1882.1 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



15 



THE TRUTH AS APPLIED TO TREE 

 AGENTS. 



BY CHARLES FREUND, GENEVA, N. Y. 



Having recently noticed in your magazine 

 also in the Neio York Weekly Sim, some remarks 

 in regard to tree agents, it would seem, notwith- 

 standing the ingenious letter written by a Ko* 

 chester dealer, and which you published a short 

 time ago, that the plain truth hud nofc been 

 stated. 



You qualified your remarks, by stating that 

 the public need not be afraid to purchase from 

 the authorized agents of responsible firms; but. 

 unfortunately, the public is not very discrimi- 

 nating in its treatment of tree agents; as a 

 rule, classing them all alike, and in sections, 

 where some man has misused them, it makes no 

 difference how good a firm a man represents, he 

 is classed as a fraud. 



The writer of the article in the Sun, with all 

 due respect to his literary abilities, proved, by 

 his sweeping and ignorant abuse, that he knew 

 as little of the manner in which nursery stock is 

 sold, retail to the public, as the buyers know 

 themselves ; and it would have been but simple 

 justice, on his part, to have, by proper inquiry, 

 placed the blame and fault where they properly 

 belong. 



The majority of tree agents are employed by 

 nurserymen and dealers, and therefore, in view 

 of foregoing facts, it is plain to be seen that, in 

 the present state of the case, the public are 

 more than likely to make the many suffer for 

 the faults of the few, and thus inflict a great and 

 too often irreparable injustice on an honest and 

 hard-working class of men. 



The only tree agents who can swindle the 

 public are those who sell for themselves, and 

 they constitute a very small portion of those 

 engaged in the business, probably not the one 

 hundredth part. These men, being irresponsi- 

 ble and having no reputation to lose, sell for just 

 such prices as they can obtain, irrespective of 

 the market value of nursery stock, and when 

 they come to purchase what they have sold, 

 often find that they cannot fill their orders with 

 genuine trees, except at a loss, and then, per- 

 haps, as a not unnatural consequence, they buy 

 whatever they can obtain the cheapest, and 

 make such as they purchase take the place of 

 what they have sold. The greatest, as well as 

 the most innocent, swindler in the tree business 

 is the harmless little label, and if it could only 



speak what trouble it would cause — what fraud 

 it would e.xpose. 



The remedy for the fraud practiced in the tree 

 business is in the hands of those who have its 

 welfare at heart— the responsible nurserymen 

 and dealers throughout the States, and if they 

 would but use their influence to prevent all 

 wrong doing, the nursery business would be ele- 

 vated to the position that its great usefulness, 

 and the many benefits it confers, justify it in 

 holding. 



The agents who represent nurserymen and 

 dealers cannot swindle the public, for the reason 

 that they neither grow the stock they sell, nor 

 pack the orders they take, and being, as a rule, 

 when they engage in the business, inexperienced 

 as to the values of the various varieties of fruits 

 that they sell, tell people just what their em- 

 ployers instruct them to say, or what the des- 

 criptions of the various plates they have in 

 their books, represent such fruits as they describe 

 to be. 



If there is any swindling done here the agent 

 is certainly not the guilty party. 



The public is, like nature, very cruel, and 

 often makes assertions that it cannot sustain. 

 As a rule, a man Avho buys trees, and who 

 for want of proper care loses them, considers 

 that he has been swindled, and consequently 

 calls the agent who sold them a fraud. Nine- 

 tenths of the people who purchase nursery stock 

 give it little or no attention, and seldom if ever 

 plant it properlj', and as a very natural result 

 lose most of what they purchase ; and this ac- 

 counts for nine-tenths of the so-called swindling 

 on the part of tree agents. The other tenth may 

 be ascribed as explained in this letter, or to the 

 peisistent resolve of the public to buy trees from 

 those who can tell the biggest stories and sell 

 the cheapest, irrespective of whom they are buy-, 

 ing from ; they have yet to learn, at least in the 

 nursery business, that the cheapest is not always 

 the best; and as soon as our pomological socie- 

 ties can make the public understand that the 

 value of a fruit is not to be measured by the 

 size of the tree on which it grows; that all trees 

 do not grow straight and large; that nature, and 

 not the nurseryjuan, shapes them ; that trees 

 will at times die from natural or unnatural 

 causes, such as excessive drought, cold. &c , for 

 which the nurseryman, being but human is not 

 to bliine, just so soon will they cease to make 

 moat ol their complaints of having been swin- 

 dled. The act of delivering any d-ce tli;U ,s not 



