Wisconsin School of the Air; Afield with Ranger Mac; 22

The Wisconsin School of the air invites you to go afield with a range of Mac today boys and girls. We're going to hear about the lighter of life. Now to take you on another radio hike down the nature trail. Here's your guide. Ranger Mack. Hello boys and girls. This is your day so up and away. Stormy March is here at last. This is the month when winter and spring have a set to battle but March is always victorious. The skunk cabbage knows it and is already sending its flower spike up through the mire in the marsh and beneath the leaves in the woods. Violets are watching this battle getting ready to send forth banners of victory when the battle is won. Soon the bark on Willow runs will turn a golden color and with new life and boys will know that then is the time to make whistles and express their appreciation for the return of spring in the shrill notes they can

draw from well-made willow whistles. The robin and Bluebird are pointed northward and will be here even before March wins the battle. And who among you will be the first to see a robin. A march is a month of water and mud chilling Wayans snow and rain and snow again and more water and mud. Your teachers are telling you to keep warm and dry for your health's sake. So that you too may be a victor. It is a kind of dirty month at heart on the school room floor are mud on hands and on face. And when mother asks you to wash your face don't think for a minute that tears will do the job. If you have taken the pains to look up the meaning of the word larger a word

used in the subject for this broadcast you found out that the word means a place where meats and other articles of food are kept most frequently. We use the word cupboard instead of Larder in our homes. It is the place one or Mother Hubbard Went to fetch her poor dog a bone or Mother Hubbard was either too poor or too thoughtless at to keep the cupboard supplied and so the poor dog had none. I have found now that most nursery rhymes have some meaning. Maybe the meaning of this Nursery Nursery Rhyme is that you cannot take anything out of out of the cupboard unless there is something there or that the cupboard is like the cookie jar. You cannot tape continuously from the cookie jar you know without at times putting cookies back into the job.

At the great cupboard ordered of all mankind the place where all food comes from originally is the soil of the rich and the poor are the cross and the present. The lame the halt and the blind. The suffering and the happy are the two and a quarter billion people who inhabit this earth. All look to this covered the soil to supply this needed food. This cupboard is of considerable size. It contains about a four and a half billion acres of probable land. Now if you divide a four and a half billion by two and a quarter billion you will arrive at a figure that shows your share my share of this covered as a member of all the people who inhabit

this earth. And that is about two acres. Of course we in America have a larger share because we are a new country and our cupboard is well filled. But there are parts of this earth. Where one half an acre or even a quarter of an acre is a rather generous portion. It is in those parts of the where old where the cupboard is scantily supplied that are the scenes of the world's greatest troubles. Today Asia Asia has more than half of the earth's people and millions of them are close to starvation battling frequent famines and soil eroding floods. Yet it was in Asia that agriculture got its first start and animals were first domesticated. Asia gave to the world most of its

fruits and vegetables flowers and domestic animals. But today people who study ancient civilizations are digging out of the Sands in Asia. The remains of the earliest known cities it must be. It couldn't help to be otherwise. Now that those people took more from the cupboard than they put back in and allowed their soil to waste away much of it to be carried away just as the Yellow River is doing today. It is called Yellow River because of the burden of silt it is carrying to the ocean. Could that ever happen to America. Yes it could. But America is awakening to the lesson of history and we are learning to love that soil for the life and happiness it

brings to us. Many of our trail histories are living on farms where their fathers are carrying on so conservation practices of the best kind contour plowing grass land farming and other good practices. When these farms are turned over to the next generation as must take place eventually other farms will be in fine condition. But you and I who live in villages and cities are apt to think that soil conservation is the farmer's problem and responsibility. But today Ranger Mack is going to try to show you boys and girls that keeping that covered well supplied keeping that soil in place and in good condition is as much the concern of people who live in cities as it is those who live on and work the soil. Now let's

start with the grocery store that is around the corner where you buy your meats and groceries. And there are about five hundred fifty thousand stores like that in this country and maybe you would like to use your lead pencil and paper and for we have some big figures and some arithmetic work to do and now these stars where people buy their groceries and meats vary in size from the large supermarkets employing say 100 persons to the little store around the corner employing three or four people. Let's say that the average is far far to each store and that's very reasonable four times five thousand five hundred a power of five hundred fifty thousand four times 550000 gives you two million two hundred thousand people employed

in that work. They are not adding any value to the goods they are simply handling the goods that originally came from the farms rendering the service. That's what they are doing. All of these retail stores get their supplies from horse sale dealers at these host sale houses. Have millions of clerks salesman's salesmen truckers and warehouse men totaling another 2 million at the meat comes from packing houses some of them of mammoth size like Swift armor Wilson Cudahy Oscar Meyers and some of them small like the local country butcher and the thousands of community lockers scattered all over the country. These employ another two and a half million people. Maybe the fathers and mothers of some of our trail hitters work in some of these plants. The ballad the leather

from these slaughtered animals goes into the making of shoes harnesses billfolds handbags suitcases footballs basketballs baseballs and novelties of all kinds. The factories where articles are made out of leather and the stars where these manufactured goods are sold involve another two million people. Eighty percent of all of the bread eaten in our homes today is made in huge bakeries by machines. The first stop from the wheat fields to the bakeries is that the elevators started along the railroads. And from there the grain goes to the flour mills in Minneapolis St. Louis Buffalo Kansas City and the hundreds of smaller Mills scattered throughout our country from the mills. The flour and meal will go to the big grease of the nation

and the vast hordes of people employed in the elevators flour feed and big business and the army of American workers become critically dependent upon farming swells larger and larger as nearly as I could get the figures. This amounts to about four million not counting truckers and railroads used in transportation. A person can live out of a department store today. A family can buy all of its needs in from tin cans glass bottles cartons and cellophane wrappers. These tin cans and other containers must be manufactured employing another million people. The food that goes into these containers must be processed prepared and made ready for the home. One and a half million are employed in this work. It is hard for a husband to compliment his wife on

her cooking today because everything he may get may be purchased ready for the table. Even It took cake mixes. The textile industry spinning and weaving of cotton and woollen goods at the printing and dying of the cloth the making of dresses and suits employs around six million cotton and wool you know our farm products. Remember that they're making a beer whiskey and wines and the selling of these liquors in 140000 taverns and the nineteen thousand one hundred thirty five liquor stores employ another million and a half people. These liquors and beverages are made from grains fruits and sugars grown on the farms. Now you must be tired of these figures by now. Ranger Mack intended you should be. That is one way to impress you with all these hordes of people are

completely dependent upon the products of the farm for their livelihood. And there are many more we could mention like the manufacturing of farm implements. Hand Tools posts and fencing seeds and fertilizers and other items too numerous to mention. Think of the railroads that carry all these products into every nook and corner of the nation and the trucks box cars and locomotives that must be made and maintained just to carry on this transportation. The 40 to 60 millions of people employed in this great land of ours are entirely dependent upon the products of the Palme for the work they are engaged in and for the food for themselves and their families. The most wonderful thing ever made by a man is a happy living made for his family. And so as the farm goes so goes the nation. A decrease in farm production hits the

city's first a loss of sorrow is just as much the concern of those who live in the cities as those living on the farms. These deep gullies in corn fields do not stop at the edge of the field but extend into city streets. These governors take from the cupboard the products that make the whistles of our factories blow and the wheels to turn. And from our tables the abundance of good food that keeps our bodies healthful and our families happy. Too often boys and girls in cities do not sense this at all. That's why Ranger MacT is giving this broadcast. And so until next week remember it's the songs you sing and the smiles you wear that makes the sun shine everywhere no matter what the weather may be.

And may the Great Spirit put sunshine in your heart today and for evermore heap much of the familiar Indian farewell brings us to the end of another trip afield with Ranger Mack. He'll be back again next week at the same time to be your guide for another radio trip down the nature trail when he'll tell us about the Great Spirit. This is the Wisconsin School of the air.