28 



The FIcMists' Review 



January li5, 1917. 



ffr 



Establtehed, 1897. by G. L. GRANT. 



PubllBbed every Thursday by 

 The Florists' Publishinq Co., 



6204S60 Oaxton BnildlDir, 



SOe Soatb Dearborn St, Chicasro. 



Tele., Wabash 8196. 



RARistered cable address. 



riorvlew, Chicago. 



Entered as second class matter 

 Dec. 3, 1897, at the post-ofBce at Ohl. 

 cai^o. 111., under the Act of Mar h 

 3.1879. 



Subscription price, $1.60 a year. 

 To Canada, $2.60; to Europe. $3.00. 



Advertlslnff rates quoted upon 

 request. Only strictly trade ad- 

 vertlslnK accepted. 



NOTICE. 



It ia impossible to ar^arantee 



the insertien, discontindanee or 



alteration of any advertisement 



nnless instructions are received 



BY 4 P. M. TUESDAY. 



S0CIEI7 OF AMERICAN FLORISTS. 

 Incorporated by Act of CongTess, March 4, 1001. 



Officers for 1917: President, Robert 0. Kerr, 

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

 maica, N. Y.; secretary, John Young, 63 W. 28th 

 St., New York City; treasurer, J. J. Hess, 

 Omaha, Neb. 



Thirty-third annual convention. New York, 

 N. Y., August 21 to 24, 1917. 



KESULTS. 



We give them. You get them. 



We both have them, 



Whatevsk may have been the fact at 

 Christmas, there is no scarcity of cyclam- 

 ens now. 



It is well to keep one's self informed 

 as to what one's competitor is doing — 

 frequently it will serve as an admonition 

 as to what not to do. 



No recent wedding has attracted so 

 much attention as that of McCutcheon, 

 the cartoonist. The photographs show 

 his bride carried a bouquet of freesias. 



The increased prices asked on advance 

 orders for Dutch bulbs are making many 

 buyers hold off, and to this extent should 

 prove of advantage to resident dealers. 



Don't be afraid to charge what your 

 stock and your service are worth — it 

 rather raises you in popular esteem if you 

 can charge more than your nearest com- 

 petitor. 



That this is an unusually good season 

 for the disseminators of novelties is the 

 opinion of the E. G. Hill Co., Richmond, 

 but its two new roses will not be ready 

 until 1918! 



When this week's issue of The Re- 

 view is "put to bed," as the printers 

 phrase it, tlio editor is going out to 

 buy himself a drink, a big, black cigar, 

 or something else with which to properly 

 celebrate the occasion — for it will be an 

 even 1,000 times the event has occurred. 



Next Monday, January 29, is McKin- 

 ley day, the day some of the trade tried 

 to have observed by the wearing of car- 

 nations. But it was a flash in the pan. 

 In only a few cities was it possible to 

 establish a special demand for. flowers 

 that day. 



EAST OR WEST. 



The press room order since January 4 

 hasjbeen to.^rint 12^00. popjes of .each 

 issue of The Review^^ but it looks as 

 though the edition soon will have to be 

 increased again, as Hew subscriptions 

 still are coming in steadily. But with 

 12,500 copies going out regularly, there 

 can not be many florists, east or west, 

 who do not read The Review, with this 

 result : 



Please cancel my ad of mum stock plants, as 

 I already am all sold out. — Gove the Florist, 

 Burlington, Vt,, January 17, 1917. 



Please discontinue my ad of pansies, as my en- 

 tire stock is sold and orders still are coming in. 

 — George F. Ode, January 15, 1917. 



When you hear a man complain of the 

 cost of advertising you can be pretty 

 sure he spends a good bit of money else- 

 where than in The Review. 



MUST RAISE THE PRICES. 



' ' While florists generally seem well 

 satisfied with the volume of business 

 done so far this season," says H. E. 

 Humiston, special representative of the 

 Chicago Feed & Fertilizer Co., "there 

 seems to be considerable complaint in 

 some localities that profits have been 

 materially decreased, due to the great 

 increase in cost of production with no 

 general corresponding increase in the 

 prices of flowers. The large increase 

 in the cost of fuel and the scarcity of 

 competent labor have undoubtedly im- 

 posed a heavy burden on many of our 

 florists." 



There is only one course open to the 

 trade — it is necessary to obtain better 

 prices to compensate for the unavoid- 

 able addition to costs. In dealing with 

 the public small increases in price will 

 be accepted absolutely without com- 

 ment, so accustomed to them have shop- 

 pers become. 



COLLECTIONS. 



In the wholesale end of the trade 

 there has been complaint for some 

 months that collections were slower 

 than they should be on so good a volume 

 of business. Comparatively speaking, 

 they have not been better in January. 

 The retailers excuse themselves with 

 the statement that they can not get their 

 money from their own customers. 



This trade is notoriously slack, from 

 one end to the other, in the matter of 

 credits and collections. There are in- 

 dividual exceptions, but as a whole flo- 

 rists give too much credit and pay too 

 little attention to collections and the 

 discharge of their own liabilities. The 

 other day a wholesale dealer in plants, 

 etc., told The Review he had on his 

 books a sum equal to his sales for the 

 entire year of 19161 It is due to lack 

 of system, that and the fear of losing 

 a customer. 



In the years when there were large 

 profits in the business lax methods were 

 bad enough, but now, with a steadily 

 narrowing margin of profit, they are 

 positively dangerous. The florist who 

 does not collect his accounts and keep 

 his bills paid up is risking his business 

 life on a continuance of general pros- 

 perity. 



THE LABOR SITUATION. 



The question of labor will be one of 

 the most difficult the florists' trade will 

 have to meet this spring. 



Under normal conditions it is bad 

 enough during the weeks of the spring 

 bedding season, and during the time that 



replanting is going on under glass, but 

 this year the situation will be far worse 

 than usual. Skilled help ne\«r is plen- 

 tiful — there never are enough men who 

 really know their way around among 

 plants — and it is less abundant now than 

 ever before, for the simple reason that 

 wages in other occupations have ad- 

 vanced faster than in the florists' busi- 

 ness. The conditions in the east, where 

 hundreds of thousands of unskilled men 

 have been drawn into munition-making, 

 are worse than in the central states, 

 where miscellaneous manufacturing and 

 agriculture make work for every able- 

 bodied man at better than the usual 

 wages. The florist who does a big spring 

 bedding business will find greater diffi- 

 culty than ever in handling the trade 

 of 1917. It should be a big season and 

 a profitable one, but it will be a season 

 during which the greenhouse owner will 

 earn all he gets out of it, for the reason 

 that he will have to do so large a part 

 of the work himself because of his in- 

 ability to secure competent assistance. 



THE ENERGETIC GERMANS. 



The following recently appeared in 



one of the British trade papers: 



It is interesting to note that American gar- 

 dening papers still carry advertisements of 

 German nurserymen, who are evidently plncky 

 and energetic enough still to peg away and take 

 all risks in regard to transport of tbeir goods 

 across the seas. There doesn't appear to be 

 that increase in the number of British advertlae- 

 nients in these papers one might have expected, 

 and although I know a few firms who are doing 

 on increasing amount of export trade, there 

 appear to be many who have the goods to sell, 

 but not the enterprise and initiative to hunt 

 up the orders. The American trade is worth 

 making big elTorts to secure, but we must not 

 expect it to come to us unbidden, and to wait 

 until the war is over will be to lose the golden 

 opportunity. 



No doubt the present does offer an 

 unusual opportunity for developing 

 American trade, for nearly all kinds of 

 stock are wanted here. It is equally 

 true that the Briton, with his pro- 

 verbial reluctance to change his meth- 

 ods, is not taking advantage of the 

 opportunity, but as for the ads of the 

 German firms, it is a fair guess that 

 they were ordered before the war, to 

 run until stopped, and the American 

 publishers are keeping them going al- 

 though they have received no pay for 

 perhaps two years and mail communica- 

 tion is known to be cut off by the Brit- 

 ish blockade. 



CHICAGO. 



The Market. 



The feature of tlie market is the low 

 level of prices as compared to what the 

 trade is accustomed to in the latter part 

 of January. . Carnations are not bringing 

 much more than half, on the average, 

 what they did at this time last year, the 

 average price of roses is considerably 

 lower than last January, because of in- 

 sufficient demand to clean up the longer 

 grades at their full value, and even 

 sweet peas, which are increasingly popu- 

 lar and hurting the sale of violets, are 

 not making the prices they did last Jan- 

 uary. On the other hand, however, tak- 

 ing the market as a whole, the supply of 

 stock is much larger than it was last 

 year in .January. There has not even 

 been the usual scarcity of roses this 

 year, as the Christmas crops went off; 

 the supply shortened up, of course, but 

 orders have been filled in far better 

 shape than in any recent January. With 

 carnations, where the difference in price 

 is most pronounced, the cut is so much 



