This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal

by Sarah Phillips

This book combines political with environmental history to present conservation policy as a critical arm of New Deal reform, one that embodied the promises and limits of midcentury American liberalism. It interprets the natural resource programs of the 1930s and 1940s as a set of federal strategies aimed at rehabilitating the economies of agricultural areas. The New Dealers believed that the country as a whole would remain mired in depression as long as its farmers remained poorer than its urban residents, and these politicians and policymakers set out to rebuild rural life and raise rural incomes with measures tied directly to conservation objectives – land retirement, soil restoration, flood control, and affordable electricity for homes and industries. In building new constituencies for the environmental initiatives, resource administrators and their liberal allies established the political justification for an enlarged federal government and created the institutions that shaped the contemporary rural landscape. Sarah T. Phillips is an assistant professor of history at Columbia University.

Genres: History, Agriculture

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Ean C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a great job at exploring the New Deals' focus on conservation and through conservation, uplifting rural areas of the United States, especially in the South and West of the country. It does a great job at explaining the different motivations and ideas of the advocates behind conservation and how their were competing ideas at play regarding conservation work during the New Deal. There is a clear discussion of its success and limitations/failure at conservation and rural renewal. Some key focuses of this book are soil conservation, buying of land by the federal government, resettlement of people off unproductive land, reforestation efforts, creation of irrigation systems, river controls/harnessing hydro power like the TVA, rural electrification, industrialization of rural areas especially during/after WW2, and some ways in which the New Deal especially aspects of the TVA were exported internationally.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Depression in America is impossible to imagine without envisioning the era’s environmental tragedies. Uprooted and impoverished people, scarred land, abandoned farms, and swollen rivers. Dust Bowl, Route 66 to CA’s unwelcoming fruit orchards. Black sharecroppers deprived of nutrient topsoil. Floods in the river valleys of the south. State-Sponsored environmental renewal: national parks and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps): young men receive jobs to battle soil erosion, replant damaged forests, and construct campgrounds. Farm relief, migrant camp management, and Tennessee Valley Authority builds dams. The CENTRAL IMPORTANCE of the environment to the interpretations of the New Deal and American political development. The government’s increased inclination to intervene (for good or ill) in economic and environmental affairs (1).

This book combines political with environmental history to present conservation policy as an arm of New Deal economic reform embodying the promises and limits of New Deal liberalism. This ushered in the modern liberal state—Americans received direct aid (welfare benefits, farm subsidies and retirement pensions) for the first time. How to secure farming? Natural resources needed to be distributed more equitably and sustainably according to the “New Deal coalition.” Poor resource use and unfair resource distribution caused poverty. Land retirement, soil and forest restoration, flood control, and cheap hydropower for farms and new industries were viewed as solutions (2). Samuel P. Hay’s Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959)—a fusion of environmental and political history, but it was too influential—convinced historians that New Deal actions were the culmination of Progressive Era dreams rather than new ideas (8). Lasting effects on American institutions and public policy are under examined with relation to New Deal legacy (10).

New rural conservatism rested on two paradoxes: (i) liberals hoped to preserve the family farm by modernizing it—efficiency and equity (failed to see the obvious justification for abandoning the small farm) and (ii) conservation was promoted as a tool for expanded production (environmental adjustments could therefore be supported or cast aside whenever it suited or didn’t their purposes) (11).

“Both the conservation and the Country Life movements emphasized natural resources—soil, forests, and rivers as critical to improving the conditions of farm life, and castigated ‘established business systems’ for depriving the ‘permanent agricultural inhabitants’ of the benefits from nearby rivers and forests.” The Country Life reformers’ emphasis on education differentiates them from the conservation movement—despite ideological similarities (14).

Chapter 1: The New Conservation [1920s rural welfare/electrification and FDR background]
Giant Power, Rural Electrification, and Regional Thought
The Farm Crisis and the Land Utilization Movement
Herbert Hoover and Rural Conservation Policy, 1928-1932
FDR: Governor and Candidate

Chapter 2: Poor People, Poor Land [New Deal programs aimed at rebuilding rural areas]
The Tennessee Valley Authority
Beyond TVA: Land Utilization and Rural Rehabilitation
Buried in Dirt: The Resettlement Idea and the Future of the Great Plains
Rural Electrification, Soil Conservation, Water Control, and Farm Security

Chapter 3: “The Best New Dealer from Texas” [from DC to Central Texas—ND bottom up]
The Hill Country Setting
Historical Development of the Colorado River
Congressman Johnson
LCRA Expansion: Rural Electrification, Recreation, and Wartime Growth

Chapter 4: The Industrial Transition [shifts: farm out-migration, urban-/industrialization]
The Resurrected AAA and the BAE’s County Planning Experiment
World War II and the Decline of Agrarian Policy
Jobs for All: Industrial Expansion and Wartime Resource Policy
Conclusion

Epilogue: Exporting the New Deal [international influence—postwar assistance programs]
Wartime Assistance, Postwar Institution Building, and the Cold War
The Point Four Program
The New Conservation Abroad

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I enjoyed the most about this book was the connections made between the New Deal and the country life movement, the urban planning movement, the damming of major rivers, electrification of rural areas, and the connection between agriculture and conservation. While reading the book I could see the legacy of the New Deal in many programs in the west and even with many of my recent reading interests (conservation and wilderness in particular). The pieces Phillips wrote about Lyndon Johnson helped me make connections between how his involvement with the New Deal could lead him to sign the Wilderness Act.
Overall I thought the book was a great read.