The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1926-05-06

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with the growth of our material
equipment we vii slip also.-Her-
bert Hoover in Education as a
National Asset.
AN INTERVIEW WITH LUTHER
BURBANK
Oh. H. Dunn in Popular Science
Monthly
Last Installment
inferior human beings, of
course, cannot be treated as if
they were inferior plants. But if
civilization is to endure, some way
must be found to produce more
of the fit, and fewer of the unfit.
GAS matters stand, we are max
ing little use of our opportunities
for racial improvement. We are
not combining the beneficial he
|redit:es Of good types. We are
little more than a field of wild
weeds, in which, here and there,
arises a superior type, the result
Iof a fortunate and chance cross
ing rather than of intelligent Sc
lection. Such blind crossing of
types produces only accidental ex-
cellence. and this excellence is
likely to disappear in the second
generation.
Like plant development, racial
Improvement is a matter of hered-
lily, selection. proper crossing. and
environments. There is no great
gulf between plant life and animal
life. | know that plants have
minds-subconscious minds, but
at any rate, minds. In the work
Of human Improvement we should
begin where we begin in plant i'm
provement-at the beginning, in
the infancy Of either plant or
child.
"No child should see the inside
of a school until he is ten years
old. The only fit place to bring
up a boy or a girl or a plant is in
the country or in a small town.
The atmosphere Of a city is too
artificial. too like that Of a rot
house.
"The curse of modern child life
in America is over-education. We
do not expect a normal plant to
begin bearing fruit a few weeks
after it is born. Both the child
and the plant should be given
ample time to prepare for the work
of their lives. To improve the
race. The children of the race must
be healthy. l could not work
successfully with diseased plants
that would spread disease among
the other plants.
Marriage of the physically,
mentally, and morally unfit should
be prohibited, and that prohibi-
ton made absolute. Crossing a
poisonous plant with a non-poi-
sonous one and so producing an
unwholesome growth which is a.
menace to the whole garden, is.
wrong; but how much worse it is.
to cross two poisonous plants, and
then set their poisonous decend-
ants loose over the earth! So with
human be!ngsl'
Greater than all his plant dis
~coveries, greater than his achieve
ment of adding grains worth mil.
lions Of dollars to our annual pro-
duction, greater than the Won.
ders he has wrought in providing.
new fruits for man, Burbank con-
siders the development of his idea
that children, like plants, can be
improved, trained and developed.
His greatest hope in life is to see
this idea applied to the coming
generation in America, and in the
whole world.
"For half a century" he said,
as he bade me good-by." I have
oeen guldlng a vast army OF MIL
lions of plants-grains, vege-
tables, fruits and flowers-toward
the goal of Improvement, so that
they might be of greater value to
man. In those fifty years there
has been growing steadily in my
mind the belief-yes, the knowl-
edgei-that in the development of
the plant lies a great object les
son for human beings. This fact
consider my most valuable dis
covery. I have proved it many.
times, and I may state it in two
sentences, the second the corol-
larry of the first:
"First. that plants are pliable.
and amenable to the wishes of.
man, and that they may be bred.
and trained and developed just
as animals may be bred and