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decades the United States has shifted from a debtor to a creditor 

 nation. This has vastly changed the economy of other nations and 

 has forced us into a new economic program. This, then, requires a 

 national viewpoint and its natural consequence, Federal control of 

 resources. 



Cooke, in his chapter on Total Conservation, presents some 

 interesting tables showing just what erosion is costing the people 

 of the United States per year. In 1940 alone, the cost was nearly 

 four billion dollars, of which amount more than three-fourths can 

 be laid to the "loss of plant food constituents and plant nutrients 

 contained in three billion tons of eroded topsoil and subsoil." View- 

 ing this alarming rate of loss of our fertile land, so necessary to basic 

 agriculture, he says : 'Tt has been estimated that the United 

 States has only seventy-five to one hundred years to go as a virile 

 nation unless brave remedial measures are set up. Our country 

 has a fatal earth disease. It is actually bleeding to death through 

 the erosion of its soils. The longer healing measures are delayed, 

 the more difficult and problematical becomes the cure." He closes 

 with the remark, "It is reassuring to know that the task of rehabili- 

 tation is probably not beyond our means and our power." 



Frankly, this reviewer, even at the risk of being called a cynic, 

 is forced to the view that, because of a deteriorating agriculture, 

 America faces an uncertain future. We have already been too care- 

 less of the magnificent heritage of this land. We cannot return to 

 the abundance of the past merely by a discussion of the problem. 

 It will require a tightening of our belts, a uniting of the whole coun- 

 try to the job of holding on to what we have ; it will take more than 

 the passing of a law. It means that there must be a hardening of 

 the will of all the people to the task ahead if democracy, as a way 

 of life, is to exist at all in this, our land. In a democracy, this will 

 to exist as free men is not up to the government, it is up to the 

 people, who are the government. ^ -rr p. ^p 



New York Botanical Garden 

 New York, N. Y. 



