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Show EDITORIAL: Wake Up America! EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story is from an account written by Mel O. Steen which appeared in a recent issue of "The Missouri Mis-souri Conservationist." Your editor ed-itor considers it one of the finest short pieces of literary work yet penned on the subject of the good American earth. Mr. Steen's story carries a hard message, one that should occasion sound thinking. think-ing. - I , Insofar as the soil is concerned it reflects the editorial policy of the Roosevelt Standard, hence wc publish it as our editorial for this week. "IF you would know the true story of Americans and their land, look first to history. On its pages you will find that story revealed in the critical light of historical fact. To better under-. under-. stand this story, however, . it is necessary to first scan the history his-tory of other men and their land. Look at history, and you will see nation after nation march across its pages, to rise and flourish flour-ish on the rape of a fertile land, and to pass on into national decay de-cay or oblivion with the deple- ttnn nf that fot-tiHtv T.nnlr at Vmc. tory, America. When you do you will see that civilized man has always misused the land. There are many unproductive scars on old Mother Earth, starvation star-vation ridden lands that once adequately fed great nations. Look at this history of any nation na-tion that has ever tilled the soil and you will see that man is not worthy of his stewardship of the land. He always despoils the land, and the degree of his destruction des-truction can be measured in terms of his tenure, plus his so-called so-called civilization. When the source of man's sustenance sus-tenance and material glory will no longer sustain his way of life, he does one of two things: he sinks into individual and national nation-al decay, or he takes, by force of arms, some other nation. That is history! 1 SO much for yesterday, now let's look at today. You are young and you are strong, America. You are progressive, pro-gressive, you are wise. Your way of life is different, your ideals are high, you will not do these things, you say. Let us look at the record your history. You are young, America. This land has been under your control con-trol some three hundred years, more or less. For about one hundred hun-dred years you have used it intensively. in-tensively. Tonnage yields to feed the world have been your goal. You have produced, but at a price.. You have produced, but you have also ruined, partially ; or completely, more than half the fertile topsoil you possessed. It took the Chinese ten times as long to do as much to China! You are strong, America But may I remind you that your way of life, your institutions, and your society are builded on, sustained sus-tained by, and no better than , the land on which you live. I remind re-mind you that adequate nutrition nutri-tion requires more than mere bulk, that nutrition is a qualitative quali-tative as well as a quantitative thing. I remind you that your hill-billy is a hill-billy because he grows his food on hill-billy land. In the light of present day knowledge there can be little doubt that the true hill-billy is what he is because of malnutrition; malnutri-tion; qualitative malnutrition that dulls his mind, saps his strength, and smothers his ambitions. am-bitions. This American is already in the process of degeneration. Do you not see him raze, and burn, and hack, and gouge the impoverished soil on which he lives, further depleting its ability to nourish him? YOU are progressive, America, Amer-ica, When your land fails to produce pro-duce the tonnage you desire, you fix things up with chemical fertilizers. fer-tilizers. But you pay no attention atten-tion to the warnings of scientists who long experience in tilling the land leads them to say that chemical fertilization is only a delusion, a stop-gap, a tonnage producer that does not restore essential, life giving elements inherent in-herent in a fertile soil. You are wise, America. When your overworked corn lands lost much of their fertility and their ability to produce, you came forth with a hybrid corn. Your corn yields sky-rocketed, and you are still congratulating yourself on your ingenuity. But you fail to take note of one significant thing. You overlook the fact that history will record hybrid corn as being that corn which had the ability to take fertility out of the soil twice as fast as any corn that man had ever grown before! (Henry A. Wallace was the greatest great-est developer of hybrid corn in U. S history Editor's Note). The truth is, America, that your own land-use history records re-cords you as the greatest spendthrift spend-thrift of all time. You have developed de-veloped bigger, better and faster ways of using up soil fertility than has any nation in all the world.' You are the champion playboy of all time, and your extravagance extrava-gance is exceeded only by your disregard of the consequences. |