Ead the sidebar titled "A Champion for the Soil" from Years of Dust. "Of all the countries of the world," Hugh Bennett said, "we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized." Americans changed the land more than "the combined activities of volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes and all the excavations of mankind since the beginning of history." Bennett became the first chief of the Soil Conservation Service. "Big Hugh," the son of a North Carolina cotton planter, was a graduate of the University of North Carolina specializing in soil science. He once asked an unwilling congressional committee to expand the soil conservation program. As he spoke, a cloud of plains dust enveloped Washington. "This, gentleman," he said, "is what I have been talking about." The committee approved his request.