242 



The BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSEI^F AT THE 

 NATIONAL CONVENTION. 



The National convention will soon be 

 here, and I wish to give a few hints to 

 those who contenipate being in attend- 

 ance; especially to those who are to come 

 from a distance. In the first place, don't 

 try to economize in the way of meals and 

 sleeping car berths. To one not accns- 

 tomed to travelling, a long journey is 

 more or less of a strain, and nothing 

 should be left undone to make it as com- 

 fortable as possible. Get jour meals as 

 regularly as possible. Don't miss one 

 simply because it may cost you 50 or 75 

 cents, or even 1 1. 00. Don't try stting up 

 all night in an ordinary day coach. Take 

 a sleeper, even though it costs $2.00, or 

 even I3. 00. It is poor economy to pay 

 out $30 or I40, or even half that sum, for 

 railroad fares, and then reach the conven- 

 tion in a worn out, jaded condition, when 

 the expenditure of a few more dollars 

 would have landed you there fresh and 

 ros\\ Three days of convention work, 

 with its excitement, and the visiting that 

 lasts well into the night, is, of itself, quite 

 a drain upon a man's vitality. There is 

 no pleasure in it if one is all ' 'played out. ' ' 

 After reaching the convention, don't put 

 up at some third or fourth class hotel 

 where there will be dirty rooms, poor 

 beds, and scanty or illj'-cooked meals. 

 From the moment that you leave home, 

 until 3'our return, take good care of your- 

 self, even if it does cost a few more dollars. 

 If you must economize, do it in some oth- 

 er way than that of depriving yourself of 

 comforts while attending the National 

 convention. 



THE V.\I.UE OF TIME AT CONVENTIONS. 



I have often wondered if those who at- 

 tend our large conventions realize how 

 much the time is really worth — that is, 

 if we should figure up the expenses and 

 divide them by the number of hours, 

 what would be the cost per hour ? For 



sake of illustration, suppose that there 

 should be 300 present at the coming Den- 

 ver convention. I think it a very con- 

 servative estimate to put the cost of at- 

 tendance at |io for each person. I think 

 that there will be very few persons pres- 

 ent to whom the actual cost in dollars and 

 cents, for railroad fare and hotel bills, 

 will fall much short of |io. Some of 

 those coming from the East, or from Cal- 

 ifornia, will find their expenses running 

 up close to ;f5o. Then, if we count the 

 /I'lfie of those in attendence, it is certainly 

 reasonable to say that the average cost of 

 attendance will be f lo for each person. 

 If there are 300 present, the comming con- 

 vention at Denver will cost those in attend- 

 ance, not far from ;f3,ooo. But I wish to 

 keep within the bounds of reason. There 

 will certainly be 200 present. This would 

 make the cost $2,000. This makes it 

 about ;f6oan hour, or |i.oo a minute for 

 the time that the convention is in session. 

 When a man gets up and talks five min- 

 utes, he uses up I5.00 worth of time. The 

 question is, does he tell something that is 

 worth that much to the convention ? I 

 fear that some of us have never looked at 

 it in this light. On the other hand, we 

 must remember that if a man should in a 

 very short time, tell something that was 

 worth only 1 1. 00 to each member, then 

 it would be worth $300 to the convention, 

 if there were 300 bee keepers present. 

 Then, when it is published by the bee 

 journals it is worth still more. 



I attended a convention, less than a 

 year ago, in which the question was asked, 

 " What constitutes an examination of a 

 colony for foul brood?" One old man 

 spent fifteen or twenty minutes in telling 

 of the visit to his place of the Inspector, 

 of what the Inspector said, of what he 

 said to the Inspector, of how his wife came 

 out and joined in the conversation, and 

 he had just begun to tell "what she said," 

 when some one called him to order. The 

 trouble is that many do not realize 

 the difference between sitting out on the 

 woodpile, gossiping with a neighbor, and 

 that of talking to a gathering of bee keep- 



