LUTHER BURBANK 



signified more to tlie world tliaii 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-doUar-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 w^as 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] 



