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56 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
more we can get together with one idea, one pursuit, as- 
sisting one another, having a common feeling for our as- 
sociates in business, the better it is for us. We cannot any 
one of us own all the flowers. We cannot market all the 
flowers. Wecannot supply allthe customers. We do not 
have the ability to do it; we have not the means nor the 
time to do it; and therefore it must be parceled out to a 
great number. 
The florists’ business of the country and, I might say, 
of the civilized world, has been given a great impetus 
of late years. There has been some little effort made 
lately to ascertain the rate of increase of the business from 
year to year, and I think that with the completion of the 
present census considerable light will be thrown upon this 
particular branch of trade. We know now that there are 
about twenty-five millions of superficial feet of glass used 
in these United States in, to a large extent, the commercial 
florists’ business. It is a business which ranks second 
to none in this country in regard to enterprise, energy and 
push ; and, like the market gardening business spoken of 
by my friend Mr. Smith, ours is a business which looks 
more particularly for a home market. It is a very perisha- 
ble commodity indeed we handle. Although large quanti- 
ties of flowers are shipped long distances, it is only with 
great care in selecting varieties and in handling them that 
this is done successfully. There are many things that we 
have yet to learn in regard to the successful carrying on 
of the commercial florists’ business. It has been but 
within the last twenty-five or thirty years that it has taken 
what I may call a front rank in a horticultural sense: — 
since the war, in fact. And one thing which a great many 
of the commercial florists at the time deprecated, was men 
of wealth going into the business for the money that there 
was in it solely, — investing large amounts of capital, em- 
ploying skilled labor, the best they could command, for 
the mere money there was in it. I can only say that a 
very large number of those men have not found it as prof- 
