The New World
And now we cross the Atlantic to the new land which was isolated from the peoples of
the Old World until civilization had advanced through fully 6,000 years. The peoples
found here, presumably descendants of tribes coming from Asia in the distant past, had
been handicapped in the development of agriculture by lack of large animals suitable for
domestication and by ignorance of the wheel and the use of iron. They had, however,
learned to conserve soil and water in a notable way, especially in the terrace agriculture
of Peru and Central America and in the Hopi country of southwestern United States. Some
have held that this knowledge was brought across the South Pacific by way of islands, on
many of which such practices are still found. In any case, lacking iron or even bronze
tools, these peoples for the most part still depended largely on hunting, fishing, and
gathering--along with shifting cultivation--for their livelihood. Thus, the soil resources
seem to have been for the most part almost unimpaired.
To the peoples of the Old World, the Americas were a land of promise and a release from
the oppressions, economic and political, brought on by congested populations and failures
of people to find adjustments to their long-used land.
North America, as the first colonists entered it, was a vast area of good land, more
bountiful in raw materials than ever was vouchsafed any people. Its soils were fat with
accumulated fertility of the ages; its mountains were full of minerals and forests; its
clear rivers were teeming with fish. All these were abundant-soil productivity, raw
materials, and power for a remarkable civilization.
Here was the last frontier; for there are no more new continents to discover, to
explore, and to exploit. If we are to discover a way of establishing an enduring
civilization we must do it here; this is our last stand. We have not yet fully discovered
this way; we are searching for the way and the light. Here is a challenge of the ages to
old and young alike. Here is a chance to solve this age-old problem of establishing an
enduring civilization--of finding an adjustment of a people to its land resources.
Our land is like a great farm with fields suited to the growing of cotton, corn, and
other crops and with land for pastures, woods, and general farming. In the West, our
country has vast grazing lands well suited to the raising of herds of sheep and cattle and
fertile alluvial valleys in the and regions, overawed by high mountains that condense the
waters out of moisture-laden winds to irrigate garden lands. Such is the American farm,
capable of feeding 350 million people when land is intensively cultivated under full
conservation and fully occupied with a complex division of labor that will give us a
higher general standard of living than we enjoy today.
To Top |
