LUTHER BURBANK 



These were the days when Chicago was a far 

 western city, and when the great territory beyond 

 was the home of the pioneer. 



The potato is a vegetable designed peculiarly 

 for the pioneer. 



It requires no great preparation either for 

 planting or harvesting. It grows rapidly on the 

 rich new soil turned over by the settler; a little 

 cultivation insures its growth; when ripened it 

 may lie in the ground and be used as needed; 

 when the fall frosts come it can easily be banked 

 in a pit for winter use. 



Little care; small outlay; easy preparation for 

 food; these make the potato the first crop to be 

 grown when the settler locates his new home. 



Trace now the influence which this one success 

 had upon a growing nation. It was in 1871. It was 

 a time when the line between success and failure — 

 between starvation and comfortable plenty — was 

 drawn so finely for the pioneer that even the 

 slightest help was of a value out of proportion to 

 its intrinsic worth. 



A crop failure or shortage, in those reconstruc- 

 tion days after the war, meant a set-back that 

 would take years to overcome, for the pioneer's 

 only source of supply, usually, was his own crop. 



Any increase, therefore, in Nature's products — 

 such as the potato — in the days of the pioneer, 



1621 



