Cross Currents; Lecture by Dr. William Birch Jr. of Yale University on the Social Meaning of Forests and by Sister Elizabeth Canden on the Current Condition of the Founding Ideas of American Life

This is cross currents in a series of recorded lectures and public forums exploring issues of public concern in Vermont. On this edition we begin with a lecture by a sociologist and human ecologist William Birch Jr. Dr. Birch is the author of daydreams and nightmares and is currently teaching at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His topic on February 22nd 1079 at the University of Vermont Church Street Center in Burlington was the social meaning of forests. We should realize that for some I always had important economic needs for us in order to survive as a species. We have chopped burned up rooted trapped dammed and otherwise converted the elements of the forest ecosystem to our survival needs. Yet only the accountancy mentality of the industrial order is taught that the sole meaning of a forest is to be found in county. So many kilos of fiber so many BT use of energy so many acres of wilderness so many recreation visits and other times and places people have sensed a

more mysterious complex subtle and intimate relation between the life of the forest and the life of human society. A careful study of the New England Forest tells a story of changing patterns in American life from the introduction of agriculture in the 17th century to the manufacture of barrel staves for shipping goods down the Erie Canal in the 19th century. Well correspondingly a careful study of the human record will predict the nature and types of forest emerging from each historical period. They intensively managed forests of Germany uniquely bend the ecosystem to its cultural image the vast 290000 acre depression borne forest growing on the Congorilla plains of New Zealand grows where no plant and no trees have ever existed. The wilder forests of North America reflect the fires and other activities of the aboriginal peoples. The activities of miners the grazing by sheep and cattle of early ranchers and the modern drift the pollutants from the great cities.

While in Japan the giant trees of isa are nurtured and harvested for their short term use in religious ritual. Force a play to determining as well as an adjusting role in human history. The emergence of Homo sapiens is traced to when our primate ancestors left the forest for the savant. Well among tribal peoples those of the forest have patterns of culture and social organization most distinctive from peoples of the valleys plains or seashore. Route reports how the emergence of forest inhibited migration from the eastern steps of Europe and therefore significantly altered Iron Age development patterns of the southern and northern regions of Europe. Certainly the great forest of eastern North America significantly influenced the patterns of European invasion and colonization and ultimately the kinds of regional political economies which emerged in the various ecosystems of our continent. Until we entered the period of which Lewis Mumford calls Carboniferous capitalism the American Way was

reflected by the King's Cross on tempers for ship mass. The wooden longhouse of the Iroquois Nation the log house and rail fence of the settler or the intricately carved totems of the Northwest Indians. What was shelter and feel and to an artistic expression. And it was wood which first contained the products and held together the rails and fueled the engines of the new industrial era. Indeed the UN forest a great plains were so confusing to the European migrants that they called in deserts and skipped over them to the more forested regions of the Pacific Coast and even when the settlers began to tentatively break the saw out of the Great Plains the puzzlement of treeless spaces was so great. The Congress passed timber culture X to encourage the growing of trees in regions where in the human scale of time none had ever grown. That's an irony of that most ironic of societies had the American considering that a nature without trees must be unnatural. We shaped the meaning of the American Forest and in turn shaped us the

social meanings of forests have been many and varied. Tonight I will narrow our attention to four clusters of meaning forest as personal and social metaphors forests as locales for managing potentially threatening social aggregates for us as stimuli and focus for larger social movements. For us as a setting where certain intergroup bonds may be established and sustained I will conclude by exploring how the supposedly biological and technically based management of forests as a renewable energy resource is really only a more elaborate set of social metaphors bound to the peculiarities of a specific political economy. Will first consider some universal uses of the forests as personal and social metaphors preliterate people saw forest as a place of spiritual and moral redemption. Certain trees and locations were seen as sacred repositories for gods of light and of darkness. The social function of such metaphorical excursions is that the spirits who dwell in the forests

could be used to curse those who might deviate from the society's norms are of equal importance is that the myths which explain why certain things were necessarily done in certain ways were given living tangible credence in the giant sake of trees or hidden sacred grove. Literate societies may have higher material standards but their poets continue to find spiritual and moral redemption in the forest. Well many a nature lover reports on their spiritual revelation in the presence of a particular tree or an ancient forest grove. Wordsworth musing on the vernal grove where the latest Sierra Club coffee table book contemplating the beauty of nature share a vision that an individual needs contact with nature to become spiritually renewed to improve mental and physical well-being and to discover the inner sources of true humanity. The nature of literature seems to alternate between seeing the forest as a setting as a gentle mother which provides a peaceful bower in which to escape the pressures of society or nature as a stern father who provides a

severe testing of the individual skills fortitude and alive in us. There's been little systematic testing as to whether the forest experience actually produces per me the spiritual and psychological gains or the sense of personal reintegration claim for or whether some other setting could as likely provide the same gains. Nevertheless it seems that for those who do believe that such transformation occurs it very likely does. Certainly there would be far fewer parks forest in nature preserves of a significant number of people were not firmly convinced that exposure to natural settings has positive benefits for the individual social well-being. Another way in which forest Aphex social stress is by providing places to temporarily store a potentially disruptive populations would producing regions tend to have an unbalanced demographic patterns with a high proportion of immobile young unattached males in the early settlement of North America logging camps may have been a much more significant safety valve than

the agrarian frontier favored by Turner's thesis. Logging camps gave those without capital land or families a place to start. Indeed the story of North American logging is a story of French Swedish and Norwegian waves of immigration which coincided with the exploitation the forest First the mountains of the East. Then the Great Lakes region and later the Pacific Northwest. Even today French Canadians are an essential element in northeastern logging while a large proportion of pulpwood cutters in the south are Afro-American. In the Great Depression the United States as other industrial societies discovered the virtues of conservation forestry in one thousand thirty three the Civilian Conservation Corps was formed to provide single young male volunteers with quote useful work and vocational training. The life was hard. These young men had families on relief most of their base pay went to their families while they were regularly isolated from the urban excitements and subjected to military type control. Most reports on the programme are enthusiastic

about its benefits for the individuals involved and certainly the U.S. is coasted upon the forest and Park facilities established in that area at the peak of the program in one thousand thirty five or five hundred thousand young men were located in over twenty six hundred camps. Such figures compel one to ponder the kind of public tranquillity and peace that would have prevailed. This mass of young men would have remained at home an already troubled urban places. However the enthusiasm for conservation of Forestry is seldom able to overcome other social priorities. The United States CCC program was terminated in one thousand forty two when the Great War apparently provided even more useful work and vocational training for young men in recent years forest areas forestry work and wilderness trips I've been seeing as places and activities for therapeutic work with delinquent male adolescents. Interestingly if one follows over time the various theories about the social benefits of exposure to Forest settings they all seem to have a

remarkable similarity to a given historical periods prevailing theories of social manipulation. For example my Sochi associate and I have abstracted findings from over 200 studies of camp and nature programmes for young people which extend from the early 1900s to 1972. The attitude of these studies most of which were written by teachers and camp counselors seemed to most clearly reflect the goals and techniques found in the contemporary theories of industrial management. Thus in the period up to the 1930s camp management stressed a finely structured programme with a motivation system based on elaborate and competitive rewards system and made the efficient physical health and well-being of the camper a primary concern. This pattern reflected the scientific management time and motion studies approach dominating industrial management prior to the 1930s. In the 1930s there was a gradual shift in progressive camps to more concerned with managing the campers experiences. This is similar to the contemporary human relations or

Western Electric or move cow sociology approach industrial management is keep them happy and produce more. The more recent cooperative camps in which the campers make decisions as a group seem to echo a concern with decision processes basic to the recent decision theory. That is industrial democracy approach and industrial management. We do not know whether these are real or simply an artifact of the kinds of studies we abstracted yet such possible trends should intrigue foresters camp and Recreation professionals and even academic researchers. We really have no complete answer as to whether forest settings have the therapeutic value attributed to them. Perhaps the summer camps promising bold new and confident products from the wilderness setting could be as effectively located in some of our urban slums. We do not like to think so but even the studies of our modern CCC the Youth Conservation Corps suggest that the benefits gained from the forest experience is mostly due to the use middle class background.

Certainly a massive amount of private and public money is annually bet that the forest experience does something good to various potentially disruptive populations. A third social function of forest may be their role in stimulating social movements which ultimately create larger social changes. Primary producing regions have long served as a locus for radical change is a moot point as to whether such regions attract or produce their malcontents. Witness Oregon in Vermont. Still pulp wood cutters loggers miners and other isolated working groups seem to have more innovative and independent unions make the strongest demands and are most likely to use violence in the achievement their goals. One suggests suspects that even the most have totalitarian political economy are the most generous welfare society will not for long suppressed such independence. Recent research on the environmental movement in the US suggests a participation in forest recreation may have

led to larger concerns for clean air water and humane urban places. If this hypothesis holds in the increased use of forest recreation areas is likely to mean even more environmental activism in the future. The larger significance of the tendency towards a more radical world view is that human societies use culture as their primary adaptive mechanism. Yet like all such a mechanisms culture can become maladaptive. That is the established solutions tend to be observed because they have been observed in the past and because of various vested interests have a survival stake in seeing that such solutions continue. Thus the survival needs of a given society always requires some locale or means for solutions and ideas to emerge and ultimately to challenge the established normative pattern. The persons who work and those who recreate in forest regions may be important sources for such social mutation. The voting patterns of our left over forested regions may function something as the early

signals regarding impending adjustments facing the nation at large. Certainly the emotional force of the wilderness idea seems to have generated expenditures of money talk energy and so forth far beyond any requirements of the Tanny tiny handful of persons who actually use such locales. Natural environments have a symbolic power. We have only partially examined. Finally forest seem to play a unique role in providing leisure settings where the social bond is established and maintained. In our study of the in our now of the studies on youth camping we found that seldom did the hoped for gains in school work and nature appreciation occur. However there was often a significant association between the camp experience and again on some social dimension such as a sense of belonging or an increased ability to work with others and so forth. In three experimental studies where urban children were exposed to Forest settings we also found that improvements in peer bonding where the only significant gains Allen study of six nature programs found that the one leisure studying were teen and pre-teen children

consistently participate with their parents as in forest and park settings. Studies by cheek league rice field so forth consistently report the primary behavioral unit in parks and other forest and Recreation settings as a social group. This holds whether recreation is deep in the wilderness or visiting the local park. Unlike many leisure locales people seldom go to a forested area alone. Depending upon the study that one consults 90 to 98 percent of the persons recreating forest areas have come with kin or friendship groups. The large proportion of kinship units mix gender and age grades means that forests are one of the few places shared by such groups in urban industrial societies. In recent work she converts have suggested that such leisure experiences enhanced bonding between generations as well as between men and women. Their national survey data show considerable equality of leadership regardless of age or gender. Secondly there is considerable continuity of membership in the group and thirdly the experience is freely chosen to little sense of social coersion. The importance of these functions is their suggestion

that a sizable proportion of industrial populations use forests as locales for building or reaffirming key social bonds. Further since most other leisure locales including the home tend to be age and gender segregated forest settings may play an especially unique role in sustaining the primary social units of any society. If this unique role does prove the case then forest recreation setting provide a non economic value that is far greater than usually indicated by a simple count of the frequency of visits to forcible cows. This brief excursion into the social meaning of forests emphasizes that non-economic in non-biological dimensions of forests are of imminent practicality. Such means permit the long run adaptation stability and survival of society. And those such utility may not show up on a corporate balance sheet or the bottom line of the economy attrition. One hopes that the survival of our society is the ultimate goal of their efforts. Perhaps my point will be clear if we consider the

realities regarding forests as a renewable resources and specifically their role as a source of energy. Even the most casual observer of nature can see evidence of resource cycles fires hurricanes predation disease and infestation catastrophic effect segments of a forest. Yet it renews itself similar patterns are found in grass and animal communities. That is some units of living in ATF fill in the space left by the departed organisms. However in the early stages the new organisms are not likely to be the original species or a species presently desired by people. We say that human intervention simply takes the place of natural processes but minimizes waste and directs towards higher uses. That is rather than the slow stages of natural succession the Forest manager accelerates the rate of minor catastrophes by clear felling herbicides fire or other techniques and then short runs the succession of stages by moving directly to establishing the

preferred species. There is nothing natural in the sense of free about this process and manage resources to him is wholly artificial and like all artificial systems requires constant surveillance and massive inputs of capital later for fertilizers herbicides pesticides to sustain the desired output for the most part professional resource managers have failed to tell us about all the long run costs for sustained yields of Fish Wildlife forests grass and water. Up to now the favorable costs of renewable resources have been sustained by ecological accident and human misery. A number of examples come to mind. The virgin forests and grasslands of the American West have simply been waiting for us and when we are through with them no God like parent in the sky is going to magically restore them. The succession of pines and abandoned Southern cotton fields and the now maturing forests on the abandoned agricultural fields of New England reflect social change

not resource planning. Well a world wide depression led New Zealand to establish the Congo forest as a means of occupying the industrially employed unemployed. Other parts of the world have similar 30 to 40 year old plantations growing from that human calamity. The great worldwide depression. Each of us is aware that those harvests in the arid mountain west were relic trees on thin soils and steep slopes are likely to never be replaced except the great costs. We are told that the harvest of the black spruce forests of northern Quebec and Ontario and the harvest of the grasslands in the arid Mountain states are scientifically managed and certainly given enough geologic time fortuitous climatic change and massive inputs of capital and labor. There certainly is a possibility of growing another crop in this sense. Coal and petroleum also become renewable resources.

Indeed what proportion the present day North American forest crop comes from stands that are the result of sustained yield management. I don't mean the harvested virgin Doug Fir stands and clear cuts have a hopeful sign posted near the road that says it is under sustained yield management. Where in the cut over northeastern states is a present harvest coming from stands that are the direct result of planned professional sustained yield management. Of course I'm demanding too much of a young profession eternally under capitalized and understaffed. My point is not to attack the profession but to challenge our romantic attachment to the sustaining renewable resource etiology. It is a fine sentiment and a noble aspiration. Still it has seldom been given a significant imperial test. One senses that like an animal unit months for grazing and allowable harvest of some game species allowable cuts of timber are more determined by political cycles than natural cycles. If the ranchers are strong enough if the pro or anti hunters are strong enough

if the lumberman are anti Letterman or strong enough then the allowable yields will respond to this political strength rather than some object of biological fact. I see nothing immoral or devious about this fundamental fact of the human condition. However I am disturbed by our failure to include a significant reality within our calculations. The economic technological and biological conditions for renewing resources are important but the crucial element is a human cultural system and most resource management models leave it only as a residual or as an assumed pressure external to the real management issue. The text fix approach to resources is clearest in the new passion for wood as a fuel source. The wood burning rhetoric seems to stem from two basic assumptions. The first observes that as recently as 1890s Wood was a significant element in the US energy budget. Therefore it assumes that what we once did we can do again. Secondly we observe that the

farmers Woodlock can provide about a quarter of field parade here on a sustained basis. Therefore we assume that what can be done on a small scale can be done even better with large scale capital in technology. Let's look at some problems with both of these assumptions. The problems with the 1890s assumption are several. In 1890 there were over sixty two million persons or twenty one point two persons per square mile. In 1980 there will be over two hundred fourteen million persons or over 60 persons per square mile and the 1890s coal saved us from a temper famine of epic proportions. Well today a large proportion of the usable timber growing land is under hard service the buildings roads parking lot supermarkets and single detached homes. If we are going to chop down all the forests and then start on coal maybe we should just start on coal in the first place. In the 1890s human and animal power were still significant national energy inputs. The vast supply of underpaid and over exploited immigrant labor may not be as good really

welcomed in 1900. The 1890s were a period of rising productivity and small mass consumption. The 1980s are a period of rising mass consumption and minimal or declining productivity. There are fundamental differences in moral attitude sense of saving in utility between a political economy that uses its energy to make more things and one that uses its energy to consume more things and the farmer one gets more wagon wheels and water pumps and the latter one gets flipped up beer cans and another episode of The Waltons. No renewable resource system can meet the insatiable wants of a political economy whose central goal is consumption. The problems with a sustainable home fuel wood system analogy are also several. First Wood is a bulky heavy hard to handle labor intensive fuel system that requires low cost labor. Secondly Homewood fuel systems are based upon the free labor of the odd times for the farmer or the unemployed state of children elderly

relatives. And this way the many tasks of selecting cutting hollowing splitting storing stacking lighting maintaining the emptying can take place. Long term detailed and intimate knowledge of the small woodlot system is essential to do proper culling and maintenance of the forests ecosystems productivity for example significant amounts of wood residue must be left in the forest to provide nutrients for future tree crops. Yet even under the most careful and intensive management there is likely to be some long term losses in forest productivity through erosion nutrient leaching and the upset of natural succession processes. Therefore every attempt to reduce labor through massive inputs of machinery technology and energy will demand use of the whole treat and chippers and other kinds of practices which ensure there will be very dramatic and very steady declines in forest productivity. Further large scale technologies require large bureaucracies in such social organization the professional labor alike have only a stake in their job and its opportunity

for increased personal gain. The health of the ecosystem remains distant and subordinate to their more personal interests and as they shift these responsibilities either upward or downward in the hierarchy. Consequently signals from the ecosystem have a long and uncertain communication path with much information being lost. Arriving Too late being distorted ignored or assigned to another office. We should recognize that from a social organization point of view of the large scale sustained yield of renewable resources is not the benign and casual practice our rhetoric suggests. Indeed to truly operate such a program requires an extensive controlled and rigid a technocratic structure is as rigid as that envisioned by Weinberg scenario of a future depended upon nuclear energy. German forestry exhibits considerably greater authority over the practices and activities on forest lands than found in the more casual approach of North America. Now imagine the even more intensely authoritarian organizational system required for forestry in an energy

independent Germany with no opportunity to import oil or Scandinavian timber. We fail to recognise the highly organized system in rigid authoritarianism imposed by the successful Iowa farmer and gaining intensive sustain yields from their lands. Forests have longer rotations and therefore require even greater vigilance technocratic consistency and control of markets. When the world becomes completely dependent upon such renewable resources matters become even more complex when we consider biomass as a significant source of energy. The substitution of biomass systems of energy for fossil fuel or nuclear systems is not likely to change the way in which workers carry out their lives. Capital flows from Metro centers will still sustain the prevailing hedge many of absentee private or government owners. Professional managers and experts will make decisions which flow downward. A system abstract rules and bureaucratic offices will maintain order and a peculiar kind of rationality. The loggers and other workers might wonder about extrapolations of their present working conditions to larger scale operations. Large

proportions of north eastern and southern workers do not have the minimal protection enjoyed by most workers in our tertiary economy. Once workers have an occupation with high accident and loss of life and rates second only to deep pit coalmining they experience high rates of unemployment they have low levels of educational attainment low annual incomes relative to other occupations and probably experience relatively high rates of social malaise alcoholism divorce suicide etc.. It's not surprising that since the 1940s the size of the logging labor force has experienced consistent declines relative to other occupations. Logging may make good macho copy for beer commercials. Still it is not the sort of occupations that parents eagerly encourage their sons and daughters to enter. I'm reflecting upon a log or as an illustration the often overlooked element in renewable resource planning. If we increase biomass use regardless of its particular form it will not be the air conditioned sun it is the clean shirted planner or the smooth shaven Smokey Bear ranger that gets the wood out.

We seem to ignore the fact that today renewable biomass is harvested in southern California by the stoop labor of the illegal immigrants. New Zealand Fijians are imported to cut gorse and prepare the land for timber and pasturage because American Europeans are unwilling to do such labor in North Western Europe persons from non-industrial southern eastern regions are imported to do the menial work refused by the high paid indigenous labor. Like America the world's working class has seen and sometimes experienced a Becker better working style and is unwilling to return to certain labor intensive occupations held in the past workers for their bright renewable resource eco topia of the future are likely to have some narrow visions and very basic questions. What kinds of safety health and retirement systems will actually be in effect. How much attention will be given to real community stability. Simple things like whether there are schools and other public services that will attain or be better than the standard prevailing in the more affluent suburbs. What have

advancement opportunity parity in pay levels job security continuity of employment. As we near the end of the 20th century are we likely to accept certain kinds of equity such as the professor the professional forester the corporate manager who have jobs they like should be paid less than those compelled to do the essential dirty and dangerous work which they do not like. And of course some passing attention must be made to the likeliest that it benefits a full scale renewable resource systems. I suspect that those social groups opposed to timber harvesting hunting hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants are most likely to be advocates of the natural biomass energy systems. One wonders about the reaction of these gentle metropolitan folk as they experience the bio organic sounds of chainsaws. The natural cycles of logging trucks in the spreading beauty of clear cuts where the biomass is harvested. Finally let us consider the availability of land for large scale practice of renewing resources. The development of North America is not guided by the planner and the ecologist but the land speculator and the lust within us all to

rapidly increase our income without working. Most of the most fertile and biologically productive lands were converted to private ownership. Public lands were usually left overs were at settlers of the time could find no economic use in these public lands were try to exhaust it rejected by private persons and then returned to the public. Consequently the productive capability of public lands is much less than that of the private lands. Yet much of the private land has been converted to a super highway shopping centers factories apartment houses Sen landfills spreading tracts of single family residences gas station cemeteries universities and so forth. Much of the forest land still held in private hands is an exceptionally small tracks and the owners have values other than timber maximization in mind. Well private agricultural lands near urbanized regions tend to ignore ecologically efficient production so they can concentrate on economically efficient production for luxury markets feed grain zero grazing for beef sod farms and so forth. Political Economy fully converted to renewable resource fuel use would need to more productive sites

close to the points of consumption and enter some sort of control for far into the future. Such an economy would come into direct conflict with trailing trends of capitalist development in private property institutions supermarkets and highways could no longer grow at their present and disciplined rate. Nor could they be planted just anywhere. Indeed many parking lot supermarkets and other facilities on highly productive lands would need to be returned to producing renewable resources. Owners of small tracts of forest land would lose many rights of control over their property. So the regional biomass authority could ensure compliance to sustain yield management needs. The conversion of North America to such a non market economy with highly limited private property rights is possible. However it would be a radically different kind of society. Forests are not likely to be the miracle fuel future. They have too many more valued social means. However wood does have at least three extremely important roles to play in regional national energy budgets. Unlike steel aluminum concrete and other

materials wood is renewable and requires relatively little fossil fuel inputs to become a usable material. What's best energy contribution is as a high quality construction material for buildings containers furniture and so forth. We should recognize that the burning of a material yellow birch or maple forest to fuel another night of money football or Masterpiece Theater is the moral equivalent of firing up an antique Chippendale furniture to toast a marshmallow. Secondly small scale professionally managed programs of culling forest can combine with new stove designs to provide a dependable source of home space heating for a reasonable proportion of households perhaps 10 to 15 percent of households in northeast could use wood as a sole space heating field well as much as 40 percent of the household might use wood as an occasional supplement for other space he needs. Still the use of these magnitudes require considerable restriction on present use of the private and public force and it must be emphasized that its central goal must not be space heating but the improved conditions for a high quality commercial force. Thirdly many would use you know there's such a pulp and paper

lumber furniture so forth can make much more efficient use of their wood residues to supply all of their in plant energy needs. In some cases such systems produce a surplus which could be made available for some local users. In some states the full use of waste wood will require some modification of building codes and regulation regarding particulate matter. These three energy uses it would suggest that we must in the great American search for the ultimate fuel. There is no final solution to any problem in the future we will need to understand the social properties as well as the bio chemical properties of a wide range of energy sources. Would another bio organics petroleum gas coal wind water nucular and solar systems of a variety of types. So much for the social meaning of would is an energy source. Let me summarize where we have been. We've explored a variety of ways in which forests and social life are intertwined. Forests are settings where important personal family and community social bonds are sustained and where social adaptations can emerge. The latest passion to convert forest to

field may not be the highest and best social meaning of our forests. Our future policies and plans are for us should recognise some of the issues we raise and I want to quickly run through them. We should be cautious in our promises regarding renewable resources. What is possible in theory is often not applicable in the real world. Secondly human beings play in a different evolutionary theatre than other animals. For the most part humans respond directly to symbolic signals and only indirectly to biological symbols. Hence most resource management practices built exclusively upon biological metaphors are likely to fail. They are likely to fail because they cannot capture the nearly infinite potential range of human resource meanings that can be applied to ecosystems. Thirdly there are limits to expertise as human tastes inventiveness curiosity and social institution out run or lag behind the best laid plans resource management is a practice of human ecology rather than a seemingly nonpolitical manipulation of ecosystems. Fourth any resource system requires a particular

organizational system. There is little evidence that renewable resources will be any smaller effective or benign than other contemporary organizational systems. Fifth renewable resources are likely to require a rather intensive human labor. The present practices regarding what bakery workers safety health and annual income in the Northeast are unlikely to sustain large scale renewable resource systems. Significant change in the distribution of social rewards will be necessary and greatly resented by those giving more and getting less. Six resources are renewable only within certain from night limits. And given the thrust of contemporary expectations it seems unlikely that we will voluntarily sustain those limits. It is difficult to imagine a political leadership anywhere in the world that will compel its population to meet the FA night limits estimated by our ecological experts. This reality promises a highly disruptive political struggle. 7 any large scale renewable resources and will need a high degree of control for a very long time over very large

amounts of highly productive land. This will require a radical change in the existing trends of capitalist development and private property institutions in North America. 8 The most significant energy contribution of forests will be providing high quality materials for construction. Our natural resource policy has proceeded as if society and nature observe the strictly separate paths assigned them by bureaucracy. All matters concerning people are to be handled by the personnel department. Well all matters of Mattachine resources shall be handled by the engineering department. I've tried to demonstrate that nature and society are a unity and that any separation in policy is an unnatural and possibly fatal convenience. I have also tried to demonstrate that as a people our aspirations have often transcended a pure materialist world view. Ours is a time of transition. It may be the better part of wisdom to recall the kind of people we once hoped to be.

Sociologist and human a call of just William Birch Jr. of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Dr Birch spoke at the University of Vermont Church Street Center in Burlington on February 22nd 1979. His topic was the social meaning of forests. For the remainder of this hour we hear a lecture delivered at the 1978 autumn conference of the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues held in Bolton Vermont. As part of this conference humanities scholars examined the current condition of some of the founding ideas of American life. Sister Elizabeth Kenton is currently serving as the secretary of the Vermont human services agency. Sister candidate's address delivered at the conclusion of the conference is due to time considerations presented here in an abbreviated form. Her topic is the possible impossible dream the credentials which led the planning committee to ask me to speak. I suspect are simply that I have lived over

a half a century of those 200 years that this land has enjoyed that I have been engaged in the educational world which makes me a humanist scholar along with many many other people. But I think it was rather that I have recently strayed from the paths of righteousness from education into that strange new world of government service. And I am now in the middle of my 23rd month as remarks Secretary of the agency of Human Services. And I want to make very clear that I stand before you not as one who thinks of herself as an omniscient say in this field but much more like one of my favorite graduate students that some of you may have heard me tell about.

This was a young man who had worked very very hard in his studies had completed his coursework and arrived at the time when he was to take his final oral examination and on the morning of the examination he appeared at the examination room fatigued and nervous. And he approached the table where a panel of professors was seated and having been a professor. I think it's safe for me to say that there really is no one quite as pompous as a college professor these three professors happened to be male professors. And I submit the male has an edge. Pomposity. And if the young man came and seated himself on one of the professors asked the question and it is nervousness the young man leaned

forward and said What do you think sir. And of course the professor drew himself up and said Young man I don't think I know. And the young man said I don't think I know either. So I speak to you this afternoon. Because I don't think I know either. As one not attempting to give you strong advice or to persuade you to a strongly held point of view but to ask you particularly the Vermonters among you to gradually re-entered with me the world of reality after your very stimulating day and a half of heavy thought

to ponder some of the actuality of how we can keep Vermont truly a part of the promised land. A continuation of the 1776 and I hope to do that as TS Eliot suggests one might do simply by teasing you into thought and I hope to do this by speaking first of all about the evolution from the self-reliance worse work ethic into what I think of now. As the dependency not work ethic. Secondly to speak a bit about responsibility individual and group responsibility. And finally to speak about a forward backward look. As a bit of background I wish to remind her I wish to

recall have you recall as I'm sure most of you well-informed citizens already know that the agency of Human Services in Vermont was formed along with others as a result of the governmental reorganization. I believe in the Hawke and Davis errors here in Vermont that reorganization drew into one agency the separate departments of social welfare health and mental health and corrections. And in the last decade or two those departments were added the Department of Social and rehabilitative services the offices on Aging the state economic opportunity office and the Comprehensive Employment and Training office referred to as the CTO office. It's a large agency throughout the state. There are about two thousand seven hundred fifty agency

workers. Do you get some sense of the heaviness of my heart when I think of all of them being callous. It's it's a it's a tremendous thought is it not. The fiscal 79 budget the one under which we're operating now of general fund was 60 million dollars and about one hundred three million of federal funds. Now what I would like to do with this focus just a moment with you on the general. 60 million. I can I can see you all calculating quickly. That's more than a million a week and I expect the reaction is What a preposterous SLI large amount of money that he is. But I would like you to listen for just a moment because I think we're going to need much help this year.

Wasn't Robertson Jeffrey Robinson Jeffers who said there's something in the air that hates humanity. I have an idea it might be the proponents of Proposition 30 the 60 million that has spent on the total agency population comprises 31 million or more and a little more than half going and tiredly to the Department of Social Welfare. And the other 29 million are divided up among those clients who could be physically handicapped. Those who are mentally ill those who have mental retardation or persons who are aging the young that are alienated from their families. Those caught up in a cycle of crime or substance abuse. Now most of the persons in those categories that I last mentioned

are I believe a person who through no merit of their own will always need some compensatory services from those among us who are able to be totally independent. Those persons for example with physical handicaps or those with retarded development. Those people who you see in my very simple faith I believe according to some mysterious plan which God has for all of us have been chosen to go through life with a burden that none of us will ever totally realize. While the rest of us are chosen to go through life not burdened by a burden of that nature. And it seems to me that

we have an obligation to those of our less fortunate fellow man to see that they are given the opportunities to reach the all to much potential that each of them possesses in the least restrictive environments. And so in American society to accomplish this takes money and I believe that all citizens should expect that taxes will go torrid accomplishing what needs to be done for these people. As a person temporarily charged with being an accountable steward of the taxpayers money I believe that one of my tasks is to see that we have properly funded programs for those who need the compensatory services in

order to have sufficient funds to do this. I believe we need to exercise the utmost vigilance just and merciful vigilance to see that public funds are not diverted to those not truly in need simply because the funds are finite. And as far as I can see their chances of getting finite are are increasing every day. Simply if they go to those persons not in need there are too few for those truly in need. Many of our agency funds are directed to those persons who need support for themselves and their families because they do not work and concern for them has caused me to devote many moments to the work ethic that I think of

as being the very fiber of colonial days. And I have to say that being of Irish heritage that I confess to you it's an entirely new experience for me to think at all about the Puritan work ethic and my extended family. There were a couple of great uncles who I am sure never did a day's work in their lives and I thought of them and I still think of them as perfectly marvelous men. They could sing they could be site poetry and they were always there. When my mother needed babysitters. And it never occurred to me before this recent experience to question the source of their sustenance. Apparently the other members of the family expert

accepted the responsibility for them. And in the Great Society language seems to me I remember LBJ saying we have plenty of idle rich around. What's the matter with having a poor a few idle poor. And I believe that made sense. And then I came to this position and I had the opportunity to visit some of these so-called welfare families particularly those in what we called our unemployed fathers program and what I saw were not the self-reliant proud Americans that I remembered my great uncles were. But diffident unfulfilled straw men. With my middle class values that I as I walked toward one mobile home

to visit a man and incidentally this is not a man with a physical handicap or a known mental handicap. It's called an able bodied man who had been unemployed for nearly three years. I thought to myself I wonder what he does for volunteer work. I wonder what his hobby is. But of course what I meant was a man so demeaned by the system that he scarcely ever left the trailer. And when I asked him what he did all day he said Sister mostly watch TV and you know I could put my foot through that did it. And I thought to myself of all of the horrors that Dante conjured up in his Inferno I can think of none that approached the horror of watching daytime television for three solid years. There was a little lad running around and when I asked how old he was

two and a half. He had never seen his father go to work. And I thought about this man. I read the closing lines of credit Curtis an essay describing an American. And he said I quote from involuntary idleness servile dependence penury and useless labor. He has passed two toils of a very different nature rewarded by ample subsistence. And I pause to think. Have we reverted. Have we now a system which spawns in voluntary idleness and servile dependence upon an impersonal government. As an inveterate English teacher I have a compulsion to read spot passages to my friends and ask them to quickly give me the name of the author

and the literary work. So I will read this one. At this moment. What do people of America want more than anything else. In my mind two things work. Work with all the moral and spiritual values that go with work and with work a reasonable measure of security for there wa a VPS and children work and security. These are the spiritual values the true goal to which our efforts should lead. And these words as I'm sure you have all recognised immediately were spoken in 1932 long before the women's movement gained its present force by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he made his unprecedented personal appearance to accept the presidential nomination

by the Democratic National Convention. And with those were part of me with those words he launched the New Deal and as I watched the election returns the other night I heard Eric Sevareid announce that last Tuesday's election clearly sounded the death no the death knell of the New Deal. But what is our national national posture today. Do we treasure self-reliance and the work ethic and do we believe that it is appropriate and non-injurious for persons to be idle and dependent upon the government system. Our present state of affairs conferring concerning this response is the response to this question is very complicated. As I was leaving the office Thursday I had an impassioned call from a member of the Fair Hearing Board a Fair Hearing Board is a group of Vermont

citizens to whom anyone who believes that she or he has been wronged by a state agency can go for a fair hearing. And it seems that a gentleman had bendy not had his grounds by the welfare department because he had voluntarily left his employment. The said gentleman had left his employment because the monthly check which he received for himself and his family working at the minimum wage for a private employer was less than he could receive from the Department of Welfare and not work. The Fair Hearing Board ruled that the welfare department could not deny him his grant but the message I got was secretary cannon. Don't just stand there do something. It's

absurd. I'm still quoting the message that a man can get more money from being on welfare than he can get from working or at least why don't you supplement his wage with the amount needed to bring it up to the level of the welfare check. Well if I put the phone down I thought the minimum wage is beyond my control. That's established by the federal in the state legislature. The amount of the welfare grant is beyond my control. That's established by the legislature and it seems to me that I remember in 1972 strongly supporting a presidential candidate who advocated the idea of a supplemental income. But who went down to a smashing defeat because his idea was considered to be absurd or to border on socialism. And so this is the dilemma that we face. There is a little

bit of happiness to the story in Vermont in December in January of 77. We had fourteen hundred men on the unemployed fathers program last month. We had 300 as a dramatic decrease has to be attributed to a healthy economy. The integrated services of the Department of Employment Security along with the departments in the agency of Human Services. Clearly a dedicated effort by state employees and very strong directive leadership from the governor. But we still have many persons a number of them women as the sole support of their children who are dependent upon the system. And I keep asking myself would it not be more advantageous for them to be gainfully employed

in a job which gives them a sense of dignity and self-reliance. And they billing them to choose what they believe is best for themselves and their children rather than accepting this posture of promoting idleness and dependence upon them. If we believe in that it is better for them to have some kind of self respecting work than we clearly have to set ourselves to the task of fashioning a society in which this is possible. The possible impossible dream by Sister Elizabeth candid. Her address was delivered at the conclusion of the 1978 autumn conference of the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues held in bold in Vermont. The theme of the conference

was in search of the promised land America in the 1970s. Sister Camden is currently the secretary of the Vermont human services agency. Her address was presented in an abbreviated form because of time considerations. This has been crosscurrents a series of recorded lectures and public forums exploring issues of public concern for months recording and editing by Fred Wasser of Vermont Public Radio.