284 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tion? Perhaps. Has the ruin of the nurseryman afforded any permanent gain to the 

 world at large? If so, there may be some comjjensation, and yet we all know this is 

 not the case. The orchard planter has paid S5 per dozen for choice apple trees, S15 per 

 dozen for luscious pears, and he has been convinced that life, liberty and the pursuit 

 of happmess depends solely upon the all-wool and a yard- wide cherries at 810 per 

 dozen. If retail prices have held up, why should the maia who has borne the heat and 

 burden of the day be shrunken all out of financial shape by prices that have varied 

 more than 500 per cent."/ 



Now, friends, can't we trace this matter back to a logical head and detect the error 

 responsible for these unjust variations? 



Some will blame the removal of the tariff upon imported goods for the shrinkage, 

 and yet French apple seed costs double the price of the native seed, and comparatively 

 few apple seedlings are imported. The naturalist is sometimes confronted with disa- 

 greeable duties, securing casts of venomous reptiles, and yet science prevails. First 

 procuring the snake, they feed it Mrs. Winslow's syrup or some other harmless soporific 

 until insensibility ensues, a mold is taken in jilaster, the sleeping beauty dumped out 

 none the worse for wear, and the cast is filled with tinted plaster of paris, the old mold 

 is then delicately chiseled away until the tinted filling is reached and the result is a 

 fac simile resemblance of a dangerous creature. "Comparisons are odious." None are 

 intended, beyond our honest attempt to attach responsibility for the disorganized state 

 of nursery business where it belongs, to the nurserymen. 



Upon whom does the nurseryman depend largely for the sale of his products? That 

 bright and entertaining gentlemen, who, with his elegant outfit of jjainted fruit, and 

 other aids, wends his way from house to house and persuades the owners to exchange 

 wealth of the realm for nursery goods. So far, so good; this is an eminently proper 

 procedure. 



The agent is usually on the war jjath during the months of May, June, and July, 

 from twelve to sixteen weeks, winding up his canvass in August and resting from his 

 arduous labors until the time for delivery arrives. The goods are packed and delivered 

 inside of fifteen days, as a rule, and he returns to headquarters to divide | ? ) with the 

 naan who has spent from two .to four years in producing the goods sold, and who in 

 doing so has experienced more risks than the children of Israel in their forty -years 

 outing. 



The division is figured by the rule of 4 — that is to say, the nurseryman gets one part 

 and the solicitor three; the apple tree retailed for 42 cents — is settled for at from 6 to 10 

 cents, the nurseryman receiving from 14 to 25 per cent, as his pro rata, while the sales- 

 man or the middleman has, to reimburse him for labor, expense, and profit, from 75 to 86 

 per cent. His stock in trade is his outfit and cash expenses for 100 days. His acquire- 

 ments or knowledge of the delicate processes of propagation are actually ''nil," and his 

 best stock in trade is cheek illimitable and push; and the worst is not told, because, in 

 some instances, they expect canvassing outfits to be supplied free, and to draw from the 

 nurseryman upon their orders, when received, a sum of money oftentimes greater than 

 the wholesale cost price of goods supplied. In other words, for the sake of doing busi- 

 ness, a cash capital is required, outside of the cost of production, fully equal to the 

 wholesale value of the goods sold. If I am drawing a long bow, please call me down. 



Some years ago, while on a visit to the Buckeye state, I visited a beautiful little city 

 in the Miami valley. My guide was one of the ubiquitous and versatile tree dealers 

 with whom the town seemed so well supplied. We drove through the residence portion 

 of the city and my attention was called to the elegant residence of Mr. A., a tree dealer. 

 Mr. B. occupied also a charming cottage — his business was the dissemination of new 

 and valued varieties of fruit, etc. On the opposite side of Mr. C, another evangelist of 

 Johnny Appleseed had recently finished a superb mansion from last season's profits, and 

 so on, up one street and down the next, until, to my fevered imagination, that little city 

 seemed to be peopled with fiourishing tree men who could, at least in a measure, meet 

 the ancient description of the lily of the field, that neither toiled nor spun. Our drive 

 presently brought us toward the nurseries located in the outer suburbs and in place of 

 the suburban villa that should furnish shelter to the man that made it possible, by the 

 expenditure of his labor and capital for so many to thrive, very modest edifices seemed 

 to satisfy their desires. 



The comparative prosperity seemed to have been divided, as did the establishment of 

 the Irish couple who, when they agreed to disagree, divided their shanty by the woman 

 taking the inside and the iiian the outside. 



We have no quarrel with the dealer or the middle man. Two are always needed in 

 constructing bargains, and you are the other party to the contract. It is simply a case 

 of where, in place of laying away his "gall" with the balance of his outfit used, when 

 through canvassing the bucolic denizen, he has brought it in with him and turned it 



