The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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New York City—There seems to be as much trouble between various kinds of Republicans as there sometimes is between Democrats! A little item in one of our papers Monday said that Republican Clare E. Hoffman suggested that President Eisenhower might run for reelection as a Democrat in 1960. As a Michigan Republican he said "The President and his left wing, free spending international one-world advisers propose to disinfect, fumigate, purify, renovate, unify and remake the Republican party." He and Senator McCarthy would evidently join together in their appraisal of certain other Republicans. They had better give a little thought, however, before they turn President Eisenhower over to the Democrats to an uncomfortable fact that it was President Eisenhower who was reelected last autumn and not the Republican party!

I was glad to see that Don A. Williams, Administrator of the Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service, made a plea for a landholder's organization before the National Association of Soil Conservation districts. He said the program was urgent because so much of the heart of our country was in the throes of drought and he thought the farmers and the ranchers needed this organization to promote the federal program of conservation. The conservation service sends specialists in saving soil and water to the farms of those who have asked for help through local soil conservation districts and there is federal aid available to help pay to put the advice into practice. Farmers and ranchers who do not have enough knowledge often misuse their soil and this causes disintegration and allows the winds to blow the topsoil off and spread dust storms throughout the area. It does mean of course that farmers and ranchers have to cooperate in the use of their land and some of them see the immediate difficulty of giving up the right to decide for themselves what they will plant and to make a little quick profit which keeps on making the land deteriorate. Of course this is more prevalent where the actual owners of the land are absentee landlords and a poor farmer is trying to make enough money to pay the rent and cannot afford to look into the future.

If we are not careful we will wake up someday and find that we have created deserts and we will be headed towards the same results that have played such havoc in parts of Asia and the Near East. It seems incredible that with the increased knowledge of today we would run this danger but we had better face it as quickly as possible and provide for increased education and insistence on soil conservation and reforestation and the preservation of water.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 7, 1957

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated February 7, 1957, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 7 February 1957, AERP, FDRL