Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1908 — THEORY OF CHILD CULTURE [ARTICLE]

THEORY OF CHILD CULTURE

Luther Burbank Says Train . Them as Fruits or Flowers ENVIRONMENT A FACTOR To Perfect the Human Race Begin with the Child—American of the Future to be Morally Beautiful and Intellectually Fit—A Work of Elimination.

America’s greatest naturalist expresses his views regarding childculture when he says: 1 The two forces to be considered in reproduction are heredity and environment. In child rearing environment is equally essential with heredity. Mind you, I do not say that heredity is of no consequence. It is a great factor and often makes environment almost useless. When the hereditary instincts are indelibly ingrained environment will have a hard battle to effect a change in the child, but that a change can be wrought by the surroundings we all know. The particular subject may be stubborn against the influences of environment, but repeated application to the same modifying forces in succeeding generations will accomplish the desired objects.

All animal life is sensitive to environment. You can change the oyster by gradually changing its environment, and you know the oyster is a very low type of life. Take an ox, a horse, a dog, a man, and that which often counts most in the development of each is environment. Of all animate things, the child is the most sensitive. Surroundings act upon it as the outside work acts upon the plate In the camera. Every possible influence acting exteriorly will leave its Impress on the child, and the traits which it Inherited will be overcome to a certain extent, In many caßeß almost being even more apparent than heredity. There is no doubt that if a child with a vicious temper be placed in an environment of peace and quiet the temper will change. Put a boy born of gentle white parents among Indians and he will grow up like an Indian. Let the child born of criminal parents have a setting of morality and decency, and the chances are that he will not grow into a criminal, but an upright man. I do not say that heredity will not sometimes assert Itself to some extent; of course. When the criminal Instinct crops out in an individual it might appear as if environment were levelled to the ground. But higher environment will become fixed. We in America form a nation with the bloods of half the peoples of the world within our veins. We are more crossed than any other nation in the history of the world. All the necessary crossing has been dope, and now comes the work of elimination, the

work of refining, until we get an ultimate product that will be the finest human race known. It is no doubt this country which will produce that specimen. Many years will be consumed before the finished, work Is attained, but It is sure to come. The characteristics of the many peoples that make up this nation will show in the composite 1 with many of the evil characteristics removed, and the finished product will be the race of the future. Sometimes I am appalled when 1 read of the increase of insanity, suicide, murder, the ills of the flesh. Statistics show many things to make us pause, but after all the proper point of view is that of the optimist. The time nriVnft whan lmmnltv win be reduced, suicides and murders will be fewer and man will become a being of few ills and bodily troubles. Wherever you have a nation in which there is no variation there is comparatively little insanity or crime or exalted morality or genius. Here in America, where the variation is greatest, the statistics show a greater percentage ofUnsanlty and all other variations. As time goes on in its endless and ceaseless course environment, will crystallize the American nation. Its varying elements will become unified, and the weeding out process will probably leave the finest human product ever known. The color, the perfume, the size, the shape that were manumitted in plants will have their analogies in the composite, the American of the future. In my work with plants and flowers I introduce color here, shape there, size or perfume, according to the products desired. In such processes the teachings of nature are followed. Its great forces only are employed. All that has been done for plants and flowers nature has already accomplished for {he American people. By the crossing of bloods strength has in one instance been secured, in another intellectuality, In still another moral force. Nature alone could do this. The work of man’s head and hand could not be summoned to prescribe for the development of a race.