On April 27, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Soil Conservation Act. The act established the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) to reduce and repair the damage caused by soil erosion. The SCS’s work was expanded and continues today as the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Hugh Hammond Bennett was one of the driving forces behind the act and the soil conservation movement – in fact he’s considered the “father of soil conservation.” Years earlier, Bennett was working as a surveyor for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bureau of Soils. He saw first-hand how soil was eroded by wind and water, how this made it harder to grow crops, and in turn, how it damaged communities that depended on these crops. Bennett then set out to inform the nation, writing and speaking on the soil erosion crisis. In 1928, he published Soil Erosion: A National Menace, which encouraged Congress to establish their first federal soil erosion experiment stations in 1929.