Community Civics and Rural Life Part 32

The farm woodlot problem, YEAR BOOK 1914, 439-456.

Economy of farm drainage, YEAR BOOK 1914, 245-256.

Economic waste from soil erosion, YEAR BOOK 1913, 207-220.

Unprofitable acres, YEAR BOOK 1915, 147-154.

Consult "Guide to United States Government Publications," U.S.

Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1918, No. 2; also, "The Federal Executive Departments as Sources of Information," U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1919, No. 74.

Report of the National Conservation Commission (1909), Senate Doc.u.ment 676, 60th Congress, 2nd Session.

CHAPTER XVI

PROTECTION OF PROPERTY AND PROPERTY RIGHTS

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY

There is nothing more discouraging than to have the product of one's labor swept away by disaster. The farmer who has every prospect of a b.u.mper crop after a hard season's work may have his hope dashed by s.m.u.t in his grain, or by a visitation of gra.s.shoppers, or by storm and flood. Cholera may carry off his hogs, or hoof-and-mouth disease his cattle. Rats and other rodents may eat his grain. Fire may destroy his barn or his home. The thief may steal his pocketbook or his automobile. His investments may prove unfortunate, or be swept away by somebody's bad management or fraud. Some thoughtless boys or deliberate vandals may ruin in a few minutes a beautiful lawn or trees that have taken years to grow and have involved great expense and effort.

THE NATIONAL LOSS FROM PROPERTY DESTRUCTION

The individual's loss is also a loss to the community. It is reported by the Department of Agriculture that nearly $800,000,000 damage was done to crops by insects in a single year. Animal diseases cause a direct loss to our country estimated at $212,000,000 annually. Hog cholera alone costs $75,000,000 a year.

s.m.u.t destroys more than $50,000,000 a year in cereals. Food and feed products to the value of $150,000,000 a year are destroyed by prairie dogs, ground squirrels, and other rodents. It is said that prairie dogs often take half the pasturage of western cattle ranges. It is estimated that the killing of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, and lynxes saved more than $2,000,000 worth of livestock in 1918. Floods have destroyed $100,000,000 in property in the Mississippi Valley alone.

The loss from fire in the United States is said to equal the value of our total product of gold, silver, copper, and petroleum.

The buildings consumed by fire in 1914, if placed on lots of 65 feet frontage, would line both sides of a street extending from New York to Chicago. A person journeying along this street of desolation would pa.s.s in every thousand feet a ruin from which an injured person was taken. At every three fourths of a mile in this journey he would encounter the charred remains of a human being who has been burned to death. [Footnote: "The Fire Tax and Waste of Structural Materials in the United States," Bulletin 814, U. S.

Geological Survey, Department of the Interior.]

THE SERVICE OF GOVERMENT

Protection against loss of property is one of the chief services performed for us by our government. We have already noted in Chapter XII what a great deal of work both the national and state governments are doing to prevent loss of crops and of livestock from disease, insects, and other causes. What this may mean to the individual farmer and to the country is suggested by the case of a farmer who had hundreds of acres of corn destroyed in some manner unknown to him. A single visit from a representative of the Department of Agriculture showed him the cause of the trouble, the corn rootworm, and how it could be eradicated by a simple rotation of crops. The farmer said that this knowledge would save him $10,000 a year.

LEADERSHIP AND COOPERATION

The state and national governments spend a great deal of money in equipping experimental laboratories and employing scientists to seek out these enemies of the farmer and of the nation, to find methods of destroying them or counteracting their effects, and to advise the farmer how he may protect himself and his neighbors.

While the government provides leadership in these matters, it depends upon the cooperation of the people to get results, as we have seen in so many cases. A farmer may destroy all the rats, or ground squirrels, or prairie dogs on his place, but the trouble will be repeated unless there is community cooperation. The same thing is true of animal and plant diseases, insect enemies, and so on.

Investigate and report on:

Further facts regarding losses to farmers of the United States due to insect and bird enemies, predatory animals, animal and plant diseases.

Similar losses in your own state.

Estimated losses of individual farmers in your locality from any of these causes.

The value of insect-eating birds as property savers.

Campaigns against rabbits and prairie dogs in the West.

Bounties on wolves and other predatory animals in your state.

The work of your state experiment station to prevent loss of property.

NATIONAL COOPERATION FOR FLOOD PREVENTION

Some kinds of protection require effort beyond the powers of individual citizens, or even of combined citizen action. This is the case with flood protection. Millions of dollars in property have been destroyed, thousands of lives lost, and untold suffering caused by the periodic recurrence of floods in certain sections of the country, as in the lower Mississippi Valley, or as in Ohio, a few years ago. The individual farmer has some responsibility for such floods, because by looking after his own drainage and preserving his own timberland he may help decrease the amount of water that flows into the streams and ultimately causes such havoc farther down the valley. But such efforts are helpful only in connection, with the larger efforts of the government. Even state governments cannot alone control the floods, because the waters that cause damage in Louisiana and Mississippi come from the states along the entire course of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Moreover, the destruction caused in Louisiana or any other state is a loss to the entire nation. The control of floods requires the combined efforts of national and state governments, as well as of local communities and individuals.

Levees have been built along some of our rivers that are subject to flood, notably the lower Mississippi, where the work has been done by the joint action of the states affected, through their local levee boards and their state boards of engineers, and the United States Mississippi River Commission. The United States government has spent large sums for river improvements, but there is a general feeling that the money has not always been wisely spent. At all events the work has been restricted to navigable streams under the power of the national government to regulate interstate commerce. Recently, however, the President has approved a law pa.s.sed by Congress appropriating $45,000,000 for the control of the floods of the Mississippi by improvements from the headwaters of the river to the mouth of the Ohio. The law also includes the appropriation of $5,000,000 for the protection of the Sacramento Valley in California. This law was pa.s.sed under the power given to Congress by the Const.i.tution "to lay and collect taxes...for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" (Art. I, sec. 8, clause i).

WORK OF THE UNITED STATES WEATHER BUREAU

Great saving of property has been effected by the United States Weather Bureau. The work of this Bureau is wonderful, but it is not mysterious. Just as the movements of a ship or of a railroad train may be reported day by day, and hour by hour, by telegraph, so the appearance and movement of a storm center or of a cold wave or of a flood are reported from a mult.i.tude of observing stations.

There are central weather-forecasting stations at Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C. Weather forecasts are made up at these points from observations telegraphed in from observing stations, and within two hours are telegraphed to about 1600 distributing stations, from which they are further distributed to about 90,000 mail addresses daily, to all newspapers, and are made available to 5,500,00 x3 telephone subscribers. A farmer may call central by telephone and learn with remarkable certainty what the weather for twenty-four hours will be, except in the case of local thunder showers which may drench his fields while pa.s.sing by those of his neighbor.

"It may be said without exaggeration that the San Francisco office of the Weather Bureau has saved to the citrus fruit growers of California more money within the last five years than the annual appropriation for the entire Bureau during a period of twenty years." "In the citrus fruit districts of California it is reported that fruit to the value of $14,000,000 was saved...

during one cold wave." "The value of the orange bloom, vegetables, and strawberries protected and saved on a single night in a limited district in Florida...was reported at over $100,000." "The warnings issued for a single cold wave... resulted in saving over $3,500,000 through the protection of property." "Signals displayed for a single hurricane are known to have detained in port on our Atlantic coast vessels valued with their cargoes at over $30,000,000." Flood warnings are sent in from about 60 centers along our rivers, enabling farmers to remove their cattle from bottom lands, to save their crops when they are ready for cutting, and otherwise to determine their farming operations. They are also of the greatest service to railroads, business men, and home owners, in cities. These are but a few ill.u.s.trations of the services performed by the Weather Bureau.

Investigate and report on:

The building of levees in your state. Where, by whom, their value.

The amount of money spent in your state for river improvement (or harbor improvement).

How the Weather Bureau forecasts the weather, storms, floods.

How to read a weather map.

Experiences of individual farmers of their locality with regard to benefits derived from the Weather Bureau.

How a merchant in your town may be benefited by the Weather Bureau.

The losses in your state and locale from frost.

Preventable Losses

A great deal of the property loss referred to is due to causes for which we are not responsible, such as storms, the depredations of insects, and epidemics of animal disease. But some of it is due to our own carelessness. It was said on page 176 that wastefulness is our chief national sin. Carelessness is the twin sister of wastefulness; they go hand in hand. Enormous waste is caused by fire, and most fires are due to carelessness--carelessness in handling matches, in the use of oil stoves, in acc.u.mulations of rubbish, in disposing of hot ashes, in smoking where there are inflammable materials.

Fire Protection in Cities

In cities and towns the safety of our own property from fire is largely dependent upon the care of others. If our neighbor is careless, our property as well as his may be destroyed. Under such circ.u.mstances it is necessary to have rules to regulate conduct for the common safety. The materials with which we may build, the thickness of our walls, the construction of our flues, the storage of explosive or inflammable materials, the disposal of rubbish and ashes, and many other things, are regulated by law. This is cooperation for fire prevention. Much money is also spent by cities for fire protection, including water supply and organized fire departments.