Evening star., 1939-08-15

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Forum.
United States every year to fill a
train of freight cars circling the
earth 10 times at the Equator. This
Is loss so huge the mind cannot
comprehend it. 1t is a loss we SIM
ply cannot afford to take for many
more years.
Menace Can Be Seen.
There are counties in the old
southeastern cotton country where
erosion has carved out gullies a
hundred feet deep and thousand
feet wide. There are other gullies
nearly as large, in the bean-produc-
ing sections of Southern California
There are localities in the Southern
plains where erosion has buried
whole farmsteads-fields, roads,
fences, machinery and buildings
under drifts of wind blown soil,
In the Northwest, where the land
has known the plow for only little
while, you can find many yellow
hllltops where the loss of dark. rich
topsoil has exposed the almost ster-
lie subsoil that lies beneath. If
you want proof of what erosion is
doing to the land you can look at
the land and see for yourself. You
can see the process in full swing
on any bare slope, whether in a field
or In your front yard, during any
heavy rain.
ON almost any section of sloping
farmland you can see some of the
2oo.OOO,0O0 gullies that rush rain
water off the land to flood our
streams. These millions of gullies
are new waterways-made by man
lhe development of these erosion
carved trenches could have been
prevented. Today they are a bic
factor IN our mounting food prob
lem.
You don't need to look very long
10 flnd valley lands buried by sand
and gravel washed down from bare
sloplng fields. And the same is true
OF reservoirs, stream channels and
drainage, bitches, clogged with mud
that was once fertile soil on upland
nelds-before the rush of rainWater
carried it away.
You can look at the people living
on poor land and see them as the
present-day victims of soil erosion
not merely as people threatened bv
soil waste. Poor land makes poor
people. And by the same token, poor
people often make poor land. Much
OF the rural poverty of this country
Is due to the poverty of land from
which erosion has secured the fertile
layer of topsoil. And not a little of
the land now being abused is being
1armed by people too poor. too debt
ridden, and too hard-pressed in
many ways, to use their land care
Iully even If they wanted to. And
yet, these harrassed farmers, in the
aggregate, make very considerable
contribution to our national produc-
ton.
Back to Jackson's Days.
I've been painting black picture,
l know, but I've done it purposely,
I hope you will keep this picture in
mind for moment while read from
remarkable document written by
Andrew Jackson 103 years ago. while
he was President of the United
States. This is Thanksgiving Day
proclamation, and here is how it
reads, in part.
we thank Thee for the absence
OF unemployment which in the kind
ridden countries of the Old World is
causing widespread suffering among
the toiling masses and has led to
such deplorable excesses as bread
riots and the destruction of labor
saving machines. And if the time
should ever come, as fate may forbid.
when our young and growing indus
tries can no longer employ all the
labor rendered, our public domain of
thousands of millions of acres of
virgin soil will offer them welcome
sustenance and fortune, so that no
willing worker shall ever be begging
for work or bread in this land of
ours"
When Andrew Jackson wrote that,
the frontier had reached out scarcely
farther than the Alleghenies Be-
yond, as he once said, lay a vast
expanse of virgin land, much of it
the richest farming country in the
world. President Jackson had cause
for optimism; it was quite reason
able for him to predict that between
the Alleghenies and the Mississippi
there was enough land to take care
OF all the people we should have in
the United States for the next 700
years. In his day good land stretched
as lar as the eye could see, in nearly
every direction. 1t seemed to have
no limit. 1t appeared inexhaustible.
Today, the frontier has been
pushed to the Pacific. Long ago the
vast expanse of virgin land" which
Jackson mentioned, was brought
into use. We have no more frontiers
to settle. And it is worth remem-
bering that now there is no reserve
supply of untouched fertile land. as
there was in Andrew Jackson's day.
1t is worth remembering, too, that
great civilizations and great nations
OF the past have disappeared be-
cause their wealth of soil was
washed away by erosion. America
in August, 1889. is still far from
being washed away, of course, but
we would be unwise to ignore the
warnings of the past. Great cities
and numerous towns once flourished
in parts of Asia and North Africa,
where there is little but desolation
now. I have read that some 400
of these cities once dotted the plains
of Asia Minor, where so much land
is now dry and depopulated. Parts