Building Soil for a Future Empire

Building Government Erosion Work Is Designed To Convert Barren Arizona Hillsides and Desert Into Green Pastures and Fer-

Get a conception of things which have heretofore not existed. Still this does not really discourage a real optimist.

We are trying to tinker up the surface of this state in such a manner that it will cease to unravel every time we have a hard rain. This is the first aspect of "erosion control" that meets the eye. But it does not in itself indicate the half of the whole problem, which is to restore vegetation and with vegetation perhaps even some climatic phases which insure a continuance of plenty of vegetation. And it is not so "dam" simple. Along with the fine growth of grasses and other plants which once undoubtedly covered most of this state, we have lost not only the vegetative cover but what is more important, the top soil. And it is going to be some job and cost plenty to restore a surface soil that will germinate seeds and keep the tiny plants alive. So the problem is at least three-fold: to stop the terrific unraveling and moving off of the whole terrain; to cause the vegetative cover to grow again; and to restore a decent top soil. All of these are, of course, inter-related. And along with these phases is the problem of slowing up the run-off, so that we shall have moisture in the low places of the ground, and ten times as many running streams (no matter how small) as we have today.

But (the optimist now speaking) engineers and naturalists can do these things. Do not doubt it an instant!

Why is it worth while, when we are supposed to have too much farm land already?

First, obviously, because of the climate and the freedom from the rigors and expense of winter. That puts Arizona at the top of the list of places to be reclaimed and developed. But the economic justification is far deeper than that.

To try to sum it in a couple of sentences: the whole country has gone hayONE should begin an article about erosion and its control by saying we are getting erosion-conscious. As a matter of fact, there has arisen some danger that we become semiunconscious from the flood of publicity about erosion control in recent months. The reader is therefore given a variant: the future of Arizona, wherein this state shall bear some day, let us say, ten times the population of today. (And engineers shall be the miracle workers, too, mark that!) The writer is a chronic optimist. Some are born optimistic, some acquire optimism, others have optimism thrust upon them. "We", speaking in the editorial manner, were born optimistic, and so far nothing in this vale of wrath and tears has acted to squelch said optimism to any noticeable extent.

But how do I get that way, about ten times the population? To begin with, the future has a way of exceeding the wildest anticipations of the wildest of prophets one of whom I am whichand so why not admit this? Besides this, any regular optimist should be at liberty to use his or her imagination. Old Archimedes concluded that, given a fulcrum and a bit of a lever, he could move the globe on which we sit. Now, to me, we have the same sort of difficulty with our imaginations, trying to

Soil for a Future Empire

Weary from too much machinery and its accompanying artificiality and drift from Nature and toward the cities. But this very development of machinery and engineering is what makes it possible for us to jump in and tackle the terrific job that restoration of vegetation amounts to.

All the world is going to remember the frenzy that led us in our mad race away from Nature and into a madder and madder expansion of credit, to keep our too-big factories and plants and corporations going, until the bubble burst. And now a slow return of san ity and ancient wisdom makes us listen and not withhold approval when our Chief Executive talks of “subsistence homesteads” and getting millions of families out where they will be assured of food, at least. Of course, we have to resign ourselves and our great dreams of a world-run-by-machinery to the fact that as long as there may only be a few hours of work for any one person at the machines, and it is safer to spend part of the rest of the day raising a few vegetables and eggs and so on, that after all these enforced out door activities are the only known way to achieve either health or happiness. We are simple, plain children of Nature, whether our vain and indecent worship of machines approves of the fact or not.

So Mother Nature in her immemorial manner is going to compel us to go back and acquire health and content ment and wisdom in the ancient ways.

And so, as I was about to say, it be comes our job to make immediate ar rangements to move as many families as possible out of the cities and congested centers and climatic handicaps and on to the soil where they can dig up food and with it health. And as a corollary, we have to get the factories and industries out where the farms will be, so the workers can be at the machines part of the day and in the gardens the rest of the day.

Did I forget to note once more that country life, what with all our modern inventions and conveniences, is no longer dreadful?

But to get back to erosion, since this commonwealth is a corporation wherein all of us hold stock, and the stockhold ers have to know what we are doing with the funds, let us go into some of the details again.

A recent disastrous flood on the out skirts of Los Angeles bore witness, on a governmental checkup, that a fire swept area denuded of its vegetation lets water run off it at least twenty times as fast as when covered by nat tural growth. This is a proved fact, not guesswork.

Likewise, actual records prove that at one time there was a fine vegetative cover over much of Arizona, and inci dentally, far more running streams, bogs, springs and even ponds. Be it noted, as an instance peculiarly obvious (Continued on page 19)