405 



cides. The inquiry will deal with such questions, relative to the 1946- 

 47 hearings, as the following : 



Should the Congress, or the House Committee on Agriculture 

 that held the hearings, have been able to sense the potential threat 

 of mass application of pesticides ? 



Should those technical people in the Department of Agriculture 

 who supported the act have recognized the need for action, and 

 called this need to the attention of the Congress, not merelv to 

 provide standards of pesticide quality and user-safety, but also 

 standards of the controlled use of pesticides? 



Did any of the witnesses who testified in 1946 or 1947 on 

 pesticide legislation identify the need for concern with the pro- 

 tection of the en\aronment from the secondary effects of long- 

 lived pesticides? 



"Was there available the scientific and technical knowledge at 

 the time to forecast the growing importance of preserving the 

 environment of man ? 



'Wliat circumstances or factors obstructed recognition of ad- 

 verse consequences of the widespread use of new pesticides ? 

 The sequence of cause-and-effect relationships that led to the dilem- 

 ma that Miss Carson so graphically described in 1962, and which 

 led to volummous hearings thereafter, was overlooked in 1946. 



Trends in seientifi-G agricultwre after 1860 



Many factors contributed to make the pattern of agriculture in 

 the United States sharply distinctive from patterns in the Old "World. 

 Characteristically, the United States possessed an abundance of well- 

 watered, fertile, unused land, in a temperate climate. The limiting 

 factors to production were mainly in labor and farm management. 

 Smce the settlement of the territoiy of the United States occurred 

 during the latter stages of the industrial revolution, there was a con- 

 tinually expanding market demand in urban centers for food and fiber, 

 the output of tlie farm. Thus, U.S. farms l:»ecame characteristically 

 factories in the field, with large acreages, capital-intensive production, 

 and single-crop products. The focus of attention was on cOvSt/effective- 

 ness methods — on maximum output at least cost. At first, this concept 

 was pursued on a short-term basis, and actual damage was done to the 

 land, by taking nutrients out of the soil without replacing them. Later, 

 as the fruits of national investment in agricultural research began to 

 appear, the concept of sustained-yield agriculture became orthodox, 

 involving mulching, fertilization, erosion control, and planting of 

 ground cover in off seasons. All of these forms of treatment required 

 the development of specialized equipment for mass application. More 

 capital equipment meant more need for large acreages, to preserve the 

 economic balance of the system. IManagement of the farm economy, 

 like strip mining and early lumbering, tended to emphasize reduction 

 of direct, short-term, out-of-pocket costs, while tending to ignore hid- 

 den costs, costs in noneconomic values, and costs borne by persons not 

 participating in the production cycle. 



Between 1850 and the close of "World "\"\^ar II, the ecology of the 

 United States, in consequence of the spread of large-scale agriculture, 

 underwent significant alteration. The Nation's agriculture producers, 

 with specialized machinery, hybrid seed, fertilization, mass processing 



