24 



The Florists^ Review 



NOTBMBEB 28, 1018. 



n 



Established. 1897, by G. L. GRANT. 



Published every Thursday by 

 The Fix)ki8ts' Publishinq Co., 



620-S60 Oaxtoa Building, 



006 South Dearborn St., Ohlcaco. 



Tele.. Wabash 8196. 



Registered cable address. 



Florrlew, Chicago. 



Entered as second class matter 

 Dec. 3. 1897. at the poet-offlce at Ohl> 

 cago. IIU, under the Act of March 

 3 1879. 



Subscription price, %IJK a year. 

 To Canada, |2.S0; to Europe, $3.00. 

 • AdTertlslng rates quoted upon 

 request. Only strictly trade ad> 

 vertlslng accepted. 



NOTICE. 



It is impossible to guarantee the in- 

 sertion, discontinuance or alteration of 

 any advertisement unless instructions 

 are received 



BY 4 P. M. TUESDAY. 



SOOIETT OF AMERICAN FLORISTS. 



Incorporated by Act of Congress, March 4, 1901. 



OfDcers for 1918: President, Charles H. 

 Totty, Madison, N. J.; vice-president, Jules 

 Bourdet, St. Louis, Mo.; secretary, John Young, 

 1170 Broadway, New York city; treasurer, J. J. 

 Hess, Omaha, Neb. 



Officers for 1919: President, J. F. Ammann, 

 Bdwardsville, III.; vice-president, B. A. Fetters, 

 Detroit; secretary and treasurer as before. 



Thlrty-flfth annual convention, Detroit, Mich., 

 August 19 to 21, 1919. 



Results bring advertising. 

 The Review brings results. 



The Fuel Administration will be ter- 

 minated automatically upon proclamation 

 of peace. 



Many retailers catering to the better 

 class of trade already are able to note an 

 increase in the call for flowers for special 

 affairs, especially for corsage bouquets, 

 as the result of the relief felt at the sur- 

 render of Germany. 



The forthcoming issue of the Garden 

 Magazine will be of special interest to 

 florists because the cover and the leading 

 article will have to do with the S. A. F. 

 publicity campaign and most of the ad- 

 vertisements have been written around the 

 trade's slogan, "Say It with Flowers." 



It is an extremely bad habit, when 

 oversold on a batch of plants, to hold 

 orders until the next lot is ready. And 

 the worst part of it is that it usually is 

 done with the orders that were accom- 

 panied by remittances. To cash a man's 

 check and not ship his order for any- 

 where from two to twelve weeks is not 

 in accordance with the golden rule. 



If the florists in the cities want to keep 

 the ones in the small towns filling tele- 

 graph delivery orders in time of need 

 they must pay the bills promptly. The 

 small-town florist gets a telegraph order 

 only now and then, usually from some big- 

 city florist who has hunted up the name 

 in a directory or obtained it from a whole- 

 saler. If the country florist does not get 

 his money without trouble, the next tele- 

 graph order is ignored and the service 

 gets a black eye. 



Don't be alarmed because you have 

 stored high-priced coal; the price will not 

 fall, nor will you spend sleepless nights 

 in midwinter. 



The Editor 's desk seldom has carried a 

 handsomer decoration than the vase of 

 Sunshine, a new Japanese anemone- 

 flowered chrysanthemum,, sent by J. B. 

 Goetz Sons, Saginaw, Mich. The flowers 

 were grown by the disbudding process, 

 which produced large blooms on long, stiff 

 stems. 



Nearly all the greenhouse building 

 material concerns have been working for 

 a year or more on government orders of 

 one kind or another. In nearly all cases 

 shipments on these orders have been 

 stopped and some of the contracts are in 

 process of cancellation on terms not un- 

 favorable to the manufacturers. They 

 will be ready to put their whole energies 

 on greenhouse building by spring. 



WELL WORTH PUSHINO. 



In many flower stores the telegraph 

 delivery feature of the business hereto- 

 fore has been regarded as a mere inci- 

 dent, but suddenly the trade has come 

 to realize that the telegraph delivery 

 department (it includes the orders 

 transferred by telephone and mail) has 

 come to be of real importance and that 

 it repays the same attention, care and 

 effort that is put on other essential 

 features of the flower business. 



How important the transfer of orders 

 between retailers has become is illus- 

 trated by the statement of F. C. W. 

 Brown, of the J. M. Gasser Co., Cleve- 

 land, who was a visitor at the office 

 of The Review a few days ago. In 

 October, said Mr. Brown, the Gasser 

 store was open twenty-seven days and 

 in those twenty-seven days the transfer 

 orders, in and out, aggregated over 

 $2,900, or more than $100 for each busi- 

 ness day in the month. 



There is many a store in many a city 

 the size of Cleveland which not so long 

 ago would have considered $100 per 

 day as an excellent total for all the 

 business done. It is a good day's busi- 

 ness for many a store right now. The 

 Gasser store did it on transfer orders 

 alone. 



Another feature of Mr. Brown's state- 

 ment was of interest. Some of the flo- 

 rists of large cities have indicated a 

 dislike for orders that are too small to 

 be handled conveniently at a profit. The 

 record of Mr. Brown's October transfer 

 orders shows that those sent out by him 

 averaged a value of $8.95, while the 

 incoming orders averaged $8.90. Among 

 them were some small orders, orders 

 too small to afford an attractive profit 

 at a busy time, but Mr. Brown considers 

 only the average value of the orders. 

 What flower store is there which could 

 not make a handsome profit on ordert 

 which averaged a value of $8,901 



THE EXPRESS BATE RAISE. 



The increased express rates predicted 

 in recent issues of The Review were pro- 

 vided for in a general order issued No- 

 vember 21 by Director General McAdoo, 

 and are effective January 1, 1919. 



The essential features of the order pro- 

 vide that in the territory north of the 

 Ohio and Potomac rivers and east of the 

 Mississippi river, the increase in ex- 

 press first-class merchandise rates range 

 from 16 cents to 17 cents per hundred 

 pounds, regardless of the distance hauled 



in that territory. This applies to cut 

 flowers. 



The increase in the balance of the 

 United States will range from 10 cents 

 to 12 cents per hundred pounds on mer- 

 chandise. The increase on second-class 

 merchandise, which includes plants prop- 

 erly packed, will be about three-quarters 

 of the increase on first-class merchandise 

 shipped by express. 



FROM FAR AND NEAR. 



Anyone who has an article used or 

 sold by florists misses the opportunity 

 to make money if he fails to let the 

 trade all know about that particular 

 source of supply. Many buyers send 

 long distances for articles they would 

 buy near home if they saw them adver- 

 tised in The Review. Like this: 



We have been getting orders for tree cones 

 advertised in The Review, from Brooklyn, Cleve- 

 land, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and other places, 

 quite a distance from us. — The Colorado Seed Co., 

 Denver, Colo., November 18, 1918. 



I have sold out all my surplus stock. The 

 Review does the selling. — R. Schilmar, Warren, 

 Pa., November 15, 1918. 



I am pleased to advise that sales are far be- 

 yond my expectations and I know that many are 

 due to my ad In The Review. — T. H. Fuller, Bat- 

 tle Creek, Mich., November 16, 1918. 



We have had a pretty good sale on the Norway 

 spruce as a result of the ad we have been run- 

 ning in The Review. — Jackson & Perkins Co., 

 Newark, N. Y., November 22, 1918. 



When you hear a man complain of the 

 cost of advertising you can be pretty 

 certain he spends a good bit of money 

 elsewhere than in The Review. 



HELP THE TRADE ALONG. 



It is the general opinion that the pass- 

 ing of the chrysanthemum season will 

 bring another pronounced shortage of 

 cut flowers in all the wholesale markets. 

 Roses and carnations then will have to 

 carry the load of a demand almost cer- 

 tain to exceed the supply. The result, 

 of course, will be an advance in prices. 



The price of cut flowers never has 

 been governed by the cost of production, 

 but by the law of supply and demand. 

 If cost governed, higher prices would 

 have prevailed for a long, long time. 



The public is willing to pay what 

 things cost; people do not wish to be 

 overcharged, but they expect to pay the 

 cost of production plus a living profit. 



Let the grower live; he has merely 

 existed for quite a space prior to this 

 autumn. 



CHICAGO. 



The Market. 



This issue of The Review goes to press 

 during the rush of Thanksgiving buying. 

 Shipping business is so heavy that it 

 will break all records; it will be a 

 Thanksgiving that will not be forgotten. 

 The city business is keeping pace and 

 it is the opinion of the leaders in the 

 trade, and also of the smaller merchants, 

 that there will not be enough stock to 

 meet all needs, even at the highest prices 

 ever asked at this holiday. Several of 

 the wholesalers already have declined 

 many transient orders, due to having 

 enough advance orders from regular cus- 

 tomers to absorb all their Thanksgiving 

 supply. Stock of all kinds, however, is 

 coming into the market in heavy supply, 

 with the exception of mums, of which 

 there will not be enough to go around. 

 So strong is the demand that many or- 

 ders will have to be cut down and it is 

 feared late buyers will fare poorly. 



The city retailers report an extra 



