The Americans: A Fable in Reverse

To disprove the argument that the U.S. owes its prosperity to natural resources, the author asks: how would the land look today if people of another political and economic cast had settled it?

When the depression hit this nation in the 1930s we were told that we had to change our ways. Our governmental forms had been wasteful and destructive. It was only our resources, the gifts of Nature, that had made us great. Indeed, so bountiful had these gifts been that they had made us great in spite of ourselves. But now that was ended. The frontier was gone, our soils were eroding, our forests depleted, our resources becoming exhausted. We would have to abandon our old ways of laissez- faire and turn to a planned society.

GC

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George F. Carter

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To disprove the argument that the U.S. owes its prosperity to natural resources, the author asks: how would the land look today if people of another political and economic cast had settled it?

When the depression hit this nation in the 1930s we were told that we had to change our ways. Our governmental forms had been wasteful and destructive. It was only our resources, the gifts of Nature, that had made us great. Indeed, so bountiful had these gifts been that they had made us great in spite of ourselves. But now that was ended. The frontier was gone, our soils were eroding, our forests depleted, our resources becoming exhausted. We would have to abandon our old ways of laissez- faire and turn to a planned society.