8G MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



its special purpose as a trade organ, the less it becomes adapted to 

 the needs of those who are outside the commercial field and who 

 garden for pleasure. The editorial point of view is restricted. 

 Money making is the object of the tradesman; but money spending 

 for the delight of acquiring what it can purchase is far more impor- 

 tant to the enthusiast — to whom the term amateur is so unfortu- 

 nately applied. The greater public influence in spreading the 

 desire for gardening lies outside the field of the trade publications. 



Publications of both kinds are essential. The trade cannot exist 

 without the amateur enthusiast to consume the products; the 

 amateur cannot indulge his hobby without the trade to supply his 

 needs. Therefore, I submit that the trade and the professional 

 man should look with a more kindly eye on the so-called " amateur" 

 organ. The so-called ideal publication, encompassing all phases 

 of the craft, trade and amateur together, can probably never exist. 

 The ideal is false. The true ideal should be to cater neither to the 

 trade nor to the amateur, but instead, to deal with gardening and 

 horticulture in their broadest significance, instructing, entertain- 

 ing, and attracting all interests as individuals, not as organized 

 groups. This, at all events, is the ideal that I have set before my- 

 self. 



A comparison of the contents of the earlier and present day 

 periodicals is illuminating, though it practically parallels what has 

 already been discovered in regard to garden books. I have heard 

 it held as an indictment against the contents of the periodicals 

 today that the garden writings now being offered in their columns 

 are, on the one hand, too amateurish, catering too much to the 

 uninformed; and at other times, that they are too technical and 

 erudite, catering too much to the technician. 



It all depends on the individual point of view. It is not easy to 

 satisfy everybody, simultaneously and continuously. The periodi 

 cal is designed to reach the greatest number of people of all 

 interests. It is a teacher, an educator, a reporter, an idealist, all 

 these at one and the same time. The relationship of an editor 

 to the public is many sided; his constant occupation is finding out 

 what the public wants and then finding the writers who can supply 

 it. He is also the buffer absorbing the shocks from both sides. In 

 reality, in the last analysis, it is the public itself that edits the 

 periodicals it reads. 



