The Soil-Killer’s Ledger
An 1878 editorial warns that Pacific Northwest farmers are repeating the mistakes of fallen empires by exhausting their land for short-term profit.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Preaching, in the abstract, in regard to exhausting land, impoverishing the soil, etc., has little effect for good, and does little towards correcting a growing evil. We might point to Syria, reduced from a population of 10,000,000 to 2,000,000: Spain, Italy and other countries greatly reduced in the number of people supported by cultivation of soil, and, coming even closer home, to New England, once rich in her lands, but now forced to depend on artificial fertilizers, or produce nothing. The seat of once populous empires now contains but a fraction of the population they once had. We might even draw a comparison between the impoverished wheat fields of California and the rich fertile soil found in the beginning, to show what continuous cultivation, without rotation or fertilizing, has done for the land. But these arguments have no effect. A does not care how much B impoverishes his soil, so long as he himself reaps rich harvests. Nor does he seem to care for his own land, if only it will hold out, producing year after year, until he ceases to need it, unmindful of the fact that by his course he is leaving a waste and ruined and worthless heritage to his children. A different line of argument must be adopted. To be effective, the shaft of persuasion must be aimed at the individual and at the individual's pocket. Show a man by conclusive evidence that he can make another dollar at the present time by improving his land, and then he will adopt the improvement. When the farmer is hit in the vicinity of his purse, then he will become progressive, and not until he sees it will he depart from the stereotyped path so long traveled.
“A does not care how much B impoverishes his soil, so long as he himself reaps rich harvests.”
This 1878 editorial reflects an early, desperate effort to marry conservation with capitalism—a tension still visible in Washington's environmental policy. Today's debates over sustainable land use and the 'triple bottom line' echo this 19th-century struggle to convince owners that the long-term health of the soil is an economic imperative, not just a moral one.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.