20 



The Florists' Review 



Jdkb 22, 1916. 



Eitebllahed. 1897. by G.L. aRAlIT. 



PabllBfted evbry Thursday by 

 The FLomsra' PcBLismNo Co., 



S30-fi60 Oaxton BuildlnR, 



808Soatb Dearborn St., Ohicaco, 



Tela.. Wabash 8196. 



Registered cable addreaa, 



Florvlew. Chicago. 



Entered as second class matter 

 Dec. S. 1897, at the post-office at Ohl- 

 caffo, IlL, UBder the Act of March 

 «, 1879. 



Subscription prlcb, $1.00 a year. 

 To Canada, $2.00; to Europe. $3.00. 



Advertising rates quoted upon 

 request. Only strictly trade ad- 

 vertising accepted. 



n 



NOTICE. 



It'll impossible to guarantee 



the insertioB, discontinuance or 



alteration of any advertisement 



unless instructions are received 



BY 5 P, M. TUESDAY. 



SOCIETY OF AJCEBICAN FL0BIST8. 

 Incorporated by Act of Congress, March 4, 1901. 

 Officers for 1916: President, Daniel MacRorle, 

 San Francisco; vice-president, R. C. Kerr, Hous- 

 ton, Tex.; secretary, Jotin Young, 63 W. 28th 

 St., New York City; treasurer, W. F. Kasting, 

 BuCTalo. 



Tblrty-second annual convention, Houston, 

 Texas, August 15 to 18, 1916. 



Besults bring advertising. 

 The Eeview brings resulte. 



The two carnations that gained most in 

 reputation last season were Matchless and 

 Alice. 



Fragile as is the petunia, it is proving 

 extremely popular for window box pur- 

 poses. 



Fortunate is the florist who still has 

 command of an adequate supply of cow 

 manure. Several large growers have gone 

 into the dairying business for the pur- 

 pose of making for themselves a portion 

 of their fertilizer necessities. 



The Want ads in The Eeview are an 

 excellent index to the state of the trade. 

 Note how the For Sale ads have decreased 

 in number in the last year or so. Evi- 

 dently business is much better than it was. 

 The turn of the seasons can be noted in 

 the Help Wanted and Situations Wanted 

 columns; the former is shrinking, the lat- 

 ter increasing. 



Mrs. Eussell most certainly is not a 

 rose for everybody to grow and least of 

 all is it a rose for everybody to graft. 

 Large propagators have again this season 

 failed to fill orders in full because of the 

 percentage of grafts that failed to take, 

 the loss in some cases being as much as 

 one-third. Is it any wonder good plants 

 of Eussell command a good price? 



There is a noticeable uplift in progress 

 in the trade. To begin with, the water 

 wagon is becoming a popular conveyance, 

 and, as the sons of the pioneers take 

 hold, they are bringing to bear such qual- 

 ities as come with higher education, for 

 nearly every florist sees to it that his 

 children get a more thorough schooling 

 than was thought necessary in the olden 

 times. 



DON'T. 



Don't spell it "Lillies" on the bill; 

 one "1" meets the custom in our best 

 families. 



Don't speak of the "dirt" in the 

 pots; there may be some on the outside, 

 but the contents is soil. 



Don't send your customers bills for 

 "boquets;" some of them may think 

 there also were omissions from the 

 bunches. 



Don't forget that in a business that 

 depends largely on service the small de- 

 tails of speech and orthography are 

 important. 



THE 0OI.DEN BUItE. 



Every advertiser should practice the 

 golden rule — indeed, dealing with a per- 

 ishable article, not readily returnable 

 in case the customer is not fully satis- 

 fied, it is especially important that 

 each seller do as he would be done by. 



There probably is no line of business 

 in which disagreements are so difficult 

 of adjustment as is the case with 

 plants and flowers — the non-standard- 

 ized, perishable, unreturnable character 

 of the merchandise makes it so. No 

 man who cherishes his good name, who 

 hopes' to receive repeat orders, who 

 hopes to profit by the valuable free ad- 

 vertising that passes from mouth to 

 mouth through the trade, or who cher- 

 ishes the good name of florists, as a 

 class, will ever send out any other stock 

 than he would be satisfied to receive 

 were he in the buyer's position. 



The man who invariably applies the 

 golden rule will never want for cus- 

 tomers. 



THE MODEBN METHOD. 



The modern method of doing business 

 is the exact opposite of the method 

 employed in this trade by an increasing 

 number of sellers. The theory that 

 prompts getting the order away from 

 the other fellow, even if there is no 

 profit in it, long since has been aban- 

 doned in other lines of business. The 

 later and better idea is to get together 

 and charge the dear public what the 

 traffic will bear. 



The florists' business has been one 

 of excellent profits for a few men spe- 

 cially endowed with faculties for han- 

 dling large affairs, and for conserving 

 their money, but the average florist 

 never has made profits in proportion to 

 the time, labor^ skill and risk involved. 

 The reason usually has been that he 

 and his neighbors were trying to see 

 which one could sell the cheapest. 



COMMODITY PEICES. 



Within the last year commodity prices 

 in America have been the highest in 

 history. The pinch has been felt by 

 nearly all florists, who found practi- 

 cally everything needed for the business 

 costing more than it ever had before, 

 with the closeness of competition pre- 

 venting a corresponding rise in the 

 florist 's own selling prices. It has been 

 a year of good business for florists, 

 without a correspondingly good profit. 



But commodity prices appear to have 

 made a turn. In almost every line of 

 business demand has visibly slackened. 

 While markets were rising so rapidly 

 everyone was buying to cover future 

 requirements, so that of late the de- 

 mand has fallen off. Also, many arti- 

 cles have reached a price sufficiently 

 high to curtail consumption. Brad- 



street's Index, which is recognized as 

 the authority on such matters, shows 

 that the high point was April 1, 1916, 

 since which date there has been a slight 

 but steady recession, prices for June 1 

 being slightly lower than for May 1, 

 and May lower than for April. 



The outlook is not for a rapid decline. 

 Conditions are such that high prices are 

 almost sure to rule for a number of 

 years, with the probability ^itiat never 

 within the lifetime of th 

 the business will prices on m; 

 get back to the level thai 

 before the war. 



now in 



articles 

 revailed 



CLEABINO THE SU^WITS. 



Plant sales are unusually ij&tive for 

 the closing weeks of June, due to the 

 lateness of the season, but it is not to 

 be expected that the demand will con- 

 tinue indefinitely. 



In many places stock has been cleaned 



up before the demand has been satisfied 



and there still exists a ready outlet 



for surpluses from other localities. The 



time to clean up is now. Lake this: 



In sending P. O. order to cover my bill I ask 

 you also to accept my thanks. The classlfled ads 

 in The Review have done fine for me this year. 

 — George B. Morrell, Philadelphia, Pa., June 15, 

 1916. 



When you hear a man complain of 

 the cost of advertising you can be 

 pretty sure he spends a good bit of 

 money elsewhere than in The Eeview. 



POT MAKERS ORGANIZE 



Another of our allied industries 

 buried the hatchet last week, on the 

 beach at Atlantic City. June 17 there 

 was a meeting of manufacturers said 

 to represent ninety per cent of the pot 

 output of the United States, at which 

 the Pot Makers' Credit Association was 

 organized. The prime movers seek to 

 make it clearly understood that they 

 have in mind no purpose other than to 

 reduce the cost of pots by the elimina- 

 tion of losses and the expenses inci- 

 dental to slow collections. 



CHICAGO. 



The Market. 



The Chicago market during the last 

 week has been decidedly spotted. Short 

 periods of activity have been inter- 

 spersed with periods of sluggishness. 

 Shipping trade has been quite good. 

 Local trade, on the contrary, though 

 especially good the end of the week, is 

 on the whole distinctly quiet. 



Beauties have been selling fairly 

 well, but at low 4)rices. Though the 

 average quality is better than last week, 

 there is far too much inferior stock. 

 The supply has been materially reduced 

 by planting, and few young Beauties 

 are seen on the market as yet. Good 

 roses of the other varieties are clearing 

 nicely, but there is a large volume of 

 poor stock that can find its way out of 

 the market only through department 

 store channels. Eussell, as usual, leads. 

 Sunburst and Ophelia find a good de- 

 mand, while the reds of really first-class 

 quality move easily. Good carnations 

 sell fairly well, but the supply of good 

 stock is so large that soft flowers meet 

 with poor sale. 



There is such a quantity of open peo- 

 nies on the market that it has a tend- 

 ency to lower prices on other stock. 

 Good peonies, however, may be had in 

 almost any quantity. Valley is still 

 short, though not so much so as it was 



