Luther Burbank
Quite a few of the plum varieties that I obtained from the CRFG scion exchange a few weekends ago are Luther Burbank varieties. I was intrigued by his legacy of so many plum varieties, so I started browsing through 1849-1926 / Luther Burbank: his methods and discoveries and their practical application Volume V (1914). It is fairly lyrical fare for a description of hybridization within the prunus genus and it made for interesting, if specialized reading. Imagine my surprise then, when out of nowhere I came upon this rather shocking passage:
When I find our almost perfect prune lapsing back in the next generation to a condition that robs it of all value as a prune, I am reminded of the story of a young Indian who was taken from his tribe and given every advantage that the Government could furnish him.
Years were spent in teaching him the studies of the modern curriculum, mathematics, history, literature, language, and even a smattering of art.
At twenty-one he had a better education than many of our presidents, and his future was considered very promising by those who had to do with his training.
Ten years later this educated Indian was one of the most worthless of his tribe.
He had simply "gone back to the blanket stage of existence." The pull of past heredities was too strong upon him. The transitory influence of a few years of education could not efface the racial instincts that had been implanted through thousands of generations of breeding of a more primitive sort.
And so it is with prunes.
Link here.
A little digging reveals that he was a Eugenicist, and the above passage seems positively benign next to some of his other statements (which can be found in the above article). I find all of this disturbing and disappointing, considering how esteemed and revered he is in California. It is even more troubling, I think, that so many schools and parks are named after him. Is this appropriate for someone who wrote in his "The Training of the Human Plant"
"When all the necessary
crossing has been done, then comes the
work of elimination, the work of refin-
ing, until we shall get an ultimate prod-
uct that should be the finest race ever
known."
