Introduction

In 1978, for the original version of this book, I wrote in and of an America that manufacturing had made, literally and figuratively. I wrote in Vermont, in a converted one-room schoolhouse overlooking a dairy farm. The hayfields, the cows gleaning them, the barns, and the machinery fitted together like tiles in the mosaic of agricultural self-sufficiency that underlay American prosperity since the first few starving years in the colonies. Nestled in a stunning mountain valley deep in rural New England, this farm nevertheless exemplified the importance of science, technology, and manufacturing to every facet of American society. Its very existence depended upon science, embodied in breeding and inoculating the cows, fine-tuning their feed mixes, and testing the milk, as well as upon an arsenal of equipment: tractors, manure spreaders, hay balers, feed mixers, conveyor belts, milking machines, storage facilities, testing equipment, and on and on.