1908

TERRORISM ON MARK WEST CREEK

Jeff Elliott 1 Comment

In the summer of 1908, the farmers along Mark West Creek watched in horror as a barn burned with horses and mules inside. As awful as that was, the community was spooked because it was nearly identical to another fire a week before. The farmers believed these were acts of terrorism – and they were probably right.

The second barn to be lost belonged the family of Harrison Finley, grandfather of Helen Finley Comstock, the wife of Judge Hilliard Comstock. She was nine when the fires occurred at the end of August, just as the hop picking season was to begin. Destroyed in the flames was all the harvesting equipment, the family wagons, even “Old Johnny,” the horse that was pulling the buggy when Helen’s father courted her mother. Whodunnit? According to the Press Democrat story, “some believe it is the work of a crank, who opposes the Japanese, as the farmers used Japs to string their hops.”

In an autobiographical sketch jotted down around 1970, Helen Comstock wrote that the family thought IWW organizers were to blame:


We hired Japanese workers to plant and “string-up” the hops…American workers could not or would not do this work but the budding IWW were constantly making trouble. One year Grandpa succumbed to their demands and hired workers through the organization. It was a terrible failure – The plants were not properly planted, the string trellises were not tied properly – the wires not hooked in place on the poles and many acres of hops fell to the ground – It was a miserable harvest. The next year [we resumed using] Japanese workers. In late August or early September, just before harvest, our barn and the barns of two neighbor hop farmers were set on fire…

When she videotaped an oral history about ten years later, Helen seemed even more certain that the IWW burned their barns, “…because [we] were hiring Japanese instead of white people for the hops. The… IWW was a powerful union at the time, and they had gone to my grandfather and threatened him for hiring Japanese to work the hop fields.” Although nothing could be proven, Mrs. Comstock said law enforcement “suspected these IWW because they had been threatening.”

But according to the report in the Press Democrat, the Sheriff actually said he “hardly agrees with the Jap theory.” Nothing is mentioned in any newspaper accounts about threats made to Finley by the IWW or anyone else.

While the Finleys may have blamed the Industrial Workers of the World (also known as the “Wobblies”), the union was undoubtedly innocent of the crime. The first red flag (pun intended) was the threat over hiring Japanese workers; one of the hallmarks of the IWW that made the organization so radical for the day was that it so inclusive, welcoming unskilled Chinese, Mexicans, Filipinos – “every wage-worker, no matter what his religion, fatherland, or trade.” The IWW particularly admired the Japanese workers because they would not tolerate working conditions they considered demeaning or wages they thought unfair.

The other major evidence of Wobbly innocence was that the IWW was barely functioning at the time the barns were burned. There were probably no more than 6,000 members nationwide in the summer of 1908, most of them coal miners. The bank panic of 1907 nearly destroyed the organization as locals folded nationwide, and the Chicago HQ even had to suspend publication of its newsletter. It wasn’t until the September convention in Chicago, when a thuggish contingent of loggers from the Northwest called the “Overalls Brigade,” who rode freight trains and “beat their way” to the convention, took control of the IWW, leading to a new focus on strikes, boycotts, and (yes) sabotage. The growing wave of violent direct action led to the bloody confrontation in 1913 at Wheatland, where 2,000 striking hop pickers, mostly Hispanic, fought a heavily-armed posse that left four dead. Two IWW leaders were convicted of murder, and in the following years Wobblies embarked on a sabotage campaign that was said to destroy $10 million in California property per annum to extort a pardon from the governor.

But if it wasn’t the Wobblies, who done the deed in 1908? There’s wide leeway for interpreting critical facts here; it makes a great difference whether Harrison Finley was threatened about the Japanese workers months or a year earlier, or if it happened just hours/days before the barn was engulfed. Or maybe the threat had no connection at all (as the Sheriff seemed to suspect) and it was just an outburst by some racist busybody passing on the road skirting the Finley farm.

Here are five theories, ranked along increasing odds of likelihood:

* James Bond’s Grandfather In December of 1907, a new trade group was formed in Sacramento: “The Pacific Coast Hop Growers’ Union.” It really should have been called the “Hop Growers’ Trust” because it was almost certainly in violation of the Sherman Act. About two months before the fire, Lord Addington made a speech in Parliament where he declared the Growers’ Union “wish to ruin the English hop industry” and presented an incriminating letter written by the head of the group that threatened to sell the West Coast crop below cost. One of the directors of the Growers’ Union was Harrison Finley, so the Europeans and East Coast hop growers had somewhat of a motive to disrupt the 1908 harvest and specifically target Finley. It would be interesting to research whether any of the other directors had a similar mishap that season (James Near, the neighbor whose barn burned earlier, was not a director, but almost certainly a member). My guesstimate on the odds of an international (or intercontinental) “hit” ordered on a prominent Sonoma County hop grower: Less than 1 percent.

* The AFL Where the IWW reached out to minorities and unskilled workers, Samuel Gompers’ American Federation of Labor was anything but inclusive. Gompers – an immigrant himself – called for stiff immigration limits to maintain “racial purity and strength” and charged that immigrants “could not be Americanized and could not be taught to render the same intelligent service as was supplied by American workers.” AFL racism particularly targeted Latin and Asian workers, even blocking minority unions from joining the all-important local labor councils. Although the hire-American-workers threat made to Finley sounds very much like the 1908 AFL (who particularly hated the Japanese), the union didn’t try to organize the unskilled workforce, such as seasonal hop pickers. My odds on this possibility: Barely 1 percent, and only because the AFL of that era always should be suspected in any labor agitation involving racism.

* Wobbly Impersonators With the national organization under death-watch that summer, anyone could claim to be an organizer for the IWW and probably no one would dispute it (or care). Rarely was the IWW mentioned in any California paper during 1908 except for little updates about the ongoing cage-match fight between the IWW, AFL, and Miners’ Union in Goldfield, Nevada, which was then in its second year. The only paper in the state with news about IWW activity was the Imperial Valley Press, which ran articles about “the plug-ugly tactics and vicious stirring up of strife” in El Centro. According to the newspaper, the “loafing delegates of the IWW” tried to interrupt the cantaloupe harvest that June by trying to drive Japanese field workers away. Local whites were incited to pelt the Japanese with stones, and a wagon carrying workers was attacked and overturned. The Japanese embassy in San Francisco telegraphed the Imperial County sheriff demanding action, but the “IWW” organizers had disappeared. (The following year, however, several actual IWW locals were established in the Imperial Valley.) Did they drift to Sonoma County and torch a few barns two months later? It’s doubtful; although there was anti-Japanese racism and use of violence in El Centro, there were no reports of union recruitment in this area. Odds that these were the same characters are again very low, maybe 3 percent.

* A Kid With a Match What if the racial threat – and even the advent of the hop picking season – were unrelated to the fire? That two, maybe three, barns in the neighborhood went up in flames might suggest the acts of an arsonist. And at that time of year, there were 130 “incorrigible” boys from “The Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society” of San Francisco working a few miles away at the Barlow berry ranch. The place was hardly a carefree summer camp; the papers frequently reported that kids escaped, only to have the police drag them back in handcuffs to collect a bounty. That summer the papers reported several boys fled and were recaptured, most notably one George Springer, “a friendless orphan who was discharged from an orphan asylum because of his bad temper,” and Raymond Onion, who had stolen a large sum from his father on the East Coast and traveled to San Francisco. Together, they were “the instigators of most of the trouble which the management of the camp has had during the past three weeks.” That the barns were destroyed with horses and cows inside might seem to work against the theory that children might be responsible, but several studies have linked juvenile firesetting with cruelty to animals. Odds: 45 percent. This is the Occam’s razor option; there’s no simpler explanation than anti-social behavior by a disturbed kid confined to a work camp.

* The Pitner Ranch Strikers Even without union representation, there were major Northern California wage strikes by hop pickers in six of the ten years between 1899-1909, sometimes more than one a year. No labor problems were reported in Sonoma County, but the strikes elsewhere often involved racial tension. In 1905, “about a hundred men, mostly tramps,” who were picking hops near Wheatland demanded more money and attacked Japanese workers at the ranch when the grower refused their demands; in an ugly 1909 incident near Sacramento, 12 deputies were called to supress a strike by a thousand angry white workers who charged that Japanese hop pickers were better paid and given easier jobs. In this possible scenario, a group of disgruntled hop pickers burned the barns. My odds: 50 percent. Here’s why:

The same week the barns burned, there was a wave of small hop picker strikes in the lower Ukiah Valley. Three out of four strikes were settled quickly, but one group of 200 workers, “nearly all from San Francisco,” according to the Sept. 1, 1908 Ukiah paper, demanded a 25 percent raise or they would allow no hops to be picked by the non-striking majority of workers. These mid-harvest strike showdowns invariably fizzled – without union muscle to back up the strikers, the foreman would have the sheriff scare the malcontents away and find new unskilled manual laborers, which were never in short supply. (In fact, the PD reported that a “special train of eleven coaches…bound for the hop fiends of Mendocino county, and bearing nearly a thousand San Franciscans” passed through Santa Rosa on Aug. 24.)

The Ukiah Dispatch-Democrat, which covered all hop picking news in Northern California, noted that ten John Doe warrants were issued for leaders of this strike “on the Pitner place” (which was just a couple of miles north of Ukiah) commenting that the rest of the crew were then expected to return to work: “This action will doubtless solve the situation as the majority of the pickers are anxious to return to their labors.” The article also gave clues that this strike was more worrisome than usual. The foreman sought legal advice about how to deal with the strikers from a Ukiah lawyer. The newspaper reported that the leaders of the strike “have been the cause of a great deal of complaint by the farmers who live near their camps. Garden truck, poultry, fruit, etc., has been disappearing at an alarming rate since the beginning of the hop picking season.” Although the Ukiah paper otherwise ended reports of any labor conflict with news that the workers were back in the fields and all were happy, the Pitner strike was apparently left without closure; did the pickers go back to work? Were the ringleaders found and arrested? The newspaper is silent.

My likely-case scenario is that the arsonist(s) were pickers who walked away from the hop fields near Ukiah and were heading back to San Francisco. It was most likely the Pitner ranch strikers (particularly their ten leaders, who had reason to flee because of the warrants), but it could also have been a loose confederation of malcontents from several of the strikes in the area. They might have targeted the Finley ranch because it appeared to be the largest to someone passing on the road, although it was overall a mid-sized farm with a long, rectangular shape because it was squeezed between the roadway and Mark West Creek.

This interpretation presumes motive – that the person/group disparaging the Japanese workers wanted to take over their jobs immediately. That’s supported by Helen Finley Comstock’s remark that the stranger was unhappy “because they were hiring Japanese instead of white people,” as well as the speed at which the Finleys and neighbors apparently linked the anti-Japanese comment to the arson. Like the Imperial Valley impostors, they might have expected to intimidate Harrison Finley by saying they’re “from the IWW” and demanded he fire his Japanese workers and hire them at once. When Finley refused, they torched his barn in revenge and to terrorize other farmers.

Evidence is circumstantial, I’ll grant. But thinking about it over several months, I kept coming back to the report about the Pitner ranch strikers being chicken thieves. The bank panic of 1907 nearly destroyed the U.S. economy; unemployment among skilled trade union workers reached 9.5% in the month the barns were burned, more than double the year before. In some parts of the country, the situation was beyond grim; unemployment in New York state reached 36 percent, with 200,000 estimated to be out of work in New York City alone. Charities were overwhelmed with appeals for help; crime skyrocketed; a vast number of men, probably millions, became unemployed drifters. Among those who came up from San Francisco for field labor in the late summer Mendocino heat might have been New England woolen mill workers, once-soft-handed Philadelphia shopkeepers, or an entire family from Ohio, all near destitute. Drawn by newspaper ads promising weeks of steady work, they found the prevailing wage in 1908 to be 80¢ per hundred pounds of cleaned hops, which meant that a picker was lucky to make $1.50 a day, about half the prevailing wage for manual labor. And on top of that, some growers demanded the workers rent tents from them and pay for food. It’s unknown what conditions were like for workers on the Pitner ranch, but with an epidemic of food being stolen from nearby gardens and backyards, we can guess that the situation was not good.

Growers like Harrison Finley treated workers well, many returning every year with their families for the harvest. But other growers had conditions that could have been the despicable inspiration for The Grapes of Wrath. It’s not hard to understand that workers on those farms would have become bitter and resentful and crazy angry, even willing to, say, torch the barns of blameless farmers who simply asked them to go away (read update here).

It’s also not hard to understand how people could have been radicalized by these experiences. None may have carried the “red card” of the IWW in 1908, but you can bet that many were card-carrying Wobblies in years to come, and who can blame them.

BARN NEAR CITY BURNED
James Near’s Property Destroyed Friday Night

The large barn of James Near, adjoining this city, was totally destroyed by fire Friday night. With the building were twenty-five tons of hay, harness and other property. A buggy shed and harness shop were also destroyed. There were eleven horses in the barn, but with the exception of one they were removed without injury. The animal caught in the flames is Mr. Near’s fine driving mare and it is hoped her injuries are not serious. Some fencing and grass in the pasture caught fire but was extinguished. The flames so near the city attracted many people to the scene…

– Santa Rosa Republican, August 15, 1908
HORSES AND MULES BURN TO DEATH IN BARN FIRE
Disasterous Fire on Harrison Finley Place

The large barn on the Harrison Finley place, north of town on the Mark West Springs road, was totally destroyed by the fire shortly before midnight Saturday night together with fifteen tons of hay, two horses, two mules, eight sets of double harness, a heavy truck and a spring wagon. The only insurances as far as could be learned was on the mules.

The origin of the fire is a mystery. It was first seen by Charles Maddux as he drove home from Santa Rosa. Mr. Maddux rushed to the Finley residence, roused the family, and gave the alarm. Joseph Brandt, a neighbor, got his large touring car and gathered up all the neighbors for miles and a bucket brigade was soon formed to fight the flames, but all to no avail.

The barn was enveloped in flames when first discovered and at no time was there any chance to rescue the animals or property after Mr. Maddux arrived. The flames were seen for miles in all directions, and created considerable excitement. Messages of inquiry were received by the Press Democrat regarding the fire while it was in progress. The barn was a large structure, being 25×60 feet, and two stories. The hay was stored in the loft. The loss will be quite heavy on Mr. Finley.

– Press Democrat, August 23, 1908
ARE INVESTIGATING THE INCENDIARY FIRES

The destruction of the barns of James Near and Harrison Finley on the Mark West road, near the junction of the Healdsburg road, within a week of one another, has caused considerable uneasiness in the neighborhood. Speculation is rife as to the cause of the fires. All are firm in the opinion that they were set by some one intent on getting even for some imagined injury. Some believe it is the work of a crank, who opposes the Japanese, as the farmers used Japs to string their hops. They say they were unable to get other help. Sheriff J. K. Smith returned Monday evening after a two days investigation as much in the dark as ever. He found some tracks, but was unable to follow them to any tangible results. He hardly agrees with the Jap theory.

– Press Democrat, August 25, 1908

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BURBANK FOLLIES, PART III

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THE BURBANK FOLLIES SERIES

These articles cover Luther Burbank’s association with the Carnegie Institution, which awarded him a subsidy of $10,000 a year “for so long a time as may be mutually agreeable.” The grant began in 1905 and continued through 1909.

Part one explains the significance of the grant and why Burbank was such a controversial figure at the time. Also introduced here is Dr. George Shull, a noted botanist sent by the Institution to study and document Burbank’s methods.

Part two explores Dr. Shull’s relationship with Burbank, whom he found mostly uncooperative. Shull discovered his work was scientifically worthless as Burbank kept few notes – a failure that led to Burbank’s reputation being tarnished in the embarrassing “Wonderberry” dispute.

Part three describes Dr. Shull’s dismay in 1907 to find competition for Burbank’s attention with researchers from the Cree Publishing Company, which had contracted with Burbank to create a ten volume encyclopedia about his work. This section also covers the short-lived plans by Petaluma’s George P. McNear and others to create a Burbank Institute.

Part four finds Burbank embittered in early 1910 after the Carnegie grant is cancelled and he finds himself defending his work in the national press.

Events in 1909 that probably contributed to the termination of his grant are discussed in “Selling Luther Burbank“, including the appearance of Oscar Binner as his new publisher and publicist, plus the short-lived deal for distribution of Burbank products with the controversial brothers Herbert and Dr. Hartland Law.

In the summer of 1907, Luther Burbank was a man with many Boswells trailing his steps, hoping to pry secrets from his encyclopedic mind. Each biographer desired to author the magnum opus on Burbank and his plant-breeding methods, and Burbank cooperated with them all equally, which is to say that he barely cooperated with anyone at all.

Besides Shull, another habitue was a writer named W.S. Harwood, preparing a second edition of “New Creations in Plant Life.” Harwood had written a 1904 magazine article on Burbank and expanded that into a book-length profile with descriptions of his work methods a year later. That book sold well even though it was slammed by knowledgeable critics, suffering a particularly harsh review in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society: “[Harwood] traces the course of his hero’s life and work with all the ardour of the true hero-worshipper…The book does not help at all, as we had hoped it would, to enable us to sift the truth from the obviously exaggerated accounts.”

In the published fragments of Shull’s correspondence with the Carnegie Institution, the sycophant Harwood is only mentioned once, and in passing; aside from being another person demanding Burbank’s attention, Shull didn’t consider him a competitor. But Shull didn’t know what to make of a new visitor to Burbank’s farm: Dr. William Martin, an editor from the Cree Publishing Company of Minneapolis, who was now living in Burbank’s old house and studying all of Burbank’s scrapbooks. The publisher had been negotiating with Burbank for over a year to prepare a ten-volume set that would document Burbank’s methods – an arrangement that seemed in direct conflict with the Burbank’s $10,000/year grant from Carnegie. Shull wrote to the Committee in February, 1907:1


Mr. Burbank informed me that the Cree books can not be in the least conflict with our work. He says that the 10 volumes will not contain as much ‘meat’ as ten pages of the Carnegie work. It is to be made up mostly of illustrations, on thick paper, with very brief statements in large type:–to be sold by subscription.

Shull’s supervisor urged him to “find out all you can” about the Cree project, and Shull replied the next month:2


I do not believe that it will be possible for me to learn much more intimately of the contents of Cree books than I have already reported. I do not think that they will be in very direct conflict, however, with the work we are planning, though without doubt, a large part of the public will draw a comparison between that work and ours, which will not be as favorable to the Carnegie work as we might hope, since the Cree work is being planned specifically to please the popular mind…

Dr. Martin was the Rev. William Mayo Martin, D. D. from Minneapolis, who the Santa Rosa Republican described as “a prominent author and man of letters.” (Martin was replaced a few months later by H. B. Humphrey, a plant pathologist from Washington State College, but Martin’s qualifications for the project are a mystery. I’ve been unable to find anything about him professionally, academically, or even personally through census records. It’s as if he never existed. UPDATE: Martin was Cree’s brother-in-law.) Besides Martin, the Cree faction also included Martin’s stenographer and a junior professor from Stanford University, botanist Dr. Leroy Abrams, who had been hired to work with Martin, and was expected to be there for a year. Shull wrote to the president of the Carnegie Institution that it was getting crowded at Burbank’s place.3


Yesterday Mr. Harwood was here revising his book on ‘New Creations.’ Dr. Martin is here getting material for the ten volumes of the Cree Co., and a representative of Collier’s [Magazine] was also securing data for articles, so you can see none of us will be able to receive much attention. Mr. Burbank is trying to treat us all alike and has assigned different hours to each of these various interests.

Shull’s 1907 stint with Burbank was cut short by the death of his wife and infant at their Santa Rosa home. With the Carnegie Institution work on hiatus while he was in mourning back east, Shull hoped that Burbank would spend more time with the Cree team, all the better to concentrate on the scientific questions Shull would pose when he returned. Alas, Burbank sent him a letter stating that he had been very busy, “and so have not dictated to the other company at all since you left, but when you come back will try to give both parties a short time each day as usual.”4 Back in Santa Rosa, Shull wrote to the Committee in February, 1908 that he was no longer sure that the Cree project would be as lightweight as Burbank had claimed:5


It should also be noted that the management of the Cree Publishing Company’s projected work, is fully aware of the wave of adverse criticism which has been directed against Harwood’s book because of its unbridled praise of Mr. Burbank’s achievements, and is obviously taking steps to lessen this tendency in their publication. The employment of a trained botanist by that company, to stand sponsor for the scientific bearings of the work who will have been a longer time in actual contact with Mr. Burbank than I will have been, opens the question as to the relative merits of that work and ours, and also as to whether one or the other of these two works will not be superfluous in the presence of the other.

There was no need for Shull to worry. Sometime during 1908, plans fell apart for Cree to publish that ten-volume set. Reasons are unknown; it could be that Prof. Abrams withdrew because of the frustrations working with the uncommunicative Burbank, or that the publisher ran out of money or patience. Although that work was abandoned, partners in the Cree venture would continue to develop money-making schemes with Burbank, which will be the subject of following installments in the “Burbank Follies.”


Now a century past, the story of Burbank’s conflicted doings with the Carnegie Institution, Cree Publishing and other would-be suitors is well-documented in books and journal articles. At the time, however, the Santa Rosa newspapers only reported approvingly of Dr. Shull’s comings and goings and the “splendid work” turned out by Cree; to the public, all apparently were having a merry time hanging out with the plant wizard, according to the papers. But there is one significant event from 1907 that was newsworthy, yet is not mentioned in any literature about Burbank: The thwarted plans to create a “Burbank Institute.”

in late October, Petaluma’s George P. McNear, possibly the most financially important man in the county, announced that “premature publicity” had derailed plans to create a Burbank Institute. As this was the first mention in the newspapers of any plans to create an international plant-breeding school, one has to wonder what publicity he meant – and why that should squelch the deal. There were other mysteries in McNear’s single-paragraph non-announcement: Who were the “wealthy men interested in results of experiments” that were expected to fund a “permanent endowment” for the institution? If truly “Burbank’s consent [had] not been secured,” as McNear wrote, how could any group presume to found a school centered upon Burbank’s methods?

The Press Democrat and Santa Rosa Republican articles that followed McNear’s statement filled in some details. Yes, the editors knew about the plans and had indeed vowed secrecy. The PD reported Stanford President David Starr Jordan, a well-known Burbank booster, was said to be the author of the press release signed by McNear. Whether that’s true or not, it’s clear something actually was afoot.

It’s difficult to know what to make of this episode. One reason to be skeptical is because plans for a potential Burbank Institute were not mentioned by any of his biographers, and this period is well-documented, thanks to Shull’s correspondence with the Carnegie Institution. It also appears that the newspaper articles about the thwarted plans for the school were written nearly verbatim from Burbank’s dictation. His fingerprints can be found in his customary overstated claims that “the Carnegie Institution has already set aside the sum of $100,000” for his support and “its perpetuation would appear only reasonable,” that he would “teach the higher science of plant breeding,” and that “University professors…were greatly interested in the project.”

There are two possible scenarios that I can imagine – and in both cases, Burbank is my pick as the probable source of the newsleak, inadvertently or no:

* There might have been “cigar talk” among some of Burbank’s more well-heeled supporters about the possibility of creating a Burbank school. Unable to restrain his need for self-aggrandizement, Burbank boasted to someone that wealthy and famous people were soon to build an institute in his honor. Word got back to McNear and the others, who became alarmed that Burbank was pushing them into commitment, so they shot down the idea, fast.


* Serious plans really might have been underway to create and endow a Burbank Institute. But the bank panic of 1907 – which occurred the same week as McNear’s declaration – caused potential investors/donors to hunker down. With the intent of pushing them into commitment, Burbank whispered to the papers that the secret deal was still in the works, which led McNear and the others to send out the statement to the press.

Some combination of the two scenarios is also possible. Yes, the nation was suddenly facing the total collapse of the U.S. economy, and investors would be foolish to give Luther Burbank a bunch of post-dated blank checks during the crisis. At the same time, many believed that Burbank’s new spineless cactus was as important a discovery as the Russet potato, and speculators were indeed “interested in results of [Burbank’s] experiments,” hoping to get in on the ground floor. As for Burbank’s role, the only thing he loved more than being idolized was having a reliable income, and a Burbank Institute had enormous potential for both. One can imagine his anguish at seeing such a project suddenly dissolve, and one can imagine he might risk a long-shot bid to snatch it from defeat.

NOTES:
 1pg. 138, Bentley Glass, The strange encounter of Luther Burbank and George Harrison Shull (American Philosophical Society) 1980
2pg. 139, ibid
3pg. 171, Peter Dreyer, A Gardener Touched With Genius (Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, CA) 1985
4pg. 140, Glass
5pg. 139, Glass

COMES TO WRITE VOLUMES ON BURBANK

Rev. William Mayse [sic] Martin of Minneapolis, a prominent author and man of letters, arrived here Friday morning, and will make his home here for the coming year. He comes to edit a work of ten volumes, to be entitled “New Creations.” This will explain in detail the marvelous work of Luther Burbank, the well known local scientist, in his propagation of new plants and flowers. This work is to be published by the Cree Publishing Company, which is having the large colored panels and colored postals made of Mr. Burbank’s creations. Rev. Mr. Martin is accompanied by his private stenographer and will have his office in the former Burbank home. His family have remained to spend some time in Los Angeles, but later will come here to make their home while Mr. Martin is doing the great work he has undertaken.

– Santa Rosa Republican, February 2, 1907
CREE GETS OUT SPLENDID WORK

Donald [sic] Cree, President of the Cree Publishing Company of Minneapolis, Minn., who is engaged in getting out a ten-volume work entitled, “Burbank’s Creation,” is on the coast making arrangements to place the work with subscription agencies. While in this city Monday Mr. Cree made the Press Democrat a pleasant call and permitted an inspection of the prospectus of the sets of volumes.

The work gives promise of being the most elaborate of its kind ever attempted. The paper is all especially made with the “Luther Burbank” watermark in the margin, and the plates are all colored to life, from handpainted samples prepared here by specialists.The binding represents the finest the art can produce and are in several styles from the luxurious $1000 to the $500 and $250 per set down to a popular edition.

Mr. Burbank has been dictating for several months for the text of the work and the “copy” is being sent out as fast as prepared and placed in the hands of the printer. The first volume is expected to be ready for delivery within a short time and the rest will follow as rapidly as they can be handled. The work is sold by subscription only.

– Press Democrat, May 28, 1907
DR. MARTIN IS CHANGED
Cree Publishing Company Plans Burbank Cards

Dr. William Mays [sic] Martin, who has been here for several months past as editor of the Cree publishing company’s works on Luther Burbank and his work, has been given another line of work by his firm, and the editorship has been placed in the hands of H. B. Humphrey, who will continue the work on the set of books under course of publication.

The Cree company has determined to issue a series of postal cards, setting forth various views of the Burbank home, Mr. Burbank’s photograph, some of his flowers and fruits and views from the experimental grounds. This department of the work has been placed in charge of Mr. Martin and already thousands of the cards have been ordered from all parts of this state, and dealers as far east as Chicago have placed large orders for the cards. It is expected that this line of the of the work will be in great demand, and the cards will be made from the superb views recently made by the company from oil paintings of the real views, such as are being used in the publication of the illustrations in the books.

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 28, 1907

SET OF BOOKS ON BURBANK WORK
Complete Scientific History of Eminent Scientist’s Work in Realm of Nature

President Dugal Cree of the Cree Publishing Company, of Minneapolis, accompanied by Rev. William Mayes Martin, D. D., has been spending several days in this city. This is Mr. Cree’s second visit to Santa Rosa, he having been here last September, at which time he entered into negotiations with Luther Burbank for the rights to publish a set of books covering the scientist’s life work. During the present visit the details have been completed and a contract entered into between Mr. Burbank and the publishing house for the latter to bring out a set of ten volumes of “New Creations,” an edition authorized by Luther Burbank giving a history of the facts, methods, principles, and a description of the new creations brought out by the famous scientist during his thirty-five years work among fruit, flowers, and foliage.

Dr. Marin will remain here to look after the Publisher’s interests and forward the copy as rapidly as the stenographer, who will take the subject matter from Mr. Burbank’s personal dictation, completes it, assist in gathering data, and see that nothing is left undone to hurry forward the preparation of the completed work.

The desire of the publishers and hopes of Mr. Burbank are to in this manner answer the thousands of questions which are constantly pouring in on Mr. Burbank, and also save the valuable time and labor which it requires to answer such requests by letter. Mr. Burbank has had most insistant demands from publishers all over the United States as well as Europe for the publication of such a work while the reading public and horticulturists desire it as a permanent monument to his memory as well as to preserve the methods and plans of the noted scientist for future reference.

The work will be profusely illustrated with full page colored plates made natural to life of all Mr. Burbank’s star creations with scenes and views of his home and experimental grounds, both here and at Sebastopol. The work will be as the name implies, a complete review of the actual methods of work carried on by Mr. Burbank in accomplishing the results which has made his name famous the world over.

“For years,” Mr. Burbank said today, while discussing the publication, “I have been importuned and urged to write a complete work which would stand as an authority of my work among fruits and flowers, but I have felt my time and attention belonged to the work in hand and that others might write the story of it. I have refused all offers up to the present time and Mr. Cree is the only many who has been able to bring me to consider the subject seriously much less enter into a contract or agreement to prepare a complete work.”

– Press Democrat, January 10, 1907

REPRESENTS THE CREE COMPANY
Bruce is Canvassing State For Burbank Books

R. A. Bruce, representing the Cree publishing company, is in the City of Roses for a visit. He spent Christmas day with relatives here. He is a partner with John J. Newbegin of San Francisco, the agents for this state of the splendid work being published by the Cree Company on Burbank’s New Creations. Regarding a story that appeared in the Republican a few days ago, the substance of which was taken from a Marysville paper, Mr. Bruce claims he never pretended to represent Mr. Burbank, and it is a well-known fact that Mr. Burbank has no agents of an kind in the field for the sale of his new creations. Mr. Bruce is traveling over the state securing subscribers to the work being published by the Cree Company, and is meeting with good success. We have reasons to believe from the credentials he has presented that he is doing a legitimate and fair business in every respect.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 26, 1907

PERPETUATION OF BURBANK METHODS
Promoters of Plan to Establish Institute Say Discussion of Matter at This Time is Premature

Admitting that the facts as published are correct, and yet fearful that undue publicity at this time may geopardise [sic] the final outcome, certain of the projectors of the proposed Burbank institution for the perpetuation of expert plant-breeding have undertaken to discourage further discussion of the matter, and the following statement ssaid to have been prepared by President David Starr Jordan of Stanford University and signed by George P. McNear of Petaluma, chairman of the committee having the project in charge, has been given to the press:

Petaluma, Oct. 26–Several persons have met to devise plans for permanent endowment and perpetuation of a laboratory of plant-breeding through the aid of wealthy men interested in results of experiments. No satisfactory plan has been yet devised. Premature publicity makes it necessary to abandon the matter. Mr. Burbank’s consent has not been secured.
George P. McNear, Chairman,

The Press Democrat believes it is in a position to state, however, that the abandonment of the project is only temporary; and that the institution will be established in due time. The idea has been suggested on numerous occasions, and when President R. S. Woodward of the Carnegie Institution was in Santa Rosa some two or three years ago he intimated that such a project was even then under consideration [illegible microfilm] the Carnegie Institution has already set aside the sum of $100,000 to assist Mr. Burbank in his work, and under the circumstances some arrangements for its perpetuation would appear only reasonable and proper. Such an arrangement as the one proposed would certainly have the hearty support of all Santa Rosans as well as of the entire scientific world.

– Press Democrat, October 27, 1907

INJURIOUS TO SONOMA COUNTY
Premature Publication Will Thwart Plans

The premature publication of the proposed plan of establishing a school of international character and importance in Sonoma county has caused the abandonment of the plans which were in process of formation. The publication has done an untold and irreparable injury to Sonoma county, and was done without authorization and after the parties to the conference had been pledged to secrecy, and after a request had been made of the newspapers that it should not be published because of the fact that it [would] cause the matter to be dropped. In the face of this request, which was made wholy with the idea of benefiting Sonoma county, the giving of publicity in the matters was unwarranted and injurious.

The REPUBLICAN was requested at the time to refrain from any mention of this matter regarding the establishment of the great international school until it was ready for publication, at which time the same was to be given out officially by Mayor John P. Overton. For the reason that it was for the benefit of the county, this paper withheld mention of the same, desiring to throw no obstacle in the way of the accomplishment of anything that would be in any manner injurious to the best interests of the county. The matter has been abandoned and the unwise action of the paper which published the matter when requested not to do so may prevent its ever being taken up again.

Luther Burbank, who had been approached to become the head of this great school, which was to teach the higher science of plant breeding along the lines of Mr. Burbank’s work was to have taken the matter up with his confreres after arranging his affairs with the Carnegie Institution, and the publicity given may prevent this being accomplished.

– Santa Rosa Republican, November 2, 1907

PLANS WORKING ALONG NICELY
Another Important Announcement Will Be Made Later In Connection With the Burbank Laboratory

Plans for the establishment of a laboratory or college for the imparting of special instruction in Luther Burbank’s great work in the creation of new fruits and flowers are going along very nicely.

It is expected that before long another important announcement will be made in connection with this matter. The Republican will get this news later.

The University professors here the past week were greatly interested in the project and both at Berkeley and Stanford it is occasioning much discussion.

– Press Democrat, November 3, 1907

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BURBANK FOLLIES, PART II

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

I imagine there were quite a few times in the autumn of 1907 when you might have seen a man with a faraway gaze sitting by himself at a Santa Rosa restaurant. The 34 year-old gentleman may have been thinking about a scientific paper he had recently published, or he might have been thinking about his wife and daughter, who had died a few months before. Or he might have been thinking about how much he’d like to wring Luther Burbank’s scrawny neck.

That man was George Harrison Shull, a botanist who worked for the Carnegie Institution, making his fourth stay to Santa Rosa. His job here was to study Burbank’s methods, and it was not going well. In a letter that Oct. 9 to his supervisor back in Long Island, he griped that the great man was even being less cooperative than in his previous visits:


In the nine days I have been here, I have had only two hours of Mr. Burbank’s time. He comes in each day at the appointed hour to say that he “Simply can not give me the time” and promises to do better later. In view of the urgency on the part of the Committee to hasten the work, you can imagine the strain this puts on me.

The Carnegie Institution had awarded Burbank a $10,000/year grant in 1905 amid controversy. While he had the enthusiastic support of Andrew Carnegie and Stanford University’s president, Burbank was viewed skeptically by much of the scientific establishment, and considered even to be a charlatan.

– –

THE BURBANK FOLLIES SERIES

These articles cover Luther Burbank’s association with the Carnegie Institution, which awarded him a subsidy of $10,000 a year “for so long a time as may be mutually agreeable.” The grant began in 1905 and continued through 1909.

Part one explains the significance of the grant and why Burbank was such a controversial figure at the time. Also introduced here is Dr. George Shull, a noted botanist sent by the Institution to study and document Burbank’s methods.

Part two explores Dr. Shull’s relationship with Burbank, whom he found mostly uncooperative. Shull discovered his work was scientifically worthless as Burbank kept few notes – a failure that led to Burbank’s reputation being tarnished in the embarrassing “Wonderberry” dispute.

Part three describes Dr. Shull’s dismay in 1907 to find competition for Burbank’s attention with researchers from the Cree Publishing Company, which had contracted with Burbank to create a ten volume encyclopedia about his work. This section also covers the short-lived plans by Petaluma’s George P. McNear and others to create a Burbank Institute.

Part four finds Burbank embittered in early 1910 after the Carnegie grant is cancelled and he finds himself defending his work in the national press.

Events in 1909 that probably contributed to the termination of his grant are discussed in “Selling Luther Burbank“, including the appearance of Oscar Binner as his new publisher and publicist, plus the short-lived deal for distribution of Burbank products with the controversial brothers Herbert and Dr. Hartland Law.

In his first report to the Institution, Shull had described Burbank as possessing remarkable skills, able to keep track of hundreds, maybe thousands, of plant-breeding experiments. The problem, however, is that these records were kept in his mind, with precious little written down on paper. Without documentation of all the cross-breeding that led to the final hybrid, his work was scientifically worthless. Yet at the same time, Burbank resented those who said he wasn’t a man of science. “Mr. Burbank says himself that if he were conducting a scientific experiment, he would do it differently, but maintains that it makes his work none the less scientific, indeed stamps it as of a higher scientific type.”1 (This wasn’t the first time Burbank claimed to be the father of a new field of science – see Part I.)

The main problem, however, was that Burbank didn’t like to be questioned and was hostile to scientific debate. “You say, ‘He is always impatient of a conversation in which he does not do all or nearly all the talking,’ the Institution’s president wrote to Shull. “Now, singularly enough, this is precisely the remark he has made to me concerning you.” Burbank had written a peevish letter to the Institution’s president that complimented Shull as “pleasant and pliable,” yet “it seems to be almost necessary to perform a surgical operation before some fixed impression can be removed to make way for another, but when once convinced by an overwhelming number of facts he at once admits that that is the way he always thought it was.”2 In other words, Burbank was annoyed at the concept of being challenged to defend an unorthodox idea, which is at the core of the scientific method. Years later, Shull wrote, “I learned from the start that my problem was chiefly a psychological one.”3

Without field notes of past work, Shull was left to flip through scrapbooks of old newspaper and magazine clippings collected by Burbank’s secretary. When Shull tried to pry information from him about his current projects, Burbank often begged off, claiming illness. “I am sorry his health is so bad,” Shull wrote to his supervisor. “I have spent some time with him every day, but have often been obliged to cut the work short because I find him on the verge of nervous collapse.”4 Shull also arrived at the farm before Burbank in order to quiz his field workers and compose simple, direct questions that he had some hope Burbank would deign to answer.

While Shull’s letters and reports to the Carnegie Institution voice his frustrations in dealing with Burbank, the published “Year Book” from the Institution always claimed “grand progress” was being made in Santa Rosa. From the 1906 Year Book:


By great good fortune the earthquake which proved so destructive to the city of Santa Rosa in which he lives and to the surrounding country, did very little damage to his property. In one respect, doubtless, the earthquake was advantageous to him and to his work, namely, in preventing visitors from encroaching too freely on his time and attention.

The 1907 Year Book similarly dished up a vague-on-the-specifics report that “the experiments and investigations of Mr. Burbank and the work of preparing a scientific account of his methods and achievements are progressing as favorably as the available division of time and labor permit…” As Burbank’s first biographer pointed out, the discrepancy is easy to explain: The Carnegie Institution was allowing Burbank himself to write the official summary of the analysis of his own work.5

(RIGHT: George H. Shull in 1906. The original picture was of Burbank, Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries and Shull, as seen in the thumbnail. When Burbank published his 12-volume series in 1915, the image was cropped to remove Shull, as can be seen in an earlier article. CLICK to enlarge. Photo courtesy Luther Burbank Museum)

Like it or not, Shull was spending about half of his year in Santa Rosa. A newlywed with a baby on the way, Shull bought the recently-built house at 724 McDonald Avenue in early 1907. His wife joined him here, and on May 5, their baby was delivered stillborn. The mother died two days later. Shull buried them both in the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery (just across the fence from Santa Rosa’s Rural Cemetery) and quickly returned to New York. Although he remarried, Shull ordered that he be interred next to them after he died in 1954.

As noted above, the situation with Burbank did not improve when Shull returned in the autumn of 1907. It was decided by the Carnegie Institution that Shull should spend some time the next year in Europe to gauge the impact of “Burbank’s Creations” outside of the United States. Shull found that the California-bred hybrids did poorly outside of the New World, and Europeans felt that Burbank’s renown was undeserved. 6

Meanwhile, the Intuition’s president popped in on Burbank in 1908 to see what was really going on. He wrote to Shull’s supervisor:


Mr. Burbank was visited during my western trip and found to be pretty badly tangled up with the rest of the universe, so badly, in fact, that it was necessary to issue a sort of ultimatum to him. I hope we may be able to extricate him, in part at least, since I feel that he is making good to the Institution on the horticultural side.

Whatever he meant by Burbank being “pretty badly tangled up with the rest of the universe,” that apparently was the last straw. The Carnegie Institution decided at the end of 1908 that Shull should wrap up the Burbank project in the coming year. Burbank would not be told of their decision, but President Woodward alerted him that he was having difficulty in convincing the board of trustees to continue supporting the project because of Burbank’s “misrepresentations.” 7

Any doubts about their decision were probably dispelled by the controversy that followed a few months later over accusations of fraud against Burbank. In 1908, Burbank had sold a nursery the rights to a hybrid berry he called the “Sunberry.” Renamed the “Wonderberry,” it was then sold to the public as Burbank’s latest marvel. The seed company even produced a cookbook of Wonderberry recipes to promote it. Problem was, the berries were poisonous when green, and palatable when fully ripe only when they were heavily coated with sugar (it’s said to taste like a cross between a very bland berry and an eggplant). Accusations were made that the plant was worthless (true) and not a hybrid at all but really black nightshade, a weed common around the world (false). Burbank offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove the latter, but the reward offer only became another club used to bash Burbank. In the end, the Wonderberry incident proved Burbank to be his own worst enemy. He couldn’t conclusively prove that the hybrid he created did not have nightshade in it because his recordkeeping was poor to non-existent – exactly as Shull had reported to the Carnegie Institution. As a result, Burbank’s reputation was tarnished for the first time in the popular press.8

Burbank learned at the end of 1909 that his grant would not be renewed for a sixth year. There is no (published) account of his reaction (UPDATE: see the final part of this series), but he was vindictive and vituperative when he wrote to the editor of “The Guide to Nature” magazine, claiming “the Carnegie people refuse to give the full facts” regarding the termination of his grant, and sought the editor’s help in bringing shame to his former benefactor. “I have never desired any publicity,” Burbank wrote, without a whiff of obvious hypocrisy, “…but I now desire publicity and lots of it, the more the better. I wish this thing dug to the very earth and the guilty parties exhibited to the light.”

When Shull returned to Santa Rosa in 1910 to wrap up his research, he found Burbank “rather free in his expressions of disapproval of the treatment accorded him by the Institution.”9 Burbank was even more uncooperative than before, as Shull wrote to his supervisor,


You will be interested to know that although Mr. Burbank received me with marked kindness, he fell back immediately onto the old plea as to the great value of his time when the question was raised as to his giving me more assistance. He says he has no income now and that his time is worth $500 to $600 an hour..10

Shull worked on his final report in Santa Rosa despite Burbank’s unwillingness to help, and continued toiling over it for the next four years. Sometimes the unfinished manuscript clearly took the backseat to his own pioneering work in genetics, but he also dedicated almost an entire year in 1913-1914 to wrapping up the Burbank report. He still didn’t produce a final draft, and biographer Walter L. Howard wrote in 1945 that it was still unfinished. Why?

It would be understandable if Shull simply ran out of steam; by 1914, he had been working on the report for nine frustrating years. Refuting accusations made by The Guide to Nature editor, the Carnegie Institution president also revealed for the first time that there was an agreement that “[Burbank’s] work should not be given to the public until his [death].” Given that Burbank lived until 1926, Shull was spending his most productive years laboring over a tome that wouldn’t see light of day for a decade or more. As Howard wrote: “Shull had become absorbed in his own genetical researches which, to him, seemed more important than working over his old Burbank records to recover a few flakes of gold from a large mass of sand.”11

The most logical reason, however, was that both Shull and the Carnegie Institution saw publication as a lose-lose situation. Whatever result was sure to anger and infuriate. A large body of the scientific community wanted the Institution to expose Burbank as a fraud; Burbank’s legion of supporters wanted him enshrined as no less a genius than Newton. There was no possibility of a compromise report that would leave the reputations of the Carnegie Institution and Shull free of significant damage.

Burbank likely saw the Carnegie grant as a kind of sinecure – an “attaboy” for long years of good works and encouragement to do even more cross-breeding. Given that George H. Shull wasn’t the sort of fawning sycophant that normally wanted to hang with Burbank, it surely occurred to him that any report published by the Institution might have a high risk of being embarrassing and damaging to his reputation. Those were two reasons why Burbank was motivated to be uncooperative. The third reason was that he had others at hand who wanted to write the “Compleat Burbank,” and these parties were far more willing to wear Burbank’s leash. More to come in Burbank Follies, Part III.

NOTES:1pg. 145, Bentley Glass, The strange encounter of Luther Burbank and George Harrison Shull (American Philosophical Society, 1980)
2pg. 137, ibid
3pg. 439, Walter L. Howard, Luther Burbank: A Victim of Hero Worship (Chronica Botanica 9)4pg. 136, Glass
5pg. 436-437, Howard
6pg. 140, Glass
7pg. 173, Peter Dreyer, A Gardener Touched With Genius (Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, CA), 1985
8pg. 176-177, ibid
9pg. 141, Glass
10ibid
11pg. 442-443, Howard

WILL BECOME SANTA ROSAN
Dr. George Shull Purchases Pretty Home Here

Dr. George F. Shull, of the Carnegie Institute, who is here to write the wonderful works of Luther Burbank, for a series of technical books, has determined to become a citizen of Santa Rosa. On Monday he purchased a handsome residence of Dr. and Mrs. J. N. Hooper on McDonald avenue and will move into the same as soon as possession can be secured.

– Santa Rosa Republican, March 5, 1907
THE SAD DEATH OF MRS. G. H. SHULL
Estimable Young Woman Passes Away in This City Yesterday Morning After Brief Witness

At an early hour yesterday morning the silent messenger summoned from earth the soul of Mrs. Ella Hollar Shull, the dearly beloved wife of Dr. George H. Shull, director in charge of the Carnegie Institute experimental station Cold Harbor Springs, Long Island, N. Y., who came here some time ago to prepare scientific articles on Luther Burbank’s work. Death followed an extremely critical illness of a few day’s duration.

During her brief residence in Santa Rosa the deceased lady endeared herself to many friends and her sudden passing has occasioned the sincerest regret. Life’s span for her was a little over thirty-one years and she was called home at practically the commencement of what seemed destined to be a very happy wedded life. She was a bride only a few months ago, and the devoted husband she leaves behind is almost overwhelmed with the grief that has overtaken him.

[..]

– Press Democrat, May 8, 1907

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