288 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



tion a concrete wall around this world-famed landmark. The wall 

 of apartment hotels has progressed to the point where today Dia- 

 mond Head cannot be seen at all from the main boulevard of Waikiki, 

 and only occasionally, with effort, from Waikiki Beach. 



You may wonder why the advertisements for Hawaii never reveal 

 these buildings obstructing the view of Diamond Head. Well, I'm 

 the photographer who has taken all the Hawaiian travel promotion 

 pictures in the past few years, and I have specific instructions from 

 the advertising agency not to show any buildings on Diamond Head. 

 This is becoming increasingly difficult to do. I hope this conference 

 will help make my job easier and more honest. 



Our problem is not just how to keep farms a beautiful part of our 

 landscape; it may really be one of just how to keep our farms at all. 

 The traditional farmland we remember as youngsters, the brightly 

 painted silo, chickens running down the road, and checkerboard 

 landscapes textured with crops rotated on small acreages, is slowly 

 disappearing from the American scene. It is becoming economically 

 impossible to earn a living on a family farm. It may be that if it 

 were not for government price-support programs, what we speak 

 of might not even exist except in isolated areas, in picture books, and 

 on long Sunday drives. 



Giant mechanized combines have turned agriculture into a manu- 

 facturing enterprise with much of its ugly manifestations. The small 

 farm home and the family have been efficiently replaced in many 

 areas by the migratory worker and the bracero. 



Where the family farmer is holding his own in diversified agricul- 

 ture, the flaying octopus of urban encroachment and a constantly 

 expanding suburbia offer him a price for his land impossible to re- 

 fuse. If he does resist, the tax assessor grabs him on the next time 

 around. 



Haphazard urban scatterization and accompanying freeways are 

 destroying the beauty of agricultural production where it is most 

 needed on the fringe of our densely populated cities and towns, 

 bursting at the seams with a population explosion. 



The conservationist who opposes the subdivider and freeway build- 

 ing finds himself being accused by the politicians of stopping progress, 

 of hindering economic development, and worst of all, denying prop- 

 erty owners their constitutional rights. 



Here a quiet revolution is taking place in America, a revolution 

 against the traditional sanctity of private property, a revolution by 



