Read On a Farther Shore Online
Authors: William Souder
It is rank folly for the government to embark on an insect-control program of this scope without knowing precisely what damage the pesticide itself will do to both human and animal life, especially over a long period. No one yet knows the answer to this question or to many other related questions of insect control—yet
the department plunges blithely ahead. But enough is known to raise the gravest concern on the part of many scientists and conservationists.
Similar questions had been raised about the DDT spraying campaign against the gypsy moth in the Northeast, which had been carried out as planned in the spring of 1957.
Later that year, three Harvard biologists—including the young Edward O. Wilson, an expert on ants who would become one of the world’s best-known biologists and environmentalists—wrote to Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson asking him to stop the fire ant program. They said they endorsed the position already taken by the National Wildlife Federation and agreed with the federation that using heptachlor and dieldrin was likely to cause damage to the environment that would exceed anything the ant might do. But they also had deeper concerns:
Broadcast application of insecticides will affect not only wildlife, but the native insect fauna, and could produce deep-set disturbances of the prevailing ecological system of checks and balances. The final result might well be further decline of wildlife, now deprived of part of its food source, or the emergence of new insect pests, once they have been freed from the natural enemies that held them in check.
The scientists added that Wilson himself was studying fire ants and that there were promising alternative techniques for controlling them by means that would not affect other species. They accused the USDA of failing to consider such alternatives and said the department’s research on chemical control methods had been “entirely inadequate.”
Meanwhile, in the fall of 1957, a group of fourteen residents on Long Island had filed a suit seeking a permanent injunction against the federal government to prevent further spraying there. The group was headed by Robert Cushman Murphy, a prominent naturalist and
former curator of birds for the American Museum of Natural History. At a hearing in federal court in early December, an attorney for the plaintiffs said nobody had demonstrated that the gypsy moth was causing problems on Long Island and that the only people defending the spraying campaign were government workers afraid to contradict the official position on the supposed safety of DDT. An assistant U.S. attorney responded that there was no issue to decide, as the government had no plans to spray the area again the following summer. Siding with the residents, the judge ordered a speedy trial.
Carson, who routinely clipped newspaper accounts of pesticide issues and kept track of the latest studies, had an already swelling set of files on the subject as the Long Island case went to trial in early February 1958—
just days after Carson had heard from one of the plaintiffs, a woman named Marjorie Spock.
Spock had been contacted by Marie Rodell, who told her that Rachel Carson was watching the court proceedings with interest. Spock immediately wrote to Carson to say it was “wonderful news” hearing that the acclaimed author was concerned about pesticides.
Carson thought the trial demanded coverage by someone who could explore the larger concerns about the increasing use of chemical poisons. But a courtroom is not a seashore, and Carson gave no thought to visiting the trial herself. Instead, she took the occasion to introduce herself to another writer she hoped might accept the assignment: the
New Yorker
’s E. B. White.
She told White about the lawsuit, imploring him to write about it in the
New Yorker
. She said she had been convinced for years that chemical pesticides were a “threat to the entire balance of nature and even more immediately to the welfare of the human population.” She offered to send White “scores” of studies and reports that would convince him this was so. The Long Island lawsuit was an attempt to gain legal traction in a cause that had already been taken up by organizations including the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, which were demanding the government halt large-scale spraying operations until their effects on nontargeted
species were better understood. Carson knew that the Audubon Society was particularly worried about the rapid expansion of spraying programs, which it believed had already begun the “secondary poisoning” of wildlife and human populations that would soon become “catastrophic.” The society had argued that the hazards from insecticide use “may well rank in seriousness of adverse effects with the dangers of radioactive fallout.”
To personalize the problem, Carson told White—who, like her, had a place in Maine, albeit one where he lived year-round—that next summer’s gypsy moth program was rumored to include parts of Maine. More definite were plans to continue the fire ant spraying in the south, where the coming season was to see greater use of dieldrin, which she said was about twenty times as toxic as DDT. If it were applied at the proposed rate of two pounds per acre, Carson said, it would be like spraying DDT at forty pounds per acre. And the known effects of dieldrin on men and animals, she added, were “alarming.”
White wrote back at once. He agreed that the pesticide issue was “of the utmost interest and concern to everybody.” It disturbed him that in discussions about their use some special group or interest was always being considered and “never the earth itself.” But he said he was too busy to take on the job of reporting the Long Island trial. Instead, he told Carson he’d forwarded her letter to William Shawn at the
New Yorker
to see if he might find somebody to do it. What White really thought, however, was that Carson should do it herself. He said he didn’t make assignments for the magazine, but that he was sure Shawn would be receptive.
B
y the time Carson received E. B. White’s letter suggesting she write about pesticides herself Carson had already decided as much.
She wrote to Paul Brooks and William Shawn saying she felt compelled to look into the subject but was having trouble deciding how to proceed. She said she had a number of writing projects that were unstarted because of her “difficult personal situation.” She seemed to be thinking of collaborating with another writer or writers, as she mentioned the possibility of doing a magazine article that could serve as a chapter in a book for which she might also write an introduction and do “some general editorial work.” She said it was hard to think of taking on anything more than that, but that she wanted to discuss the idea further.
Carson’s hesitance wasn’t due entirely to the new demands of her life as an adoptive mother—though her circumstances were now dramatically altered. At six, Roger was no longer the cooing toddler she could amuse for an hour or two at the beach before turning him back over to Marjorie. He could be distractingly energetic—Carson once said he was as “
lively as seventeen crickets”; at times she was the only
person who could “hold him down.” He was also prone to infections and respiratory problems. Roger was fond of Stan Freeman—he sometimes called him “Uncle Stan”—which delighted Carson, who thought Roger benefited from the occasional presence of a father figure. But her overwhelming feeling about Roger was one of obligation.
When Dorothy had offered to have Roger visit her and Stan in West Bridgewater not long after Marjorie’s death, Carson said it was impossible to even think of sending the boy off alone. Better to keep him close, part of a household that now included one aging mother, one active child, and a beleaguered author who felt blocked and entangled in domestic commitments beyond her control.
Carson had also come to believe that one reason she was having trouble doing any real work was her uneasiness with the fact that human beings had acquired the means to reshape the world. It had made her miserable in ways she was only just coming to terms with. She told Dorothy that it was troubling to think about and harder still to put into words, as she felt that her most cherished beliefs were crumbling:
But I have been mentally blocked for a long time, first because I didn’t know just what it was I wanted to say about Life, and also for a reason more difficult to explain. Of course everyone knows by this time that the whole world of science has been revolutionized by events of the past decade or so. I suppose my thinking began to be affected soon after atomic science was firmly established. Some of the thoughts that came were so unattractive to me that I rejected them completely, for the old ideas die hard, especially when they are emotionally as well as intellectually dear to one. It was pleasant to believe, for example, that much of Nature was forever beyond the tampering reach of man.
Carson said that when humans cleared a forest or dammed a river the world went on. She had always believed that the environment molded life, not the other way around. And yet so it had come to be. This
was disorienting. Carson confessed that she had “
shut her mind” to what was happening for a long time, but now she had opened her eyes again and realized it was pointless to ignore the changing world and “worse than useless” to resort to “eternal verities” that had turned out to be not so eternal after all. She said maybe it was time for somebody to write a book in light of a new reality and that it might be “the book I am to write.”
Carson said that however one wanted to understand the “
space age universe,” the most important thing was to do so with humility rather than arrogance. Arrogance had created DDT and the hydrogen bomb, and arrogance was, in her mind, as much the problem as what it had begotten.
On April Fools’ Day 1958, Carson had several long telephone conversations about a book on the pesticide problem. One was with Paul Brooks, who was already committed to publishing it at Houghton Mifflin. Another was with the science editor at
Newsweek
magazine, a man named Edwin Diamond. Diamond had been proposed as a collaborator on the project. A third call, one that excited Carson most of all, came from William Shawn at the
New Yorker
, who told her he would like to run a long, two-part piece from her on pesticides.
The
New Yorker
had been among the first to criticize chemical pesticides.
In the spring of 1945, the magazine’s “The Talk of the Town” section had run an item about DDT, reporting on its value to American forces fighting in the South Pacific—where islands were being routinely sprayed prior to Allied invasions—but also raising questions about its safety. The lethality of DDT to insects was well proven, the magazine said, but so also were its toxic effects on wildlife. As for how safe it was for people—nobody could say. Even if it turned out to be relatively harmless to humans, American naturalists, the
New Yorker
said, were worried about what would happen when DDT went into general use in the United States, and insects of every kind—the good and the bad, the creepy and the beautiful—began to disappear.
Carson realized the impact the
New Yorker
would have on the book’s visibility, not to mention the handsome check she would get from the magazine. Adding to this good news was Shawn’s suggestion that Carson start thinking about yet another topic he thought she could do for the
New Yorker
. The subject, said Shawn—who apparently had decided that Carson could do anything—was “the universe.”
For the time being, though, pesticides would be Carson’s world.
In April she agreed, without much enthusiasm, to Brooks’s suggested working title for the book, “The Control of Nature.” Privately, Carson had been thinking of it as “the poison book.”
She at this point saw it as a relatively short book, on the order of six chapters comprising fifty thousand words. Carson was to write the first and last, Diamond the middle four. The two authors would share a byline, but the copyright was to be Carson’s exclusively. It was also understood that Diamond—who was to earn a $1,500 advance for the book—would have no financial interest in the
New Yorker
serialization, but would be expected to help Carson with the research on it. Everyone agreed to a tentative deadline for delivery of a manuscript by the end of June 1958.
Diamond signed a letter accepting these terms on May 3 and sent it back to Marie Rodell.
But two days later the collaboration collapsed. Rodell informed Diamond that Carson viewed her partnership with him as unworkable. Diamond had not delivered the research materials he had promised and was apparently busier at
Newsweek
than anybody had understood. He had also irritated Carson by not staying in regular communication with her. Rodell told Diamond that collaboration required a close working relationship, but this had “proved impossible on your end.” Diamond evidently asked them to reconsider, but
a few days later was again told that it was over.
In mid-May, Paul Brooks stepped in and told Diamond that any thought he had of resurrecting a coauthorship with Carson was “out of the question.” Brooks asked Diamond to either return the money he’d already been
paid—he’d gotten half of his advance at the outset—or hand over his research materials.
A few weeks later, Carson told Brooks she’d gotten a transcript of the Long Island trial on her own and was in contact with all of the principal witnesses. She said if Diamond sent him anything he should send it right back.
Diamond, meanwhile, ignored Brooks for several weeks before finally sending him some material from the trial near the end of June. Insensitive to the extent to which he had alienated everyone, Diamond told Brooks he was withholding a cache of additional information he’d gathered through interviews during the trial, but that he’d be willing to share everything if “we can work something out” that would allow him back into the project.
Brooks, who was on vacation when Diamond’s materials arrived at Houghton Mifflin, returned the package when he got back to the office, telling Diamond coldly that he was sure Carson already had all of it in her files.
The scope of the book grew quickly, as Carson began researching and corresponding with experts, and the ridiculously ambitious goal of completing a manuscript by midsummer was scrapped. The plan had been to publish the book in January 1959, but Brooks once again accepted a delay from a writer he knew could not be rushed.
In June, Carson met with William Shawn in New York. Shawn now said he’d like to have as many as fifty thousand words for the
New Yorker
, which Carson thought might turn into three articles and probably make up almost the whole book. Better still, Shawn told Carson the story needed to be told from her point of view. She told Dorothy that meant she would be “pulling no punches.”