Land, The

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the cakes good land to raise a house like this [Music] [Applause] it takes good farming to have full minds [Music] good people of the solid old stock that settled in this country 300 years ago [Music] [Music] [Music] they looked at houses to last forever [Music] but even here in this rich state of Pennsylvania which has some of the best ponds and farmers in the country trouble has crept in [Music] all over the country that has been troubling [Music] [Music] all of us meet and talk it over talk over the deep problems of the land and the people problems that no longer than any one man [Music] one of the problems is erosion the loss of the soil [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it is amazing but the washer brain gender [Applause] tall trees you here once and grass as high as an end we found this in Tennessee but you can find it in greater or less degree in every state these devastated sod like patches of soil containing metal elements upon which all life depend [Music] [Music] it is here in the old cotton South a great Southern culture grew up you are on this land which was once so rich and beautiful once so marvelous for its bigger [Music] at a coaster that grew up on two grapes all wasting props tobacco and the land year after year and generation after generation was beaten it is here that we see what erosion that the loss of the soil can do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and soil nails like pills [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in one railing of a house we came upon an old Negro who lived there alone along with the rats [Applause] [Music] [Applause] he didn't seem to know we were there [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a thousand miles west here spread over 40,000 square miles of our Great Plains is probably the most spectacular and of some incredible erosion this country ever had millions of tons of topsoil blown away 300 million tons of a single storm and after farm blown into the sky and Mormons more of hundreds of thousands of tons washed into our great rivers washed us here it's steamed up and down this river 70 years ago you can almost walk across it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] but the most sinister erosion because it cannot receive this she drew a gradual wasting grain by grain elevated land wasted planet wasted rivers [Music] and played so swiftly and on so greatest age [Music] [Music] we came to a town that cotton farmers founded not so many years ago go for they call it go forth Texas [Music] they died the Gasol [Music] that died of the sort of farming that kills us all [Music] at the edge of the town we came upon a scene that is part and parcel of a road of land migrants landless [Music] [Applause] [Music] once a soil begins to go it is hard to stop [Applause] in 300 years we conquer the continent and became the richest nation in the world but our soil we squandered squandered at such a rate that in less than a century if we go on as we have in the past the days of this nation's strength will be now [Music] my land cry out against me or that the furrows that likewise complain but thistles grow instead of wheat and cotton instead of mourning Joel said this more than two thousand years ago [Music] [Applause] [Music] a family of eight lives in this box of a trainer some of them were born in it going on the road [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] they make the best of it work is what they want any kind of work along our highways there are more than a million homeless people [Music] sternly moving out and played honor he said [Applause] [Music] most of our magnets are young people with the young children [Music] we had another name for these people was we call them pioneer [Music] heading west that's where most of them go [Music] [Music] America the New World 300 years ago this cry rang through Europe to lift the hearts of the defeated the persecuted the dispossessed a new world [Music] chance to live [Music] Arizona forty-niners would pass through this country couldn't see how even a coyote could live in it no one but engineers came in not so long ago we'll get more gold out of this country Lisa when the 49ers ever dreamed they went over the mom build dams and impounded it great reservoirs of water [Music] [Applause] water and Sun that never failed for crops a year a boxful of the price of a dozen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when they come from almost every state [Applause] a hundred men for every job [Music] they come to feels like these so rich such as the magic but there is no end to the bounty they produce [Music] but they go to the lettuce fields and what do they find Filipinos and Mexicans do the work while the work is hard and Filipinos and Mexicans are strong and can do it better in the sheds they might find a job there [Music] but whether it's in the sheds or in the fields it's like a machine and endless belly [Music] landing on the Mexican border Mexicans mostly do the work many of them children that pays 40 cents good pay for a danger down on the Rio Grande [Music] and here women get to work and glad they are together looking to get a day-to-day working who had land to cover them [Music] thousands upon thousands the field field one of the greatest migrations in all the history of this Restless country [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] his hands keep moving even in his sleep [Music] he thinks he's picking peas she said [Music] but erosion alone is not the cause of all our driven people there are other forces at work and one especially much more powerful [Applause] [Music] they come to the chopping come for the picking come by the thousands the Cotton Pickers in our country number millions more Michaels depend on calm but on early [Music] [Music] but more powerful than all these millions is the machine it can pick more Cup in 20 minutes when a human hand can pick them two days it doesn't quite clear enough yet [Music] that maybe picking every popular [Music] [Music] and they they cleared in an hour that's how fast it goes the man who drives it holds it clears as me responds with it to charges five dollars an hour [Music] clears anything you like [Music] [Music] - monster by 10,000 take it to some new space in the world with such an army you could clear the ground what a great rule country and no time at all [Music] even for little things there are no machines all they have to do is tie them up [Music] I had a piece of land for 20 years he said he told us he was a mountain man from the Cumberland Mountains some of that country's just the same today as it was 200 years ago the old fire still my great-grandfather but every Singapore matter everything a man needed sternwheeler still runnin down this bill still grindin [Music] it's just an old-time country with old-time ways [Music] [Applause] [Music] I wake up late sometimes been dreaming about and wishing I was there [Music] this is Iowa no where is a better land [Music] shuttle [Music] [Applause] [Music] good bombs but even here in this red state there's problem for years farmers have been struggling with prices too low to pay the things they have come on it's been hard for them to make both ends meet to close and educate the children to pay taxes to meet the nose of the bay here and everywhere so they don't own their homes anymore nor the land I'm almost 50% now our tenants [Music] working other than earned horses were working all over the country not so long ago an area larger than England grew feed for him but that market is done for today the feeders gasoline or a machine [Music] [Music] and now this machine is coming [Music] [Applause] [Music] you don't see many people in these fields anymore even at harvest [Music] all of these wheat fields by the rest you don't see many people and [Music] thousands upon thousands of men only a few years ago harvested food thousands more harvested home [Music] and here they are some of them crumbs of the machine [Music] [Applause] [Applause] Elaine man who had walked in for miles on crutches said to us I don't know what some of us would do if it weren't for the food the government gives us [Music] the yield of 15,000 acres a week in a single cargo [Music] the yield of armies of machines [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] during the first plague more we started banging these machines out of the wheat fields and we fed the world [Music] [Applause] they drown like rats on events sometimes these men trimming the target of week [Music] the farmers themselves have been browned by this abundant to save themselves our farmers have developed a nationwide system of galleries to store the surplus of that important crops their wheat their torn their cotton it was the only way they could believe their markets the only way they could carry on it is called it ever normal granary a vast reserve which now gives us commend the state for in the disruptive world we face it is vital as a weapon for our defense [Music] here is the other normal gravity of the corn dough in every Township in every County bins like these filled with corn [Music] pundants in the mountain abundance on the ranges [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have every single nation after her every single nation needs we have the open strength we have the hidden strength not only for today and for tomorrow but for the centuries of the naked [Music] a change has come over the land in the last few years farmers are turning to a new way of working it a new package new fur alliance new terrace lives to hold the rain where it falls to prevent it from forming in opponents [Music] it is a pattern that will always hold the soil no matter what the / of wind or the wash of rain [Music] the infamous with clover turned on their enriched to align with phosphate enriched for the hearts and minds and bones of our children and our children's children [Music] [Music] the farmers pop it over it looks practical it is practical [Music] six million farmers six million strong are beginning to farm together to sync together to act together down in the Carolinas up in Oregon in Indiana in the high Northwest the Texas plane the face of the land needle makes wrong again make strong whatever [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are saving the soil with our fabulous machines we can make every last acre of this country strong again with machines we can produce food enough to feed the world but what about the people [Music] these homeless thousands our machines have dispossessed and the thousands more who still struggle on the land [Music] when will we find the way learn to live with the incredible power we have won these miraculous machine the strengths of a man is not great he has not resigned in fact the strengths of a great but man has a mind he can think he can govern he can track a new world stands before him and abundance beyond his dreams the great fact is the land the land itself and the people and the spirit of the people [Music] you