In Holland we found another of mankind's great achievements -- the reclamation of the ocean floor for farming.

Holland is a land of about 8 1/4 million acres, divided into two almost equal parts -- above and below high-tide level. It is inhabited by 8 million industrious people. Its land included the great delta of the North Sea built up with the roducts of erosion sculptured out of the lands of Germany and Switzerland and northeastern France, brought down by the Rhine and Meuse Rivers. Now 45 percent of the area lies below high-tide level and one-fourth lies below mean sea level. The Dutch from time immemorial have been carrying on an unending battle with the sea. They have become expert in filching land from the grasp of the angry waters of the North Sea.

If the United States were as densely populated per square mile of cultivated land as Holland, the population of the United States would be 1 1/4 billion. The density of population of Holland has called for an increase of its land area.

Rather than to seek additional land by conquest of its neighbors it has turned to the conquest of the sea.

The Zuider-Zee project, two centuries in the planning, is Holland's masterpiece in a 2,000-year battle with the North Sea. This project adds more than 550,000 acres of new land to Holland's territory, converting the old salt Zuider-Zee into a sweet-water lake renamed the Yssel Meer.

The Dutch have built great dikes to dam off the sea and have pumped the water out of the basins with great pumping plants. They have diked off the sea and dewatered the land, leached it of its salt, and converted it into productive farm land. We stood on fertile farm land that was the floor of the sea only 7 years earlier, but now is divided into farms equipped with fine houses and great barns (fig. 14). At a cost of about $200 an acre, this land was reclaimed from the sea and divided into farms.

Figure 14. -- A Dutch farm in the Wieringermeer Polder of the Netherlands. Only 7 years before this picture was taken this land was covered by the North Sea.

The Dutch by this means have created a new agricultural paradise into which only select farmers may enter. One of 30 applicants is selected on the basis of character, the past record of his family, and his freedom from debt. The successful applicant is put on probation for a period of 6 years. If he farms the land in accordance with the best interests of the land and of the country, he will be permitted to continue for another period. If he fails to do so, he must get off and give another farmer applicant a chance.