The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1950-01-27
By ALBERT H. KRUSE, Comm.
Of Agriculture Under Ford
Administration

The conservation of soil and water
resources is one of the MUST jobs of
this country. According to the Unit
ed States Department of Agriculture,
no other nation has lost so much soil
in so little time. According to a ma
tion-wide survey of land conditions
by the Soil Conservation Service. as
reported in the June 1947 issue of the
Country Gentleman, out of the 1926
100000 acres now in use as cropland,
around 107,000,000 acres have de-
Perforated badly. Another 113,OOO.-
600 acres of cropland were found to
be in a serious, if less advanced, stage
of loss. According to another report,
erosion has already seriously damag-
ed two-fifths of all the cropland in
the United States.
What ] am talking about is a mai
or threat to the prosperity and to
the very life of this country. Some
people regard it as our number one
peace-time enemy. 1t is cancer in
our agriculture and a drain on our
pocketbooks. Each year the erosion
costs the United States in the neigh
borhood of 1884, 100000 in wasted
soil, railroad and highway damage,
flood damage, abandonment of farms,
reduced reservoir capacity, and other
losses. And where erosion is permit
ted, the standard of living goes down.
Since the beginning of history, pow
erty has followed in the wake of ero-
sion.
Started Almost Immediately After
Colonists Began Farming
How long has this thing called soil
erosion been going on in our coun-
try? The first white settlers had
hardly set foot upon the continent
before the menace of erosion appear
ed. In 1907, the first settlers arriv-
ed in Virginia, and 1920 the May
flower landed her passengers at Ply
mouth Rock. By 1856 some of the
more observant settlers on the east
ern seaboard noticed an increase in
floods due to cutting down the for
ests. Streams that previously had
run clear now ran brown with silt.
Still the settlers heedlessly con-
tinued the deforestation of the sea-
board. They cut and burned the for
ests to make their fields and planted |
corn among the stumps. Much tim
Der was burned to make potash for
export to Europe. In New England |
the presence of timber close to the
sea stimulated the growth of the new
ship-building industry of England
In the South, pine was cut for lum-
Der or ''boxed" for turpentine.
Old Country Methods Not Suited To
Lighter New World Soils
Much of the seriousness of erosion
in this country is due to the use by
the early settlers and the European
immigrants who followed them of
the same methods of cultivation on
the friable forest lands which had
proved good over the years on the
heavy clay soils of Western Europe
under gentle, regular rainfall. Trans
planted here, those methods did not
produce much damage the first year
or two, because the undecayed vege-
table matter held the soil in place.
But as continual cropping and heavy
rainfall washed away the organic
matter from the surface of the soil
and depleted the inorganic matter at
the deeper levels, the productiveness
of the land declined each succeeding I
year. At the beginning of the 18th
century, many of the farms were
washed and gulied. In the latter {
part of the century, sand storms {
were common along the Eastern sea-
board. S
Letters and records of many of the
most prominent personages of that S
time give us clear picture of the s
of erosion in Virginia i
and Jefferson, as well i
as many of their associates, were c
deeply interested in agriculture. They c
understood the signifi- I
canoe of what was happening to the I
SOIL
Referring to his Mount Vernon v
estate, Washington wrote to friend q
near the end of the century, ga hus- v
h a DIN ans yUicb would not low tho r