Ohio History Journal

MAN AND NATURE IN MODERN OHIO1

 

 

by PAUL B. SEARS

Professor of Botany, Oberlin College

 

My theme is law. It is a curious paradox that science, whose

practitioners proudly boast that they take nothing for granted,

rests upon faith. Science is, in fact, what our theological friends

would call an act of faith. The faith to which I refer is a pro-

found belief that the universe of our experience is a universe of

law and order.² Without a conviction that the world of experi-

ence must be consistent I doubt that anyone would have the cour-

age to pursue the truth by painful step upon painful step. It

takes courage and confidence for an accountant to tackle the an-

alysis of a set of business transactions. If he were not sustained

by his belief that there is a fundamental order in arithmetic, he

could not go ahead. The natural scientist believes that what is

true of the realm of numbers is true throughout the universe.

Unfortunately, not many of us act as though the reign of law

were universal. We are like bookkeepers whose records and

additions are meticulous, but who fail to look behind each day's

transaction to examine the larger truths--to distinguish between

income and depreciation and to see how the details fit into the

whole enterprise. This comparison is almost literally exact. I

have known many men, privileged to own a portion of the surface

of the State of Ohio, who took heavy returns from it and called

them profits, when in fact these returns were destroying the capital

value of their land. These returns were not profits, but pledges

against the future.

 

1 This is an address given November 14, 1946, by Dr. Sears in the annual

Lecture Series of the Ohio State Museum.

2 The fact that many phenomena are so complex that statistical analysis must be

used and probability invoked, does not invalidate this statement.

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MAN AND NATURE                      145

 

Such is, I think, the most serious criticism that can be lev-

eled against our age of applied science. We are guilty of using,

with an almost diabolical cleverness, those laws of nature which

suit our immediate ends, without attending to the broader prin-

ciples which tell us which way we are heading. I propose to ex-

amine some of these broader principles as they are exemplified in

our own State.

Ohio, as you know, contains roughly 40,000 square miles,

or about 26,0000,000 acres of surface. It is thus more than three

times the size of Holland, or about the size of Holland, Belgium,

and Denmark combined. Two of its boundaries, the Ohio River

and Lake Erie, are natural. The remainder are straight, man-

made lines, and across such lines the laws of the landscape operate

without regard to our wishes. The problems of coal and of hill-

farming and forestry in eastern Ohio we share with Pennsyl-

vania. The problems of the grain belt, of cattle and hogs, extend,

regardless of our western boundary, into Indiana and the states

beyond.

The topography of Ohio varies from the wet lake plain known

as the Black Swamp of the northwest to the Alleghany foothills

of our southeast. The mineral cover is as varied. Lime is lacking

in the surface rocks of most of eastern Ohio and lime is vital to

the nutrition of plants and animals. Much of the State is fortu-

nately clad in a mantle of richly mixed glacial earth. Most of

this was transformed into forest soil whose fertile black layer is

dangerously thin and easily lost by erosion. Less than ten per

cent of it consisted of the deeper black prairie soil.

The average rainfall varies in irregular belts from 32 to 44

inches per year, and fortunately the lesser rainfall is in the cooler

north, where it is more efficient. Winter temperatures are more

variable than those of summer, having an average range in Jan-

uary from 24^° to 34^°. The frost-free growing season likewise

varies greatly, being as little as 150 days in places, and as much as

200 elsewhere. Roughly we may figure that a distance of fifteen

miles, north and south, makes a difference of about one day in the

advance of spring, or would, if it were not for the effects of Lake

Erie.

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146  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The natural forest which once covered nine-tenths of the

State was most varied too. We are still puzzled to account for

the irregular pattern of beech-maple, oak-hickory, and oak-chest-

nut, although the absence of limestone seems to account for the

range of the chestnut. The ash-elm-maple forest of northwestern

Ohio was a swamp forest.

Such, in too brief a compass, are some of the broader natural

features of our inland empire. When it was first entered for set-

tlement after the Revolution its wealth in timber was incalculable.

Springs abounded and waters flowed clear and uniform through-

out most of the year. High water came in the spring, of course,

but its damage was restricted by the universal cover of vegetation.

In these waters fine food fish abounded and wild game was plen-

tiful in the forests and prairies. Even the lordly bison lived in

Ohio in the eighteenth century. The human population of Indians

was, I am persuaded, as dense as it could be under a hunting

economy with casual agriculture. There were, we think, about

12,000 Indians in what is now the State--a population slightly

greater than that of my native city of Bucyrus. To each inhabi-

tant there was available an area of about four square miles.

Cleared of forest, this land afforded an abundance of building

material, but the hard hand labor of building enforced an economy

of design which was beautiful in its simplicity--quite unlike the

later obscenity which came with rapid machine processing. The

virgin soil yielded stupendous crops--100 bushels of corn, 60 of

wheat, to the acre. The first orchards and vineyards bore mar-

velous fruit, free from disease and insect pests. Today we poison

our fruit and vegetable plots to protect them. It is true that

many pests have come in from the Old World, but there are in-

creasing indications that part of the trouble, at least, is due to

what has happened to the soil, to native birds, and to the general

balance of nature. What the cumulative effects of arsenic and

heavy metals will be upon us and upon the soil is a subject we

prefer to skip.

We have removed the forest until only fifteen per cent of

the area--some 3,500,000 acres--bears trees, and most of these

are inferior. At least 5,000,000 acres should be forested--about

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MAN AND NATURE                     147

 

one-fifth of the State--if it is to be put to the most economical

use. Translated into its meaning for business, the annual output

of our 2,125 wood-using industrial plants amounts to almost $300,-

ooo,coo, and we are obliged to import 80 per cent of the raw ma-

terial for these industries. The annual freight bill alone runs into

millions. Under proper forest management of all farm woodlots

and commercial and public forests (if these were expanded to

cover 5,000,000 acres as they should be) we would easily produce

two-thirds of the raw material we need.

It never occurred to any one to save a single township of

36 square miles--less than one one-thousandth of the area of the

State of Ohio--to preserve its virgin timber. It never occurred

to any one to place a single township under scientific forest man-

agement which would have insured a permanent yield of fine

lumber.

In the 1880's, with some 2,300 wood-using factories in Ohio,

there was some agitation about the rising cost of raw material.

The legislature appropriated $1,000--less than 50 cents per fac-

tory--hired an instructor at Ohio State University, and petitioned

Congress to lower the import duty on lumber. Had it been pos-

sible to inaugurate even a mild forestry policy at that time--

something half as good as the French, Germans, and Swedes were

doing in the 1880's--we would now be harvesting mature timber

in abundance. Instead of growing trees in the interval, we con-

tinued to cut them. When hard-surfaced roads came through,

the cost was first assessed against the adjoining farms. Many a

fine woodlot in the early 1900's was cut to pay these taxes. Our

foresters, devoted men, have had to struggle along with inade-

quate funds and waste energy each biennium to justify the little

they got. Please observe that I am not talking about trees sen-

timentally, but about the raw material for a $300,000,000 industry.

Surely our respect for law has failed us, not in the details,

but as to the background. Every new device of applied mechanics,

every discovery in the utilization of power and industrial design,

is put to work in the harvesting and processing of lumber. But

the inviolable principles of biological science, which govern the

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148  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

growth of trees and the production of our raw material, we have

failed to apply.

I have said that much of our present forest is in poor condi-

tion. Let us examine this statement as it refers to the largest

aggregate area which is in forest--the farm woodlots of the State.

These are of great importance because the farmer needs the lum-

ber and income which they might produce, and so does industry.

Yet the typical farm woodlot consists of cull trees, with no young

trees under them. Such a woodlot is dead commercially and is

dying biologically. The usual reason is that it is being used as

livestock pasture--a form of use which nets not more than $1.00

per acre per year, as against a possible return of three to five

times that amount under proper management. Coupled with this

situation is the general neglect of pasture management throughout

the State. The carrying capacity of permanent pastures in Ohio

can readily be doubled by proper fertilization and clipping, thus

affording the best of grazing, and taking the load off the woodlot.

Perhaps no single change in farming promises better returns than

such a policy. Thus any permanent forestry program for Ohio

cannot stop at the woodlot margin--it must carry over onto the

rest of the farm.

Let this introduce the question of soils. Soil is not, as we

used naively to imagine, a mere chemical mixture of the things

that plants must have. It is a process, a set of conditions, physical,

chemical, and biological, in which time is an important factor.

The virgin fertility of Ohio soils was the product of countless

generations of plant and animal activity. Both the work and the

wastes of living organisms are essential to soil. Yet this past

autumn I have seen the burning of straw, stubble, fence rows, and

leaves on a grand scale. All of these substances, and more beside,

are needed to maintain our soil in good condition.

The population of Cleveland is about 900,000. Figuring

three acres per capita, these Clevelanders require the production

from 2,700,000 acres per year for their subsistence. Cleveland

burns its garbage, some 300 tons per day which, according to Wal-

ter Pretzer, a professional gardener, is the equivalent in organic

matter of the annual hay crop of a 300-acre farm. Mr. Pretzer is

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MAN AND NATURE                     149

 

interested because he and his fellow gardeners who help feed

Cleveland must now buy organic matter in the form of hay to

maintain the fertility of their soil. They would much prefer the

humus which could be made from garbage by a proper reduction

plant. The establishment of such a plant would relieve some

109,000 acres of the burden of growing hay for garden mulch

and release them for growing food.

Such a reduction plant, incidentally, would be able to sal-

vage valuable fats and oils, over and above the organic fertilizer

produced. A plant of this  kind in Shelby County, Tennessee, is

part of one of the finest prison farms in the country and last year

returned a net profit to the county of $80,000. What kind of

accounting is it, may I ask, which tolerates waste of potential fer-

tilizer on such a scale?

It is a difficult technical problem to estimate the depreciation

of Ohio soils. The average estimate of thirty per cent is perhaps

not too far off. We get some clue from the statement of Dr.

Robert Salter, formerly of the Ohio Experiment Station, that the

per acre yield, in spite of our greatly increased knowledge of

disease and pest control, fertilizers, and plant breeding, is being

maintained with difficulty. One may observe, as he travels about

the State, the color of the plowed earth and note how often that

of the pale subsoil is present, how seldom the dark color of the

original rich surface. Again, one may converse with the owners

of custom machinery and find what proportion of wheat fields

yield thirty bushels per acre or more, or how infrequently the

original high yields are encountered. An observing veterinarian

who serves a wide territory knows the amount of disease that

can be traced to inadequate soil minerals. On one of my own

farms, before our program of liming and pasture fertilization was

well under way, we were troubled by poor lamb crops and by

cannibal sows that ate not only their own young but the poultry.

Since we have built up our soil these troubles no longer occur. I

recently talked with a dairyman from Scotland who has 120 head

of cattle and milks an average of 60 head on 240 acres. I asked

him about minerals in stock food. His reply was, "We don't

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150  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

need them. We put minerals into the soil and they are in the

grass and hay."

We have come to admit that the soil of eastern and southern

Ohio is badly eroded and must be restored. There the interest in

soil conservation districts is active. But tragically we refuse to

see that erosion has levied its toll on the best farm lands of north-

ern and western Ohio, and so the waste goes on. Perhaps the

costliest example of this is to be found in the rich Black Swamp

area of northwestern Ohio. In this, the last part of Ohio to be

cleared and settled, the land is black and level. Great drainage

ditches have been constructed to remove the surplus water. Here

corn and sugar beets thrive. But each straight ditch is an active

focus of erosion, and every rain carries a heavy burden of silt

out into adjacent Lake Erie. Here it forms an opaque blanket

for a distance of three or four miles offshore, and when it set-

tles, the character of the lake bottom, once so favorable to the

spawning of valuable food fishes, is completely altered. In this

particular event we see an interference with nature which reacts

upon two great industries, fishing and farming, to the ultimate

detriment of both. Such erosion is less spectacular than that which

has impoverished the hill farms to the south and east. It is like

a disease whose visible symptoms are so mild that they are disre-

garded--deadlier perhaps in the end than one whose onset is her-

alded by a good honest bellyache.

It has been my privilege for some months to sit as a mem-

ber of the Ohio Commission on Conservation and Natural Re-

sources. I think it is betraying no secrets to say that this is the

old Fish and Game Commission, reorganized and rechristened.

Its primary function still remains the restoration of fish and wild-

life. But the very fact that its name has been changed is im-

portant. The sportsmen who finance its operation to the tune of

$1,500,000 a year have come to realize that better hunting and

fishing cannot be brought about by any direct attack which ignores

the other natural resources. Fundamentally our problem on the

Commission is to encourage better practices of land and water use

within the State. Fish and wildlife will be restored only as fast

as we restore suitable living conditions for them. Game farms and

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MAN AND NATURE                      151

hatcheries can produce young animals in any quantities, but there-

after comes the problem of survival.  The land upon which game

must grow to maturity belongs mainly to the farmers of Ohio, and

the streams in which fish must live flow through their farms and

past municipalities.

Much can be done directly for fishing through the building

of lakes and ponds which will also control floods and augment

water supplies. Much is being done along this line, but it does

not solve the problem of our streams. Unless these are kept clear

of poisons and sewage we may as well write them off for fishing

purposes. And unless industry and municipalities are willing to

cooperate in keeping these streams clear, the task will be extremely

difficult. There is growing talk of compulsory legislation and a

surprising amount of pressure back of this talk. For myself, I

would much prefer the slower, more effective process of getting

the cooperation of those who now offend. I am certain that they

will not lose thereby, for clean water is a prime asset, civic

and industrial. At least some of the industrial wastes can be

profitably reclaimed. In any long-time or permanent economy

the sewage wastes should be salvaged rather than thrown into

streams, for they contain stuff that ought to go back upon the

land where it is sorely needed. Farm silt is likewise a source

of damage to these streams. Here the idea of compulsion seems,

if anything, less advisable than in the instance of city and indus-

trial wastes. Even if it were possible to compel the farmer to

conserve his land, which I doubt, it would be a tragedy to meddle

with his traditional self-respect. Though the progress is slow,

I am encouraged to see what gains have been made in improving

the standards of American farm practice through education and

the appeal to enlightened self-interest. It is increasingly true, I

believe, that proper soil conservation is becoming an economic

necessity to the farmer who would remain in business. If pressure

is needed, let it be exerted upon those who own farms but neg-

lect them, leaving their operation to tenants who have inadequate

knowledge, skill, finances, and inducement to do a really good job.

It is upon such farms that the worst mischief occurs and the num-

ber of them makes an impressive total.

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152  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The relation between wildlife and farming is not a simple

one. If there is to be wildlife, other than on private preserves

and public lands, the farmer must provide habitat, shelter, and

food. Except for his own casual hunting, this seems to be a labor

of love, in return for which he runs the risk of having his fences

broken down and his livestock frightened, if not injured. Since

farmers actually own the greatest portion of the surface area of

the State, the basic problem of wildlife restoration on any scale

that will satisfy the buyers of hunting licenses seems clear. Is it

possible to reconcile the encouragement of wildlife with the self-

interest of those who practice agriculture? Do the conditions of

habitat which are necessary for wildlife help or hinder farming?

This I must confess is a difficult question to answer. We do know

that fertile soil is needed for both. But we need much more

knowledge than we now have. We need research extending over

long periods of time, not subject to interruption by changes in

personnel and financial support. We need research rather pro-

foundly planned by mature and competent scientific minds, or

younger minds with unusual scientific insight.

It is safe to assume that the increase of protected farm wood-

lots, of the type which will produce a maximum income from

timber, will also benefit wildlife greatly. But elsewhere on the

farm traditional good practice means such thorough utilization of

land as to leave little room for game. Alfalfa must be mowed

when ready; regardless of nesting pheasants. The best possi-

bility, it seems to me, lies in fence-row studies. In this, Ohio has

made a good beginning, but the work needs to be followed up.

The average square mile of Ohio farm land contains not less

than ten linear miles of fence row, generally more. Is it, from the

cold view of farm income, actually the best economy to have these

fence rows clean and free from shrubs, vines, and herbs? Or

are there possible benefits to the adjacent fields which will out-

weigh the inconvenience and loss of space of a living fence row?

Although the answer is not likely to be the same for all types of

farms, nor in the various regions, I surmise that there are great

benefits to be derived from such fence rows. But we must be

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MAN AND NATURE                     153

 

able to answer definitely and honestly before we can encourage the

farmer to make this concession to the sportsman.

I have reserved the question of underground water until the

last. We are all acquainted with the essential fact that the water

table of Ohio has been falling at an alarming rate. Good wells at

reasonable depth are increasingly hard to get because too little of

our rainfall soaks into the ground. In numerous counties farmers

are obliged to buy and haul water at great expense to themselves,

while the quality of municipal drinking water in many places is

so bad that it should alarm the W. C. T. U.

The causes of decreased underground water are several.

Certainly the removal of forest with its absorbent leafmold is one.

Our system   of highways--a rectangular network of water-

courses superimposed upon the old natural drainage pattern is

another and most serious one. Texas has met this problem by the

use of broad, shallow, grassed drainage ways along the roads and

by diverting highway drainage back into the fields. But Texas has

a great deal of space in which to experiment.   Perhaps the

most serious factor, at least in my part of Ohio, is the gradual

hardening of the land through failure to return to it sufficient

organic matter. This is the opinion of Dr. Wilber Stout, former

State Geologist, and my observations confirm it. I know of two

farms, at least, on which the water table has apparently been raised

by a reform in operations and perhaps this will happen else-

where with the spread of soil conserving methods.

Of one thing we may be certain. However we may improve

the techniques of land use and management, the principles are

already clear. The standards towards which we must work are

those which are exemplified in the natural landscape, by natural

communities of plants and animals. Those communities work for-

ever towards a condition of the most efficient use of material and

energy and toward the maximum abundance of life possible under

the given conditions of climate and terrain. Waste is surprisingly

minimized and the generations of plants and animals leave the

world behind them, as a good farmer and citizen should, the better

for their having lived in it.

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