LUTHER BURBANK 
signified more to the world than it ever has since. 
Multiplying a potato yield by four, then, meant 
more than were such a yield multiplied by ten, or 
even by a hundred, now. 
But the greatest value which the Burbank 
potato gave to the world was not in the increase in 
its potato crop; the greatest service it rendered 
was not even the seventeen-million-dollar-a-year 
addition to America’s farm incomes which this 
potato has been estimated to have wrought. 
The greatest value it gave—the greatest service 
it performed—was to turn Luther Burbank into 
a new line of invention—into a line in which, 
because it is so basic and so vast, even a slight 
improvement means a fortune to the world of 
consumers—and the perfection of a new food or 
_ forage plant untold billions in added wealth. 
* * x x t 
It was the potato seed ball, found by Luther 
Burbank, the boy, which gave the world Luther 
Burbank, the man. 
It was his success with the potato which put in 
his heart the courage to forswear the certainty of 
farming for the ups and downs of an inventor’s 
life; and it was the lesson in heredity which it 
taught that placed him on the trail of Great 
Achievement. 
[64] 
