380 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



You perhaps well know that planters — I mean commercial planters 

 — generally buy direct at wholesale. They know what they want and 

 send for it, but the average farmer and other small planters, as a class, 

 buy from salesmen. 



If left to order by their own judgment, not one out of ten, no, not 

 one out of a hundred, will buy a bill of trees. They really don't know 

 what they want, and are afraid to order from catalogues, for they want 

 to see the trees before they pay for them, and besides, very few of them 

 have any idea that they need trees or want them, until convinced by 

 the salesman that they need them and should have trees. In fact, the 

 desire must be created. 



To get them interested, it takes a salesman capable of gaining their 

 attention, talking them into a bill of fruit trees, ornamentals, etc., and 

 after they have been talked into it and have the trees brought to thein,, 

 they will plant them, but if left alone the average farmer will be 100 

 years behind the times. These are facts from experience. The horti- 

 cultural and agricultural papers " preach " as though all buyers were 

 converted men, and know just what they want. That is where they 

 make iheir mistake, for few farmers are interested ; in fact, three-fourths 

 of them never see a horticultural or agricultural paper, and I don't 

 think I am alone when I state that the salesmen and this retail system 

 of selling nursery stock has done more good by scattering fruit over 

 the land, awakening an interest in horticulture, than all the horticul- 

 tural and agricultural papers put together. 



Selling trees is like selling many other things, and if a party knows 

 he wants a certain thing, he has made up his mind, and he may order 

 from an advertisement, but orders of this kind received by nurserymen, 

 wholesalers, dry goods, agricultural machinery, or any other line of 

 goods will be few and far between compared with the business done by 

 traveling men. Personal influence is the key note to success. A mer- 

 chant or farmer will appreciate having a house send their solicitor to 

 them, as they like to see and talk with the man they are buying of, and 

 the house that employes no traveling salesman, no matter how good a 

 reputation its goods may have, don't last long. 



Perhaps you remember that the Greely-Burnham Grocer company 

 of St. Louis established an immense trade through salesmen, and think- 

 ing they could dispense with salesmen, giving their customers the bene- 

 fit of the salesmens' salaries and expenses, they tried it, but had to go 

 back to the old way or fail. 



Now let me give you an instance, though it is only one among hun- 

 dreds; your are personally acquainted with T. V. Munson in whom 

 there is no higher authority in the country in horticulture : he also does 



