FLOWER POTS AND THEIR MANUFACTURE. 19 



The capacity of our flower pot drying rooms of today far 

 exceeds the entire product of any one year prior to 1865. At 

 that time the custom of using wood for drying and firing pots still 

 continued. It required three cords of white pine and from thirty 

 to forty hours' labor thoroughly to fire a small furnace. Today 

 three tons of bituminous coal will fire five times as much pottery 

 in fifteen hours. 



It is a very common saying that one flow^er pot is as good as 

 another, provided it will hold together long enough to grow the 

 plant ; which is equivalent to saying that one rose is as good as 

 another ; and when they say that one pot is worth no more than 

 another thej^ might as well say that a hybrid should be sold at the 

 price of a tea rose. It has always been our practice to make, at 

 a fair manufacturing profit, the best flower pot that could be 

 produced. The late C. M. Hovey has often said to me, "Mr. 

 Hews, I want all perfect pots." Then he would go on to explain 

 why he wanted all perfect pots. "You see, Mr. Hews," he would 

 say, " I am potting a nice plant which will be worth two or three 

 dollars and I want a nice straight pot for it, but I am obliged to 

 pull the pile over before I can find one. Then when I have found 

 it, it is sure to be of such a soft burn that it will hardly hold 

 together." Then he would take me into the greenhouse and hunt 

 for a nice plant and at the same time be very sure to select one 

 that happened to be in a warped, cracked pot. " And now you 

 see, Mr. Hews," he would say, "that pot just spoils the sale of 

 the plant unless I re-pot it." That was before the day of standard 

 pots, and I am sure no man would have appreciated the standard 

 size more than he. 



When the Society of American Florists met at Washington in 

 1892, I spent several hours in the greenhouses of the various 

 departments, in company with a prominent member of the 

 Horticultural Society, who had never happened to visit the city 

 before. To a certain extent I had prepared him for the kind of 

 flower pots he would find there. I think he would say, if he cared 

 to discuss the subject, that I had not underestimated them. To 

 say that many of them looked as though they belonged to that 

 class of pottery found in the Indian Mounds of Mexico, would be 

 a reflection on the aborigines. 



The poor preparation of poor materials is largely the cause of 

 the thousands of inferior flower pots that flood our markets. 



