A GLOBAL VIEW 



FIG. 2. "Water, instead of nurturing: life, destroys it." This Maryland corn 

 needs the water which is escaping 1 . A. full yield cannot be secured without it. 

 Not only water and crop growth are 'being' lost, the runoff is heavy with topsoil. 

 Two hundred such episodes perhaps 30 corn crops and there will he no topsoil, 

 no corn, no man on this landscape. 



And if by chance the watercloset, cold and dry, does not become 

 the symbol of America's decline, it will be because the gully got 

 there first. Erosion is robbing us of soil minerals five or six times as 

 fast as the harvest of crops. Here again, man has placed a heavy 

 hand on the balance scale of nature. Normally, on a mature land- 

 scape, weathering and the acid juices of former life eat down into 

 new soil as fast as the surface soil is lost or exhausted. Man, by his 

 choice of row crops for sloping land, by his exposure of bare soil to the 

 power of rain and wind, by his exhaustion of spongy organic matter 

 through continuous year after year cultivation, by harvesting to the 

 last crop remnant, has destroyed the soil cycle. He has, at the same 

 time, by the same acts, short circuited the water cycle ; water, instead 

 of soaking in to feed crops, runs away with the soil water, instead of 

 nurturing life, destroys it. (Fig. 2.) All power may be used for 

 benefit or destruction, according to our management of it. One of 

 the fundamental problems facing the world is the proper use of 

 power. The power of nuclear fission released by a bomb is no more 

 dangerous in the long run than the power of falling raindrops or 

 sweeping wind. (Figs. 3, 4.) Each can play its part in destroying 

 civilization, or enriching it. There may be differences in the speed at 

 which they work, but the result can be the same. 



The primary result of man's disruption of the natural cycles of 

 soil minerals, air, water, and organic matter is reduced vegetative 

 production. (Fig. 5.) This brings shortages of food, clothing, housing, 

 and chemurgic products. The shortage of food does not operate like 

 a carefully supervised and balanced reducing diet; the food from 



