236 



HORT I CULTURE 



August 14, 1909 



Everything 

 Seasonable 



IN 



CUT 

 FLOWERS 



THE YEAR ROUND 



Estimates Furnished on Large 

 Quantities 



W. E. McKissick & Bro. 



Wholesale Florists 



1619-1621 Ranstead Street 



PHILADELPHIA 



Good 

 Men 



Help of all kinds, including 

 that for Florists, Nurserymen, 

 Seedsmen and the Horticultural 

 trade generally. 



When you need good men, 

 skilled or unskilled, Write: 



THOS. H. BAMBRICK 



34 South 7th Street, 

 PHILADELPHIA 



Bureau business of Mr. Thomas H. Bam- 

 bricli, one of the city's foremost business 

 men and citizens, to the newly incorpo- 

 rated Pennsylvania Labor Exchange Com- 

 pany. 



The consideration was $50,000 and the 

 company, which now takes hold of this 

 well known forty year old business, has 

 been incorporated under the laws of New 

 Jersey and has interested many thousands 

 of dollars worth of new capital and not 

 only contemplates the erection of a modern 

 twelve-story building on the site of its 

 present offices, 34 South Seventh street, 

 Phil.idelpbia, but likewise includes estab- 

 lishing branch offices in New York, Pitts- 

 burg, Chicago and the West and Europe." 



HENRY A. DREER (Incorporated). 

 — Founded in 1838 by Henry A. Dreer 

 in partnership with Henry Hirst. Two 

 years later Mr. Hirst retired. From 

 the first the active management of the 

 business was in the hands of Henry 

 A. Dreer, then only twenty years old. 

 Henry A. Dreer died in 1873, and was 

 succeeded by his son William F. 

 Dreer. In 1892 the business was in- 

 corporated, under the name of the 

 founder, Henry A. Dreer, with William 

 F. Dreer as president; J. D. Eisele, 

 vice-president; Herbert G. TuU, treas- 

 urer, and J. Otto Thilow, secretary. 

 William F. Dreer, although active in 

 the business for forty years, is still 

 at the helm, in the strength and vigor 

 of middle life. As soon as he left 

 school he began business with his 

 father, who gave him a thorough busi- 

 ness training in all departments. At 

 the age of eighteen he spent a season 

 with one of the largest seed growers 

 in Germany, and a season in a famous 

 establishment in Paris. The European 

 experience thus gained, added to his 

 other training, he put to splendid use 

 in extending and improving the al- 

 ready large business of his father, 

 until the house of Dreer gives employ- 



ment to 175 men and women at all 

 seasons of the year, and during the 

 busy season in the spring there are 

 seldom less than 200 employees, of 

 whom from 50 to 60 are engaged at 

 the store, office and warehouse in 

 Philadelphia, and the balance at the 



Wm. F. Dreer 



greenhouses and nurseries at River- 

 ton. As the firm well says in its sou- 

 venir catalogue of 1908 (commemorat- 

 ing its 70th anniversary) — for a busi- 

 ness house to live through 70 years is 

 something! In all the hundreds of 

 business houses which today line 

 Chestnut street in Philadelphia, Henry 



A. Dreer is the only one which existed 

 in 1838. But to grow from small be- 

 ginnings into an organization which 

 reaches into all parts of the world and 

 supplies vegetable, flower and grass 

 seeds, bulbs and plants to hundreds 

 of thousands of customers, is much 

 more! History is valuable only for 

 the lessons it teaches. Its records 

 must mark either progression or re- 

 trogression. Especially is this true of 

 the seed, plant and bulb trade, where 

 a successful continuance is dependent 

 wholly upon intelligent and persistent 

 efforts towards betterment of sorts by 

 selection, and towards improvement 

 in methods of production and distri- 

 bution. This truth was most forcibly 

 put by Henri L DeVilmorin in 1893 at 

 the Horticultural Congress in Chicago 

 when he said: "All the care, food 

 iind protection given to plants may 

 make them larger and finer, but only 

 selection among many of the same 

 kind, with the help of heredity, can 

 fashion an enduring race of plants 

 with special good qualities for our 

 farms, gardens, or orchards. Chance 

 seeding may yield some very good 

 finds, as sometimes a good hit is made 

 by shooting at random. But no good 

 marksman will, even after the luckiest 

 of chance shots, dispense with the 

 use of his eyes and judgment for the 

 rest of the day." Selection, re-selec- 

 tion, and tteu some more selection 

 has been the story of evolution in 

 the seed trade. In the list published 

 by Dreer 70 years ago was included 

 every vegetable we have today with 

 the single exception of Brussels 

 sprouts. 123 varieties of flower seeds 

 were offered of which eighty are still 

 listed. Nearly all of these varieties of 

 both vegetables and flowers have been 



