Montana labor news., 1938-08-25
LAB0R'S BOOK SHELF
BOOK REVIEWS
By RICHARD LAKE
The River" by Pare Lorentz.
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Inc next time anyone tells you
that u civilization couldn't have
become what it is today without
capitalism, show him ''The River"
Remind him that capitalism had its
historic function-to transform an
unsettled continent into an indus
trial nation in the shortest possible
time-and then hand him this book
as a jarring sheaf of evidence on the
criminal wastefulness involved in
doing the job. Explain this to him
by way of softening the shock he
will receive when he looks through
the book. Because it is hard for the
average man to realize how capital
ism has raped and despoiled this
United States. Even if he has gone
abroad in the land and walked up
and down on it, he discounts the
evidence that his eyes gather, be-
cause he is told to in newspaper and
magazine and history book. He is
told that he himself was careless and
wasteful of his heritage-that prodi-
gality is an American characteristic,
shaped by Americas exuberance and
youth.
Your neighbor may, of course, ask
whom Lorentz means when he says
I'VE" and in that case you will have
to tell him.
Many of you saw a moving pic
ture called "The River which Pare
Lorentz made for the Farm Security
Administration of the United States
Department of Agriculture. The
book reproduces the whole of that
eloquent, poetic text, and enough
photographs taken from the movie
to complete the narrative. It is a
striking book, fortunately put to-
gether, the pictures complementing
the teXt-one of those achievements
of photography and poetry that fit
into no particular category, but will
probably in the near future consti-
tute a category of their own. Such
books + Erskine Caldwell and
Margaret Bourke-White's 9You Have
Seen Their Faces and Archibald
Macleish's Land of the Free" 1.-THE
River is like a memory book of the
movie. As you turn its pages you
hear the tremendous rhetoric of the
names of American rivers and you
see their waters running down to
the Gulf. The great presence of the
Mississippi Valley begins to make
itself felt in shape and sound and
meaning; you see the conquest of
cotton and the slashing destruction
of forests; and you feel the thunder
of floods bearing disaster and death.
Lorentz, with his inspired camera
and his "utilitarian poetry" is tell
ing the epic story of the despoiling
of the second greatest river valley
in the world.
The work is educational and as
objective and restrained as is human
ly possible, considering the terrific
dynamite lurking quietly in the
material treated.
when first we found the great
valley it was 40 per cent forested.
To-day, for every hundred acres
of forests we found, we have ten left.
To-day five per cent of the entire
valley is ruined forever for agricul-
tural usel
twenty-five per cent of the top
soil has been showed by the old river
into the Gulf of Mexico.
To-day two out of five farmers in
the valley are tenant farmers-ten
per cent of them sharecroppers, liv-
ing in a state Of squalor unknown to
the poorest peasant in Europe
"And we are forcing thirty thou
sand more into tenancy and cropping
every year.
Lorentz made this picture for the
Farm Security Administration, but
when your neighbor cries that it is
government propaganda, remind him
of this-that the story of the Missis-
sippi is the story of heroic attempts
at flood control.
Because he is going to add,
But you cannot plan for water
unless you plan for land: for the
cut-over mountains-the eroded hills
the quilted fields that pour their
waters unchecked down to the
river"
And
"You cannot plan for water and
land unless you plan for people.
Down in the Valley, the Farm Sc
curity Administration has built a
model agricultural community. Liv-
ing in homes they themselves built,
paying for them on long term rates,
the homesteaders will have a chance
to share in the wealth of the Valley.
More important, the Farm Sc
curity Administration has lent thou
sands of dollars to farmers in the
Valley, farmers who were caught by
years of depression and in need of
only a stake to be self-sufficient."
The Farm Security Administration
is a New Deal agency committed in
general to the governments program
of agricultural scarcity-but in GER
tain significant ways it is blazing the
trails Of the future. Flood control
and cheap power projects are among
those ways that farmer and labor
groups generally must applaud and