TRAGEDY OF THE DUST-BOWL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 33 (Supplement)

TRAGEDY OF THE DUST-BOWL.

Failure of Costly Forest Belt Scheme.

AMBITIOUS PRAIRIE PLAN ABANDONED.

rE campaign against President Roosevelt last year was as bitter as his victory was sweeping. The tactics used by some of the most prominent newspapers in the United States to oppose him could not be justified, regardless of what candidate they might have been used against. But there are reasons why 39 per cent of the voters registered their conviction that he is a menace to the country, for, on the basis of the eminently ill-advised Republican campaign, that is what a vote for Landon meant. The late-lamented and widely publicised "shelter-belt zone" furnishes striking evidence of the reason, writes Nelson Springer in "The Sphere."

The "shelter-belt zone" was to have extended from the Canadian border on the north to the Mexican border on the sooth for a distance of 1800 miles, and it was to hare been 100 miles wide. It was to havo been filled with avenues of trees to prevent wind-erosion, to serve as Wind-breaks, and to aid in the

conservation of water resources. It was to pass through the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, comprising what is known as the Great Plains.

What waa accomplished in the matter of planting may be indicated as follows: In the spring of 1935, 232 shelterbelt strips, each 10 rods wide, and averaging one-half mile in length, had been planted in the eix States.- During the same year, 1920 farmstead plantings, averaging 2J acres, had been completed

iu North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. These farmstead plantings were authorised under the project to be undertaken by the individual farmer with the aid of the Government, maintained at his expense. A total of 7514 acres on 2152 farms was involved, and required 5,615,183 trees. The land for the shelter-belt strips in all cases was leased or purchased outright by the Government.

Last spring 2212 shelter-belt strips, again averaging one-half mile in length, and 878 farmstead plantings, averaging 1.6 acres, were established. This operation involved 24,521 acres on 2112 farms. Besides this, 629,810 trees were used to replace dead trees of the 1935 planting, and to fill blank rows, making a total of 18,155,878 trees planted in 1936.

On June 30, 1936, a total of 32,035 acres had been planted on 4364 farms; and out of 23,771,061 trees planted, 19,281,592 were still alive, an achievement of 81 per cent. Catastrophe Repeated. After this date it was announced through Governmental authorities that the experience proved the project to be feasible; but when the Great Plains Committee reported to the President earlier this year the project was omitted from its recommendations and it has been abandoned.

As a matter of fact, I am not sure who in the United States, outside of the President and his New Deal officials, ever supposed that the project would be successful. When it was first announced with a great flare of publicity there was

not anyone in my experience who supposed that it could be accomplished. There were very few who supposed that the President would actually launch the project, and these were mainly embittered and extreme conservatives whose position was that the President would do anything, and that the more fantastic it was the more likely ho would be to do it. In this case, at least, their worst fears were justified.

The nature of the country itself should have forbidden the President in his judgment this wild and fruitless scheme. The Great Plains, comprising about 30 per cent of the total area of the continental United States, is mainly a treeless area. Except along the watercourses it is grassland, divided into two almost equal parts, the tall-grass prairie in the east and the short-grass prairie in the west. From east to west it represents a climatic transition from the humid to the semi-arid. It is characterised by low annual precipitation, most of which takes place in summer, frequent droughts, blazing summers, freezing winters, low humidities and almost incessant winds of high velocities. Moving from east to west, the conditions of plant growth become steadily less favourable.

The President's action was taken in July, 1934. It was his response to the drought of that year, which was an appalling catastrophe, rendering thousands destitute, and menacing one of the nation's greatest and richest food-pro-ducing areas. Since 1934, as everyone now knows, the common, rather than the occasional, experience of the United States has been one of catastrophe. If the drought of 1934 was sufficient to embark the President on an obviously impossible scheme of grandiose proportions, the drought of 1936 was much worse, and devastated not only the Great Plains but about 75 per cent of the United States. The Great Plains, however, presents a problem that is assuming the most profound gravity.

Trouble Started by "Squatter."

For some of my information in this connection I went to the venerable Sam D. Myres, one of the most famous characters in the history of the West. A close personal friend of Buffalo Bill, and

of Captain Hughes, for many yean the commander of the Texas Rangera, Myres has roamed the range from the Canadian to the Mexican border. He is a veteran cowman and knows the country at firsthand over a period of more than fifty years.

"When I first became a eowboy," Myres said, "this country was not a country of sandstorms. We had just as much wind then as we do now. Sometimes I think we had more. But that may be because now I sleep in a house, whereas then I slept wherever night found me. But I can tell you this—if the Government doesn't do something about this country pretty soon, it is going to become a second Sahara—l am not joking at all. The Sahara would be all right if you would put grass and mesquite on it to hold the soil down."

The problem which Myres posits is almost as old as the arrival of the white man in the country, almost, but not quite. The danger arose when the first "squatter" arrived in the region, staked out a small farm on the public domain, and drove a plough into the land. He was the "little" man who followed the pioneer, the man without either the means or the imagination to herd millions of cattle over boundless tracts, and who hoped merely to eke out a living rather than to build an empire. In general, he was the kind of man who had failed in the verdant east, and who had come west, not because he wanted to, but because he must.

The pioneer "cowman* sensed tie danger from the first, although the word "erosion" probably never found & place in his vocabulary. He resented the squatter's "smallneea." He didn't like his character. He despised hia tamenesa. He hated fences. And he didn't want anything as large as a one-room cabin obstructing his view of the horizon. It was sentimental reasons like these that bred the cowman's hatred of the farmer, rather than a scientific prevision of the fact that one day the farmer would ruin his range. But it was a fierce hatred, nevertheless, so much so that the squatter often found it advisable, or even necessary, to "move on," provided he was alive to move on. Bat the squatter had the Federal Government on his side; and, with the coming of the railroads and the growth of the towns, it became easier and more attractive for the squatters to comet 'So more squatters came. The eowman fought a losing battle. The fences and the cabins multiplied. More and more land wn put under the plongh. Greed for War-time Profit*. This situation was growing steadily, but not rapidly, worse when the World War broke. The present sudden and intense aggravation of this situation is due directly to that catastrophe. Prices for agricultural products soared, with the result that more and more land that never should have been p'ougned was ploughed. During the period of war prices, and during the period of boom prices that followed the war, these land? were profitable enough. But, as agricultural lands, even during any period of normal prices, they are distinctly submarginal.

Thus the people, m their greed for war-time profits, accomplished the destruction of their own holdings, and of other people's holdings. High winds took the top soil oft" acres where it was an asset, and deposited it on other acres where it was a liability; blew the seeds out of acres in which they were planted into other acres where they were smothered; and exposed vast areas to the drylhpr influence of sun and wind. In their wake they left tax-delinquent land?, a lowered standard of living, and a hopeless future for thousands of families not more wise nor more foolish than their fellows.

The President's ton-year drought programme now proposes to attack the problem in another way. It was sent as a message from the President to the first session of the seventy-fifth Congress in a document of 104 pages of text, photographs, maps, charts and graphs. Vet a Government official, engaged in this work for years, said to me only recently: "I don't believe the President known what his programme is, or what he wants."