Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

same parathion, workers handling foliage that had been treated a month earlier collapsed and
went into s hock, and es caped death only through s killed medical attention.
Does Indiana still raise any boys who roam through woods or fields and might eve n explore the
margins of a river? If so, who guarde d the pois oned a rea to kee p out any who might wander in,
in mis guided s earch for uns poiled nature? Who kept vigilant watch to tell the innocent stroller
th at the fields he was about to enter were deadly—all their vegetation coated with a lethal
film? Yet at s o fearful a ris k the farmers , with none to hi nder the m, waged their nee dles s war
on blackbirds. In each of thes e situations , one turns away to ponde r the ques tion: W ho has
made the decis ion that s ets in motion thes e chains of pois onings , this ever-widening wave of
death that s preads out, like ripples when a pe bble is droppe d into a s till pond? W ho has placed
in one pan of the s cales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other
the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers , the lifeles s remains of the birds that fell before the
uns elective bludgeon of ins ecticidal pois ons? Who has decided —who has the righ t to decide—
for the countles s legions of people who were not cons ulte d that the s upre me value is a world
without ins ects , even though it be als o a s terile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bi rd in
flight? The decis ion is that of the authoritarian te mporarily entrus ted with power; he has made
it duri ng a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the orde red world of nature
still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.