The Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in American Biological Science, 1870-1920

12. Industrial Perspectives: Luther Burbank

12 / Industrial Perspectives Luther Burbank T h e c e n t r a l p a c i f i c r a i l r o a d l i n e w a s c o m pleted in 1869. One year later, a shipment of Californian Bartlett pears arrived in New York.1 Railroad transportation dramatically changed the distribution and the production of plants and in doing so opened up new ways of conceiving of humankind’s relationship to the environment. In 1875, twenty-six-year-old Luther Burbank boarded the transcontinental railroad heading the other direction, west, in order to set roots with his brother in Santa Rosa, California. Burbank understood that he lived in a remarkable time in history, not only for nurserymen and consumers, but also for plants. “Perhaps it has not occurred to you that the building of railroads and the erection of drying plants and canneries marked a new era in the race-history of plants, but it is true,”2 observed Burbank’s ghost writer in his autobiography, Harvest of the Years. The appearance of this new “era” is most obvious when one considers changes in the patterns of distribution and consumption of produce. Large drying mills and railroads made possible the delivery of dried and canned produce across large distances. One of Burbank’s insights was that he could use the same infrastructure to supply fresh produce to those at a distance, if produce could be bred that would withstand the travel. 2 7 4 It was in my time, too—it was not more than a few decades since—that consumers showed that they would pay high prices for fresh fruit, preferring it to canned goods or dried fruits. I saw that this would be true, but I was one of the first—in fact, for a time, I was the only man devoting study and experiment to the end that fruits might be developed that would stand transportation and arrive in the hands of distant consumers in attractive condition. It was here that I began my work with plums.3 Some gain in consumers would come from the ability to transport produce greater distances; some would come from a transformation in habits, a small backlash of individuals who sought to leave behind the stresses of urban life and carve out a new middle-class existence surrounded by the greenery of the countryside. A similar motive drove Leland Stanford to not only set up his trotting-horse farm but also to begin a winery. As the historian of California Kevin Starr has noted, the growing number of subdivisions convinced people that they could have their fruit and grow it too. The urban bondage of educated men and women, went the argument, had run its course. Intensive farming had made a new way of life possible, one possessing the benefits of country life and at the same time preserving values of diversity, leisure, and family living. With the subdivision of its large holdings underway, California offered the middle class a way out of the increasingly burdensome work loads of business and the professions. They could return to the land as scientific farmers. Photographs of snug ranches played up the new style of rural life. . . . It was both the garden and industry, a way of making a living and a way of life in total contrast to what had characterized the previous agricultural frontier. Central to this emerging rural lifestyle was the raising of fruit.4 Burbank, it seemed, could doubly benefit from the growing middle class’s clamoring for fresh produce: he not only created the fruits and vegetable stock that growers would purchase in order to deliver fresh produce, he produced the plants and trees that those seeking solace from the cares of the city would plant in their gardens. I N D U S T R I A L P E R S P E C T I V E S / 2 7 5 Burbank was not alone in this intuition. For many, the next step in the evolution of civil society involved a recapitulation of agricultural development to fit the demands of an industrial society. In The Valley of the Moon, Saxon and Billy eventually settle in the Sonoma Valley (much like Jack London had done) in order to start this new form of agriculture. The Californian fruit and wine industries...