Man In The Doorway (1957)

these traders also were sure of the lands fertility didn't the fig trees bear they olive groves increase the grain fields flourish year after year that man and the doorway he was a farmer he can tell us he can tell us nothing he's a ghost and his land is in ruin this was his olive grove his trees marched up the seas were once flat fields of barley and millet and as far as the eye could see there were groves of cedars Timbers for the ships of Roman Caesars once upon a time but nature gives no man a blank check on her resources unless he is willing to pay dearly and so there's nothing left of the ancient farmer and his civilization but a doorway to nowhere [Music] things look better today to a farmer in the doorway of a barn in Pennsylvania the harvest is coming in a good harvest because this man knows that each part of nature is inseparable from the others but rainfall is useless to his land unless there are trees and grass to hold it he knows that if he lets erosion take hold his topsoil will go flying in the wind and he can't grow corn in the sky he knows he can't be forever taking from nature and so from his doorway things look wonderful [Music] when you come right down to it can't you say that things look wonderful all over America if you look in the right places they hold the fields of ripening wheat enough all together to feed half the world and then some if we want to raise it look at the fattening steers the poultry ready for market [Music] the immeasurable wealth of the sea ship at once for car loads of lumber let's have an ocean of orange juice and oh yes keep the earth producing freight car loads of metals and minerals keep the oil flowing but wait can delivery be guaranteed forever is the world truly our oyster 3/4 of the earth's surface is under water beyond the plow that leaves 1/4 dry but half of that is barren desert beyond the plow [Music] or lock in ice and snow beyond the plow or to mountain mister cultivate well that's not too bad that leaves one-eighth of the Earth's surface for producing food timber and fibers wrong in many parts of the United States floods wash away whole farms while big chunks of the Southwest blow away in the bone-dry wind erosion steals land from the careless man thousands of square miles of US pasture land is so thin that it takes 50 acres to raise one steer 50 to 1 good land will do the job for one every year 10 million acres of trees and grass go up in flames and insects destroy enough timber to build 1 million 5 room houses oil wells do go dry and even though we're lucky rich in coal we're not adding we're subtracting add one airport subtract a potato farm and 5 orchards add suburban expansion subtract thousands of acres of choice land you can't grow beans in driveways parking lots and tennis courts add a thousand miles of superhighway subtract millions of bushels of grains and vegetables the machinery keeps clawing and biting away subtracting it takes nature from 400 to a thousand years to make one inch of topsoil we can lose it in the wink of an eye I stand in this doorway because the ghosts in the ancient doorway still haunts us speaking as a scientist I know why that other fellow perished with his civilization he didn't learn the laws of conservation didn't know how to use the raw materials right in his own front yard he went bankrupt in a gold mine well Americans too inherited a gold mine and for 200 years we acted as though that were inexhaustible well that dream is finished the cold fact is that we must have the best of science to save us from the fate of the ghost in the doorway most of us live in the present unable to foresee disaster now the same was true of people who were working and playing dreaming and planning in 19:4 back then a widely respected British scientist Sir William Crookes predicted a major disaster it is my opinion of the world as facing certain starvation unless we can find new and abundant sources of nitrogen for use and fertilizing the crop lands of the earth but nobody's seemed to be listening [Music] in 1917 ship arrived in New York Harbor by that time serious thinkers in America agreed with the Englishman's prophecy of world starvation there was the usual excitement at dockside but the reporters and cameramen were interested in the star attraction a musical comedy dancer from Paris on the edge of the crowd scarcely noticed was Frank Washburn an American engineer returning from a one-man scientific mission to Europe nobody had any idea how successful he had been but scientists were not outstanding heroes in nineteen seven mr. Washburn left the ship unnoticed carrying in his suitcase one of the answers to Sir William Crookes frightening prediction of global starvation [Music] this is what he carried a sample of a black powder called Cyanamid and a process to make it from air coal and limestone three of nature's most plentiful materials this black powder a rich source of nitrogen when applied to the soil was the first synthetic fertilizer ever produced in North America later on scientists were to discover that it had an even greater value as a starting material for industrial products with much more dramatic value in conservation it was and is a versatile compound it has a fertilizing action releasing plant feeding nitrogen and also sweetening the soil in the form of dust Cyanamid causes certain plants to shed their leaves which drop off stem from stalk commercially this defoliating process is a boon to cotton growers who dust their fields a few days before picking time and setup the crop for an easy harvest the process eliminates trash that used to come with the cotton to the cotton grower Cyanamid means getting more and keeping more of what he raises that is applied conservation unpretentious black powder yes but 50-plus years ago it was a symbol of America's future in chemistry the science nourished by Frank Washburn by DuPont Dow Queenie hooker staffer Mellon quote and many others in the years since Cyanamid came home with Washburn chemistry has come into its golden age and many hopeful answers are coming from chemistry chemistry for conservation for better usages increased yields better salvage Cyanamid itself played a key role in the replacement of the products of nature with the products of man's creative chemical ingenuity above all chemistry is a servant of man and the chemist by his very nature a man of endless curiosity in any chemical laboratory the chemist is a man of many jobs when he seeks to rid the farm of pests and raise its production of plants and animals he's a farmer a farmer in a lab coat when he plans a battle against enemies of our timberlands he is a Forester [Music] when he explores the realm of medicine searching for chemicals that banish disease soothe the troubled mind and prolong life he is a good right arm to the physician and pharmacist [Music] he is many men too many men but chemists while I've been talking about the chemist his problems have multiplied 600,000 kinds of insects have been inflicting staggering damage to our economy creatures like this have been chewing chewing away insects outnumber us several trillions to one their appetites are so enormous that the farmer works one day out of every 12 just to feed them their keep runs to adding machine figures one and a half billion dollars worth of grain cotton vegetables and fruits every year 7 times more trees than are lost in forest fires sum it up insects cancel the work of 1 million farmers and foresters every year it isn't a question of how much more the bugs would take if chemistry weren't backing the war against them the question is how can the chemists take back most of what the bugs are already stealing this is an insecticide laboratory where the villains are raised on the very best diets and exposed to hundreds of likely chemical compounds the research man paints beam leaves with what he hopes will be knockout drops then watches the worms at dinner [Music] if they clean the plate he knows he's on the wrong track as he is nine times out of ten but once in a blue moon there's a discovery like malathion one bite then the meal is over that kind of compound is given the full lab test plants are sprayed under natural conditions to make certain the chemical won't harm the plant and won't harm the person who eats it it's tried on house flies eternal challenge to insecticide chemists malathion bull's them over permanently then warm-blooded animals are exposed to the material a chemical company may have a million dollars invested in a compound by the time research proves it to be effective in amounts harmless to man and animals [Music] the big test for malathion came in Florida in 1956 where the Mediterranean fruit fly threatened to wipe out the entire citrus crop as it did 30 years ago this tiny killer lays eggs on the skin of the fruit and the larvae do the damage [Music] at first the fly was a local Menace but federal and state antem ologists knew the invader could move quickly and when they found him in traps many miles and several counties from his first point of attack the order went out hit him from the air the sky over Florida citrus groves rained malathion for weeks this time no banks failed in Florida this time the tables were turned this time the Med fly threat was checked and the struggle against the bugs goes on above our insect blighted Woodlands chemical mist is falling from planes while spray crews on the ground complete the job [Music] chemical sprays make modern farming something better than a gamble against hopeless odds in this age of insects everybody would be losers without chemistry every single day 7200 new consumers are born in these united states will have a lot better chance of feeding them if we can take back what we are now serving to the bugs 9% of our national food and timber crop at our present birth rate we're going to have to feed 200 million mouths by 1975 did you ever think that the family butcher might become obsolete if the day comes when man has to compete with animals for grain and grass animals won't be fed and the butcher will vanish [Music] that time has been postponed by ideas like this one this is crude Oreo Meissen obtained in the early stages of the Oreo Meissen refining process we use it to bring home more bacon how fast as a pig grow the thousands of years Nature has answered that question and man has accepted the answer no more science knows how to accelerate the growth of animals with feed supplements here the research man works with thimble proportions but 1/2 cup full of Oreo Meissen is more than enough to enrich 1 ton of feed 12 bushels of this speed will enable the farmer to produce 200 pounds of pork in less than 6 months [Music] but chemistry is doing more than helping man produce more meat it is saving meat animals from natural enemies disease with preventive and curative chemicals vaccines and antibiotics [Music] a few drops of an antibacterial chemical in the drinking water of chickens means they drink to their own health every time they're thirsty [Music] chemistry goes another step a minor amount of antibiotic in the ice water bath of a poultry processing plant makes chickens stay remarkably fresh for many additional days this is conservation in its most literal sense beyond bread and meat man needs many other resources to survive and prosper and when nature can't meet the heavy demands for these materials science is challenged to do it here again chemistry serves to conserve look at these two samples of copper ore this one contains 30 percent copper the supply of this can't last forever but there's plenty of this other one nine tenths of one percent copper years ago this would have been called just plain dirt samples of ore come from all parts of the world to this mineral dressing laboratory the owners of these ores want to know one thing are they worth mining this research man is going to work with the copper ore containing nine tenths of 1% copper that equipment on the table is a flotation machine that duplicates on a small scale a process used in commercial copper mining the low-grade ore is poured into a water-filled Bowl a small amount of a chemical called a promoter reagent is added and then a frothing agent the mixture is aerated the promoter conditions the tiny copper particles so that they capture air bubbles the frothing reagent floats these bubbles to the surface where they're skimmed off no longer nine tenths of one percent but 35 percent copper two pennies worth of promoter will treat one tonne of or making it profitable to squeeze copper and gold from mountainous slag piles like these even more it means longer life and better economic futures for mining communities fewer and fewer towns are becoming ghosts in the valleys [Music] no matter how big a tree grows only a small percentage of it can be used as boards and Timbers a chemistry takes what's left and converts it to practical use this tough and durable wood is chipboard made from wood chips and plastic with veneer and plastic treated paper it can be made into handsome furniture wood that'll take more abuse than the real wood chemistry is isolating vanillin from what used to be wasted byproducts of wood you may taste it in your next dish of vanilla ice cream this is tallow obtained from wood waste from this oil comes rosin for sizing paper and other chemicals widely used in making drying oils for surface coatings another once wasted byproduct of wood is now used in the production of turpentine and camphor this is sugar for animal feeds obtained from wood by chemical process adhesives of incredible strength making possible an enormous national production of plywood well these are all examples of what we mean when we say chemistry is at work in conservation chipboard what is it but ingenuity plus plastics the very word Plastics takes us right into the heart of conservation because plastics improve on the products of nature and thus take the pressure off our natural resources chemists pursued hundreds of lab experiments with cyan emit several years ago they found that one of its derivatives melamine reacted with formaldehyde to produce a plastic when this conquest of man over molecules had been demonstrated a vast new industry was born and plastics moved into every waking hour of man's life [Music] if anyone had suggested in nineteen seven that the black powder would become one of the chemical clues to plastics that would also point the way to manmade rubber which would prove to be better than natural rubber for many uses the ideas would have been labeled preposterous and if anyone had hinted that Cyanamid would also be a chemical ladder to man-made fibers for beautiful clothes this idea too would have been dismissed as preposterous but chemistry is full of such preposterous ideas most of which are working for man's benefit now and more are on their way for man is the most important resource of all chemistry's greatest role in conservation is the conservation of human resources there's an old cemetery in a small town not far from here [Music] how many years of useful life are buried in that little country cemetery perhaps a thousand years lost to pneumonia meningitis if only they could have waited just a few more years their stories might have had things because science found in the very soil to which every man ultimately returns some resounding replies to disease scientists had known for years that soil contains mold but when it was discovered that a certain mold produces substances that prevent the growth of injurious bacteria the great breakthrough to antibiotics was made [Music] chemists gathered soil samples from all parts of the world and each soil developed its particular mold population [Music] occasional moles like this developed an obvious antibacterial zone thousands of these moles were deposited in a vault a kind of Bank of hope to be drawn against someday perhaps to destroy the yet unconquered threats to all mankind and after many many blind alleys a mole produced chemical was found that held vast promise its chemical birth certificate called it floor tetracycline it's working name is Oreo Meissen the parent of Akram Ison a versatile and widely accepted antibiotic if only they could have been spared for a few more years they would have reaped these gains of science and walked the lengthened shore of life today's child has a brighter chance for a healthy life the years of greatest responsibility have been rescued from many murderous diseases a healthy useful old age is no longer of a dream modern medicinal chemistry has given all ages a better claim to good health we're working to save man from the ravages of heart disease and cancer and we're gaining [Music] in the last 56 years man stay on earth has been extended by an average of 21 years forgive me if I don't talk about bright tomorrow's and positive answers to every the chemical industry is substituting action for words