The Nurserymen and the Fruit-Growers. 295 



I believe most thoroughly in patronizing home industry in the nursery business. 

 If a neighbor has a good stock, buy of him rather than send away off somewhere. 

 Your local man is more apt to know what varieties you should plant ; you will 

 get stock that is already acclimated, and you will be able to get it at the proper 

 time to plant. 



TRUE TO LABEL ESSENTIAL. 



In going about the country as I do, I find a good many orchards in which n 

 large per cent of the trees were not what the planter ordered when he put the 

 tree out. and he naturally is angry and says hard and uncomplimentary things 

 about nurserymen in general and some one in particular if he happens to know 

 where he purchased his trees. 



I am reminded of a remark made by that good farmer and charming writer. 

 Mr. H. W. Collingwood, of Hope Farm, New Jersey, and editor of the Rural New 

 Yorker. "No man can plant a tree and care for it. watch it grow, pushing forth 

 leaves, branches and fruit, and not be a better man for it, unless, unless, imless 

 some one has changed the label." 



Now I do not believe for a minute that any one of you ever deliberately 

 changed a label ; that you are criminals, as we have recently heard charged : 

 that you should all be in the penitentiary because, through mistake, accident or 

 the carelessness and ignorance of employes, you may at some time have sent 

 out trees that were not true to name. I once purchased fifty apple trees from a 

 man whose honor and reputation were above reproach, a personal friend as well, 

 and yet only eight were the kind I ordered. Such mistakes are bound to occur at 

 times in a business where it is so hard to avoid them as it is in the nursery 

 business ; but it must be your constant aim to keep these mistakes at the minimum 

 point. You must know that you are cutting your scions and buds from correctly 

 named stock ; you must know that your assistants correctly mark the rows, and yon 

 should keep records in the office to verify the markings in the field. 



The nursery business is an exacting one. It requires the highest order of 

 business skill to successfully grow and market a large amount of stock. I do not 

 know whether the rewards of a careful and conscientious nurseryman are as great 

 as they ought to be, but the purchaser wlio pays a fair price for trees and who 

 uses due care and good sense on his own part is entitled to ask a great deal of 

 a nurseryman. No man can grow a good orchard who does not get good trees to 

 start with, and he must depend absolutely upon you for that start, the founda- 

 tion of his future business. It is no light matter to wait seven or eight years to 

 find that your apples are nearly or quite worthless. Last winter at the meeting 

 of the Northwest Fruit Growers, it was said that we needed very stringent laws, 

 rigorously enforced, upon this subject, but I must say I can not agree wiih the 

 idea then advanced. If this plan of requiring the nurseryman to pay all damages 

 and loss caused by selling trees untrue to name were to be strictly enforced, it 

 would make the price of trees almost prohibitive. In order to take the risk the 

 nurseryman would have to charge from fifty to seventy-five cents for an ordinary 

 pear or apple tree. 



If such a plan were to be adopted at all it would be liest to have it apply 

 only to such cases as the purchaser desired. If he demanded the absolute guarantee 

 let him have it and pay the exti-a price, but if he was willing to trust the seller 

 he should not be made to pay for someone else's lack of confidence. I wish to 

 call your attention here to the plan adopted by the Rogers Nurseries of Dansville- 

 N. Y. They sell what they call the pedigreed trees ; that is. trees budded or grafted 

 only from the best bearing trees they can find. For these they ask a little extra 

 price, but guarantee them in every respect and offer to pay damages to anyone 

 buying such a tree and finding it untrue to name, to the amount of five times 

 the price of the tree. Their other stock, grown in the usual manner, is sold at 

 ordinary prices. 



The deliberate swindler, the man against whom such a law would be primarily 

 aimed, would evade it by working a community one or two seasons and moving 



