Most of the valuable cultivated plants which mankind is 
now dependent upon for food and clothing have been improved 
through the discoveries of men who have neither been paid for 
their work nor honored for their gigantic services. 
These modest men whose names you do not know, do not 
complain and it is not to improve their personal condition that 
I write, but to call your attention to the fact that there are today 
fewer Plant Breeders in America than there were twenty years 
ago, that as a career Plant Breeding offers nothing but a 
starvation wage at the close of life, that not a tenth of one per- 
cent of our good varieties of plants have been produced by 
government paid men, that the very foundation of successful 
agriculture lies in the use of varieties of plants which are 
adapted to each locality, that plant breeding more than any 
other profession requires a continuous application over long 
years to accomplish anything and that it must be done in the 
country where collections of the plants which are to be bred 
can be kept, that the keeping of these collections is a very 
expensive thing and that the cost of maintaining them always 
falls on the individual Plant Breeder. 
Notwithstanding all these facts there has not been done one 
single thing to encourage Pioneers who because they love plants 
have sacrificed their fortunes, their families and their lives to 
produce the luscious fruits, the lovely flowers and the delicious 
fresh vegetables which fill our gardens, and because the Patent 
Laws do not recognize discovery in the field of living matter, 
the Plant Breeder is poorer in proportion to the size of his 
collections and the length of time he has been breeding plants. 
"What is needed is a Foundation for Plant Breeders. An 
Institution through which this whole question of the stimulation 
of this profession could be studied. If, as many Plant Breed- 
ers believe and many Patent Attorneys admit, Plant Hybrids 
can be patented and protected and in this way the art of plant 
breeding be placed where it belongs — among the highest of the 
arts — then it is time, high time, that America should take the 
lead. As one of the most successful Horticulturists of America 
expressed it : " Such a step would advance Horticulture more 
than any other thing which has occurred during this century." 
The Garden Club of America is composed of those who are 
leading the thought of the country in Ornamental Horticulture. 
It has in it more influence than any organization ever before 
interested in Horticulture. I present a cause which has never 
been taken up seriously by any organization, which is one of the 
biggest things which could be considered, which offers an 
opportunity for fame that will last for centuries to whoever first 
takes it up seriously and which in the long run will make more 
change in the flower gardens of the world than anything which 
has occurred for a hundred years. 
299 
