Who Shall Grow Carnations 



is as well pleased for the time being as if he were engineering a successful 

 corner in coal stocks. But the reckoning day is at hand. The time comes 

 when the returns from the commission house begin to give a pointer as to 

 what the profits bid fair to be. It is then that the floricultural novice learns 

 that there is a wide difference in value between the flowers as they leave the 

 handsome store of the Broadway florist, delivered in the liveried equipage 

 drawn by expensive horses, and the price at which they leave the com- 

 mission house; and this variation he finds one that cannot be overcome, 

 unless he himself be willing to engage in the retail florist business and 

 assume its attendant risks and expenses. His vision of handsome profits 

 vanishes. He finds that the possession of immense wealth does not make 

 him a successful commercial grower, and that the enthusiastic, skilled florist, 

 who not only loves the carnation as a flower, but who couples with that love 

 a shrewd ability to make the best out of little, and who is willing to make 

 the many personal sacrifices necessary to produce the best results, is able to 

 obtain better flowers, and to sell them at better prices than the whilom 

 grower is able to get for the costly products of his expensive greenhouses, 

 which he finds must be sold upon an unprofitable basis ; and after a period 

 of time he, too, disappears from the ranks of the commercial florist. 



Another would-be carnation grower is exemplified by the following 

 letters : 



J. Kelsey Blank. Office of Blank & Co., 



W. Atwood Blank. Manufacturing Chemists, 



469 Blank Street, Chicago, 111. 

 My dear Mr. W : 



This will introduce to you my gardener, Mr. John Rowls, who has charge of my 

 country place, Overlook Manor. You will find that Mr. Rowls is a very capable florist. 



Now, my dear Mr. W , I wish to ask a little advice. I have at Overlook Manor 



quite an extensive greenhouse, sufficiently large to more than provide my household 

 with such flowers as we desire. Mr. Rowls has been marketing the surplus carnations, 

 and has always received the very highest prices for them. He thinks the climate and 

 soil at Overlook especially well adapted for growing fine carnations. Mr. Rowls has 

 advised me, that with the building of a few additional greenhouses the production of 

 carnations will be increased so that enough can be sold to materially help defray the 

 expenses of maintaining Overlook. 



I have a surplus income from my business which will enable me to build the needed 

 additional houses, and I contemplate engaging in growing carnations. Knowing you 

 to be one of the most successful growers in the country, and one who seems to have 

 made considerable money out of the business, I take the liberty of asking you to advise 

 me as to their culture and the style of house I should build; also, will you kindly fiir- 



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