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Russell Lord and the Permanent Agriculture Movement: an Environmental Biography Margaret L

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Russell Lord and the Permanent Agriculture Movement: an Environmental Biography Margaret L Antioch University AURA - Antioch University Repository and Archive Student & Alumni Scholarship, including Dissertations & Theses Dissertations & Theses 2017 Russell Lord and the Permanent Agriculture Movement: An Environmental Biography Margaret L. Eppig Antioch University, New England Follow this and additional works at: http://aura.antioch.edu/etds Part of the Environmental Studies Commons Recommended Citation Eppig, Margaret L., "Russell Lord and the Permanent Agriculture Movement: An Environmental Biography" (2017). Dissertations & Theses. 365. http://aura.antioch.edu/etds/365 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student & Alumni Scholarship, including Dissertations & Theses at AURA - Antioch University Repository and Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations & Theses by an authorized administrator of AURA - Antioch University Repository and Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Russell Lord and the Permanent Agriculture Movement: An Environmental Biography By Margaret L. Eppig A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies Antioch University New England Committee: Alesia Maltz, Ph.D (Chair) Rachel Thiet, Ph.D Allen Dietrich-Ward, Ph.D 2017 1 Dedication Dedicated to my family on the land in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Your good work and stewardship inspired me to take a closer look at why we love our land and why, perhaps, it may love us back. 2 Acknowledgments This work would not have been possible without the commitment and assistance of numerous historical societies and archives. The Historical Society of Harford County, Bel Air, Maryland served as my research home, and I thank Maryanna Skowronski, executive direction, most sincerely for her friendship, years of encouragement, generous access and ready assistance. Thanks to the volunteers at the Baltimore County Historical Society my research table was always loaded with files on the Sparks High School, county 4H history, farm clubs, and news items from the farm papers. This research took me beyond archives close to home, to explore the places where Russell Lord and members of the Society of the Friends of the Land farmed, traveled, and worked to inspire a holistic restoration of America’s degraded agricultural landscapes of the 1930s and 40s. I especially thank the staff of Malabar Farm State Park, former home and farm of Louis Bromfield, and the Ohio History Connection in Columbus, for several weeks of access to the living landscapes and archival resources of the Friends of the Land in Ohio. I traveled across fifteen states to explore landscapes that less than a century ago were so severely degraded that it seemed all had been sacrificed to the boom and bust of the war economies of World War I and the floods and droughts that followed. This effort involved visiting over twenty national and state parks, former working lands given to conservation for repair and rest. I thank my hiking partners, park staffs, librarians, soil conservation district members, farmers, and fellow historians for their enthusiasm and companionship in the field. Thanks to Curt Meine, Leopold biographer and scholar, for our friendly and informal conversations at conferences and through emails. He helped me to understand just how cutting edge The Land journal had been for its time and he taught me to gain perspective through the lived experiences of Russell Lord and Society members who were witness to and participants in one of our nation’s greatest modern environmental challenges. I thank Dr. Alesia Maltz, my Antioch University New England advisor and committee chair, who with utmost patience and good humor, kept me upright and facing forward over the years it took to complete this work. I cannot imagine having accomplished this much without her steady encouragement. Dr. Maltz along with my committee members, Dr. Rachel Thiet of Antioch and Dr. Allen Dietrich-Ward of Shippensburg University, provided not only scholarly and professional support but friendship as well. My sister, Laura Smith Weldon, an excellent American history scholar in her own right, offered to help proof and improve this work for its final draft. Finally, I wish to recognize Mary Umbarger Corddry, who now in her nineties, continues to advocate for the principles of land care and stewardship that the Friends of the Land instilled in the minds of American land owners and farmers when she took her first job, fresh out of Hood College, with Russell Lord. The exciting days of working as his assistant then as co-editor helped her to build a respected and long career in environmental journalism for the Baltimore Sun. 3 Abstract This work is an environmental biography of agricultural journalist Russell Lord and a history of the agricultural conservation organization he co-founded. Today the work of the Society for the Friends of the Land (1940 – 1960) is little known to contemporary agricultural and environmental history, yet its influence continues through the fields of sustainable agriculture and landscape restoration. This work chronicles how modern revolutions in scientific and ecological thought transformed the future of American agriculture. It formed the cornerstone of an emerging environmental movement. I argue that this movement, with Lord as its literary vanguard, was the lynchpin that bound together a diverse set of conservation philosophies that transformed working landscapes and their farming communities damaged and almost lost to the physical and economic degradations of American war economies. I introduce the concept of sacrificial landscapes to describe the socio-ecological pressures and biological loss that working lands endured during the first half of the 20th century. This is important to the narrative of the origins and history of the Friends of the Land and demonstrates how ideas of interdependence and agricultural ecology were translated into workable conservation solutions. 5 Table of Contents Dedication ……………………………………………………….… 2 Acknowledgements…………………………………………….…... 3 Abstract…………………………………………………….….…… 5 Introduction………………………………………………….………7 Chapter One: Education of an Agriculturalist, 1895-1912 ….……. 13 Chapter Two: Countryman and Soldier, 1912-1920 ………..…….. 40 Chapter Three: Education of a Journalist, 1920-1929 ……….…… 71 Chapter Four: A Gathering of Expansive Ideas, 1930-1938 ……... 96 Chapter Five: An Unlearned Society, 1938 -1941 ……………….. 134 Chapter Six: An Endless Adventure, 1942- 1964 ………………... 162 Chapter Seven: One World or None, 1955 – 1965…………………196 Conclusion …………………………………………………………229 Bibliography & Resources …………………………………………223 Appendix – Permissions ……………………………………………248 6 Introduction I have sought not so much to report technical advancements as to suggest the human result. The people are not only changing their methods, they are changing their minds. Russell Lord, Men of the Earth, 1931 Russell Lord (1895-1964), agricultural writer and editor of the agricultural literary journal The Land (1941-1954), helped shape and disseminate ideas of an ecologically responsible branch of American agriculture during the tumultuous mid-20th century. Co-founder of the conservation organization Society of the Friends of the Land, Lord served as a key thought leader of the permanent agriculture movement. His work conveys the importance of socio- ecological ideas of holism, interdependence, and engaged stewardship during a time of environmental and economic crisis. His emphasis on working lands conservation prepared the ground for America’s environmental and sustainable agriculture movement, and he elevated the status of ecologically-minded farmers as America’s most important stewards of land. Considered one of the most influential American agricultural writers of his time, The Baltimore Sun proclaimed him to be “the country’s foremost farm writer” during the New Deal years. Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture under F.D.R., acknowledged his “grace of style” and “depth of feeling” and described him as a literary artist who was also an agricultural philosopher and historian.”1 Lord is barely known today, however, and his work was nearly lost to obscurity. This is unfortunate, if not inexcusable, considering our robust 20th century agricultural history field. The main goal of this work, therefore, is to shine new light on Russell Lord’s life, times, and work as it embodies the history of the permanent agriculture movement and its legacy. Why, then, the obscurity? I argue that the permanent agriculture movement is misunderstood within the context of agricultural history and may not have received the scholarly attention it deserves. Given its association with earlier back-to-the-land and country life movements, critics could be justified in framing permanent agriculture within the context of early 20th century reformism and counter-culturalism. But the mid-century work of permanent agriculture leaders, including Russell Lord, is often misread as nostalgic and utopian. It is easy to dismiss as quaint or romantic. These criticisms, however, are unfair and beg a closer look. 1 Chrismer (2007) adds that in addition to The Baltimore Sun and the USDA, The Saturday Review of Literature described Lord as “America’s premier writer on agriculture,” pg. 3; A complete bound collection of The Land can be found at the Historical Society of Harford County, Bel Air. This archive served as the foundation
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