5. An American System

Ibid. By 1935, 1,054,515 acres, or 55.4 percent, of the continental U.S. land area was in farms, up from955,884 acres, or 50.2 percent, in 1920.

D. Worster, The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 123.Worster reasserted his main conclusions about the Dust Bowl and its cultural origins in “Grassland Follies: Agricultural Capitalismon the Plains,” in Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 93–105.

Statistical Abstract: 1940, p. 638;The nation’s top ten crops were corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, potatoes, hay, tobacco, and cotton, which made up 90 percent of total planted crops. Statistical Abstract: 1934, p. 595.

The New Deal–era efforts to use resource-use programs to promote social welfare are considered in S. T. Phillips, “Acres Fit and Unfit: Conservation and Rural Rehabilitation in the New Deal Era,” PhD diss., Boston University, 2004. A classic work on the subject is R. S. Kirkendall and Farm Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966). Farm policy during the Hoover years is considered in D.E. Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

An invitation to speak at an erosion symposium in December 1935 gave Leopold occasion to sort out his thoughts on the mechanisms behind soil erosion. See AL, “The Erosion Cycle in the Southwest,” unpublished manuscript, ca. 1935 (including notes with slides by the same title for “Erosion Symposium,” dated 17 December 1935), p. 1, LP, 10-6, 12.

AL, “Conservation Economics,” RMG, p. 197.

Ibid., p. 198.

Ibid.

Eric Freyfogle describes a thoughtfully wrought modern version of landownership grounded in ecological knowledge; his work emphasizes the need for fundamental changes in prevailing cultural values to bring about conservation and is based on many of Leopold’s ideas. See E. T. Freyfogle, The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good (Washington, DC: Island Press, Shearwater Books, 2003). See also his Bounded People, Boundless Lands: Envisioning a New Land Ethic (Washington, DC: Island Press, Shearwater Books, 1998), and “Battling over Leopold’s Legacy” (Washington, DC: Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, Georgetown University Law Center, 2004). Also see R. L. Knight, “Aldo Leopold: Blending Conversations about Public and Private Lands,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 26 (Winter 1998): 725–731, and R. L. Knight and S. Riedel, eds., Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 2.

AL, “Conservation Economics,” RMG, p. 196.

As early as 1930, during Herbert Hoover’s administration, the idea of buying up many of the increasing number of America’s unprofitable and degraded “submarginal” farms had been proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A year later, after the USDA-sponsored National Conference on Land Utilization had been held, the USDA prepared a report suggesting that government undertake buyouts for suffering farm families. See Gray, “Resettlement Land Program,” p. 347.

AL, “Conservation Economics,” RMG, p. 194.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 196.

AL, “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest,” RMG, p. 94.

AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” Journal of Forestry 31, no. 6 (October 1933): 634–643. Reprinted as “Racial Wisdom and Conservation” in Journal of Heredity 37, no. 9 (September 1946); also in RMG, pp. 181–182.

AL, “A Proposed Survey of Land-Use for the Farm Foundation,” ca. 1934, p. 2, LP 10-2, 4.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 78.

Tractors on Oklahoma farms, for instance, increased by 25 percent between 1929 and 1936. Some farm owners used government subsidies to make machinery purchases, rather than to employ workers. Ibid., p. 58.

The centrality of soil issues in the 1930s is considered in R. S. Beeman and J. A. Pritchard, Green and Permanent Land: Ecology and Agriculture in the Twentieth Century (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), pp. 9–34. The primacy of soil as a natural resource continued to draw adherents after the dust storms calmed. See W. C. Lowdermilk, “Conservation of Soil as a Natural Resource,” in The Foundations of Conservation Education, edited by H. B. Ward ([Washington, DC]: National Wildlife Federation, 1941), pp. 15–31.

Ibid., p. 15.

AL, “Land Pathology,” RMG, p. 214.

Ibid., p. 212.

Ibid., p. 215.

C. G. Bates and O. R. Zeasman, “Soil Erosion—a Local and National Problem,” Research Bulletin 99 (Madison: U.S. Department of Agriculture and University of Wisconsin, Agricultural Experiment Station, August 1930), p. 1: “The loss of fertile surface soil from the farms of the country alone represents an enormous economic loss, so that the problem becomes a ‘conservation’ problem of the first magnitude. But this is only one of the injuries.…”; others included an increase in occurrence of large, damaging floods.

Ibid., p. 52.

AL, “Coon Valley: An Adventure in Cooperative Conservation,” American Forests 41, no. 5 (May 1935): 205–208; also in FHL, p. 49,RMG, p. 221.Hugh Bennett, chief of the Soil Erosion Service, wrote to Leopold on 22 May 1935: “Dear Mr. Leopold: Let me express my very great appreciation of your article in the May number of American Forests Magazine, under the title, ‘Coon Valley.’ You have certainly packed into this brief article a great deal of profound thought, and you have expressed these thoughts in a way that will appeal to the people. The article is so pertinent, so well written and otherwise so pleasing to us that we have procured from American Forests Magazine 500 reprints. These we are giving wide distribution. First a reprint goes to every Regional Director in our Service with special request that the article be passed around for careful reading and for comments.” LP 10-2, 8.

AL, “Abandonment of Game Management on the Soil Erosion Projects,” 2 July 1934, p. 1, LP 10-2, 8.

AL, “Coon Valley,” RMG, p. 219. The breadth of the Coon Valley project was threatened in 1934 when Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes ordered a halt to game management work on all erosion projects, presumably for jurisdictional and financial reasons. Leopold responded by writing to Ickes (AL, letters to Harold Ickes, 19 June 1934, 2 July 1934, and 5 July 1934, LP 10-2, 8) and by circulating to various conservation periodicals a three-page statement expressing his opposition to the move (AL, letter to S. B. Locke, Izaak Walton League of America, with attached statement, “Abandonment of Game Management on the Soil Erosion Projects,” 2 July 1934,LP 10-2, 8). The project, Leopold asserted, was of “greater immediate consequence to game conservation work” than anything else taking place in Wisconsin (AL, “Memorandum for Mr. Darling: Re: Game Management Demonstration Work,” 15 June 1934, p. 1, LP 10-2, 8). Whether Ickes agreed or not is unclear, but under threat of bad press he soon revoked his order. Harold Ickes, letter to AL, 29 June 1934, LP 10-2, 8.

Helms, “Coon Valley, Wisconsin,” p. 53.

AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 340.

See also AL, “Improving the Wildlife Program of the Soil Conservation Service,” 3 May 1940, LP 10-6, 16, in which Leopold works from the premise that justifying the SCS work in terms “of individual profit economics is false and should be discontinued.”Most of what should be done for and with wildlife on Wisconsin farms would not “pay.” But promoting wildlife on farms could be justified by the pleasure to be derived from the wild animals, their benefit or profit to the community (vs. the individual), and “an appreciation of benefits which are usually indirect, often small, often long deferred, and always interlaced with farming, forestry, and other activities.”

AL, “To Determine Methods of Inducing Landowners to Follow Land Use Practices That Will Conserve the Public Interest,” 12 September 1934, LP 10-6, 12.

Leopold resubmitted his proposal in 1938: AL, “Conservation Economics Study,” 7 November 1938, LP 10-6, 12. Although his larger hopes for the program seemed to stall, finally in 1943 Leopold and one of his students, Joseph Hickey, produced a manuscript on a study addressing some of these questions: What could be done once the system of federal subsidies had shrunk, free CCC labor was gone, and AAA was left paying for crops no matter the technique used for growing them on eroding, hilly farms in south-western Wisconsin? See A. Leopold and J. J.Hickey, “The Erosion Problem of Steep Farms in Southwestern Wisconsin: A Report Prepared for the Wisconsin State Soil Conservation Committee,” 1943, LP 10-6, 12. The tension among economists at the University of Wisconsin at the time Leopold submitted his proposal is described in J. Gilbert and E. Baker, “Wisconsin Economists and New Deal Agricultural Policy: The Legacy of Progressive Professors,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Summer 1997): 281–312. The disinterest of most economists in Leopold’s conservation ideas was linked to a profound shift within economics as a discipline. The shift was from an empirically and historically based, inductive approach toward greater reliance on models, deductive reasoning, and a lessened interest in reform. The shift is recounted in Y. P. Yonay, The Struggle over the Soul of Economics: Institutional and Neoclassical Economists in America between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). The early years of resource economics, influenced by conservation thought and aimed at improving land uses, is considered in G. A. Smith, “Natural Resource Economic Theory of the First Conservation Movement (1895–1927),” History of Political Economy 14, no. 4 (1982): 483–495.

AL, “Proposed Survey of Land-Use.”

AL, “Proposed Conservation Economics Study,” 7 November 1938, p. 3,LP 10-6, 12.

AL, “Proposed Survey of Land-Use,” p. 5.

AL, “Conservation Economics,” RMG, p. 201.

Ibid., p. 200.

Ibid., p. 201.

Ibid. See also AL, letter to Roger Baldwin, 21 June 1944, LP 10-2, 5: “Sometimes I wonder whether we all begin to organize at the wrong end. Perhaps we should throw away all our blueprints and simply look for outstanding people, then let them build their own jobs.”

AL, “Conservation Economics,” RMG, pp. 201–202.

On 19 December 1930, Leopold prepared a memorandum for the U.S. Senate Committee on Wildlife Conservation, “The Role of the Federal Government in Game Conservation,” LP 10-12, 6. He set forth three guiding principles for federal work in game management: help states and private landowners work out better cropping methods through research and demonstration, conduct their own management operations on federal lands, and take part in management of migratory birds, which cross state boundaries.

Anonymous, “Roosevelt Recommends a Department of Conservation,” American Forests 43, no. 2 (February 1937): 74. In January 1937, FDR had recommended to Congress a sweeping reorganization of the federal government framework, which would have converted the U.S. Department of the Interior into a Department of Conservation, because conservation represented a major purpose of the government. Its role would have been to advise the president “with regard to the protection and use of the natural resources of the nation and the Public Domain.” The conservation community was speculating about whether this change also would imply transferring USDA conservation agencies, including the Forest Service, Soil Conservation Service, and Biological Survey, into the Department of the Interior (Department of Conservation) or whether those agencies would be split between Interior and the USDA. Gifford Pinchot also came out vigorously against making Interior the Department of Conservation, declaring that it would split up and “hamstring” government forest work. Nor did he think that conservation could be housed in a single department, being as “universal as the air we breathe” and related to everything. See G. Pinchot, “It Can Happen Here,” American Forests 43, no. 4 (1937): 282–283, 321; Anonymous, “Pinchot Opposes Department of Conservation,” American Forests 43, no. 4 (1937): 196–197.

AL, letter to John H. Baker, 9 December 1937, LP 10-2, 5.

Anonymous, “Wallace Appoints Three to Aid Wild Life Plan,” editorial, New York Times, 3 January 1934, p. 8 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file); V. Van Ness, untitled, “Rod and Gun,” New York Times, 16 January 1934, p. 27 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file).

Anonymous, “Wallace Appoints Three.”

Anonymous, “Wild Life Project Calls for U.S. Aid,” New York Times, 24 January 1934, p. 24 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file).

Ibid.

T. H. Beck, J. N. Darling, and A. Leopold, “A National Plan for Wild Life Restoration” (Washington, DC: President’s Committee on Wild Life Restoration, 8 February 1934), p. 4,UWDWE.

Anonymous, “Map Aid to Wild Life as a Works Project,” New York Times, 11 May 1934, p. 16 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file).

Ibid.

G.Greenfield, untitled, “Rod and Gun,” New York Times, 7 June 1934, p. 34 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file). It appears that the source used by the Times was the organization More Game Birds, established around 1930 by a wealthy American, Joseph P. Knapp. Leopold encouraged the use of private resources for the advancement of game conservation and Knapp’s “fundamental idea of a big-scale program.” But he criticized Knapp’s plan as unduly narrow and restricting. Knapp apparently sought to dictate what he considered the best kind of game management—an importation of the European system of private game ownership. Leopold favored commercializing the shooting privilege in some cases but not the game. There was plenty to learn from European game management, Leopold admitted, but what America needed was to try out on the land a system of its own. This had not yet been done. This system needed to be flexible, to fit various locales, and would involve the need for ongoing experimentation. A rigid line of thinking, in any case, would not do. See AL, letter to Joseph P. Knapp, 18 September 1930; Ovid Butler, letter to AL, 25 September 1930; and AL, letter to Ovid Butler, 30 September 1930; LP 10-2, 1.

Anonymous, “New Deal Sought for Our Wild Life: Conservation Leaders Urge a National Plan at Session of Audubon Societies,” New York Times, 30 October 1935, p. 23 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file).

G. Greenfield, untitled, “Wood, Field, and Stream,” New York Times, 31 October 1935, p. 25 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file).

FDR did sign the Duck Stamp Bill on 6 March 1934, however, and Jay Darling used his artistic talent to draw scenes for the stamps, which hunters were required to buy. The stamps sold well and helped raise money to establish a national system of waterfowl refuges. A federal duck stamp program continues into the twenty-first century.

By then Leopold had little good to say about the federal effort except that it made funds available (albeit in small amounts) for biological research and did achieve gains in the federal migratory bird program. See National Research Council, “Report of the Committee on Wild Life Studies,” 22 May 1935, LP 10-2, 6 (2).There is also evidence that the committee did not always agree and struggled to create a report that was mutually acceptable. See also AL, letters to J. N. Darling, 16 January 1934 and 29 January 1934: “The more I think about the Committee’s job,” Leopold wrote, “the more I am convinced that our success depends not on the report that we write, but on the man who is chosen to execute the program.” Leopold put a premium on finding “a qualified administrator, with … [a] broad conception of his duties.” Then Leopold “would not care what the report said, or whether we submitted any at all.”

FDR, “Remarks of Hon. Henry A. Wallace” (Wallace read a letter from FDR, who was unable to attend), 3 February 1936, Proceedings of the North American Wildlife Conference (Taking the Place of the Twenty-second American Game Conference) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1936), p. 5.Efforts during the 1930s to promote wildlife conservation are outlined in J. B. Trefethen, An American Crusade for Wildlife (New York: Winchester Press, 1975), pp. 195–236.Apersonalmemoir of FDR and wildlife issues by one of his informal advisors appears in I. Brandt, Adventures with Franklin D. Roosevelt (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Publishing Company, 1988), pp. 37–52.

The Oberlaender Trust of the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, Inc., was founded in 1931 by Gustav Oberlaender of Reading, Pennsylvania, to stimulate appreciation of cultural achievements of German-speaking populations. Members of the group included L. F. Kneipp, head of the USDA Forest Service’s Division of Land, with a focus on “utilization of forest for the local community,” and W.N. Sparhawk, senior forest economist, looking at “social relationships of forestry.” See Anonymous, “Study Grants Given to Forestry Experts,” New York Times, 5 August 1935, p. 13 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file). Each team member was assigned a research topic according to his specialty; Leopold’s was game management in relation to forestry. Upon returning to the United States Leopold published six articles based on his observations. Several dealt with specific forestry methods used in the country, yet he was inclined to dwell also upon social organization in Germany and its stronger sense of national cohesion. AL, “Notes on Wild Life Conservation in Germany,” Game Research News Letter 6 (16 September 1935 and 21 October 1935): 1–3, 7, and 1–3; AL, “Naturschutz in Germany,” Bird-Lore 38, no. 2 (March–April 1936): 102–111; AL, “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: I. History,” Journal of Forestry 34, no. 4 (April 1936): 366–375;AL, “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: II. Ecology and Policy,” Journal of Forestry 34, no. 5 (May 1936): 460–466;AL, “Farm Game Management in Silesia,” American Wildlife 25, no. 5 (September–October 1936): 67–68, 74–76, also in FHL, pp. 54–69; AL, “Notes on Game Administration in Germany,” American Wildlife 25, no. 6 (November–December 1936): 85, 92–93.

AL, “Suggestions for American Wildlife Conference,” attachment to a letter from AL to Seth Gordon dated 27 October 1935, p. 2, LP 10-6, 17 (6).

Ibid.

Ibid. See also AL, “Land Pathology,” RMG, pp. 212–217.

Jay Darling, letter to AL, 20 November 1935, LP 10-2, 8.

Compare the postmechanization landscapes of the American Great Plains and the agricultural lands of collectivist Ukraine in the mid- to late 1930s. View Pare Lorentz’ The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) along with Alexandr Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930).

AL, “Suggestions for American Wildlife Conference,” p. 1.

Jay Darling, letter to AL, 20 November 1935, LP 10-2, 8.

Ibid.

AL, “Notes on Game Administration in Germany,” p. 93.As Leopold put it against the background of World War II in 1942: “War has defined the issue: we must prove that democracy can use its land decently.… We deal with bureaus, policies, laws, and programs which are the symbols of our problem, instead of with the resources, products, and landusers, which are the problem.” AL, “Land-Use and Democracy,” Audubon 44, no. 5 (September–October 1942): 259–265; also in RMG, p. 295. See C.Meine, “Home, Land, Security,” in Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004), pp. 222–246.

Leopold and the rest of the American Game Policy Committee objected to the option of ceding title of game to private landowners, giving the reason that it was the English system and incompatible with American tradition and thought.AL et al., “Report to the American Game Conference on an American Game Policy” and “Discussion of the American Game Policy,” Transactions of the 17th American Game Conference (1–2 December 1930), pp. 284–309, 142, 146–147; AL, “Game Methods: The American Way,” RMG, pp. 156–163; and see AL, review of W. Shepard, Notes on German Game Management Chiefly in Bavaria and Baden, Journal of Forestry 32, no. 7 (1934): 774–775.

AL, Review of Notes on German Game Management Chiefly in Bavaria and Baden (by Ward Shepard, Senate Committee on Wild Life Resources, 1934) Journal of Forestry 32, no. 7 (October, 1934), p. 775.

Ibid.

Douglas Wade, letter to AL, 30 September 1944, pp. 1–2, LP 10-8, 1.

Ibid., p. 2.

AL, letter to Douglas Wade, 23 October 1944, LP 10-8, 1.

AL, “Ecology as an Ethical System,” ca. 1940s, p. 1, LP 10-6, 17.

Ibid., p. 1.

AL, “Land-Use and Democracy,” RMG, p. 300.

AL, “Proposed Game Survey” prepared for the Wild Life Committee, National Research Council, 30 December 1931, p. 2, LP 10-2, 6. Leopold, still in the first blush of a national career, was initially hopeful about the work this committee might accomplish, which included the likes of prominent ecologist Victor Shelford, the Audubon Society’s T. Gilbert Pearson, Paul Redington of the USDA Biological Survey, and A. B. Howell of the American Society of Mammalogists. See AL, letter to Charles Elton, 2 March 1932, LP 10-3, 10; AL, “Function of the Wild Life Committee: National Research Council,” 20 February 1932, p. 1, LP, 10-2, 6 (1).

G. Greenfield, untitled, “Wood, Field, and Stream,” New York Times, 1 February 1936, p. 12 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times, 1837–current file).

The new wildlife federation did emerge (now the National Wildlife Federation), replacing the former American Game Association, but its formation did not end the disagreements. Another new organization was formed at the 1936 conference—the Wildlife Institute, which would collect and allocate “some $200,000 in industrial funds.” See AL, letter to Ivey F. Lewis, 2 March 1936, LP 10-2, 6.

In particular, Leopold was active in and wrote about the Riley Cooperative, supported by the new Wisconsin Shooting Preserve Law, which allowed a generous open season to those who raised pheasants on their land. In the cooperative, an intimate group of farm and town members shared shooting privileges equally, with town members paying dues in cash to farmers for management expenses and farmers paying “dues” by contributing the use of their land and grain. The Riley experiment continued throughout the decade, producing longer-term results that were for the most part discouraging, however. The cooperative was hard to maintain without the personal involvement of Leopold and his graduate students; when the students left for the war, the experiment largely folded.

The Faville Grove project, near Lake Mills, east of Madison, was a “farmer pool” type of organization wherein farmers managed game for their own shooting and outsiders were allowed in only as guests. This project, which Leopold advised, included restoration of prairie and marsh flora as well as game and nature education for schoolchildren. It was operated by Leopold’s graduate student Art Hawkins and made possible by farmer conservationist Stoughton Faville, owner of the farmland.

Leopold began requiring each of his professional game students to live on and operate his own game setup for at least a year, to give the student experience and research opportunities and to aid various farmers. Leopold and his students were also actively involved in game management and other restoration projects at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. See also AL, “The Arboretum and the University,” RMG, p. 209. See also B. Sibernagel and J. Sibernagel, “Tracking Aldo Leopold through Riley’s Farmland,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Summer 2003): 34–45. The issue and possibilities of farmer-sportsman cooperation continued to draw attention after Leopold’s death. Durward Allen explored the matter at length with particular attention to the public’s ownership of the wildlife itself in Our Wildlife Legacy, rev. ed. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1962), pp. 309–336.

AL, “Helping Ourselves,” RMG, pp. 203–208;AL, “Farmer-Sportsmen Set-Ups,” p. 283.

AL, “Farmer-Sportsman Set-Ups,” p. 284; see also AL, “Vertical Planning for Wild Life,” address to Rural Regional Planning group, 25 March 1936, LP 10-6, 14.

AL, “Suggestions for American Wildlife Conference,” p. 4. Earlier that month Leopold had received a letter from Seth Gordon asking him for ideas on the upcoming American Wild life Conference, called by FDR. This was a portion of Leopold’s response, sent from the Savoy Hotel in Breslau.

Darling also would encourage national management and wilderness planning work at the Biological Survey, starting with the needs of various species and working up to provide for those needs at appropriate spatial scales, which Leopold viewed as so important. The grizzly bear was being given some particular attention. See the discussion in various letters between Leopold and Darling: AL to Jay Darling, 27 November 1939;Darling to AL, 23 November 1939; Darling to AL, 21 November 1939; LP 10-4, 8. See also AL, “Proposal for a Conservation Inventory of Threatened Species,” undated draft, LP 10-2, 6; AL, “Wildlife in Land-Use Planning,” 20 March 1942, UWDWE; and AL, “The Grizzly—a Problem in Land-Planning,” 6 April 1942, LP 10-6, 16.

Jay Darling, letter to AL, 14 January 1935, LP 10-1, 1.

AL, letter to Jay Darling, 21 January 1935, LP 10-1, 1.

AL, “The Research Program,” Transactions of the 2nd North American Wildlife Conference, 1937, p. 104. Reprinted in American Wildlife 26, no. 2 (March–April 1937): 22.

Ibid.

AL, “Proposed Conservation Economics Study,” p. 6.