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281 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1952)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0281 and id is 1 raw text is: Conservation in 1952 By STEPHEN RAUSHENBUSH CONSERVATION is in danger of becoming a lost cause. As a cause, rather than a series of techniques, it started with two ideas. The first was the concept of a national patrimony, a God-given heritage and legacy which was to be handled by re- sponsible stewards rather than by prodi- gal and wastrel sons. The second was that the advantages of our natural re- sources should be shared by all the citi- zens of the nation, not used primarily for the benefit of a few. Today the emotional content of these old ideas survives mainly among the small farmers who love the land which gives them their living. It is their group of soil conservationists that holds that the right to own carries the duty to conserve. But for most of the rest of the community, the two moving ideas of Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and the host of great conservationists of the early part of the century seem to have lost attractiveness. The cause that rose from these ideas has been weak- ened. This is not to say that many things are not still done in the name of conservation. It is not to say that there are few sincere recreationists, or few people worried about the pressure of population on land, or few diligent technicians of soil and forest conserva- tion. They are all present. They are all doing valuable jobs of sorts. They are simply no longer so sure of their community of interest or so confident of the national value of their work as were the old-time leaders. CONTRARY FORCES What happened? Some five distin- guishable forces and events battered away at the old ideal. 1 First was the peculiar sequence of war-depression-war-defense that has ex- tended over the past 38 years. The war and defense periods drained our re- sources at rates that were unthought of in the early conservation days. In those emergencies there was little possibility of considering slower rates of use. The greatest service to future generations seemed clearly to be that of mobilizing all our resources as rapidly as possible. Sandwiched between war emergencies was an agricultural, coal, and lumber depression that began in the middle 1920's. Owners and tenants had to exploit the land, the forests, and the coal in destructive ways to stay alive. They had few funds to maintain the national resource capital. Dust storms then transported topsoil from the Mid- west to Washington, and a few starts were made (the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Conservation Serv- ice) toward belated conservation; but then war and defense claimed the na- tional surplus. In this whole sequence of war-depression-war-defense it became easier to preach conservation than to achieve it, and easier to ignore it than to preach it. Second was the demonstration of the ability of our applied scientists to produce substitutes or find alternate sources. When lumber became scarce, light metals and useful clay products were available. When good range for our sheep became scarce, synthetic sub- stitutes for wool appeared. As the soil resources were depleted or eroded, a host of seed, insecticide, and fertilizer improvements produced larger crops on less land. Internal combustion engines made land available that had previously been used for the maintenance of horses

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