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James Jarvis

HI796

Why was the chemical industry so fearful of Rachel Carson?


Rachel Carson, author of possibly the most influential piece of environmental literature in the twentieth century and a product of its time from the 1960s. Through Silent Spring published in book form in 1962 Carson not only informed the public about the ills of general insecticides use within the environment, she took it upon herself to challenge the big engines of American infrastructure; the chemical industry, along with agribusiness, academic researchers and governmental agencies. The chemical industry was right to be fearful, their practices and credentials were under threat. By aiming her writing style for an audience without strong scientific knowledge, Carson was able to broaden her influence beyond the scientific base, which in turn enabled her to widen her net of mobilised readers. This thesis will analyse key aspects of Rachel Carsons affiliation to the chemical industry. A basic outline of Carsons professional background will displayed in order to understand what made Carson important, not only as an astute researcher but also her role in a male dominated field. Key aspects are the push for a balance in nature and her gifts as a writer which allowed her to become a celebrity author. The document in question, Silent Spring, will be analysed from a literal and cultural perspective to portray why it had so much impact on a mass audience during a time of cultural unrest of the Cold War era. Silent Spring was literally unique through Rachel Carsons interweave of comprehensive scientific fact, first-hand accounts, and vivid imagery which is evident inside the introductory chapter A Fable for Tomorrow. The reason as to why the chemical industry was so fearful about Rachel Carson is significantly down to what they stood too loose or at least what they perceived to loose. The three main subjects at risk were loss of sales revenue, increased governmental regulation, and, most importantly, credibility of a professional and moral issue. The strategy and insistency of the counterattacks levelled against Carson were representative of the apprehension on the part of the chemical industry. This was understandable. However, what is of concern was the apparent sexist nature of the antagonism directed at Rachel Carson. Examples of these counterattacks will be explored. To finish, a relevant outline of Silent Springs legacy will be defined. How exactly it helped to bring about changes within the infrastructure of the chemical industry, policy introductions, and its influence over bringing the environmentalist movement in to the mainstream. Rachel Carson can essentially be described as an author first and biologist second, and that is the formula of her success. Born in Pennsylvania on 22nd May, 1907, Carson showed a talent for writing even at a young age and
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James Jarvis

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she soon showed an interest in natural sciences of which her career focused upon. 1 Carson graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women in 1928 which is the foundation of her educational credentials. She later achieved a masters degree in zoology and taught at John Hopkins and the University of Maryland. Finding work with a position with in the U.S. Bureau of Fishers, now named the Fish and Wildlife Service, and brief work in the bureaus war information office in Chicago, Carson combined her two interests as she wrote articles and short publications for a scientific field. She eventually worked herself to the position of editor in chief.2 Being employed for scientific governmental agencies would prove to be the most fundamental part of Carsons strength against counterattacks from her targets. It provided her with a strong base for defending her credentials by demonstrating knowledge and experience in a respectable working environment. Since it would turn out that the practices of government agencies was one of her targets of Silent Spring. Prior to the landmark literature, Rachel Carson published two books that propelled her in to the public eye. The first, The Sea Around Us (1951), afforded her the gravitas in the literally field. A book that discussed the sea and its life became an instant best-seller.3 The title won the National Book Award for non-fiction and Carson was received in to the Academy of Arts and letters. 4 The revenues from The Sea Around US afforded her the financial security to pursue her writing full-time and hence resign from Fish and Wildlife. Carsons next book, and second best-seller, The Edge of the Sea (1955) secured her position as a celebrity author of the non-fiction genre.5 Her prior professional successes and prestige have been integral in affording her the backing of reputable publishers, serialization in the New Yorker and Houghton Mifflin, since her next work provided a controversial storm that was inevitably going to attack not only the title in question but Carson herself. Silent Spring focuses on Rachel Carsons concern for the future of the environment under threat by the universal application of insecticides, especially dichloro-dephenyl-trichloro-ethane (DDT). In reading Silent Spring it is apparent that Carsons use of prose is extremely skilled. A key and concurrent aspect of the title is the handling of factual information while at the same time avoiding alienating neither the general readership nor the scientific association. Accessibility is the big theme of this title, at first
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Linda Lear, Introduction , Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: First Mariner Books, 2002) pp xi-xii Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001) p 20 3 Ibid., p 23 4 Linda Lear, Introduction , Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: First Mariner Books, 2002) p xiv 5 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 23

James Jarvis

HI796

published in a serialized form for the New Yorker and adding sources in its book form. Ultimately the aim, or mission as it can otherwise be called, of Silent Spring was to first inform the public of the environmental dangers and human costs of insecticide use while at the same time exposing the irresponsible and indiscriminate practices and polices of the chemical industry unchecked by government agencies, agribusiness and academic researchers.6 Rachel Carson also criticised the American capitalism in to what she saw as the reason behind pointless overproduction. 7 Second, Carson looked to bring into question the nature of human behaviour inside the framework of naturalised environments. The final aspect of Silent Spring was to mobilise the public by influencing their attitudes towards insecticide products and therefore strive towards maintaining a balanced environment.8 It is these aims that the chemical industry found Rachel Carson to be a threat of the highest magnitude. However, these aims can only have the highest potential if portrayed in a successful framework of writing skills of the highest order while providing accomplished scientific knowledge to effectively persuader her audience. In referencing Lawrence Buells work about techniques for effective environmental literature, it is evident that Rachel Carson had used what Buell described as environmental imagination; an effective method to reconnect readers to nature through attitudes, feelings, images, and narratives. 9 Silent Spring opens with these elements in her introduction titled A Fable for Tomorrow. The metaphors used evoked strong imagery that directly related to those fairy tale stories of old. Starting off by painting an idyllic scene, THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings, Carson then uses terms such as evil spell and witchcraft before ending with the poignant sentence The people had done it themselves when referring to the silence of nature.10 As Killingsworth and Palmer observed, Rachel Carson explicitly used such apocalyptic narrative as a form of shock tactic technique in order to elevate the problem at hand in the readers minds. What Carson did with A Fable for Tomorrow was not to paint a picture of the present but a future scenario, a worse case scenario where agriculture died, human illnesses, and sudden unexplained deaths. Throughout the book the language
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Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, pp 1, 29 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: First Mariner Books, 2002) p 8-9 8 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, pp 1, 20-32 9 Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment In the U.S. and Beyond (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001) pp 1-2 10 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, pp 1-3
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conjured the fear of the end of the world and thus placed urgency to the masses in what could have been a stale and wholly academic writing. 11 However, it is wrong to wholly summarise Silent Spring due to the interpretation of the introducing chapter. Rachel Carson reigned in her creative ability and focused on the matter at hand: to develop a persuading case study of the highest quality while at the same time maintaining credibility. Not blighted with an exclusive scientific discourse, Silent Spring explained, with accessibility, the problems relating to DDT through numerous principle sources. Priscilla Coit Murphy considered the fifty-five pages of reference material provided Carson the legitimating needed for her argument.12 It made it much harder for to centre counterattacks on a collective than an individual. Among the sources, however, was the efficient use of personal accounts in order to maintain a human connection to the reader was used liberally throughout Silent Spring. For instance in the chapter And No Birds Sing a housewifes letter was quoted in order to illustrate the despair of the situation, as After several years of DDT spray, the town is almost devoid of [prior abundance of] robins and starlings.13 Personal accounts helped to provide an environmental awakening for readers in a physical environment that has increasingly been composed by geopolitics, technology, and capital. 14 It is clear that Silent Spring had a rhythm of an investigative, journalistic style.15 The framework seemed to set a pattern starting with anecdotes and dramatic themes such as [man] has written a depressing record of destruction. Then it is supported in the middle through a charge of source material and accuracy before concluding with some form of philosophical commentary, Confusion, delusions, loss of memory, mania a heavy price to pay.16 Each chapter in this book followed the format of drama, fact, and philosophy. 17 Rachel Carson indeed used contemporary topics in order to arouse significant and relating attitudes. In part with the apocalyptic narrative the constant reference to the Cold War was used, in particularly the radioactive compound Strontium 90 that was an integral part of the controversial atomic bomb tests in Nevada and New Mexico. In fact, Carson went so far
Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer, Millennial Ecology: The Apocalyptic Narrative from Silent Spring to Global Warming , Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown (eds.), Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996) pp 49 12 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, pp 1, 29 13 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, p 103 14 Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment In the U.S. and Beyond, pp 5, 18 15 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 10 16 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, pp 85, 198 17 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 10
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James Jarvis

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as to do an outline of the possible symptoms of radiation, a cell uncoupler for one and off course cancer. Another Cold War theme found in Silent Spring is the sense of escalation. It directly relates to the Arms Race that saw the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. trying to best each other with weapons of dangerous potential. The escalation of DDT to combat evolving pests is deemed by Carson as a central problem equal to nuclear extinction. 18 In associating the anxious consciousness towards atomic energy, the book effectively translated those concerns to the emerging world of chemicals. Through a meticulous writing style Carson had managed to bring about the message of insecticide as a dangerous agent in natures environment. However, Silent Spring was somewhat fortuitous since it had the advantage of emerging during a tumultuous time in American history, namely the Cultural Revolution. The notion that humanity would be better served living in simpler circumstances emerged. For the first time, a universal concern for the consequences of human activity found itself in scholarly discourse and popular culture during the 1960s. Environmentalism as a movement amassed momentum that eventually took form in cultural protests. Environmental costs had succeeded in entering mainstream politics. 19 Other noted works that was published during this decade were Paul Ehrlichs Population Bomb and The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Harding, both published in 1968. It would be foolish to suggest that Silent Spring started the Environmental Movement of the 1960s, however it is not a stretch to propose that the book did accentuate it or at the very least helped bring it into the limelight. After all, like Rachel Carsons The Sea Around Us, Silent Spring created a national sensation and made cemented her place as a literally celebrity.20 National success coupled with her aims, the accessibility of her writing, numerous sources to highlight her credentials, and the fact it arrived on the cusp of the Cultural Revolution that saw many changes that fractured the conservative order in America, the chemical industry had much to fear and loose. The first risk for the chemical industry, and the least, was the potential loss in sales revenues from the often-quoted $300-million pesticide business. The fact of the matter was, that there were no good alternative from the established commercial agricultural pesticides. Over sixty percent of retails sales went to famers, an established base for which the industry had secure revenue from and on a mass stock, even if individual home owners decided to avoid purchasing the pesticides. However, there is still a

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, pp 8, 203, 234 Hal k. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945 (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1988) pp 83-5 20 Ibid., p 88
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potential forty percent loss that the chemical industry faced when Silent Spring still appeared. 21 A second risk that the chemical industry faced was the possible loss of millions in revenue from government programs. The amount of government purchases was never stated due to the unpredictability of the programs that were subject to bids. Nevertheless, government expenses would have represented a fair portion of the estimated chemical use which was with in the region of $700 million and $1 billion per year. 22 The third risk was worries over the loss of prestige and credibility since the chemical industry portrayed itself as the parties which were concerned with public welfare. If pesticides were to be banned then the high regard of an established sector would be at endangered.23 This is in turn related to the era of the 1960s antiestablishment and therefore brought a sense of reality to these beliefs among the hierarchy of the chemical industry. However, the greatest risk to the industry was the presumption of increased oversight, control, and regulation from outside the borders of the chemical industry and its friendly governmental agencies. The potential for new regulations was forecasted to be more costly than the decline of revenues and loss of public relation legitimacy. The concern was that legislation could become so restrictive that it would take the profit out of research efforts into new products.24 These four risks that concerned the chemical industry justified there efforts in counterattack Silent Spring through costly public-relation expenditures in order to preserve there commercial standing in American agriculture. The campaign can essentially be split into two camps; first, to criticise the book in terms of content and research and, second, to discredit Rachel Carsons character. The industry spent over a quarter of a million dollars in order to win the fight against Silent Spring, thus representing their fears in their actions. A logical assessment of Silent Spring was that it was wholly biased and presented only one case rather than formulating the apparent advantages of synthetic pesticides. 25 The chemical industrys official approach was to proceed in the positive offensive avenue by lauding the benefits and necessity of pesticide use, proclaiming its safety, and reassuring the public that research was thorough. 26 This is a direct challenge to one of Carsons

Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 96 Ibid., p 96-7 23 Ibid., p 97 24 Ibid., p 98 25 Hal k. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945, p 88 26 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 99
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attacks on an industry which she accused of denying any environmental losses and only dealing with half-truths.27 The booklet, Fact and Fancy, by the National Agricultural Chemicals Association (NACA) claimed that Silent Spring was grounded only in accusations without fact. 28 A parody of the chapter A Fable for Tomorrow was released by Monsanto, titled The Desolate Year used the apocalyptic narrative technique in its favour to give disturbing imagery of a world without insecticides.29 The method of Carsons approach to scientific material was also in question with criticisms that a book about science should be targeted to an audience of the scientific field. Federick Stare put forward the idea that Miss Carson writes with passion and with beauty, but with very little scientific detachment.30 Essentially Silent Spring could be deemed to little more than propaganda. Another criticism levelled at Rachel Carson was the questionable use of numerous sources. Her critics provided the idea that she was name-dropping in order to divert attention away from her lack of scientific validity. 31 The book seemed to depend too much on informants rather than Carsons own research.32 Yet when sources were checked a new claim emerged, the sources were out-of-date and did not represent the modifications that have developed since publication. Another counter attack approach by the chemical industry, as mentioned, was to discredit Rachel Carson as a person, yet such criticisms were sexist in nature. The gendered language used represented the times where women were seen to be innately more connected to the natural world. All attacks, from trade journals to popular news magazines such as Chemical and Engineering and Time, respectively, were almost all written by men. They were suspicious of Carson who was an independent scholar who approached the scientific field in an unaccustomed way, namely targeting a mass audience.33 Michael B. Smith highlighted the most sexist review of Silent Spring appeared in the Chemical and Engineering News magazine in October 1962. William Darbys, Silence Miss Carson! said that Rachel Carson was a uniformed woman was speaking of that which she knew not, she was voicing her opinions in a mans world and that female silence was
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, pp 86 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 99 29 The Desolate Year , Monsanto Magazine (October 1962) pp 4-9 30 Frederick J. Stare, Some Comments on Silent Spring , Nutrition Reviews (January 1963) p 1 31 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 104 32 Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer, Millennial Ecology: The Apocalyptic Narrative from Silent Spring to Global Warming , Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown (eds.), Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America, p 31 33 Michael B. Smith, Silence Miss Carson Science, Gender, and the reception of Silent Spring , Feminist Studies, Vol.27, No.3 (Autumn, 2001) p 735
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expected. 34 Other terms used against Carson was that she was a woman out of control, a spinster, and hysterical.35 Despite her detractors, Silent Spring and Rachel Carson had an achievement and a legacy that will be associated, despite how brief the influence was. President John F. Kennedy investigated Carsons claims as soon as he read her thesis, in particularly the subjected residents of aerial spraying, which in turn cumulated in the eventual domestic ban of DDT production six years after Carsons death in 1964. 36 Readers were compelled to write letters in their numbers, Carson had succeeded in her aim to mobilise the public.37 Initially environmentalism experienced a boom in mainstream politics at the turn of the 1970s with numerous legislations; such as the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, the 1972 Water Pollution Control Act, and the 1976 Toxic Substances Act. However, by the end of the 1970s, environmentalists faced a hostile mainstream culture and were labelled as pathological crisis-mongers, apocalypse abusers, and false prophets. 38 Fundamentally, despite decades of awareness and environmental protests the reduction of the use of pesticides has still yet to take effect. Therefore, in the bigger picture it could be deemed that the appropriate fears towards Rachel Carson by the chemical industry were ultimately a false one. Nonetheless, it is integral to recognise the enormity that one person had succeeded an individual who dared to face the corporate world and created enough leeway to influence initial changes.

Michael B. Smith, Silence Miss Carson Science, Gender, and the reception of Silent Spring , Feminist Studies, p 738 35 Linda Lear, Introduction , Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: First Mariner Books, 2002) p xiv, xvii 36 Ibid., xvii-iii 37 Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, p 99 38 Federick Buell, From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century (New York: Routledge, 2004) p 10, 34

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rachel Carson, Introduction by Linda Lear, Silent Spring (New York: First Mariner Books, 2002). Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001). Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment In the U.S. and Beyond (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001). Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer, Millennial Ecology: The Apocalyptic Narrative from Silent Spring to Global Warming, Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown (eds.), Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996). John M. Steadman, Chaucers Eagle: A Contemplative Symbol, PMLA, Vol. 75, No.3 (June 1960) pp 153-59. Hal k. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945 (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1988). The Desolate Year, Monsanto Magazine (October 1962). Frederick J. Stare, Some Comments on Silent Spring, Nutrition Reviews (January 1963) 1-4 Michael B. Smith, Silence Miss Carson Science, Gender, and the reception of Silent Spring, Feminist Studies, Vol.27, No.3 (Autumn, 2001) 733752. Federick Buell, From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century (New York: Routledge, 2004).

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