recklessly plundered our continent, raiding it for beaver, for buffalo,
for timber, for gold, for grass, laying waste to forests and hillsides and
river valleys, without regard for the needs of future generations. A
national movement of protest finally slowed the pace of exploitation,
and Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt led the American
people onto the uphill road of conservation. Today we are all con-
servationists -- or, in our pride, so we would have it seem. Yet Harry
Caudill's book tells us that in some parts of the United States the
raider spirit of the last century is still abroad, wasting irreplaceable
resources and demeaning human lives.

Although Caudill has called his book "A Biography of a Depressed
Area," it is also the story of what other parts of America might have
been, if we had not developed a land ethic and formulated a system-
atic conservation program. Ironically, not far away from the dark and
bloody ground of the Cumberland Plateau is the Tennessee Valley
Authority, the nation's highest benchmark in land use and regional
planning of resources. But a few years ago the Congress drew a wall
around TVA, and its proximity only serves now to dramatize the
contrast between the social health and well-being that accompany
wise development of resources, and the poverty of land and spirit
that can occur in absence of such planning.

Mr. Caudill has constructive proposals for the rehabilitation of his
homeland -- but it will take deep concern by people in Washington
and Frankfort to bring them to fruition.

This book is the story of what happens when men betray their re-
sponsibilities as land stewards. The price we pay for wanton spolia-
tion is sure and certain. In the highest sense, conservation of the land
is the conservation of human life. The two have always been, and
will always be, inseparable.

-- STEWART L. UDALL

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