February, '14] WASHBURN: ADMINISTRATION OF INSPECTION LAW 121 



all of whom concurred in the statement that they only imported from 

 5 to 10 per cent of the stock sold, such per cent, occasionallj^, in excep- 

 tional years, running a little higher, possibly amounting to 15 per cent, 

 rarely to 20 per cent. All of these nurserymen agreed that if any citizen 

 selling nursery stock could prove that he raised half of what he sold, 

 he should be entitled to a regular certificate and not merely be regarded 

 as a dealer. This problem, therefore, is virtually solved. It must be 

 borne in mind, however, that a few cuttings thrust into the ground by 

 a dealer, might, in view of a decision of one of our Supreme Courts, 

 transform a dealer into a regular nurseryman and be the cause of revers- 

 ing any decision that the state inspector had made to the contrary. 



Another problem, and one which constitutes a serious criticism upon 

 our law is found in section 7, which provides for a special certificate 

 for dealers and florists but obliges them to purchase all their stock from 

 Minnesota nurseries or to sell under said certificate foreign stock (that 

 is, European), inspected in ^Minnesota. That this section is not care- 

 fully framed must be evident to every one of you. Worded, primarily, 

 to meet the needs of firms who bought stock of Minnesota nurseries 

 for immediate selling, or imported stock for that purpose from Europe, 

 with perhaps the additional view of preventing unscrupulous dealers 

 from buying non-hardy stock from any source whatever, it neverthe- 

 less works a hardship upon honest dealers, — and there are many such — 

 by obliging them to buy all their American grown stock in Minnesota. 

 This is manifestly an injustice and we shall seek to have a change in 

 this section at our next legislature. 



Whether or not the inspector should feel privileged or is justified in 

 interpreting the wording of the law in such a way as not to allow it to 

 work a real hardship in individual cases is perhaps another problem. 

 As one of a number of examples which might be cited, section 6 of our 

 law declares it to be unlawful for any part}^ to open a package con- 

 taining foreign stock unless the inspector or deputy is present and 

 since shipments from abroad frequently arrive in such large numbers 

 at one time that our force cannot immediately comply with all the calls 

 sent in, these consignments would suffer if the consignees were compelled 

 to leave them boxed waiting for our coming. In extreme cases, there- 

 fore, we have allowed them to unpack this stock while waiting for our 

 inspectors. 



We have been somewhat embarrassed by the fact that small con- 

 signments of European stock, not inspected in the state to which they 

 are originally consigned from New York, have been forwarded to in- 

 dividuals in Minnesota, obliging us to take several long and compara- 

 tively expensive trips to inspect, possibly, one box of stock in each 

 town. For example, a large consignment shipped to brokers at Mil- 



