70 PRACTICAL FLORICULTURE. 



as light as either writing or typesetting, and for many 

 years I have taken great pains to stimulate my workmen 

 to rapidity of movement in all our light work, and it is 

 astonishing what the gain in labor has been in this par- 

 ticular. The average work of a man planting Cabbage or 

 Lettuce plants, when we began market gardening, did not 

 exceed 2,000 a day; now, and for many years past, a 

 man, with a boy to drop the plants, will set 6,000 a day, 

 and one of my old foremen, John Scarry, has repeatedly 

 planted 10,000 in a day. In the lighter work .of our 

 greenhouses rapid movement is even of more importance, 

 and the rivalry among our workmen for distinction in 

 this matter is of great benefit to themselves as well as to 

 us. 



Four years ago the acknowledged " Champion " in all 

 our force of seventy hands, was a young Irishman named 

 James Marvey, who died in 1883 at the age of thirty-two. 

 He had been in my employment for nearly twenty years 

 and had ever distinguished himself for rapid and neat 

 workmanship, for, some years before his death, he had 

 repeatedly potted 10,000 cuttings, in two and a half inch 

 pots, in ten consecutive hours, and had attained on one 

 occasion the extraordinary number of 11,500 in ten con- 

 secutive hours. I paid him for years $5.00 per day, and 

 always considered him one of our cheapest workmen, 

 because, not only did he earn all he got, but his example 

 fostered a spirit of emulation among our other em* 

 ployees, valuable alike to themselves and to us. 



