8 Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrial revolution led, especially in Europe and 91 North America, to overcrowded, filthy cities, damaged countryside, loss of commons,
10 disease and misery. Various intellectuals questioned capitalism, agricultural moderni1 sation and industrial growth. Some were dubbed ‘romantics’, saw nature as a source of 2 inspiration, and advocated a less damaging relationship with the environment. They 31111 include poets like Wordsworth, Blake and Coleridge, writers like Henry Thoreau (1854), 4 and artists like Holman Hunt and John Turner. They inspired twentieth-century environ5 mentalists, but their contribution is ‘more escapist than visionary’ (for a review of 6 romantic environmentalism see Bate, 1991).
7 Drought in the USA midwest Dust Bowl, especially between 1932 and 1938, caused 8 crop loss and soil erosion. The wind-blown dust was apparent as far away as Chicago 9 and Washington, DC. Large numbers were ruined and displaced. The folksinger Woody 20 Guthrie and novelist John Steinbeck commented on the degradation and misery; at first 1 seen as subversives, they helped provoke public and government concern. To counter 2 these problems President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted integrated development of 3 natural resources, and in 1933 he established the US Soil Erosion Service and in 1935
4 its successor, the US Soil Conservation Service.