348 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
sota as in other and (for that industry) more favorably located states? I 
think it has kept pace with most of them. As near as I am able to learn 
there were in 1881, or, to be more correct, at the beginning of 1882, 18 per- 
sons engaged in the florist business, operating a total of about 86,000 
square feet of glass. At the present time there are to my knowledge 60 
persons engagedin the business, and operating a total of 439,000 square 
feet of glass; an increase in number of establishments of over 300 per 
cent, and in capacity of over 500 per cent. This places the state of Min- 
nesota as No. 18 in regard to number of establishments, and No. 17 as re- 
gards capacity or amount of glass, as compared with the other states; 
certainly not a bad showing, taking everything into consideration,—the 
short period the state has been in existence, and the climate, which we 
may praise as we will and insist upon its being the most glorious climate 
on earth, as it may be for raising No. 1 hard. It is, nevertheless, a 
hard climate for the fiorist to contend with, the fuel question being one 
of his heaviest items of expense and one engaging his most serious atten- 
tion. According to my experience at various places, 1 believe it costs us 
here on an average $70.00 per 1,000 square feet of glass to keep warm, and ~ 
thus the snm of $31,000 will have been expended for this item alone this 
winter. Nevertheless,the florists in this state are well satisfied to receive 
the same prices for their products as the florists of the Eastern states, 
where the cost of heating is just about one-fourth. This shows that 
we must have advanced as fast as they, or they would certainly undersell 
us. As to prices for our products, they have on an average fallen 50 to 70 
per cent. in the last ten years. To beable to keep up under these adverse 
circumstances shows that we must have been able to effect savings 
somewhere, either one way or the other. This has been done in various 
ways; first, by improved buildings, enabling us to grow more and better 
stuff in the same amount of space; second, by improved methods of 
heating, whereby we maintain a more uniform heat at less cost, (steam 
heating seems to be the mode giving the best general results and it seems 
to be almost universally adopted for all larger establishments;) third, by 
growing better paying classes of stuff and discarding everything that 
can not be made to pay; fourth, by the better methods adopted, quite a 
saving in labor is effected. Thus it may be seen that our profits are gen- 
erally made up of what ten years ago went to waste. 
Our business is something that almost wholly depends upon the larger 
cities for existence; hence the good showing the state of Minnesota 
makes in the matter of floriculture is to be credited to her two larger 
cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis, these two cities alone taking 40 of the 
50 established florist concerns, with 352,000 square feet of glass, leaving a 
balance of 87,000 to be divided in the various smaller cities. The pro- 
gress in various lines of the business has kept well up with the increased 
capacity of the greenhouses. Iam quite certain that we this year aver- 
age more flowers produced in Minnesota in one day than in twenty, ten 
years ago, and these are sold at not exactly the same prices as ten years 
ago, but probably at as good a profit to the individual, and certainly a 
good deal better for the state at large. Ten years ago there was probably 
$50,000 worth of flowers shipped to Minnesota from other states, and the 
next five or six years following considerably more, while the past year I 
think we have exported a great deal more than we have imported. 
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