of the loess hills the streams come down as fluid mud. Upland torrents develop herculean transporting power. Mud-laden, these torrents reach the plain, where the streams widen, and choke up natural and artificial channels with silt, which raises the beds of the streams above the plains. What can be done then to check floods? It is all a direct consequence of the denudation of the hillsides, in turn a consequence of competition for soil. The record looks so bad that it seems to reflect upon the intelligence of the people. But the testimony of competent observers is that China had no choice. Politically and technically she was too undeveloped to take a better course. China lacked, not brains, but social organization.
Those who have studied the subject figure that the Chinese, like the American colonists, had to clear some of their ground for crops. As is well known, deep forests yield little subsistence, even for wild animals. Fauna inhabit the borders chiefly. Moreover, the Chinese wished to drive out wolves, leopards, and tigers, and for that purpose used fire. But forest clearing of this description was a pioneering operation, not seriously destructive. Considerable damage followed wars and rebellions, which created huge demands for timber. But even that could have been survived. It was a combination of modern forces that extended the rim of cultivation up the hillsides and precipitated disastrous erosion. The most extensive forest cutting began about two hundred years ago, not for timber but to get soil. Even to-day the traveler sees fine timber rotting in piles beside oat fields. Population growth was apparently the main cause of the forest destruction; and the cause of the population growth is obscure. It may have been partly the introduction of maize and of the potato, partly the introduction of iron tools, partly the development of trade with the Occident. Whatever the cause, it intensified the competition for soil.
Recent investigations do not bear out the idea that the Chinese destroyed their forests and allowed their soils to wash away through ignorance. Baron von Richthofen, a keen observer, thought so; but later observers rejected his conclusion. Vicomte d’Ollone challenged it. The Reverend R. A. Haden extolled Chinese forestry. Near Soochow he discovered nurseries, trees planted in close formation, wood lots managed for sustained production. W. C. Lowdermilk, a member of the United States Department of Agriculture, saw in China thousands of acres planted to pine from local nurseries, and traced the practice back to ancient times. Also, he found temple forests scattered throughout the country. Buddhist priests began to establish these temple forests in the first century of the Christian era, and the religious communities have derived considerable revenue from them ever since. They reproduce naturally, without irrigation; so it is evident that the deforestation of China is not the result of climatic change. Lowdermilk says the temple forests show good care. Erosion resulting from cultivation of sloping lands is a cause of famines. But the Chinese understand the dangers of erosion; their proverbs show it. One proverb says: ‘Mountains exhausted of forests are washed bare by torrents.’ Another says: ‘Mountains empty, rivers gorged.’
It was not ignorance that brought about soil destruction in China, though certainly the Western world has a more exact knowledge of what erosion does, and of how it may be prevented. But what could the Chinese do, when between 1743 and 1920 their population increased nearly threefold? There was only one thing possible, since they were confirmed individualists — to push cultivation up the mountains. They carried it to the very summits. To get soil, they had to cut down trees; and when by that means they had got soil, they could not keep it. Moreover, the short life of agriculture on the hillsides ended the long life of agriculture on the plains. Every farm won from the mountain side ruined a dozen in the path of the released torrents. In the end there was less production than there had been before, and the standard of living declined terrifically. The struggle for new land killed old land. The loss far exceeded the gain; but it could have been prevented only by an arrangement of some sort between the tillers of the plains and the would-be cultivators of the heights—in other words, by the extension of aid from the plainsmen to the hill people for the control of erosion. And that was further in social engineering than the Chinese were prepared to go.
This is not theory, but recorded fact. Like the virgin forests of the United States, and our grazing areas, the mountain sides of China were open to use and misuse. Lands above the earlier cultivated area were common lands; anyone was free to cultivate them. And when plants became available that could be cultivated there, plants like the potato and Indian corn, there was a pioneering rush. Slope cultivation proceeded uncontrolled. Each man raised what he could, without bothering about the damage he did to the lands below, and moved on when his soil had washed away. Sometimes the mountain lands, after being minutely subdivided, came together again in joint uses; but there was still no motive for conservation. The individual interest was too small. Of course there was no government control. Up the mountain sides the writ of the government did not run, either central or provincial; and the plainsmen could not get together to buy off the damage, though it would have been cheap to do so. On the other hand, the hillmen could not be expected to desist, with starvation hounding them. It was laissez-faire run wild.
IV
Sometimes fertile regions become deserts through the breakdown rather than the nondevelopment of social controls. But the process is the same. When individuals may use land as they will, without regard to social interests, the result in thickly populated countries can only be disaster. As is well known, the greater Arabian peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia or Irak, Armenia, and parts of Asia Minor contain multitudinous architectural remains, which prove that these regions were once densely peopled. Regions which as late as the Christian era supported millions are now desolate and barren. Their forests are gone, their once fertile soil buried by sand. It is unquestionable that the Middle East must once have been extremely productive; Asia Minor alone boasted more than two hundred and fifty considerable cities. Large armies, in marches and countermarches, subsisted by foraging in areas that to-day would hardly feed a herd of goats. Most authorities do not believe that the climate has changed within historic times. For example, Professor D. S. Sanford, of Oxford University, in a letter to the director of the United States Soil Conservation Service, declares: ‘I am convinced that in the Christian era at any rate there have been exceedingly few real changes of climate, though there have been vitally important local changes. On every hand we see how man has reclaimed vast areas from the desert, and let them decay.‘
Note well that phrase, ‘let them decay.’ It implies neglect; but was it individual neglect? Not at all. The agriculture of the Middle East, of the empires of Persia, of Babylonia, of Assyria, and of Chaldea, rested upon vast irrigation works. It was control of the Euphrates and of the Tigris that enabled the numerous inhabitants to maintain prosperous and extensive civilizations, and to hold back the desert. Now the control of vast irrigation works is distinctly not an individual but a collective task. When the late Milton Whitney was chief of the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture, he studied the Middle East, and concluded that agriculture could thrive there again if the ancient water controls were restored. What caused the ancient engineering works to be neglected and destroyed?
Undoubtedly the cause was not internal but external; not ignorance of soil conservation, or of the principles of flood control, but wars, invasions, and the resulting social paralysis. Not until the power of governments had crumbled did the engineering works, the dams, the reservoirs, and the terraces disappear; not until then did the hills lose their forest covering. It is noteworthy, indeed, that the contending armies before the Christian era respected the forests and the engineering works, though they destroyed growing crops. Both the Euphrates and the Tigris carry tremendous floodwaters, which, unlike those of the Nile, come irregularly; and any conqueror wishing to profit permanently from his conquests had to leave intact the water system and the forests. Otherwise he could have reaped no crops. Besides the elaborate irrigation system, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia had luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows. Palestine’s hills bore forests, as the Old Testament declares. ’I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,’ said the Psalmist. He would not have said that had the hills been denuded, barren, and the source of destructive torrents. But after the Christian era the old respect for the irrigation works and the forests disappeared. New conquerors, with no interest in agriculture, laid the region waste.
It was the desert nomads, followed by the Crusaders, who struck the vital blow. They destroyed both the forests and the waterworks. Agriculture in Asia Minor had flourished up to that time. But after the fall of Rome, Mahomet’s hordes wrought havoc. Despising agriculture, they strove to kill it. Next came the Crusaders, who cut down the olive trees for their engines of war, and ruthlessly destroyed the forests. After the Crusaders the Turkish powers, distinctly non-farmminded, completed the destruction of the agricultural facilities. Rome had built a road into the heart of Asia Minor. Under the Turks it vanished and commerce virtually ceased. Rome had preserved the agriculture of the region, though she had other sources of supply. But the nomads wanted only pastures. The Crusaders were transients, and the Turks never dreamed of restoring irrigation works. The social motive, and with it the social power to maintain the agriculture, vanished; and the sands of the desert swirled in. There, as in China, nature demonstrated that she bows only to collective man.
V
Historically the civilizations of the Middle East were thriving only yesterday, but they have scarcely left a trace. Antioch was at the height of its glory as late as A.D. 360. Now it is a ghost town, occupying only a corner of the original site. Where most of the ancient city stood, there is only rock or sand. In A.D. 360 an orator celebrated the city’s glories at an Olympic festival. He said nature had poured out all her resources for the benefit of Antioch — earth, streams, a temperate climate, and so forth. He described the land as luxuriant with Athena’s olive, and declared that even the mountain slopes could be fertile. Perhaps he was unaware of the dangers of erosion; for he rejoiced that farmers could be seen driving their ploughs almost to the summits. The heights afforded wood for the ovens of bakehouses, and for the furnaces that heated the baths. Around the city were vineyards. Vessels loaded with olive oil constantly passed down the Orontes. Ships were ever to be seen unloading the produce of the interior.
Tall trees flourished on plain and hillside, and crops sprang up under their shadow. Crop failure was rare. Sheep and goats pastured on the rich grass, kept fresh by the many rivers, some of which flowed always while others flowed only in the rainy season. People thronged the city streets continually. There were wide thoroughfares, handsome dwellings, busy shops, and parks, temples, and baths. Building was incessant. To the modern visitor, who sees only a tumble-down place with watercourses in the narrow streets, and desert all around, this sounds incredible. The change looks like the result of geologic or climatic influence. But had Rome endured, it probably would not have occurred.
Agriculture persisted throughout the Middle East for thousands of years with high productivity. When it suddenly declined, the cause was a change not in the climate or in the soil but in the social organization of the region.
We can see how agriculture must have been dependent on strong government. Without strong government there could have been no protection of the irrigation works. Without a controlled water supply there could have been no crops — in fact, little vegetation of any useful kind; and without vegetation the country would have been immediately subject to wind erosion. It was not merely necessary for the government to be strong, but equally important that it should be scientifically-minded and fair. It had to encourage research, and to prevent partiality in the distribution of the water; for that would have caused disaffection, and reduced production.
Then the state would have been weakened. Its revenues would have dried up and its power to maintain armies for the national defense would have declined. Successive governments did what was necessary prior to the decline of the Roman Empire. Ancient agriculture in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris rested upon a social system which controlled the water and protected the soil, and which, therefore, commanded the loyalty and coöperation of the people. The civilizations of the Middle East could not have been continuously bloody and oppressive; for continuous bloodshed and oppression do not nourish the agricultural arts and do not encourage social coöperation.
That wind erosion supervened does not prove that wind erosion was the cause of the decline. Everything indicates a prior political or social cause. It was the destruction of organized society that promoted the destruction of agriculture. Agriculture in the Nile Valley survived political shocks and social changes. Why did Egyptian agriculture not succumb with the agriculture of Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria? The reason is simple. The two agricultural systems, though both very old, were not alike in other respects. Agriculture east of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea could not exist without irrigation. It depended absolutely on the control of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Agriculture in the Nile Valley did not depend upon irrigation.
It used irrigation, to be sure, but only in a primitive way before the British occupation. The sculpture and paintings of ancient Egypt simply show hand bailing to spread around the waters of the Nile farther than they would naturally go. Scientific irrigation in the Nile Valley is a modern innovation. Ancient irrigation in Egypt could not compare with the elaborate systems of Babylonia and Assyria. Nature, rather than man, provided the original basis for Egyptian agriculture; and nature resumed her function after every catastrophe. West of the Red Sea, agriculture could revive spontaneously; east of the Red Sea, it could not.
But there is only one Egypt in the world. The uninterrupted life of agriculture there is an exception to the rule that the preservation of agriculture and the care of the soil are normally a social function. Egyptian agriculture owes its unique advantage to two remarkable properties of the Nile. First, the rise and fall of the water occur each year about the same time, and the height of the annual flood varies little. It attains its highest point in September, diminishes rapidly until December, and then more slowly. Thereafter the farmer need only scatter seed to be sure of a crop. The lowest flood on record was only five and onehalf feet below the average. Seriously low floods have occurred only four times in modern history. The second extraordinary property of the Nile is the way in which each year it deposits a rich alluvium, which makes fertilizer superfluous. Egypt benefits from soil erosion — erosion not within but beyond its borders. Erosion in Ethiopia and along the headwaters of the Nile carpets the Nile Valley annually with a rich soil.
Agriculture in the Nile Valley therefore has an indestructible core which distinguishes it uniquely from that of all other important agricultural areas. Irrigation may extend the cultivable area, but the lack thereof cannot totally obliterate it. Social organization is of course important, more so to-day than formerly, because modern irrigation has fostered an enormous population growth in Egypt. Even in ancient times it was necessary to protect the crops against marauders. Therefore it was necessary for husbandman and soldier to coöperate. In other words, it was necessary to have a state. But the decay or weakness of the state could not wipe out the agricultural system. With seed scattered within reach of the natural flood, nature could be depended on to do the rest. Agriculture survived wars, invasions, and revolutions in Egypt because nature rather than man was the guardian of the soil.
VI
Everywhere else, especially where he is numerous, man is the guardian of the soil; and he abuses the trust at his peril. He abuses it at his peril in the United States. Speculations about the soil problems of China, and of the ancient empires of the Middle East, have more than an academic interest for Americans. They emphasize the fact that soil conservation is never merely a physical problem, a mere question of educating individuals in the proper use of natural resources, but always in a paramount degree a social problem. It is a problem for the community. As the ratio of population to resources mounts, competition thrusts land into wrong uses. First the timber disappears from the hillsides, then the soil.
When the torrents fall unimpeded on the plains, agriculture becomes impossible where it seemed secure. Then it is necessary to control the water artificially, at an enormous social cost.
Obviously, if individuals are to be restrained from pursuing their interests destructively, those who profit from the restraint should pay for it. They should indemnify the individuals who forgo their objects. This is a problem in the distribution of costs and benefits. China strips the hillsides and devastates the plains, not primarily because she lacks the science, the machinery, and the labor with which to control erosion, but because she has not discovered how to compose the differences between those who want new soil and those who mainly wish to keep what they have. Hence advantage to a few becomes calamity for many. We make the same mistake. If we need not fear disaster from external pressure, we have need to fear it from internal weakness. Our laissez-faire tradition is strong, and threatens to do us heavy damage before we discover how to promote the use rather than the misuse of natural resources.
What we have done with our forest lands is a warning. These cover nearly a third of the continental area, and for the most part are privately owned. Fires ravage more than 40,000,000 acres annually. Axe and fire together have devastated or crippled more than 74,000,000 acres. Nearly everywhere, in the trail of the lumberman, we come upon forest empires destroyed, forest industries abandoned, towns deserted, hills and valleys eroded, and streams, dams, and harbors choked with silt. In many regions agriculture has become impossible, not only through soil erosion, but through the disappearance of forest industries which used to furnish near-by markets for farm crops.
Overgrazing and the unwise ploughing up of range land have created a serious range problem. It is imperative to check overgrazing, to restore the range vegetation, and to prevent further unwise extensions of crop growing into range areas. Conflicts between public and private interests in the use of the range must be reconciled. It need scarcely be said that there are financial as well as agronomic difficulties. Each step in the control of grazing within the national forests has been won against stubborn opposition, and efforts to check further misuse of private range land will undoubtedly encounter still stronger resistance.
But we cannot deal with the soil problem piecemeal and deal with it effectively. The different malpractices interact with cumulative ill effect. Reckless lumbering leads to reckless cultivation of the denuded slopes. Reckless grazing drives out the livestock man, and tempts in the farmer to his ruin, and to the detriment of the soil. In an individualist economy, with little check upon self-interest, it cannot be otherwise. Unrestrained individualism is self-destructive, particularly in an expanding community whose resources and markets do not expand. Then the struggle for resources leads straight to their misuse. The result is diminishing returns.
In 1934, perhaps 10,000,000 in the United States who should have been gainfully employed were not. Among the consequences was the backing up of rural youth on farms. Probably 2,000,000 young people who under normal conditions would have got city jobs between 1930 and 1934 wore still in the country. What was there for them to do? Broadly, just two things: cultivate the old area more intensively and break new land. They did both. They raised crops on fields that should have been returned to grass or trees, and created new farms. More than 500,000 new farms came into existence between 1930 and 1935, most of them in regions of hilly surface and of poor soils. This was a move toward soil destruction.
Thus the soil problem is urban as well as rural. Were urban industry more active, the problem would be easier to solve; for, with unemployment dropping, rural youth would be less driven to intensive soil uses, and less prone to strip the slopes. There would be less reoccupation of abandoned farms, less clearing of forest land, less ploughing of range land. Among the factors that impel the expanding rural population to mine the soil, lack of other opportunities is the chief. Literally, as well as figuratively, unemployment undermines the national life. The evil, to be sure, can be mitigated. Public agencies can guide land uses, and coöperate with farmers in checking erosion. But, while unemployment lasts, such efforts will meet with resistance, because it is better for the poor man to farm badly than to rot in idleness. If the nation wishes to restrain him from slope cultivation, it must offer him a better choice.
Tied up with unemployment in its bearing on soil conservation is farm tenancy. Urban unemployment and farm tenancy are related evils. Between 1880 and 1930 the number of farm tenants in the United States more than doubled, and the number of tenants among each one thousand farmers increased 138 per cent. More and more people had to work the land on terms not compatible with good care for the soil. Without a stable, continuous association with the land, farm operators have no motive to check erosion. The average tenant stays on a farm only two or three years, whereas owner occupancy averages fourteen years. Short tenure and soil conservation do not harmonize. Another obstacle to soil conservation is farm debt, which leaves many farmers with only nominal land ownership. In 1930 the total farm mortgage debt in the United States represented about 22 per cent of the value of all farms, as compared with only 10 per cent in 1910. Farmers with negligible equities cannot take care of the soil. Both unemployment and increasing farm tenancy betoken economic insecurity. Both conditions put a premium on soil mining. Unemployment forces people into the hills, where they must cultivate erodible slopes. Tenancy obliges them to rate immediate production above future productivity.
From a national standpoint, it is bad economy to deforest the mountains, to cultivate steep slopes, to cultivate even moderate slopes without precautions against erosion, to plough up grasslands not suited to farming, and to overgraze the range without giving the natural vegetation a chance to recuperate. All these practices tend toward soil bankruptcy. They cut into our soil capital, which, unlike monetary capital, can never be replaced. But on the other hand they allow certain persons temporarily to make a living, often much more than a living. It is not merely poverty farming that denudes the land. Wealthy lumbermen, cattlemen, and dry farmers are equally responsible. Greed, as well as want, may be improvident. And when we ask the individual to choose between his own advantage and the permanent good of the community, we know his answer in advance. In an individualist economy the answer will always favor the individual. Therefore if, collectively, we disapprove the answer, we must present an alternative. When the community asks the individual to restrain his exploitive impetuosity, somehow or other it must make it worth his while. Means must be found to create a present interest in the conservation of soil values for the future.