ARE THERE ENOUGH PLANTS? 37 



Pacific boundary and flowed back upon itself. The country had filled 

 up. Yet still, the sperm and egg were at work, ever increasing the 

 demand for food, for houses, barns, fences, clothing, and all other 

 products of the land. 



The Age of Adjustment. About 1910, the lack of timber became 

 alarming. Most of the good and easily logged forests had been cut 

 over. In the east and south, soils had been beaten and driven until 

 they lay down to rest, like a starved horse. And like a starved horse, 

 they could not, of their own effort, immediately get up to go again. 

 No longer did everyone have all the good food and all the wood he 

 needed. The government began reserving forest lands against buyers, 

 against exploitation. With the World War came the plowing of the 

 plains for wheat production. High prices, two to three dollars per 

 bushel, caused this raping of the finest natural legume grassland on 

 earth. Here again, nature struck back against man's violation of her 

 laws and rights. The great Dust Bowl, flanked to north and south by 

 smaller satellite dust bowls, was nature's reply. 



According to general surveys by the government, over one billion 

 acres of our land has been damaged by erosion. 1 This is more than one 

 half of the United States. A hundred million acres of cropland, more 

 or less, has been ruined for tilled crop production. This is about one- 

 fifth of our normal cropland area. Counting the areas ruined by 

 erosion resulting from fires on forest lands and overgrazing on range- 

 lands, the destroyed area mounts to 282,000,000 acres. These figures 

 mean little until they are compared with some area you know. The 

 state of Ohio has about 27 million acres. Thus, land equal to ten such 

 states has been reduced, virtually to a biological desert. This is diffi- 

 cult for many people to believe. But, if they travel a moderate amount 

 and look for evidence, they will readily accept the estimates of the 

 U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Fig. 14.) 



The existence of such total areas of burned, overgrazed, blown, 

 and washed out land has led to questioning the common sense of 

 the human activities which have produced such devastation. Ob- 

 viously, a readjustment is called for in our relation as a society to 

 the thin and delicate earth crust which enables us to exist. It is a 

 simple question of life or death. 



Since high grade vegetation is the resource which has, for the 

 most part, disappeared on these problem areas, the obvious conclu- 

 sion is that it should be restored. This is not an easy task. The 

 destructive forces unleashed by man not only have destroyed the 

 vegetation; they have damaged the mechanisms which produce use- 

 ful vegetation. It takes nature milleniums to construct the sensi- 

 tively balanced complex of sun, soil, water, weather, plants and 

 animals which climax in a high order of verdure. (Fig. 15.) The 

 wrecking of these climaxes has set such areas back centuries, in 

 many cases thousands of years. (Fig. 16.) The question facing us 



Bennett, H. H., Soil Conservation, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1939, p. 60, 



