as high as the Washington Monument and a mile long on each of the 

 four sides! Cleared and plowed lands, the source of food products, 

 are the ones which suffer. 



Most of the soil-wash at least seven hundred and eighty-five mil- 

 lion tons every twelve months, probably is dumped into the ocean 

 and lost forever. This would fill four channels as big as the Panama 

 Canal, according to the original specifications. So says the cold-eyed 



soil expert. 



Four hundred million tons of soil are washed from the borders oi 

 the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries every year 

 and poured as mud into the Gulf of Mexico. So says the wild-eyed 

 Washington statistician. 



Muddy waters carry more impurities than clear, and so endanger 

 health more. They have greater power for cutting away the banks of 

 streams. Deposits in the channels, drifting sand bars and changing 

 courses are caused entirely by silt in muddy streams. Had you ever 

 thought of that ? Read the hymn backward. Thrown out of balance, 

 water and sand tin-make the pleasant land. 



From the State of Missouri alone enough soil is carried away an- 

 nually to make a prism one mile square and six hundred feet high. 

 The Missouri River bears into the Mississippi every twelve months 

 enough earth to make a mud-pile a mile square and four hundred 

 feet high. The billion tons of soil which are washed away every year 

 would spread a layer like Nile mud over Indiana, Illinois or Iowa. 

 But what good does it do buried in the depths of the mighty ocean ? 

 It may help some future Saurus family, but it won't help yours. 



Whole towns have been washed away by the change of currents in 

 silt-laden streams. In some neighborhoods an entire farm has been 

 taken up and carried across to the other side of a river. Within the 

 past year the town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was threatened with 

 destruction, many of the buildings toppling over into the turbid flood. 

 Bad plowing is the cause of a great deal of soil-waste. The farmer 

 of America each year digs a Panama Canal with his little plow. Each 

 year he digs out of the heart of his little forty, eighty or one hundred 

 and sixty acres of land a block of dirt really bigger than the entire 

 cut of the whole Panama Canal. The riches of his farm take wings. 

 He did not see them go. He does not understand that he is literally 

 plowing his farm into the mighty ocean. Not only do we waste, but 

 that waste accelerates each year. That is the horrible feature of all 

 these resource-wastes they increase geometrically with awful swift- 

 ness. The buffalo went ''all at once." The trees, the fish, the ore, 

 will go "all at once." We do not like high prices, but higher prices 

 than we now can dream are coming to us Americans unless we can 

 get down to a practical basis on religion, politics and business unless 

 w r e can understand that little old hymn we used to sing. 



When axe and plow work together as agents of destruction and not 

 as creative influences, then we are not using good business sense. Yet 

 that is what we have done -ripped the covering from the soil, and 

 then ripped off the soil itself. In that way we destroy a primary 

 value. In that way, also, we raised the price, cut down the supply of 

 food, of clothes, of habitation, for the average man. The average 



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