The Holy Earth. Liberty Hyde Bailey
“Advance Praise” for The Holy Earth, Charles Scribner’s Sons Edition, 1915
“I am reading Professor Bailey’s ‘The Holy Earth’ with pleasure and profit. I like the audacity of the title; it confers new dignity upon the farmer and the countryman. Some of the chapters are very timely and convincing, like that on the struggle for existence and war. It is sound natural history and sound philosophy. I have never seen the case better put.”
— John Burroughs
“It is fortunate indeed that Dean Bailey has been able to free himself from the thraldom of administrative regime, if he will lead us up to the heights and show us the view therefrom. Too many of us are so completely engrossed in the sorting, packing, and labelling that we lose the perfume and essence of the spice of life. The calm, philosophic, and attractive way in which he presents the realities of the world about us should exert a wholesome effect on all but the shallow-minded. Would that we had more of the calls from the lonely and waste places.”
— H. L. Russell, Dean of the College of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin
“There is something clear, high, and noble about this little volume, a quality of thought and of phrase that distinguished it as sharply from the hard and sapless character of official scientific writings on the one hand as from the lax and conscious character of official literary writing on the other. It is the utterance of a true seer, so rare a sound among us since the voices of Carlyle and Emerson ceased to be heard.”
— The Nation
“The book is as uplifting as its title. Mr. Bailey is a naturalist whose idealism, penetrating to the heart of things, blends with large practical knowledge how to make the most of them both for physical and for ethical ends, social and individual.… It is a book for the people, an educational classic.”
— The Outlook
“I have read with great interest my friend Bailey’s new book, ‘The Holy Earth.’ Like all that he writes, this book is unique and cannot fail to give the reader a new respect for Mother Earth.”
— Eugene Davenport, Dean and Director, College of Agriculture, University of Illinois
“I can hardly find words to express my appreciation. Although I have heard the sentiments voiced by the writer with his vital personality behind them, to have them in black and white — amplified — is a double pleasure.… It is so full of wholesome matter in a way not usually thought of by not only farmers but by citizens generally that I am sure it will be of great interest to many readers.”
— Edward Van Alstyne, Director, Bureau of Farmers’ Institutes, Department of Agriculture, State of New York
Copyright © 2015 Counterpoint LLC
Editor’s Introduction © John Linstrom 2015
Foreword © 2015 Wendell Berry
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Bailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde), 1858–1954, author.
The holy earth / Liberty Hyde Bailey; foreword by Wendell Berry.
— Centennial edition.
pages cm
Originally published in 1915 by C. Scribner’s Sons.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Country life. 2. Earth (Planet) 3. Natural resources. 4. Nature. 5. Conservation of natural resources. I. Title.
S521.B16 2015
630—dc23
2015030268
Cover design by Attebery Design
Interior design by VJB/Scribe
Cover photo by Liberty Hyde Bailey, untitled photograph of his daughter Sara May Bailey beside a tree in front of his childhood home in South Haven, Michigan, ca. 1890s. This photograph was digitized directly from Bailey’s glass plate negative for the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum exhibit “Through the Lens of L. H. Bailey” in 2012 and belongs to their collection.
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e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-670-4
Contents
Foreword by Wendell Berry
Editor’s Introduction by John Linstrom
Retrospect
First, the Statement
In the beginning
The earth is good
It is kindly
The earth is holy
Second, the Consequences
The habit of destruction
The new hold
The brotherhood relation
The farmer’s relation
The underlying training of a people
The neighbor’s access to the earth
The subdividing of the land
A new map
The public program
The honest day’s work
The group reaction
The spiritual contact with nature
The struggle for existence: war
The daily fare
The admiration of good materials
The keeping of the beautiful earth
The tones of industry
The threatened literature
The separate soul
The element of separateness in society
The democratic basis in agriculture
The background spaces. — The forest
A forest background for a reformatory
The background spaces. — The open fields
The background spaces. — The ancestral sea
Notes
The Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum
Fifty or so years ago, when I was beginning my effort to learn to write about agriculture, I obviously needed to learn something of what already had been written. My searches through the card catalogue and the stacks of a university library revealed that a good deal more had been written than I was ever going to read, though I skimmed and dabbled no doubt to some improvement of my mind. What I remember most was the frequency with which I came upon books by Liberty Hyde Bailey, who alone was the author of a fairly adequate agricultural library. Until then I was unacquainted even with his name, and I would be a long time learning much about him. But finding his books, leafing through them, skimming and dabbling as I