Power, Lost and Found: America At Century’s End 511Dramatic episodes of air and water pollution, a new knowledge of the
effects of radioactive fallout, and especially the publication of biologist Rachel
Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring opened a new nationwide environmental
movement. Carson’s book became an immediate best seller among middle
class Americans and remains one of the most important works of the 20th
Century. She documented the deadly effects of indiscriminate DDT spraying,
but more importantly revealed a partnership between the federal government,
pesticide manufacturers, user constituencies, and scientists who relied on the
government and pesticide companies for research funding. Carson explained
this connection as a pest control “subgovernment.” Of course these groups
attacked Carson’s conclusions as “science fiction,” but the damage had already
been done and the American people began to doubt their government, as they
were doing on a whole variety of issues in the 1960s.
Issues of air and water pollution particularly troubled the growing subur-
ban middle-class. Business interests had actually boasted that postwar indus-
trial pollution was a sign of American economic progress, but post-war White
suburbanites who wanted attractive communities and clean water for swim-
ming and boating began to question the government. When radioactive fallout
appeared in human milk, Americans were even more alarmed. The suburban
American middle class mobilized to protect the environment because they
FIGuRE 10-6 An airplane spreads insecticide, New Jersey, 1942