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The Florists^ Review 



NOTBUBK le, 1916. 



UMMUbiOSbtf, by a. L. OBAIIT. 



Pabliahed every Thonday by 

 Thb Flobisis' Pdbubhino Co.. 



830-800 Oaxton Building, 



lOSSootb Dearborn St, Obioaca 



Tele.,Wab«tfi819S. 



Be^atered cable addraM, 



Vtorrlew, Otalcaro. 



Entered as aeoond claas matter 

 Deo. S. 1897. at the poet-offlce at Ohi- 

 oafo. IIU OBder the A«t of March 

 M87a. 



Snbacriptlon price, fl.00 a year. 

 To Canada, $iMi to Europe. $S.OO. 



Advertlslnf ratee quoted apon 

 reqneat. Only strictly trad* ad* 

 veitlaliiff accepted. 



(I 



NOTICE. 



It'll impoaaible to (uajraate* 



the insertioii, diaeontinoajie* or 



alteration ol anj adTortiaeaeat 



«&!••■ iaatmetions aro roeeiTOd 



BY 6 P. K. TUESDAY. 



BOCXETT or AKERIOAN FLOKXSXS. 



iBooiporated by Act of Ooagress, Uareh 4. UOl. 



Offloers for 1916: President. Daniel MaeBorie. 

 ■•a Fraadsoe: Tiee-prcaldeat, B. O. Karr, Heos- 

 tsa. Tax.; seeretair, John Tonne. BS W. 38tb 

 ■t.. Kew Turk Ofty; treasurer. J. J. 



oncers for 1917: President, Bobert 0. Kerr, 

 Heoston, Tex.; vice-president, A. L. Miller. Ja- 

 ■alea, N. T.; secretary, John Tonne, 68 W. Mth 

 ■t., new Twrk City; treasnrer, J. J. Hass. 

 Oaialui, Meb. 



nirty-thlrd annual conTontlon, Mew Tork. 

 n. T.. Ausnst ai to 34. 1917. 



RESULTS. 



We give them. You get them. 



We both have them. 



Cleveland already is planning a big 

 fall show for 1917 and has set the dates 

 as November 6 to 11. 



Apparently the debutante bouquet has 

 given place to the debutante basket of 

 cut flowers. The change at least makes 

 the gifts more useful to the recipient. 



The Godfrey calla is gaining in popu- 

 larity steadily, as growers learn the 

 method of handling it, and promises prac- 

 tically to displace the old ^thiopica for 

 cut flower purposes. 



While early November has seen a 

 slump in nearly all the important whole- 

 sale cut flower market's, this has not been 

 the case with the retail trade in the 

 country. With the latter section of the 

 fraternity business has steadily improved. 

 The slackened wholesale demand has been 

 due to the fact that many retailers who 

 buy at other seasons have been busy mov- 

 ing the mums they grow in the houses 

 now to be used for bedding stock. 



A New York daily in a recent issue 

 devoted space liberally to the treatment 

 of fall bulb planting, by amateurs. 

 "Bulbs for a City Yard," "Bulbs for 

 the House" and "Amateur Bulb Plant- 

 ing" were the heads over instructive and 

 fairly comprehensive articles. It goes 

 without saying that educational treatises 

 of this description, if published through- 

 out the country year after year in dif- 

 ferent guises, would be business boosters 

 of inestimable value to the trade. 



LAKOE STOCK, LABGE SPACES. 



There is a hint for others in the sub- 

 joined letter; a hint especially for those 

 who expect a small horse to pull a big 

 load: 



We And advertislntr In The Review profitable, 

 with better returns than from any other trade 

 paper, and after trying out advertlaements of 

 different sizes we have found that the larger 

 spaces brought the greatest returns for eadi 

 diollar spent. Larger production has made larger 

 ' advertisements advisaole and we expect to nae 

 more space in The Review this coming year tban 

 ever before. — William Toole & Son, Baraboo, 

 Wis., November 6, 1016. 



When you hear a man complain of 



the cost of advertising you can be 



pretty sve he spends a good bit of 



money elsewhere than in The Review. 



CALIFORNIA COUNTS. 



California has been to the front this 

 month, politically and in a trade sense. 

 Just as California had to be reckoned 

 with in the matter of who is to be presi- 

 dent, so California has had to be reck- 

 oned with in the matter of the supply, 

 distribution and price of cut flowers. 

 It was something of a surprise, too, in 

 both cases to a good many people. 



This is the first year that California 

 mums have penetrated the middle west 

 in quantities to unsettle the markets 

 there. For the last year or two they 

 have entered into competition with Cin- 

 cinnati, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas 

 City stock for the All Saints' day 

 business in Louisiana and Texas, but 

 otherwise had not been felt. The pro- 

 duction of chrysanthemums, mostly in 

 cloth houses, in southern California and 

 in glass houses around San Francisco 

 has increased greatly in the last year 

 or two and early this month there was a 

 far greater quantity than the local buy- 

 ing would consume. The result was an 

 energetic campaign for a wider market. 

 In this the shippers had the important 

 assistance of the two largest express 

 companies, each of which operates a 

 refrigerator car service east from a 

 coast terminal. The coast mums are 

 earlier than the crops in the Missouri 

 river country and farther north, so that 

 at first the long distance shipments 

 filled a need, but when the local mums 

 came in the importations only created a 

 glut greater than usual and depressed 

 prices to a serious extent. The Chicago 

 market suflfered and so did many others, 

 not so much perhaps from the number 

 of California mums sent there as from 

 the fact that many <'ustomers who 

 usually buy in those markets already 

 had been filled up with the shipments 

 from the west. 



What another year will bring forth is 

 a matter for conjecture. It has been 

 demonstrated that mums grown almost 

 within sight of the Pacific can be 

 shipped far east and have a fair per- 

 centage open in salable condition. How 

 far the business can be developed at 

 a profit remains to be seen. No doubt 

 there are limits. The Review hears of 

 shipments on which the express was 

 nearly 3 cents per flower and in which 

 the waste was high which sold at a 

 profit early in the season but which 

 could not be handled after the local 

 crops became heavy. After that the 

 importations stopped. California violets 

 meet Hudson river violets about at the 

 Mississippi rjver. A few reshipments 

 of the Rhinebeck stock from Chicago 

 £ro farther west, but at Des Moines and 

 Kansas City the western flowers hold 

 the lead. 



The Californians are pushing steadily 



to open eastern outlets for their prod- 

 ucts and, although there seems to be a 

 limit beyond which they can not go as 

 a matter of regular business, they give 

 every indication of affording competi- 

 tion which will have to be taken into 

 consideration by everyone in the busi- 

 ness in the western half of the United 

 States. 



THE PRICE OF FLOWERS. 



The Review is convinced that large 

 numbers of florists, especially those in 

 the country towns who grow most of 

 the stock they sell, are retailing cut 

 flowers and potted plants at prices be- 

 low the cost of production. Evidence 

 of this ctnnes to hand every few days. 

 For instance, a subscriber in a south- 

 ern town writes that a certain whole- 

 saler overcharged him on an order for 

 All Saints' day and investigation re- 

 veals the fact that the order was for 

 75 cents' worth of white carnations, 

 75 cents' worth of pink carnations 

 and $2 worth of mums. The wholesaler 

 sent fifty carnations and fifteen mums 

 and obviously it was good stock, as the 

 distance was nearly a thousand miles 

 and the complaint is on the quantity, 

 not the quality. 



The man who complains of prices 

 scarcely ever judges them by city stand- 

 ards. The city buyer knows something 

 of the cost of production and the rea- 

 sons for fluctuations; he does not call 

 3-cent carnations high at the end of 

 October. On the other hand, the man 

 who retails the stock l\j produces on the 

 home place is likely to have too many 

 duties to give time to figuring the cost 

 of production and he gradually falls 

 into the error of selling too cheaply. 

 By his standards he is overcharged when 

 he sends an occasional order to a city 

 wholesaler. 



It behooves each man to take an ac- 

 count of his business and to do it now. 

 Costs of doing business are rising every 

 day and it is necessary for the florist 

 who would avoid financial diflSeulties to 

 know what stock costs and to ask prices 

 that will make the business return at 

 least a living. 



CHICAGO. 



Beware This Swindler. 



The Review is advised that ^ man 

 is calling on the trade, asking for sub- 

 scriptions to this paper and offering a 

 brown leather pocketbook as a gift to 

 those who will subscribe. Please- take 

 note that The Review employs no 

 such solicitor; it never has found it 

 necessary to give pocketbooks, knives 

 or any other kind of premiums to get 

 people to buy the paper and anyone 

 making such an offer can be set down 

 as a swindler. 



Not long ago a solicitor canvassed 

 near Chicago for The Review, but 

 when the receipts were read with care 

 it was found that it was the Farmers' 

 Review, not the Florists' Review, 

 which had been obtained with the 

 brown pocketbook. The Farmers' Re- 

 view refunded. 



Representatives of The Review are 

 well known in the trade. Don 't pay 

 money to strangers for this paper's 

 account. 



The Market. 



Last week was one of general over- 

 supply and low average prices, but the 

 sudden change of temperature, which 



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