August 21, 1909 



HOKTICULTURE 



279 



one subject is likely also to have it 

 on another. I recognize, ol' course, 

 that in science and elsewhere we must 

 accept much on faith; hut the faith 

 should be reasonable. 



It is very difficult for any of us to 

 divest ourselves of tradition and of the 

 notions that have come with us from 

 birth or f i oni childhood. Most of us 

 have positive opinions on a great many 

 subjects on which we have no real 

 knowledge whatever. I often say to 

 my students thai they come to college 

 with a whole body of notions and opin- 

 ions and that the probability is that 

 every one of them is wrong. The 

 larger part of the maxims and "wise 

 saws" by which we guide our lives are 

 probably either untrue, only partially 

 true, or are misleading and unsafe as 

 guides. 



The scientific man neyer sets out to 

 prove anything. He starts out to find 

 what is true. He divests himself of 

 all preconceived notions as to what the 

 result is to be. He merely wants to 

 know what is the fact, and if the tact 

 that he discovers today contradicts the 

 fact that he discovered yesterday, or 

 even contradicts his own public state- 

 ment of yesterday, he is the first man 

 to acknowledge and to publish the con- 

 tradiction; and he finds as much satis- 

 faction in the discovery as if he had 

 not made an imperfect conclusion the 

 day before. I knew an experimenter 

 who was very much disappointed that 

 his experiments did not prove his the- 

 ( ry and he therefore discarded his ex- 

 periments. It is a rare quality in a 

 man that he is able to withhold his 

 conclusions until he has the evidence. 

 I am afraid that most of us draw our 

 conclusions and afterwards begin to 

 prove thetn. That is, we prejudge, or 

 are controlled by prejudice. Any one 

 who has attended courts of law will 

 know exactly what I mean. 



If I read the work of Lincoln proper- 

 ly, it is that he was interested very 

 little in the intricacies of argument and 

 in the mere methods of reasoning. He 

 fell back on his native judgment of 

 men and of affairs and on his original 

 sense of justice and drew his conclu- 

 sions as quickly and as directly as pos- 

 sible. A large part of the debaters of 

 the world are really sophists, more in- 

 terested in the processes of their rea- 

 soning and of their judgment and in 

 their own performance than in the ac-n 

 curacy of their premises, or in the 

 final justice of their results. 



These remarks ought to have appli- 

 cation to every one of us whether we 

 are investigators or not, and whether 

 or not we are following a business that 

 is founded on scientific fact. Our type 

 of mind determines our attitude tow- 

 ard the world in which we live. There 

 are very few of us, 1 am afraid, who 

 have a perfectly rational and natural 

 outlook on the world of nature. We 

 are inclined rather to look on the 

 forces of nature as in antagonism with 

 us rather than to put ourselves direct- 

 ly into line with nature and try to 

 work with her rather than against her. 

 It is interesting to catch this note 

 through all the history of mankind and 

 in our literature. The thunder, the 

 lightning, the storm, the wind, and 

 much else, have been thought of as 

 forces which are by nature opposed 

 to us and with which we must neces- 

 sarily contend. This idea, whether 

 consciously or unconsciously, has en- 

 tered into our customary attitude of 



life and is expressed in our dogmas 

 and in our creeds. I should liKe to 

 do something, if I can, to enable man- 

 kind to overcome the traditional and 

 theological fear of nature. 



You, as nurserymen, are interested 

 in country life. You desire to see it 

 developed. The beginning of all real 

 development is a rational outlook on 

 the part of those who live in the open 

 country. Country people must inter- 

 pret nature from cause and effect, 

 rather than by tradition, notion, or 

 prejudice. The colleges of agriculture 

 and experiment stations ai'e doing just 

 this for country people. Beyond ah 

 "practical" application of the work of 

 these institutions is the new and open- 

 minded attitude that they develop on 

 all problems under discussion. They 

 banish all guessing and all think-so. 

 The farmer is now willing to learn and 

 to cast old notions aside; and for this 

 reason, the world is becoming a new* 

 world to him and he is beginning to 

 understand his situation. As rapidly 

 as he understands his situation, he will 

 master it. 



In a practical way, our attitude tow- 

 ard our own health is an illustration of 

 what I have said. Most of us seem to 

 have an inborn fear of fresh air, for 

 example, especially at night. We shut 

 our doors to nature. We have lived 

 in buildings with narrow windows and 

 have let in the air only grudgingly. 

 We have considered the air to be com- 

 pounded with miasma and with all 

 kinds of noxious attributes. It is the 

 old idea of the antagonism of nature. 

 We are, of course, overcoming this feel- 

 ing of antagonism and are developing 

 a real sympathy toward the nature in 

 which we live; but I think that the 

 townsman is in some ways developing 

 more rapidly in this direction than the 

 countryman. I am inclined to thiUK 

 that the town boy, for example, is com- 

 ing to be more of an outdoor boy than 

 the farm boy is. He is likely to have 

 better physical development, also. The 

 farmer works out-of-doors and then 

 too often escapes from the out-of- 

 doors to the house and shuts himself 

 up. I doubt whether any persons suf- 

 fer more from lack of fresh air than 

 many of the farmers. 



We seem to carry the idea that un- 

 health is a necessary part of the order 

 of the world. All organs tend to go 

 - wrong and must be regulated; and, 

 therefore, we have liver regulators, 

 stomach regulators, nerve regulators, 

 and the like. There are still many per- 

 sons who look on sickness as a judg- 

 ujent or a punishment rather than to 

 regard it from the rational and scien- 

 tific point of view. This notion is an 

 expression of the idea that the world 

 is, at best, a poor place to live in, that 

 we are all inoculated with original sin, 

 and that we are pilgrims doing pen- 

 ance. Now the plain fact of the mat- 

 ter is that it is natural to be healthy. 

 It is natural for a fruit tree to bear: 

 we should be careful not to put any 

 obstacles in the way of its bearing. It 

 is an imperative duty that we remove 

 the obstacles to good health. This is 

 much more important than merely to 

 treat disease. We have developed col- 

 leges of medicine or of disease. We 

 shall sometime have colleges of health. J,, 

 Our traditional idea of God as a rulerJ '' 

 who sits on a distant throne and man-l 

 ages the universe is another expressionj 

 of our unsympathy with nature, be- 

 cause we put God above, beyond and 



outside of nature. The modern out- 

 look is to find God in nature. 



What I have been saying, applies to 

 nurserymen and to all other persons 

 who live in the world. We must ac- 

 cept the natural conditions of the 

 world as they are, and it is the part 

 of reason to work completely in har- 

 mony with them, because we cannot 

 make progress or live any satisfactory 

 life otherwise. You, as nurserymen, 

 must go to ihe bottom of things if 

 you are to found your business on en- 

 during principles. You now have the 

 right to call on the experiment sta- 

 tions and colleges of agriculture to 

 help you to determine the real facta. 

 If there is San Jose scale, it is the re- 

 sponsibility of the man who owns the 

 property to know it, to acknowledge it, 

 to accept the consequences, and to 

 fight it. The presence of the San Jose 

 scale is a fact that cannot be mini- 

 mized or alleviated by any kind of ex- 

 planation or by any sort of certificate. 

 It nmst be attacked. Much has been 

 said in the past against the tree-agent 

 and, I am sorry to say, sometimes, 

 against nurserymen themselves, for 

 what were said to be dishonest prac- 

 tices. I have no idea that such prac- 

 tices are any more common than in 

 other bodies of men, and we hear less 

 about them every year; but even if 

 there were cause for widespread com- 

 plaint, I think that we could depend 

 on the natural clarification of the busi- 

 ness within a very few years, coming 

 as the normal result of the work of 

 scientific men on problems that modi- 

 fy and that underlie the nursery busi- 

 ness. It is impossible to have the 

 spirit of truth work itself out in one 

 part of a business without working it 

 out in another part. 



I look for a rapidly growing exten- 

 sion of all kinds of nursery business 

 and for tbree reasons: (1) because 

 there is an increasing love of plants 

 and desire to have them; (2) because 

 the business of growing plants depends 

 so closely on the ftesults of scientific 

 study that the business must constant- 

 ly tend to be open, clean and honor- 

 able; and (3) because the growing in- 

 telligence of the people will constantly 

 demand the best standards. 



If the nursery business freely avails 

 itself of the scientific knowledge at its 

 disposal, then it has within itself the 

 essential elements for its self-purifica- 

 tion and self-development. 



BUSINESS CHANGES. 

 Elgin, III. — H. J. Slagle has bought 

 the florist business of H. B. Sullivan. 



San Francisco, Cal. — G. Rossi & Bro. 

 have purchased the business of Munro 

 & Walker. 



Franklin, Mass. — William Stuart has 

 given up his florist business and re- 

 moved to Brockton. 



Warren, C— J. E. Walters &. Son 

 have purchased the Gaskill green- 

 houSes, three in number, with about 

 10.000 feet of glass surface. 



Alliance, O. — A. B. Barber of Reisch 

 & Barlier, florists, has sold out to his 

 l)artner and will take a position with 

 the Jones-Russell Co. of Cleveland. 



Madison, O. — H. G. Taylor has pur- 

 chased the C. Hagenburger Co. inter- 

 lest in the Madison Greenhouses, of 

 which he has had charge for five 

 l/ears. 



