 Starring Louis Bromfield in Peace from the Harvest, a Thanksgiving play on the cavalcade of America sponsored by Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. On our program tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Dupont presents Louis Bromfield, both as author and as storyteller. His play, Peace from the Harvest, is a story of the land. In Mr. Bromfield's words, a story of the earth, which is the foundation of everything. Louis Bromfield as author and storyteller of Feast from the Harvest on the cavalcade of America. This is the story of a family and of a valley and of a piece of land somewhere in the wide, rich expanse of these United States. The story has no hero, no heroine. It's a story about people. It is about the American people who in the past have been and in the future must be everything this country is and can be. The story happens on Thanksgiving night where the people of the valley, young, old, and middle age, are gathered together in the assembly rooms of the Valley Church to celebrate the richness of the harvest that is to feed us all, ourselves, our allies, and perhaps a little later, the starving women and children of our enemy. It is the tale of the land and of fertility without which all else, even civilization itself, waver, thickens, and dies. It is the story of the earth, which is the foundation of everything. Now, folks, the scallop oysters and pumpkin pie and cider for everybody over in the church kitchen. Wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. Now, it's Thanksgiving, folks. And before we fall on the food, the Reverend Simpson's got a few words to say. Just a few words of thanksgiving for all the plenty we got here in the valley. Plenty like nobody else on this earth has got. Yeah, come on up here on the platform, Reverend. All right now, quiet, quiet, everybody. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank thee for all the plenty, the peace, the beauty we have here in our valley, for the wide fields of corn and the fat cattle, the fruit that comes with the rich harvest scene. And Lord, we ask a blessing upon the boys who are leaving the valley to fight to preserve our liberties. Upon Sidney Wells and Johnny Wells and Hilbert Noyes and upon Henry Drake from Tennessee who is visiting us and going away tomorrow. Bless them all, O Lord, and bring them back as you brought back their fathers and grandfathers from other wars. We thank thee, O Lord, and implore thy blessing. Amen. That was mighty fine, Reverend. Thank you, sir. All right now, folks, the grand march to supper. Get your partners. Here we go. That was nice of the preacher to ask a special blessing for you, Henry. I sure appreciate it. Everybody's mighty nice to strangers up here. We'd better go and eat. Oh, I don't want to eat right now. I'm not very hungry. Can you wait? Sure, I can wait. What's the matter with you tonight, Henry? Such a pretty night, moonlight and all. Seems a shame to waste it inside. It's a mighty pretty night. What do you want to do? How about going outside for a little while? It's not cold. Your coat's right there on the wall. I'll get it. Well, what's the matter, Mary? You and Henry hungry? We're just waiting until the others get food. Here's your coat, Mary. Oh, you're going sparking there. Ain't no reason why young soldiers shouldn't go sparking with a pretty girl like Mary. There's been a lot of sparking right here in the Valley Church, you know. You know, that's where I got my wife just outside there. Now take good care of a young man. You bet I will. She's a mighty pretty girl. Good luck. Come on, Mary. This cow, it lasts a long time. Oh, he didn't mean anything. Just men kind like. He's beautiful. I don't guess there's any place in the world more beautiful in our Valley. Joy, I better take my arm. Where are we going? Just over there on the cedar trees. There's an old bench there. In the graveyard. Aren't you afraid? Of course, I'd be afraid of. All my family's in there. My grandfather and my great-grandparents way back beyond that. Way, way back to the time of the Indians. That's so. Look at the white mist down along the creek. White, new, clean wool. You know, sometimes on a night like this, I imagine them coming into the Valley for the first time long ago. The first settlers coming up the Valley down there where the mist is. Don't it scare you? No, Henry. There's an owl. Down in my country, they say you better turn your shoe over tonight or you'll have bad luck. Really? Well, you're a funny girl. But I kind of like that. Even if you aren't afraid, of course. Mary. What, Henry? Cat got you down? Is that train down there? Yes. I'm going away to the army tomorrow. Yes, I know that, Henry. Uh, sure you're warm enough? Maybe you better snuggle up a bit. Sure, Henry. Mary. Yes, what is it, Henry? What do you want to say? What was your first kinfolk in the Valley called? First kinfolk? Their names were Jonathan and Mariah Ferguson. They're buried right over there. Those two tombstones that are covered with ivy and kind of crumbling. Jonathan, Mariah. Mm-hmm. Funny names like you don't hear anymore. They're a little girl called Sapphira. She was my great-great-grandmother. She's lying over there under the weeping world. Don't I have people go on and get mad over and over since the beginning of everything? Mm-hmm. Sometimes on nights like this, I think I can hear the sound of wagon wheels and voices calling out way down there in the valley. Sometimes I think people don't die at all. But the spirit just goes on and on forever. You think they're still down there in the mist? Yes, in a way. They're everywhere here in the valley. They help to make the valley. Listen, the foxes are barking up on the ridge. They begin barking about this time of year. They're mating season. Listen, settlers must have had them, too. They break into the valley. I wonder what it was like then, what they were like, both for a settler. A boy and a girl looking down into the midst of the valley, where long ago the first wagon train of settlers moved into the richest country on earth. So came the family of Jonathan and Mariah Ferguson out of the east. Listen, you can hear the singing of Solomon, the negro who rode with them. A freedman coming into the new wilderness. Beneath the wagon swing crates of live ducks and chicken, and behind them follow two cows, a young bull and a pair of goats. In one wagon rides a woman. She is nursing a baby. Another child, a boy of six, rides at the back of the wagon, peering out. He is watching for birds and deer and chipmunks as the wagons move along the tunnel of green, dappled with the sunlight of the warm, kind months of June. A man and a boy guide the teens of oxen as long poles. One is a hired man called Ezra Pulsifer, and a boy 15 years old is called Ezekiel. These are good people, strong people, religious people. What you see is something out of the Old Testament. The story is as old as Moses, as old as time itself. This is the beginning of America. Listen, you can hear the man and boy with the long poles calling out to the faithful beasts that have drawn the wagons for a long week over the trail. Hi, buck. Hi, Barry. Hey, you boys. Hello there. Up now. OK. Ready? And the voice of the woman on the seat of the high wagon, singing an old song to the child at her breath. You can see a little girl, dark-haired, gypsy-eyed, running along beside the wagon in her long skirt. She carries a bright feather in her hand and a little bag made of cotton cloth. She has walked beside the wagon all the way from Maryland because this new world is a wonderful place filled with wonderful things. Off the wagon and let the fire come out. Hold up, hold up, hold up there. Hold up enough. It's fire. I'll give you a boost up. Yes, yes, give me a hand. The feather I found. What is it? It's an eagle feather. A feather from the Gold Eagle. What if you catch me again? Oh, that's the same thing, Mommy. Look, a stone shines like a diamond. It's quartz. And a sharp stone. I found it at the creek. And look, I've got my finger on it. That's an arrowhead. The Indians make them. Will we meet any Indians, Mama? Uh, I hope not. When can Papi and I catch more fish? You'll have to ask about it. Perhaps that's the next thing. Are Indians terrible, Mommy? Do they stop and burn up people? Oh, you mustn't think about such things to fire up. I'll show. It's the baby. And up ahead on a mare called Dale rides with a father. His name is Jonathan Ferguson, and he looks scotch like his name, with black curly hair and blue eyes. He is a big man, a strong man, a tough man who has fought Indians and the border people. He rides easily, a musket slung across the saddle, a knife and a tomahawk at his belt. He is no green traveler. He knows these hills and forests and marshes and streams. It is a rich country of green valleys and of hills, piled up by the great glaciers 200,000 years ago. Now look, the trail crosses the crest of a hill and down below in the misty light of the early morning, read the winding, clear stream, flashing with fish, and boarded by green marshes where the wild ducks fly up at the distant sound of the chalking wagon rears. The crest of the hill, Jonathan Ferguson, pulls up the mare and raises his hand as a signal for the caravan to fall. He is thinking, perhaps if you listen hard enough, you can hear his snork. What a country, what a beautiful country. We've been a train in our history. Make some man, believe in God. All right, look, there it is. What, Jonathan? Our place, where we're going to settle. There are the knots between the hills of the river. Our spring's just beyond it. It's our new world. All ours, Mariah, for the taken. Come on, boys, we'll make it be evening. All right, high five, high five, high five, high five. The little girl runs beside the wagon with my great-great-grandmother, Safara. The Indian's mother's one of her brothers. He's buried over there in her father's mother. And the oldest one, Ezekiel, who was driving the oxen, he died at New Orleans, fighting with Andrew Jackson. The little girl, Safara, built the old part of our house the part where my room is. It's nice to know, Safara, back about your tinfoils. Oh, it's easy here in the valley. Sometimes I feel like they're all around us, like they weren't there at all. Over there is my great-grandfather, John. He was Safara's son. He died fighting the Nantesians. I had a great-grandpappy in that valley. He was on the other side. And there they are with Uncle Benjamin. He was a senator. He saw the women's man. He was a colonel in the war against the Spanish. They have another brother called Edworth. He's got to be president of a big back down New York. I don't know much about him. He left Dad's night by another farm. He isn't buried here, though. He's in New York someplace. Mary is right. They are all there. About her. Unseen in the moonlight in the misty valley. Jonathan and Mariah. Safara and Safara's son, John, who died at Antietam. And Benjamin, the senator, and Edward, the banker. They are all there because they are a part of the valley itself, like the trees and the fields and the houses. They are a part of America. They are not dead so long as America lives. They can never die. They are all there watching Mary and Henry on the moss-covered old bench in the churchyard. If you listen carefully, you can hear them. You can hear Jonathan speaking and Safara and Benjamin and all the others there in the moonlight and the mist. Listen. Jonathan is speaking. Jonathan the Hunter, the first one to come into the valley. Who's Safara? Yes, Papi. Look, Mariah. That's little Mary over there on the bench with her young Mary. You know, Mariah, little Mary, Elmer Paine's little girl. She's a mighty nice-looking young man, Jonathan, but awful tongue-tied, like you were that evening back in the orchard in Frederickstown. Remember, Jonathan? Evening, Thomas Jefferson came to Frederickstown to make his speech. Sure, I remember. Oh, here comes my boy, John. Hello, John. Hello, Ma. Say, our marriage turned out to be a mighty pretty young girl. Funny, I proposed to Heston on that same bench before I went off to Antioch. Oh, here comes Benjamin, the senator. Good evening, Ben. Good evening all. How do you do? My brother Ed, the banker's coming, too. All the way to New York. Here he is now. Hello, Ed. Good evening, kinfolk. You've come a long way. I heard something important was happening. I heard the family was about to grow. Yes, they're over there on the bench. See, he can't quite get to the point. She's too shy to help him. She's been telling him all about us. Maybe he needs a push. You were never shy, Sapphira, not where young men were concerned. Get behind him. Give him courage. Don't you worry, Sapphira. He'll get to the point. He'll ask him. I see it all spread out ahead just as if it was the past. They'll get married maybe tomorrow before he goes away. And he'll come back from the war all right. And they'll have four children. He's going to be a great engineer and do great things for his country. And he'll take Mary away from the valley. And in the end, they'll both come back to the valley to sleep with us. You always knew everything, Marat. You always did. I'm always glad when somebody in the family gets married or is born or dies, it brings us all together again. Where are you going, Sapphira? Oh, oh, don't call out like that. You might frighten them. I'm just going to give Mary's young man the push he needs. Oh, it matters, Sapphira. No, Jonathan. Let it go. Tell me where that wind has come from suddenly on a still night like this out of nowhere. It's just blowing here all about us. You go over there. The tree's not moving. Better lean a little closer. I'm afraid you're getting cold. That's better. Now, if you put your head on my shoulder, you'll be good and comfortable. That is nice, isn't it? Mary, I love you. I love you, Mary. Going to say anything? I love you, too. Will you marry me? Yes, I will. Funny how it's hard to say things like that. I just felt as if somebody had given me a push from behind. It's been a lovely Thanksgiving day. I guess we're pretty lucky. We're lucky, all right. There's only one thing that would make me luckier. Not him, eh? If you'd marry me tomorrow, before I go away. It's all for quick. I'd have to think. But it don't matter, Mary. If we love each other, how quick it is. All right, Henry. Tomorrow then. Honey, it's just as if somebody pushed me then. Oh, that's true supper. Maybe we'd better go in. Oh, no. Not yet, Mary. So nice here. Just the way we are. Mary, Mary, Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. Yes, Carol. Mary, get in here. Mary, give me a wave of heart. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary. Praise the laws that are the mighty mission, for the Lord without the only mission. Praise the laws that the every mission and the law stand free. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. And by the Centerville news, for those in Pleasant Valley who have done most toward raising food for the war effort, eh, the Henry Harris, one war bond for the biggest yield for acre of soybeans, German Nussbaum, one war bond for the best acre of truck gardens, Paul Dinski, one war bond for the finest exhibit of home canned goods, good for the war bond for the best yield on 102 bushels, raising with her own hands the finest steer in Pleasant Valley. I just heard that Mary's got something else to tell her. Go ahead, Mary, and tell them. Go on and tell them, what's the matter? What are you scared of? You ain't ashamed, are you? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, back there. Close that door before we get blown out of here. Now tell them, Mary, go on. All right, then I'll be married tomorrow. We want you all to come to the wedding. All right, I'll tell them for you. Mary and Henry are getting married tomorrow. And they won't join the choir in singing a good night hymn. All right, Ed, let it go. This is our America, the rich, abundant America of yesterday and today and tomorrow, the America which will win this war and go on as a great nation, believing forever in the power and the rights of the people, an America made up of Mary Payne and Henry Drake and Maria Paul Dinski and Herman Nussbaum and all the others, the people loved by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. It is a great tradition, the greatest tradition the world has ever known since the beginning of time. Living in it, we can only go forward to victory. Thank you, Louis Bromfield. As never before, Americans may offer thanksgiving for the harvest this year. Our American farmers have had to call on their wives and youngsters to help in the fields. They have worked with fewer and fewer hired hands. They have worked their land facing shortages in farm machinery, in transportation, just when machines and transportation were needed most. Under hard conditions without precedent, our farmers have had to produce food not only for us, not only for the millions of men in the services, but also for our allies. Somehow working day and night, they have done the job, done the impossible. The harvest is in, the greatest harvest in our country's history. We may well bow our heads and give thanks this Thanksgiving day. Farmers are also growing farm crops for industry, which industry is turning into products essential to the war effort. You may not fully appreciate this new increasing outlet for agricultural products. To carry at one time all of the products from farm and forest purchased by the DuPont Company alone in one pre-war year would require a line of 50,000 giant 5-ton trucks rolling bumper-to-bumper over 236 miles of highway. That is approximately the distance from Washington, D.C. to New York City. Today there would be far more loads than that. And DuPont represents only one unit of America's industrial chemistry. Wood pulp and cotton linters, the fuzz that stays on cotton seed after the fibers are removed are the sources of cellulose for the chemist. Cellulose goes into explosives, but it's also the source of cellophane, of rayon, of motion picture and x-ray film, of plastics and many other chemical products. Corn is another product of agriculture that is used by the chemist in making commercial dynamite, a basic product as essential to agriculture, mining and construction as smokeless powder is to war. Black seed and cotton seed reach the chemist as vegetable oils used in the manufacture of paints, varnishes, enamels and lacquers in making soap and many other industrial and household products. Industrial chemistry buys quantities of vegetable oils. Peanut oil is another one used primarily by food chemists. This year farmers have more than double their acreage planted to peanuts from two million acres to more than four. And today every American farmer knows the soybean. America's 1942 soybean crop is estimated at more than 200 million bushels, which means something like two billion pounds of soybean oil. Through chemistry soybeans become paint and varnish, medicines, glycerin, soaps, linoleum, adhesives, paper coatings, glue, plastics and also food, salad oil, cooking oil, vegetable shortening and even ice cream. From molasses and grain DuPont makes industrial alcohol. Also from molasses and grain DuPont obtains carbon dioxide essential in the manufacture of dry ice to safeguard foodstuffs. From the same farm products comes the lactic acid used in the tanning of leather and other industrial applications. This partnership between American agriculture and American industry, especially the chemical industry, is working night and day to win the war and win it fast. These farm crops used by industry, where when peace is won again, serve more and more people as better things for better living through chemistry. Next week, ladies and gentlemen, Cavalcade will be privileged to present for the first time ever on the air a dramatization of the life and work of the celebrated Australian nurse, Sister Elizabeth Kenny, whose treatment for infantile paralysis has brought her world recognition. Miss Madeline Carroll will be our star and will portray Sister Kenny. Be sure to be with us next Monday when Cavalcade presents the dramatization of the life and work of Sister Elizabeth Kenny, who will appear on our program speaking from Minneapolis, where she is now engaged in training nurses in her method of treatment. On tonight's broadcast, James McCallion played the boy, Cherita Bauer, the girl. The orchestra and musical score were under the direction of Don Burry. This is Clayton Collier, sending best wishes from Dupont. It was going to come to you from the door. This is an national broadcasting company.