294 Appendix. 



THE NURSERYMEN AND THE FRUIT-GROWERS. 



W. K. Newell before the second annual meeting of the Pacific Coast AssociatioQ 



of Nurserymen. 



Relations between the nurseryman and the fruit-grower should be most 

 cordial and intimate, and believing as I do, that the initiative in establishing better 

 feeling and understanding must come from you nurserymen, I have in this short 

 paper dwelt upon that point. 



AYhen asked by your executive committee to prepare a paper, I felt much 

 reluctance in accepting, for it seemed to me I was getting out of my province 

 somewhat, for I have neither raised nor sold any nursery stock, and can speak to 

 you only from the standpoint of the fruit-grower. But as Bobbie Burns says : "Gie- 

 us the gift to see ourselves as ither see us," perhaps it may not do any harm 

 to look upon yourselves from the standpoint of the average fruit-grower, even 

 though the picture be not always flattering or even pleasant. 



I am sorry to say that the majority of fruitgrowers have not quite the degree 

 of confidence in the average nurseryman that they should have. That this i.s 

 so is due to a number of causes here in Oregon, some of which causes have been 

 already removed, and others are being removed or remedied. During the great 

 boom of tree-planting here some twelve or fifteen years ago, the demand for trees 

 was so great that local nurserymen could not supply it : the evpr-preseut speculator 

 appeared upon the scene, who bought trees wherever he could find them, utterly 

 regardless of quality, variety or anything else so long as they resembled fruit trees. 

 And when an order was received he put on the labels to suit and shipped the 

 trees. What did he careV He did not expect to be here when the poor deluded 

 purchaser, after several years of care and expense, detected the fraud. And then 

 when the boom collapsed, and fruit trees were peddled and hawked about the 

 country for any price that they would bring, it was inevitable that much of the 

 planting done at that time should prove unsatisfactory. 



SELLING AND BUYING. 



The method, almost universally in vogue here for so many years, of nursery- 

 men selling the greater part of their stock to .iobbers or dealers who in turn 

 perhaps sold to other dealers before the stock finally reached the consumer, was 

 unbusineslike and unprofitable, and the hard times in eliminating that middleman 

 and forcing you to take up other methods was at least not wholly an evil to the fruit 

 industry. 



I am glad to see that of late years a better method is taking its place : that 

 is the plan of the nurseryman selling direct to the planter through his duly 

 accredited agents. There are only two ways in which a man should buy trees : the 

 first is to send or go in person to some reliable nursery, and the second to order 

 through an agent whom he knows to be duly authorized to represent some responsible 

 firm. Where an agent is not personally known he should carry proof of his 

 identity, and if he does not do this, the purchaser should decline to deal with 

 him, or at least blame no one but himself if he is defrauded. Where a large 

 and important order is to be placed, one should, of course, go in person to the 

 nursery and select his trees, just as he would do in purchasing any other important 

 article of merchandise. If people would use a little more business sense in buying 

 and quit trying always to get something for nothing, there would be much less 

 complaint of fraud. 



