John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part I
(Page 3 of 17)
January/February 1975
By John Shuttleworth
Now you may think that I'm leading you away around the barn with this family history when all you really want to know is how I finally came to start a back-to-basics magazine known as Mother Earth News. But there's no wild goose chase involved here at all.
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What I've just told you, you see, is that I learned at my parents' knee that simple, straightforward, hard work will — nine times out of 10 — beat a will-o'-the-wisp rumor of easy fortunes in the next state. My earliest memories are of the warmth and security that self-sufficiency can give you when a seemingly endless stream of other people do not know how to raise or preserve the food they need or repair the equipment they have or even cut their own hair. And I was taught by example at the earliest possible age that it is good to share your surplus and your knowledge with those who need it.
And that, of course, is a great deal of what Mother Earth News is all about. I'm only doing on a larger scale what my folks did over 30 years ago. I was absolutely programmed to publish this magazine. The only difference between what they did then and what I'm doing now is that they reached dozens of people and I carry the message to millions.
PLOWBOY: You say that hard work, self-sufficiency and sharing are "a great deal of what Mother Earth News is about." What else, in your mind, is of primary importance to the magazine?
SHUTTLEWORTH: Well, there's a strong preoccupation with what is known in the United States as "Yankee ingenuity," with finding the simplest, easiest, least energy-intensive way to do a certain job or accomplish a defined goal. Again, any claim to expertise I have in this area is entirely due to my parents and the way I was brought up.
The only tractor we had on that first farm was homemade and Dad built it. It was a good one too. Dad also designed and constructed the big portable welder we had. Then, after he traded it off and another guy tore it up, he bought it back and rebuilt it. It's the same welder we've been running lately on methane.
Another very important piece of Dad's Yankee ingenuity that made a profound impression on me was the windplant that supplied our electricity on that first farm, I was born the son of Tom Swift, you see, and that's been a tremendous advantage for me as I've edited this magazine. Some of the people now trying to write about things like windplants have never even seen one, but the first electricity I ever used came from a wind-driven generator.
This has given me a feel for windplants, a sense of rightness about clean, renewable sources of energy, and a standoffish attitude toward fossil fuels and things like nuclear-powered generators.
It was this feel for the so-called "alternative" sources of energy and disdain for what our society considers "conventional" fuels that led Mother Earth News to be one of the initial New Life and environmental publications to actively promote wind, solar, methane and other renewable power sources. Which, in turn, put Henry Clews — as he has stated many times — into business as the first of the current new crop of windplant dealers. And which, according to Al O'Shea, founding President of the American Wind Energy Association, originally helped direct his attention to alternative sources of power.
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