72 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS successes wrought run well into the thousands — how vast it seems to those of us who are content to do one thing at a timel**^ Is not humanity, theref ore, to be congratulated that Luther Burbanky early in life, selected his work and turned a deaf ear to the wishes of his people that he direct his talents to mechanical invention t If he had developed into an Edison, a Morse, a Howe, or a Marconi, the world would have been robbed of the Burbank potato which has added more than seventeen million dollars a year to the farm incomes of Amer- ica alone. It would have been robbed of Mr. Burbank's dis- coveries in prunes, which have made the United States a three hundred million pound exporter of prunes, instead of a fifty million pound importer as before. It would have been robbed of the thirty or forty Burbank creations that are adding mil- lions to the wealth of the nation; and it would have been robbed of the hundreds of other equally important Burbank in- ventions that will be generally known as soon as Mr. Bur- bank's books, now about completed, are given to the reading public. And notwithstanding the fact that young Burbank constructed a machine in the factory in which he had found temporary employment that did the work of a half dozen men, and because of which his delighted employers doubled his pay, he was still true to his ideal — true to the call of nature to come and cooperate in making new plants and improving old ones. So young Burbank left the whirl and grind of the factory and went out into the green fields to begin the creation of his wonders. His first creation, when he was but a young boy, was the Burbank potato. Every man, woman and child in a large part of the entire world has personally benefited by this development. We quote from the first volume of Luther Bur- bank, His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practiced Appli- cation :
- * Luther Burbank found a seed-ball on one of the plants of
1 Luther Burbank, His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Appiicti- tion. Three volumes of this series have already been issued and the remaining nine volumes will appear in rapid succession.
