OCTOBER 26, 1S99. 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



537 



Pond of Aquatics at Lincoln Park, Chicago. 



seen a large clump of Eulalia zebrina, 

 and a little to the left of the grasses 

 are a number of plants of Helianthus 

 orgyalis in good bloom. 



The side of the rustic stone bridge 

 is covered with the wild grapevine. At 

 the right end of the bridge is a very 

 effective clump of a native water reed. 

 The prominent shrub on the right 

 margin of the pond is Aralia spinosa. 

 On the margin in the foreground is 

 seen a colony of the native sagittaria. 



THE COMMISSION BUSINESS. 



The cut flower commission business 

 is one of the hardest of all lines of 

 trade. 



First there is the weather. When 

 we have a cold snap following a few 

 warm days, stock checks up and the 

 out-of-town buyer thinks he is getting 

 the worst of it on account of the high 

 prices charged. If the weather remains 

 warm he still feels that he has the 

 worst of it and says the commission 

 man sends out old stock, when he 

 ought to know that it was entirely due 

 to the hot weather that the flowers did 

 not carry and keep as well. 



Second, he must please the buyer, 

 and to do this he must get the best 

 in the market, which means that he 

 must buy stock if better is to be had 

 than that he has on hand. Here the I 



commission man stands between two 

 fires. He may have thousands of flow- 

 ers of the sorts called for, but not 

 enough of a quality fit to ship, and 

 when he goes out to buy he may meet 

 a lot of retail men who will at once as- 

 sume that it will be of no use to visit 

 his place for stock, "For I saw their 

 buyer in the market looking for stock," 

 though at the same time, as above 

 stated, he may have thousands of 

 these same flowers in fine shape for 

 home use, but not fit for shipping. 



Third, the grower must be pleased. 

 If not, you could not run a commission 

 house, for you would not have any 

 flowers to sell. Often a case of this 

 sort comes up. Monday the grower 

 happens in, and at the time trade is 

 "out of sight." He sees his stock sold 

 at a fat price. The next day the 

 weather is warm and on the follow- 

 ing day there is double the supply. The 

 rerail man is afraid to buy because the 

 stock is soft, so he cuts down his pur- 

 chases and takes only what he must 

 have. The weather remains the same, 

 stock is still soft and lots of it every- 

 where, the market goes all to pieces, 

 and it takes a cold snap to check stock 

 and get it back to where it was the 

 Monday your visitor called. He comes 

 again and sees hundreds of pots of old 

 stock on hand, and at once talks of 



overproduction, or a thousand and one 

 other causes for such happenings. But 

 if you will look back for any length of 

 time you will see that the same thing 

 happens over and over again. These 

 gluts come and go. But the commis- 

 sion man has to bear the brunt of it, 

 for when it is not the producer, it is 

 the buyer. 



Fourth, and possibly as bad as any, 

 in the spring and fall, when any old 

 greenhouse will produce stock, the 

 man that should be a buyer is a ship- 

 per, and he wonders how it is that 

 when he buys the commission man al- 

 ways charges him a fat price, though 

 when he ships he gets little or noth- 

 ing. 



That is easily explained. A com- 

 mission man that is up to date must 

 protect the grower that grows for him 

 and ships regularly. And it is easy to 

 see that if a little fellow (or a big one, 

 for that matter) is sending stock to 

 sell, then there is more from the regu- 

 lar shipper than can be disposed of at 

 a proper figure. And when he gets 

 around to sending orders instead of 

 stock to sell, flowers, have become 

 scarce, and the fact that he has become 

 a buyer makes extra demand, and that 

 extra demand is what makes the price. 



Strange as this may all seem, it is 

 toe true. If the commission man could 



