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horticulture: 



August 25, 1906 



HORTICULTURE 



AN ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL 



DEVOTED TO THE 



FLORIST, PLANTSMAN, LANDSCAPE 



GARDENER AND KINDRED 



INTERESTS 



HORTICULTURE PUBLISHING CO. 



II HAMILTON PLACE. BOSTON, MASS. 



Talephone Oxford 292 



WM. J. STEWART. Editor and Manager. 



Annual catalogue making is now well 

 Overdoing it under way. After perusing the prod- 

 ucts of some of the catalogue makers 

 ■we sometimes find ourselves unable to decide whether 

 they or the 4th of July fireworks dealers are the greater 

 adepts in the use of florid adjectives. Supposing a more 

 moderate style of description were adopted and about 

 four-fifths of the grandiloquent phrases entirely cut 

 out, woiild the sale of the seeds and plants in question 

 be thereby impaired? We think not. 



Under the amended Interstate Com- 

 A relief from merce Act, jurisdiction is given 

 express tyranny over all express companies s= well 

 as railroads carrying goods from 

 one state to another. The law provides further that 

 the party making complaint need not have a personal 

 interest in the goods or the transaction, and that a so- 

 ciety or other organized body will have the same stand- 

 ing as an individual in seeking redress through the In- 

 terstate Commerce Committee for any of its members. 

 The latv will be operative on and after August 28, 1906, 

 and from that time all express rates must be published 

 and copies of schedules furnished to any applicant. 

 Hereafter it will be a simple matter to ask foi and 

 promptly secure unprejudiced investigation and justice 

 in the matter of express charges upon flowers or other 

 commodities, and if parties submit to extortion by these 

 corporations as they have been compelled to in the past, 

 it will be wholly their own fault. 



The eagerness with which the i-chool 



Horticulture oliildren take up garden work when 



for the permitted to do so is one of the best 



school children arguments in favor of this branch 



of study. It is remarkable how the 



most stubborn and incorrigible boys will forget their 



mischief and destructive proclivities and join with un- 

 feigned delight in this, the natural avocation of the 

 luuuan race. There can be no question of the wisdom 

 of the Society of American Florists and Ornamental 

 Horticulturists in fostering liberally the dissemination 

 of garden knowledge through this means, for its mem- 

 bers have an equal interest with the rest of the com- 

 munity in anything which tends to make the people 

 better and happier. And beyond this is the selfish but 

 very proper argument that whatever encourages a love 

 for the beauties of nature, a healthy appreciation of 

 flowers, trees and verdure, and develops a fondness for 

 daily association with these things, is a direct and sub- 

 stantial benefit to every line of horticultural industry. 

 It is always good business ix)licy to take up such ques- 

 tions in a spirit of broad foresight. 



"An organization, national in character, 

 A model honest and progressive in purpose."" was 

 society fiie ideal held up before us by the foun- 



ders of the S. A. F. twenty-two years 

 ago. TVc might search long and earnestly before find- 

 ing another aggregation of similar character that ha.s 

 adhered more closely to its text than has this great half- 

 social and half-business organization of horticultural 

 people. Take tlie convention which is in progress this 

 week at Dayton and consider what it must mean in its 

 ultimate influence upon American horticulture and 

 those whose prosperity is linked with this great and 

 growing industry. Veritably from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific, from the most northern to the most southern 

 limits of our population these enthusiastic people have 

 gathered, bent on pleasure and business combined, anx- 

 ious to learn from the lips of their brethren that which 

 is new and progressive in the practice of their profes- 

 sion, interested to see and examine and to adopt the 

 various appliances and up-to-date goods shown by en- 

 terprising manufacturers, glad to greet old friends with 

 an enthusiasm increasing in intensity with the distance 

 travelled — yet an almost utter absence of the divisions 

 and wire-pulling and scrambling so generally charac- 

 teristic of associations of this type when they have be- 

 come prosperous and influential. "Xational in charac- 

 ter, honest and progressive in inirpose." May ii long 

 so continue. 



No man who grows stock for sale can call himself 

 "progressive" if he omits to advertise it. If you grow 

 for retail exclusively, advertise in your local papers. If 

 you grow for wholesale trade, or if yoii have a surplus 

 above your retail needs, get in line with tliose who are 

 to be found in Horticulture's advertising columns. 

 You will find it distinctly to your advantage and will 

 have no trouble to back up the claim that you are "pro- 

 gressive." Horticulture is essentially the medium of 

 the "progressive" horticulturist, and this is one reason 

 wb.y it is the best advertising medium in its class. 



