THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



192 



woke up to the fact that their land was not inexhaustible. 

 Every year since then more and more has been said, and 

 at least a little more has been done about "conserving re- 

 sources," about "rational use" and about such reconstruc- 

 tion as seemed possible. Scientists have studied the prob- 

 lem, public works have been undertaken, laws passed. Yet 

 everybody knows that the using up still goes on, perhaps 

 not so fast nor so recklessly as once it did, but unmistakably 

 nevertheless. And there is nowhere that it goes on more 

 nakedly, more persistently or with a fuller realization of 

 what is happening than in the desert regions where the 

 margin to be used up is narrower. 



First, more and more cattle were set to grazing and 

 overgrazing the land from which the scanty rainfall now 

 ran off even more rapidly than before. More outrageously 

 still, large areas of desert shrub were rooted up to make 

 way for cotton and other crops watered by wells tapping 

 underground pools of water which are demonstrably 

 shrinking fast. These pools represent years of accumula- 

 tion not now being replenished and are exhaustible ex- 

 actly as an oil well is exhaustible. Everyone knows that 

 they will give out before long, very soon, in fact, if the 

 number of wells continues to increase as it has been in- 

 creasing. Soon dust bowls will be where was once a sparse 

 but healthy desert, and man, having uprooted, sl'augh- 

 tered or driven away everything which lived healthily and 

 normally there, will himself either abandon the country 

 or die. There are places where the creosote bush is a more 

 useful plant than cotton. 



To the question why men will do or are permitted to 

 do such things there are many answers. Some speak of 

 population pressures, some more brutally of unconquera- 



