THE LUTHER BURBANK SOCIETY 



analyst of the situation might well have come to 

 the conclusions that: (1) Luther Burbank's meth- 

 ods and discoveries, whether valuable or not, are 

 hardly likely to be given the world in any under- 

 standable form, since for so many years so much 

 money had been poured into the enterprise with- 

 out visible result; (2) the world will continue to 

 enjoy such of Luther Burbank's creations as have 

 been already distributed, but it is not likely that 

 other experimenters will be enabled to take up his 

 work where he is leaving off, while, on the other 

 hand it is extremely likely that the world must 

 wait for many years, perhaps centuries, for a new 

 crop of plant improvers to grow who will catch up 

 with this man who has lived so far ahead of his 

 times; (3) it is quite likely that Luther Burbank, 

 like Mendel, will die unappreciated, not because 

 the world would lack appreciation for such work 

 as his, but because, rather, there seems to be no 

 practical means of communicating to the world 

 what he anxiously desires to tell. 



The analyst who would have come to these 

 conclusions need not have been a pessimist; he 

 might well have been an optimist who simply 

 looked the facts in the face. 



It was at this stage that The Luther Burbank 

 Society was organized. 



The underlying thought was that where one 



[259] 



