NOTES ON EUROPEAN NURSERIES. 35 



continue for generations to be faithful, plodding, expert workmen, 

 always to be depended upon and always bringing on stock of 

 even and satisfactory grades. 



The common employment of women and children to do the weed- 

 ing and some other work was very distasteful to me. A row 

 of them kneeling upon little knee cushions and picking out weeds 

 with knife and fingers was a sight that spoke of intense competi- 

 tion and narrow lives. There is, I must confess, an all pervading 

 air of drudgery and an almost total lack of any enthusiasm and 

 hopefulness on the part of almost all the common people employed. 

 This is replaced by a strong sense of the stern necessity of doing 

 their work well in order to live. Few of them can ever hope to 

 rise to anything like comfort or ease, and their lives are dominated 

 by the necessity that drives men downward, and not, as is oftener 

 true here, b}' the hope that leads us willingly. It is only the 

 educated few, whose horizon is wider, who seem to see much rose- 

 color in the future. And so they go on forever, the proprietor 

 keen, receptive, and ready to do new things or buy new things, to 

 keep in the front rank of the trade ; the common workers, expert 

 of hand and eye through long practice of one thing, but otherwise 

 dull and unambitious. 



Thoroughly well trained, as is everj^one in the nursery, they do 

 their mechanical work well as cogs on a wheel, and would be 

 amazed and horrified to see in this land, men of no more know- 

 ledge or training than themselves owning and managing nurseries, 

 with a large sign in front and a good patronage too, from people 

 who never had the benefit of any better service. 



Discussion. 



The discussion of Mr. Temple's paper was opened by William 

 C. Strong, who said that it was very interesting and certainly 

 very suggestive, and, he was obliged to add, very depressing. 

 The conditions of life in this country are so different from those 

 in Europe that we could hardly hope to have here such establish- 

 ments as had been described. Few nurseries here are handed 

 down from father to son as in Europe. On the other hand is the 

 question of labor, which had a depressing effect on Mr. Temple, 

 as it does on every one who goes abroad. It is useless to expect 

 to compete with such labor. Last fall our seaboard cities were 

 absolutely flooded with the products of European nurseries, which 



