Read On a Farther Shore Online
Authors: William Souder
Carson wrote that the effects of exposure to DDT and other
pesticides—like exposure to radiation—was of particular concern for children. Many readers in 1962 already knew they were giving their children milk laced with radionuclides from fallout. Now Carson added DDT to the unwholesome cocktail from the dairy case. Nowhere in
Silent Spring
does Carson let go of the parallel between pesticides and radiation, and in one of the cancer chapters she found an example of pesticide poisoning that mirrored the most infamous radiation poisoning case ever reported.
It was the story of a Swedish farmer who dusted sixty acres of land with a mixture of DDT and benzene hexachloride. There was a breeze that day, and as the man worked clouds of the pesticidal dust swirled around him. Later that evening the farmer felt ill, and about a week later he entered the hospital with a high fever and abnormal blood counts. Two and a half months later he died.
This was, Carson wrote, eerily reminiscent of what had happened to the radioman aboard the
Lucky Dragon
, Aikichi Kuboyama: “
Like Kuboyama, the farmer had been a healthy man, gleaning his living from the land as Kuboyama had taken his from the sea. For each man a poison drifting out of the sky carried a death sentence. For one it was radiation-poisoned ash; for the other, chemical dust.”
Carson rejected the idea that technology inevitably led us to abuse our environment through a desire to regulate it in our own interest. She held out hope for sophisticated biological controls that could actually target pest species in a way chemical poisons could not. She contended that pesticides, far from being a scientifically sophisticated means of pest control, were, in fact, a step backward in human progress:
As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life—a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the
practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no “high-minded orientation,” no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.
Carson’s closing thought was that the phrase “control of nature” represented an abhorrent idea that was “conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.” Now, Carson said, we faced the “alarming misfortune” that so primitive a science had “armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons.”
On September 25, 1962, two days before publication, Houghton Mifflin held a party for Carson at the Carlton House on Madison Avenue in New York.
Then a few days after
Silent Spring
came out,
Life
magazine phoned Carson to say they were moving up the schedule to run their story about her right away. Carson, who’d decided not to worry about the magazine getting into “silly personal details,” told Dorothy Freeman she’d have to endure reading about the “new me.”
When the article appeared in the October 12 issue,
Life
reported that Carson was “unmarried but not a feminist”—evidently an important consideration—and went on to describe her as a “shy, soft-spoken woman miscast in the role of crusader” before characterizing her as exactly that: “
Like all good indignant crusaders, Rachel Carson presents a one-sided case. The world she describes so vividly in
Silent Spring
is a dream world or, more accurately, a nightmare world.”
The article included several striking photos of Carson—though in one showing her at home with her microscope she looked pallid and unwell. The story itself was muddled with contradictions that suggested the magazine’s editors were hedging their bets so as not to end up on the wrong side of a controversial issue.
Life
said the book was “amply buttressed by research” and featured “Miss Carson’s usual literary grace,” but added that in making this “undeniable case against the pesticides” Carson had “overstated her case.”
Life
suggested to its readers that there must be some happier common ground where
“chemistry, biology, wildlife, and mankind can achieve a peaceful coexistence.”
Silent Spring
was reviewed everywhere. More than seventy newspapers also ran editorials on it, and many published excerpts. The press was overwhelmingly favorable. This was not the case with articles and pamphlets put out by the chemicals industry—which matched the flood of press coverage and were sharply critical of Carson and her methods.
Writing in the
New York Times
two weeks before the book came out, Brooks Atkinson noted approvingly that the book came with fifty-five pages of source citations and references. He called Carson a “realist as well as a biologist and writer” who understood that chemical pesticides were a fact of modern life that could not be made to go away entirely, and that her plea instead was for their intelligent use with the knowledge of their potential for “deadly peripheral damage” to the balance of nature. Atkinson paid particular attention to Carson’s assertion that chemical pest control was an act of arrogance in which we deceived ourselves over our place in the web of life: “
The basic fallacy—or perhaps the original sin—is the assumption that man can control nature,” Atkinson wrote. “Nature returns with a massive assault from an unexpected quarter. For nature has devoted millions of years to creating an order of life in which parasites and predators control one another.”
Atkinson said that Carson had a sober way of stating “alarming facts” that made them the more believable. Her case for ecology was actually a case for humanity. Atkinson’s preview was followed days later by two full reviews of
Silent Spring
—
one on the cover of the
Sunday Book Review
that was glowing and another, by science reporter and editor Walter Sullivan, that was admiring but mixed.
Sullivan started off appreciatively, mentioning the debt owed to this “gifted writer” for having brought the wonderment and beauty
of the oceans to millions of readers.
Silent Spring
, however, was a departure for Carson that was likely to shock her many fans—a book that Sullivan likened to an earlier American classic: “
In her new book she [Carson] tries to scare the living daylights out of us and, in large measure, succeeds. Her work tingles with anger, outrage and protest. It is a 20th-century
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
.”
Sullivan wasn’t the only reviewer to make this comparison, nor was he alone in saying that the one-sidedness of
Silent Spring
opened Carson to attack from people who would claim she had not told the whole story. But Sullivan thought the book’s “drawbacks” were actually part of its appeal. After all, he said, “
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
would never have stirred a nation had it been measured and ‘fair.’ ” Sullivan said that considering world events,
Silent Spring
could not be more timely. “If our species cannot police itself against overpopulation, nuclear weapons, and pollution, it may become extinct.”
Sullivan also previewed one of the more ambitious responses coming soon from pesticide makers—a parody of the opening fable from Carson’s book. Titled “The Desolate Year,” it had been written, according to Sullivan, by “some unsung hero of the chemical industry.” It appeared in the October issue of
Monsanto Magazine
—
which had a surprising circulation of 140,000 among business leaders, educators, and government officials. Even Carson must have grudgingly thought the piece well done. Flipping Carson’s depiction of a dead and brown world devastated by pesticides, “The Desolate Year” pictured one
without
chemical controls—a world where the springtime brings not renewal but revulsion, as ravaging hordes of insects and vermin lay waste to the countryside. The plague moves north with the warming weather, wreaking havoc on crops and spreading disease to humans suddenly defenseless against their ancient and fearsome enemies:
Genus by genus, species by species, sub-species by innumerable sub-species, the insects emerged. Creeping and flying and crawling into the open, beginning in the southern tier of states and progressing northward. They were chewers, and piercer-suckers,
spongers, siphoners and chewer-lappers, and all their vast progeny were chewers, rasping, sawing, biting maggots and worms and caterpillars. Some could sting, some could poison, many could kill.
Sullivan offered the dubious observation that the luridness of “The Desolate Year” amounted to an “imitation of Miss Carson’s poetic style.” But, of course, it wasn’t meant to be literature. Several times longer than Carson’s opening chapter, “The Desolate Year” left no grotesque assault from the insect kingdom unexplored. By the end the crops are destroyed, famine is imminent, and millions are succumbing to malaria and yellow fever. Could anyone wish for
that
world? Helpfully, the article included an appendix of factual findings that supported the plausibility of everything it claimed—plus a selection of public statements by various governmental and academic experts testifying to the need for pesticide use and to their safety when applied properly.
One of Carson’s most determined attackers was a New York–based organization called the Nutrition Foundation, whose president, C. G. King, issued a formal rebuttal to
Silent Spring
as an accompaniment to the negative reviews the Nutrition Foundation collected and redistributed far and wide. King said that most scientists held the view that Americans had never been safer, better fed, or healthier—facts that, on their face, refuted any claim of general poisoning and declining health as a result of pesticide use. Government and industry worked tirelessly, King insisted, to make pesticides safe and to inform users how to apply them. Besides, King added, the charges made in
Silent Spring
were obviously the ravings of a poorly informed and probably deranged person.
The problem is magnified in that publicists and the author’s adherents among the food faddists, health quacks, and special interest groups are promoting her book as if it were scientifically irreproachable and written by a scientist.
Neither is true. The book presents almost solely selected information that is negative and uses such bits from a period of many years, building a vastly distorted picture. The author is a professional journalist—not a scientist in the field of her discussion—and misses the very essence of science in not being objective either in citing the evidence or in its interpretation.
Reading this, Carson could not help but feel it represented the more or less official reaction to
Silent Spring
from everyone in industry, academia, and government with a commitment to pesticide use. Among the members of
the Nutrition Foundation board were the heads and senior executives of the National Biscuit Company, H. J. Heinz, General Foods, General Mills, Standard Brands, the Borden Company, and others. Also on the board was the surgeon general of the United States and the presidents of Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, and MIT.
The love/hate split response to
Silent Spring
continued for months after it was published as it climbed onto the bestseller lists. A few reviewers managed to be in both camps.
Writing in the journal
Science
, I. L. Baldwin, an agriculture professor at the University of Wisconsin, called
Silent Spring
“beautifully written” and likened Carson to a prosecuting attorney who concentrated on the evidence that supported her case while sidestepping facts that did not. Baldwin argued—not unfairly—that the widespread use of chemical pesticides was the result of the “obvious benefits” they produced. But he said those same benefits in agricultural production and public health might have created an attitude of complacency that ignored the fact that synthetic pesticides are poisons and therefore present serious hazards. The right course, Baldwin argued, was greater care in the safety testing and use of pesticides. Backing away from them entirely was not an option:
Modern agriculture, with its high-quality foods and fibers, could not exist without the use of pesticides. Weeds, disease, and insect
pests would take an extremely heavy toll if these chemicals were not used. The yields per acre, the yields per man-hour, and the quality of the product would all suffer materially if these chemicals were withdrawn from use. One cannot do more than guess about the changes that would be necessary in American society if pesticides were banned. An immediate back-to-the-farm movement would be necessary, and this would involve many millions of people. It is hoped that someone with Rachel Carson’s ability will write a companion volume dramatizing the improvements in human health and welfare derived from the use of pesticides.
The editors at
Chemical Week
judged correctly that press reactions to
Silent Spring
were likely to “come out pretty squarely on Miss Carson’s side” and were not going to be nearly so judicious or so knowledgeable as Baldwin had been in the pages of
Science
. The trade magazine reported that the Manufacturing Chemists’ Association and the National Agricultural Chemicals Association had devised an industry response different from that offered by the Nutrition Foundation. The idea was to avoid a direct attack on Carson’s book and instead emphasize the benefits of pesticide use.
Paul Brooks heard the campaign had a $250,000 war chest.
But
Chemical Week
also noted that Monsanto had already broken ranks in going at Carson head-on with “The Desolate Year,” reprints of which had been sent by the company to newspapers and radio and television stations across the country. Pesticide makers thought sales of products intended for homes and gardens would probably experience little impact from
Silent Spring
, as the book had come out in the fall and consumers were likely to forget about it come spring when the pesticides market bloomed. But companies with heavy sales in agriculture and forestry prepared for a protracted siege. More worrisome than
Silent Spring
itself for the industry was President Kennedy’s pesticide commission, which
Chemical Week
doubted had the scientific depth among its members to properly evaluate pesticide safety.