Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson

by Rachel Carson

  Preface to Animal Machines

  THE MODERN WORLD worships the gods of speed and quantity, and of the quick and easy profit, and out of this idolatry monstrous evils have arisen. Yet the evils go long unrecognized. Even those who create them manage by some devious rationalizing to blind themselves to the harm they have done society. As for the general public, the vast majority rest secure in a childlike faith that “someone” is looking after things – a faith unbroken until some public-spirited person, with patient scholarship and steadfast courage, presents facts that can no longer be ignored.

  This is what Ruth Harrison has done. Her theme affects practically every citizen, for it deals with the new methods of rearing animals destined to become human food. It is a story that ought to shock the complacency out of any reader.

  Modern animal husbandry has been swept by a passion for “intensivism”; on this tide everything that resembles the methods of an earlier day has been carried away. Gone are the pastoral scenes in which animals wandered through green fields or flocks of chickens scratching contentedly for their food. In their place are factorylike buildings in which animals live out their wretched existences without ever feeling the earth beneath their feet, without knowing sunlight, or experiencing the simple pleasures of grazing for natural food – indeed, so confined or so intolerably crowded that movement of any kind is scarcely possible. [ … ]

  As a biologist whose special interests lie in the field of ecology, or the relation between living things and their environment, I find it inconceivable that healthy animals can be produced under the artificial and damaging conditions that prevail in these modern and factorylike installations, where animals are grown and turned out like so many inanimate objects. The intolerable crowding of broiler chickens, the revoltingly unsanitary conditions in the piggeries, the lifelong confinement of laying hens in tiny cages are samples of the conditions Mrs. Harrison describes. As she makes abundantly clear, this artificial environment is not a healthy one. Diseases sweep through these establishments, which indeed are kept going only by the continuous administration of antibiotics. Disease organisms then become resistant to the antibiotics. Veal calves, purposely kept in a state of induced aenemia so their white flesh will satisfy the supposed desires of the gourmet, sometimes drop dead when taken out of their imprisoning crates.

  The question then arises: how can animals produced under such conditions be safe or acceptable human food? Mrs. Harrison quotes expert opinion and cites impressive evidence that they are not. Although the quantity of production is up, quality is down, a fact recognized in a most significant way by some of the producers themselves, who, for example, are more likely to keep a few chickens in the back yard for their own tables than to eat the products of the broiler establishments. The menace to human consumers from the drugs, hormones, and pesticides used to keep this whole fantastic operation somehow going is a matter never properly explored.

  The final argument against the intensivism now practiced in this branch of agriculture is a humanitarian one. I am glad to see Mrs. Harrison raise the question of how far man has a moral right to go in his domination of other life. Has he the right, as in these examples, to reduce life to a bare existence that is scarcely life at all? Has he the further right to terminate these wretched lives by means that are wantonly cruel? My own answer is an unqualified no. It is my belief that man will never be at peace with his own kind until he has recognized the Schweitzerian ethic that embraces decent consideration for all living creatures – a true reverence for life.

  Although Mrs. Harrison’s book describes in detail only the conditions prevailing in Great Britain, it deserves to be widely read also in those European countries where these methods are practiced, and in the United States where some of them arose. Wherever it is read it will certainly provoke feelings of dismay, revulsion, and outrage. I hope it will spark a consumers’ revolt of such proportions that this vast new agricultural industry will be forced to mend its ways.

  26

  [1962]

  A Fable for Tomorrow

  THE BRIEF FABLE with which Carson opens Silent Spring is one of the most memorable in contemporary nonfiction and elicited more controversy than almost any other part of the book. Many scientists were appalled that Carson dared begin a book about the science of chemical pesticides with an allegory about the environmental pollution of an imaginary town. Some simply ignored the fact that it was a fable and attacked Carson because the town was not accurately described, while others accused her of writing science fiction throughout. By contrast, most literary critics praised her use of the fable as a brilliant rhetorical device and a creative way of introducing the disturbing subject of the deliberate poisoning of the earth.

  Carson realized her first chapter, originally titled “The Rain of Death,” might be too formidable and used the fable as a device to engage the nonscientific reader. In early drafts, Carson gave her town a name, Green Meadows, and centered the action on a young man who returns home after many years only to find his town devastated by ecological havoc. At the urging of her publisher, she rewrote the fable making it clear that the town was a composite of many communities and became the voice of the fable’s narrator. The opening paragraphs recall the once bucolic town of Springdale, Pennsylvania, where Carson grew up, which was subjected to an earlier kind of industrial pollution.

  THERE WAS ONCE A TOWN in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.

  Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.

  Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.

  There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example – where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

  On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs – the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.

  The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Eve
n the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.

  In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.

  No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

  This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know.

  What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.

  27

  [1962]

  Women’s National Press Club Speech

  SILENT SPRING WAS SERIALIZED in three summer issues of the New Yorker in 1962 and published in late September. The high level of public interest that surrounded the book included notice by President John F. Kennedy, who convened a special panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into the problem, the introduction of legislation in several states seeking to halt the spraying of pesticides without citizen notification, and general uproar in the agricultural chemical industry and among government scientists.

  Carson took many of her critics in stride, but she could not abide those that damned the book without having read it. As debate grew more acrimonious in the fall of 1962, Carson’s public remarks grew sharper, culminating in her appearance at the Women’s National Press Club in December. In this speech, Carson attacked the smugly self-satisfied chemical industry and exposed their counterparts in industry-funded research institutions.

  With national television cameras rolling, Carson charged that basic scientific truths were being compromised “to serve the gods of profit and production.”

  MY TEXT THIS AFTERNOON is taken from the Globe Times of Bethlehem, Pa., a news item in the issue of October 12. After describing in detail the adverse reactions to Silent Spring of the farm bureaus in two Pennsylvania counties, the reporter continued: “No one in either county farm office who was talked to today had read the book, but all disapproved of it heartily.”

  This sums up very neatly the background of much of the noisier comment that has been heard in this unquiet autumn following the publication of Silent Spring. In the words of an editorial in the Bennington Banner, “The anguished reaction to Silent Spring has been to refute statements that were never made.” Whether this kind of refutation comes from people who actually have not read the book or from those who find it convenient to misrepresent my position I leave it to others to judge.

  Early in the summer – as soon as the first installment of the book appeared in the New Yorker – public reaction to Silent Spring was reflected in a tidal wave of letters – letters to Congressmen, to newspapers, to Government agencies, to the author. These letters continue to come and I am sure represent the most important and lasting reaction.

  Even before the book was published, editorials and columns by the hundred had discussed it all over the country. Early reaction in the chemical press was somewhat moderate, and in fact I have had fine support from some segments of both chemical and agricultural press. But in general, as was to be expected, the industry press was not happy. By late summer the printing presses of the pesticide industry and their trade associations had begun to pour out the first of a growing stream of booklets designed to protect and repair the somewhat battered image of pesticides. Plans are announced for quarterly mailings to opinion leaders and for monthly news stories to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Speakers are addressing audiences everywhere.

  It is clear that we are all to receive heavy doses of tranquilizing information, designed to lull the public into the sleep from which Silent Spring so rudely awakened it. Some definite gains toward a saner policy of pest control have been made in recent months. The important issue now is whether we are to hold and extend those gains.

  The attack is now falling into a definite pattern and all the well-known devices are being used. One obvious way to try to weaken a cause is to discredit the person who champions it. So the masters of invective and insinuation have been busy: I am a “bird lover – a cat lover – a fish lover” – a priestess of nature – a devotee of a mystical cult having to do with laws of the universe which my critics consider themselves immune to.

  Another piece in the pattern of attack largely ignores Silent Spring and concentrates on what I suppose would be called the soft sell, the soothing reassurances to the public. Some of these acknowledge the correctness of my facts, but say that the incidents I reported occurred some time in the past, that industry and Government are well aware of them and have long since taken steps to prevent their recurrence. It must be assumed that the people who read these comforting reports read nothing else in their newspapers. Actually, pesticides have figured rather prominently in the news in recent months: some items trivial, some almost humorous, some definitely serious.

  These reports do not differ in any important way from the examples I cited in Silent Spring, so if the situation is under better control there is little evidence of it.

  What are some of the ways pesticides have made recent news?

  1. The New York Post of October 12 reported the seizure by the Food and Drug Administration of more than a quarter of a million pounds of potatoes – 346,000 pounds to be exact – in the Pacific Northwest. Agents said they contained about 4 times the permitted residues of aldrin and dieldrin.

  2. In September, Federal investigators had to look into the charge that vineyards near the Erie County thruway had been damaged by weed-killer chemicals sprayed along the highway. Similar reports came from Iowa.

  3. In California, fumes from lawns to which a chemical had been applied were so obnoxious that the fire department was called to drench the lawns with water. Thereupon the fumes increased so greatly that 11 firemen were hospitalized.

  4. Last summer the newspapers widely reported the story of some 5000 Turkish children suffering from an affliction called porphyria characterized by severe liver damage and the growth of hair on face, hands, and arms, giving a monkey-like appearance to victims. This was traced to the consumption of wheat treated with a chemical fungicide. The wheat had been intended for planting, rather than for direct consumption. But the people were hungry and perhaps did not understand the restriction. This was an unplanned occurrence in a far part of the world but it is well to remember that large quantities of seed are similarly treated here.

  5. You will remember that the bald eagle, our national emblem, is seriously declining in numbers. The Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported significant facts that may explain why this is so. The Service has determined experimentally how much DDT is required to kill an eagle. It has also discovered that eagles found dead in the wild have lethal doses of DDT stored in their tissues.

  6. This fall also, Canadian papers carried a warning that woodcock being shot during the hunting season in New Brunswick were carrying residues of heptachlor and might be dangerous if used as food. Woodcock are migratory birds. Those that nest in New Brunswick winter in the southern United States, where heptachlor has been used extensively in the campaign against the fire ant. The residues in the birds were 3 to 3.5 ppm. The legal tolerance for heptachlor is ZERO.

  7. Biologists of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Department have recently reported that fish in the Framingham Reservoir on the outskirts of Boston contain DDT in amounts as high as 75 ppm, or more than 10 times the legal tolerance. This is, of course, a public water supply for a large number of people.

  8. One more item – an Associated Press dispatch of November 16th: a sad commenta
ry on technology gone wrong. A Federal Court Jury awarded a New York State farmer $12,360 for damages to his potato crop. The damage was done by a chemical that was supposed to halt sprouting. Instead, the sprouts grew inward.

  We are told also that chemicals are never used unless tests have shown them to be safe. This, of course, is not an accurate statement. I am happy to see that the Department of Agriculture plans to ask the Congress to amend the FIFRA to do away with the provision that now permits a company to register a pesticide under protest, even though a question of health or safety has been raised by the Department.

  We have other reminders that unsafe chemicals get into use – County Agents frequently have to amend or rescind earlier advices on the use of pesticides. For example, a letter was recently sent out to farmers recalling stocks of a chemical in use as a cattle spray. In September, “unexplained losses” occurred following its use. Several suspected production lots were recalled but the losses continued. All outstanding lots of the chemical have now had to be recalled.

  Inaccurate statements in reviews of Silent Spring are a dime a dozen, and I shall only mention one or two examples. Time, in its discussion of Silent Spring, described accidental poisonings from pesticides as very rare. Let’s look at a few figures. California, the only state that keeps accurate and complete records, reports from 900 to 1000 cases of poisoning from agricultural chemicals per year. About 200 of these are from parathion alone. Florida has experienced so many poisonings recently that this state has attempted to control the use of the more dangerous chemicals in residential areas. As a sample of conditions in other countries, parathion was responsible for 100 deaths in India in 1958 and takes an average of 336 deaths a year in Japan.