PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 289 



greatest reward in the market. This, it seems to me, is the first con- 

 •dition to be considered in relation to successful peach-growing and pea^^h- 

 marketing in the future. 



Another thing is to consider what the people of the consuming world 

 want and what they appreciate. There is a growing appreciation among 

 the public for finer products of the soil, all the time, and for more 

 beautiful and aesthetic things. It happened to be my good fortune, in 

 1890, to have some connection with the horticultural census, which cov- 

 ered several phases of horticultural production, and some special 

 inquiries were made. One was in relation to floriculture. Now, flori- 

 culture has not anything directly to do with peach-growlni*:, but beauti- 

 ful peaches and beautiful flowers go hand in hand, into the same families 

 and into the same hearts and homes of the same class of people. There 

 never had been a floricultural census in the United States, and so I was 

 allowed by the chief of census to begin where I liked and leave off where 

 I could. As Uncle Sam "paid the freight", and I wanted to get all the 

 information I could for our horticultural friends I went deeply into it. 

 I want to just briefly state that in 1800, so far as we oould trace, ihere 

 was but one commercial florist's establishment in the United States. In 

 the next ten years there were less than fifty establishments, and in the 

 next ten years not much more than a hundred more, and so on away 

 •down until 18G0, when he had less than six hundred commercial florists' 

 establishments. Between 1860 and 1870 they increased somewhat more 

 rapidly, and more so between 1870 and 1880; but between 1880 and 1890 

 nearly 3,000 commercial florists' establishments were started, so that in 

 1890 there were about 5,000 of them, turning out and selling to the 

 people more than |12,000,000 worth of cut flowers and about |15,000,000 

 worth of plants and shrubbery of various kinds, and something over 

 $25,000,000 was the price paid by the people of the United States, in 1890, 

 to the florists of this country. In getting at that information, we wanted 

 a great deal of other information, and we asked those people a great 

 many impertinent questions, just as your local census-takers did. We 

 asked them a great many questions about their business which it is not 

 pertinent to bring up here at this time. The point I want to get at is 

 that we found this tremendous increase in the demand for flowers 

 among the people of the country, to be far in excess of the increased 

 population and increased wealth. There were investigations in relation 

 to educational matters and in relation to church matters, lines which 

 show the cultivation and the refinement and the better side of the 

 people, and we found that the consumption of beautiful flowers and 

 plants went along with the culture and refinement of the people. Now, 

 it would not be proper for me here at this time to state in what sections 

 of the country, per capita, we found people using the most flowers, but 

 it is sufficient to say that as the culture and refinement of the people 

 had developed, so the greater increase of demand for fruits and flowers 

 had increased. Some towns of 5,000 inhabitants, in one section of the 

 United States, often with the same relative capital and extent as others, 

 were buying two or three or four or five times as much of beautiful 

 flowers. Now, what has that to do with the future of peach-growing? 

 It has a great deal to do with it, because peaches and flowers and other 

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