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. 

 ***** 



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] 



