Was L.H. Bailey a Racist?

    In a recent January post on Thornapple CSA's blog, Paul B. Thompson, the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University, made the striking claim that Liberty Hyde Bailey was a racist: "But although Bailey is clearly a food ethics icon, he’s also problematic. He was a racist, for one thing, and his writings include occasional sentences and paragraphs that are shocking to modern readers." Despite not giving any specific support to his charge, let us take Professor Thompson's charge seriously. Unfortunately, comments to Professor Thompson's blog post are currently closed so I'll respond here.

To clear the playing field, let's list two important ideas that everyone should know about race:

• Race has no genetic basis.
• Race isn't biological, but racism is still real.

    With this in mind, here is what Bailey had to say in his background book, What is Democracy? published in 1918 after the wake of the Great War; "Racial independence and separateness is a doubtful apprenticeship to democracy. It tends to solidify the racial clan, making it a class enterprise in the world. Racial jealousies and hatreds have always stood in the way of democracy, and the modern process has been to break down these barriers...One reason why democracy has thriven in North America is because the population is not a race but a brotherhood."

    It is evident, that Bailey could not discard the idea and workings of racism. This doesn't make him a racist, however. In great contrast to a racist ideology, Bailey found the ideas of race antithetical to democracy. If he can be accused of anything is perhaps overt optimism that North America consisted as a brotherhood, while we still struggle with the inequalities of racism today.

    In his follow-up writing, Universal Service, the Hope for Humanity, Bailey viewed World War I as a "great collapse" in society where people of every race found it necessary to be prepared, "to destroy the citizen of any other race or people in order to protect itself." He further asserted, "If we make no fundamental change of direction in these moving forces at the conclusion of the present Lapse, then we must conclude that society does not have within its body the power of self-correction." Again, Bailey articulates the destructive properties in our belief in race.

    In all fairness, perhaps Professor Thompson quick accusation was directed at other aspects of Bailey, namely his science. But as for the man himself and his personal beliefs, we find a very articulate person, hoping for a better future, with a larger belief in humanity. That alone should give one enough restraint in connecting Liberty Hyde Bailey with the ugly stain of racism.

L.H. Bailey-A Look Backward On The Grape

    On a shelf in my library are some fifty books printed in North America which are devoted to the grape, but there is no other fruit that has anywhere near this number of volumes. When, many years ago, I began to collect horticultural books from antiquarian shops in all parts of the country, with no lists to guide me, I was struck by the profusion of writings on "the vine" and began to make inquiry as to the reasons for it. I found that therein lay a most interesting and devious history, and one that has much significance to the development of agricultural practice. We think of history as belonging to politics and governments, to kings and thrones and wars, but hardly to such common practices as the plowing of land and the growing of grapes; yet, one does not plow, neither does he plant, until he makes up his mind to do so, and he makes up his mind because there are antecedent reasons.

    These grape books are generally old — of the middle of last century and earlier — and they impress one greatly with the description of European practice. Many of them are books recording the attempt to transfer Old World methods into this new continent, and to grow the vine for the purpose of making wine; for wine has been the destiny of the grape from the time of Noah until the present epoch.-L.H. Bailey

(Read more at A Look Backward on the Grape )

Through the Lens of L.H. Bailey: Plants, Places, & People

In the archives of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum over one-hundred glass plate negatives taken by America's Father of Modern Horticulture, Liberty Hyde Bailey were uncovered. This summer, for the first time in over a century, these images will be able to be viewed by the public. At the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum's premier exhibit, "Through the Lens of L.H. Bailey: Plants, Places & People,"  connect to America's eminent horticulturalist-philosopher through these rare images taken at the turn of the 20th century. 

JUNE 22ND: MEMBER PREVIEW

OPENING JUNE 23RD - SEPTEMBER 15TH

General Admission: $5; Student/Senior Admission: $3; Kids 5 and under: Free; Members: Free

 - Group Tours Available -

For more information email lhbm@south-haven.com or call (269) 637-3251

A Christmas Husbandly Fare

    It was more than three centuries ago that native Thomas Tusser, musician, chorister, and farmer, gave to the world his incomparable "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry." He covered the farm year and the farm work as completely as Vergil had covered it more than fifteen centuries before; and he left us sketches of the countryside of his day, and the ways of the good plain folk, and quaint bits of philosophy and counsel. He celebrated the Christmas festival with much conviction, and in the homely way of the home folks, deriving his satisfactions from the things that the land produces. His sketches are wholesome reading in these days of foods transported from the ends of the earth, and compounded by impersonal devices and condensed into packages that go into every house alike.

...May we not once in the year remember the earth in the food that we eat? May we not in some way, even though we live in town, so organize our Christmas festival that the thought of the goodness of the land and its bounty shall be a conscious part of our celebration? May we not for once reduce to the very minimum the supply of manufactured and sophisticated things, and come somewhere near, at least in spirit, to a "Christmas husbandly fare?" - L.H. Bailey, The Holy Earth

The Wild Apple of your Eye

Looking for a good ritual this New Years for your apple tree? Check out

The Wild Apple of your Eye!

The Difficulty with Much of our Teaching

    The difficulty with much of our teaching is that the pupil does not carry it with him into life; and he does not carry it with him because it is likely to be taught in an abstract way and without any particular articulation or vibration with the situations that he has to meet or with the knowledge that he is likely to gain by experience. I do not care much about the mere "practical" teaching, meaning by that the direct outcome of teaching in dollars and cents; but I care very much to have our teaching really mean something to the pupil, and to this end all teaching should be applicable.

... I think we shall some day consider it to be important that our people know the actual products of the earth, not only that they may utilize these products effectively but that they also may have the resource that comes from good nature-knowledge. - L.H. Bailey, 1913, "York State Rural Problems"

How the Trees Look in Winter

Only the growing and open season is thought to be attractive in the country. The winter is bare and cheerless. The trees are naked.

The flowers are under the snow. The birds have flown. The only bright and cheery spot is the winter fireside. But even there the farmer has so much time that he does not know what to do with it. Only those who have little time, appreciate its value.

But the winter is not lifeless and charmless. It is only dormant. The external world fails to interest us because we not been trained to see and know it; and also because the rigorous weather and the snow prevent us from going afield....If the farmer's winter is to be more enjoyable, the farmer must have more points of contact with the winter world. One of the best and most direct of these points of sympathy is an interest in the winter aspects of trees. Let us consider the subject a moment.

Consciously or unconsciously, we think of trees much as we think o f persons. They suggest thoughts and feelings which are also attributes of people. A tree is weeping, gay, restful, spirited, quiet, sombre. That is, trees have expression. The expression resides in the observer, however, not in the tree. Therefore, the more the person is trained to observe and to reflect, the more sensitive his mind to the things about him, and the more meaning the trees have. No one loves natures who does not love trees. - L.H. Bailey, 1899