The narrative passages and the photographs
on this page and the two pages that follow are from The River,
a motion picture just completed by the Farm Security Administration
of the Department of Agriculture. The River might well be
considered an epic poem of the Father of Waters, with musical
accompaniment and camera shots that Homer would have welcomed.
It incorporates recent flood scenes, as did its predecessor
in 1936, The Plow That Broke the Plains, the havoc of drought
and dust. Both were written and directed by PARE LORENTZ.
From as far West as Idaho,
Down from the glacier peaks of
the Rockies,
From as far East as New York,
Down from the turkey ridges of
the Alleghenies,
Down from Minnesota, twenty-five
hundred miles,
The Mississippi River runs to
the Gulf.
Carrying every drop of water that
flows down two thirds the continent,
Carrying every brook and rill,
Rivulet and creek
Carrying all the rivers that
run down two thirds the continent,
The Mississippi runs to the Gulf
of Mexico.
...And we made cotton king.
We rolled a million bales down
the river for Liverpool and Leeds;
1860: we rolled four million
bales down the river,
Rolled them off Alabama,
Rolled them off Mississippi,
Rolled them off Louisiana,
Rolled them down the river...
We mined the soil for cotton until
it would yield no more,
and then moved West...
...We built a hundred cities and
a thousand towns, but at what a cost.
We cut the top off the Alleghenies
and sent it down the river;
We cut the top off Minnesota and
sent it down the river;
We cut the top off Wisconsin and
sent it down the river.
We left the mountains and the
hills slashed and burned, and moved on.
For the water comes downhill,
Spring and fall, down from the
cut-over mountains, down from the plowed-off slopes,
as far West as Idaho and as far
East as New York,
in every brook and rill, rivulet
and creek;
Carrying every drop of water that
flows down two thirds the continent...
. . . Thirty-eight feet at Baton
Rouge:
River rising;
Helena: river rising;
Memphis: river rising;
Cairo: river rising
A thousand miles to go,
A thousand miles of levee to hold....
When we first found the Great
Valley it was forty percent forested.
Today for every hundred acres
of forests we found we have ten left,
Today five percent of the entire
valley is ruined forever for agricultural use,
Twenty-five percent of the topsoil
has been shoved by the old river into the Gulf of
Mexico,
Today two out of five farmers
in the valley are tenant farmers, ten percent of them
sharecroppers....
And the old river can be controlled;
We had the power to take the valley
apart; we have the power to put it together again.
