■rHE KETAIL FLORIST. H'S 



mental lines, we are only too glad to get back once lU a wnue and profit 

 by one another's experience. I believe our meetings which we have 

 been holding here once a year have been very profitable to all who 

 have attended and I hope that this one will be the same. 



Chairman: Our progiam consists mostly of papers by the florists 

 this afternoon, and as the Florists Society is an auxiliary of the society, 

 I will call its president, Mr. Irwin Frey, to the chair. 



STATE FLORISTS' SOCIETY. 



Chairman Frey: The first thing we have on the program is a paper 

 on the subject of "Chrysanthemums," by Mr. Harry Hunt, of Kearney, 

 but as Mr. Hunt is unable to be with us today on account of sickness, 

 I will call on Mr. C. H. Green, of Fremont, on the subject of "The Retail 

 Florist." 



THE RETAIL FLORIST. 



CHAS. H. CREEX, FREMONT. 



Had I been called upon some twenty years ago to talk to you about 

 the retail florist, I would have approached the subject with the perfect 

 confidence of the boy who went to work in the greenhouse one Monday 

 morning and that same evening one of the men said to him, "Well, Roy, 

 how do you like the florist business?" "Fine," said Roy, "fine, I'm glad 

 1 learned it." So it was and is, or was, with most of us, I suppose. 

 When we have scratched a little on the surface of floriculture, or any 

 other big subject for that matter, we conceive the idea we have gone to 

 rock bottom and fondly imagine we can give the older and wiser heads 

 unlimited beneficial, even if unsolicited and unheeded, advice. As we 

 delve deeper and the impossibilities begin to appear where at first we 

 saw only possibilities and probabilities, we begin to acquire knowledge 

 that is really useful and valuable. 



Now what is a retail florist? The man who has a little space under 

 a stairway or on a corner of the sidewalk in a big city will tell you that 

 he is a retail florist. That man, a step higher, with a window and space 

 for his refrigerator in a drug store in a side street admits he is a retail 

 florist. The man who conducts the grand, marbled, mirrored, silver 

 plated, plaie-glass establishment on the best corner in the heart of the re- 

 rail dry goods section of the big city, often paying a rental greater than 

 the gross income of a really prosperous florist in a city of the second or 

 third class, knows that there is really only one retail florist and he is it. 

 These people are dealers only, as they, almost without any exception, buy 

 their flowers and plants from the growers or wholesale commission men. 

 Those of us who supply the floral wants of a community with stock 

 which we have ourselves produced, who have cared for oui' blooming 

 and other bedding plants all along the way from the propagating bed to 

 the flower garden, who have watched over our cut flowers from the 

 soil to the social event, sick room or cemetery, and in doing so have 



