"Lime": E.B. White and Self Reliance; C. Kuhne

440 "Lime": E. B. White and Self-Reliance by Cecil Kuhne E B. White (1899-1985)was one of the finest essayists of this century. Per• haps best known as the author of the children's book Charlotte'sWeb, White was also a superb nonfiction writer. His pieces (many of which were clearly tongue-in-cheek) appeared regularly in The New Yorker,where he worked as an editor, and in Harper's,where he submitted monthly columns as a freelancer. Eventually White left New York City to live on a farm in coastal Maine, where he did some of his most brilliant work. A collection of his essays, One Man's Meat, contains a short piece entitled "Lime," written in November 1940. The subject of this article was the allotment of ground lime stone that White received as a farmer, free of charge from the government, under one of the many New Deal programs. White took the three tons of lime, which he sprinkled on the soil of his upper field to improve its alkalinity. But in the process, he admits to some misgivingsfor having done so.

As he cogently points out in this essay,the lime he received from the government was in effect a gift to him from all the taxpayers of the country (whether they liked it or not). He uses the provocative analogy that as he was spreading the lime on his fields, the federal government was spreading the cost over its citizens. The well-worn rationale for such a handout, of course, is that the fertility of the soil is a national concern-one that affects everyone-and there fore the Federal program will benefit all of us. But White sees problems with the logical exten sion of this type of thinking: "... 1believe it also Mr. Kuhne is an attorney in Amarillo, Texas. is true that a government committed to the poli cy of improving the nation by improving the condition of some of the individuals will even tually run into trouble in attempting to distin guish between a national good and a chocolate sundae."

He continues: "I think that one hazard of the 'benefit' form of government is the likelihood that there will be an indefinite extension of bene fits, each new one establishing an easy precedent for the next." After all, says White, think of the women who want a permanent wave for their hair. It could be argued that the satisfaction of that need is also a national good. Then the government would pro vide free permanent waves in the belief that the public wants them and that they provide valuable employment for hairdressers. Government provision of goods and services eventually leads to a nation of people who de pend on the government for their every want and need. Even White felt the pressure to demand more. "I seemed to have lost a little of my grip on life. 1felt that something inside me, some intangi ble substance, was leaching away. 1 also detected a slight sense of being under obligation to some body, and this, instead of arousing my gratitude, took the form of mild resentment-the character istic attitude of a person who has had a favor done him whether he liked it or not."

White was losing touch with his self reliance -just as anyone does when he comes to depend on government handouts. Self-reliance, a charac teristic strongly valued before the New Deal, has declined in importance as government entitle ment programs have grown. We shouldn't be sur prised. D 441 The Population Bomb ... Defused by R. Cort Kirkwood R epetition is the mother"of learning, and there are some popular beliefs that have no basis in fact, but which many Ameri cans simply accept at face value because the news media has repeated them so many times in so many different ways. One such belief is that spaceship Earth has too many inhabitants, that the developing world's population growth inhibits economic development, and that everyone might run out of food, water and natural resources if something isn't done to stop Africans and Latin Americans from having babies. Just a few months ago, the United Nations re leased an alarmist report saying the world's popu lation will reach 10 billion by 2025 and 14 billion by 3000 if women everywhere don't start using II10re and better birth control techniques. The headlines were predictable. Ask average people on the street whether population growth is a problem, and they will answer, yes-faster than they can tell you what team Mickey Mantle played for, or who wrote Huckleberry Finn.