20 



The Florists^ Review 



JULT 81, 1919. 



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QRAITT. 



Pabllahed every Tbarsdar by 

 The Flobists' Pdblishinq C!o., 



620-660 Oaxton Bnlldlngr. 



606 Soutb Dearborn St., Chicago. 



Tele., Wabash 8195. 



Begtstered cable address, 



' Florvlew, Chicago. 



Entered as second class matter 

 Dec. 3. 1897. at the post-offlce at Chi- 

 cago, III., under the Act of March 

 8. 1879. 



Subscription price, $1.60 a year. 

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



Advertlaing rates quoted upon 

 request. Only strictly trade ad- 

 vertising accepted. 



He who bu^s first will be the one who 

 laughs last this year. And you know the 

 adage. 



When you find a man who uses both his 

 head and his hands, keep him satisfied 

 with his job; there are too few such in 

 every line of business. 



Summer business never will compare 

 with winter business, but this has been the 

 best July most florists ever have seen. 

 Those who have had good flowers have 

 done well. 



Conditions in the Tennessee holly dis- 

 trict are said to be such as to indicate a 

 small supply for Christmas at a cost at 

 least double that of ante-bellum seasons. 

 Transportation for it will be obtainable, 

 but an advance in freight rates was an- 

 nounced last week. 



RESULTS. 



We give them. You get them. 

 We both have them. 



The price of glass has gone up a mat- 

 ter of five per cent. 



The coal situation does not look 

 brighter. When the grain crops begin to 

 jnove it will turn dark. 



There is small chance of there being 

 too many plants next spring. Make 

 preparations to propagate all you can. 



With the mass of the American people 

 earning and spending at the present rate, 

 how could business with florists be badf 



At City Point, Wis., haying and the 

 blueberry season are offered as the reasons 

 why sphagnum moss is coming out so 

 slowly. 



Any florist who has small Boston ferns 

 for growing on will find a quick market for 

 them if he offers them where the buyers 

 look — in the Classified section of this 

 paper. 



Not to secure business, but to secure the 

 stock with which to take care of it, is the 

 problem of the coming season, as some in- 

 fluential florists see it. 



C. W. Ward still is making much good 

 copy for the newspapers on the Pacific 

 coast, but now it is his personal, rather 

 than his business, affairs that are attract- 

 ing attention. 



In last week's issue of The Review the 

 Situation Wanted, Help Wanted and For 

 •Sale advertisements occupied almost four 

 , full pages. It was the largest showing of 

 these compact little opportunity offers 

 thu9 f^r published. But there .will be 

 more. " Once a publication becomes known 

 for the number of these ads it carries, 

 they increase like a snowball rofllng down- 

 hill. 



Field-grown carnation plants will be 

 extremely scarce this season. In the first 

 place, the quantity propagated and 

 planted out was small and, secondly, 

 weather conditions have been unfavorable 

 — frost in the spring, followed by too 

 wet in the east and too dry in the middle 

 west — so that the loss in the field has been 

 considerable. Under the circumstances it 

 will be too much to expect that such sur- 

 pluses as may be offered will be invariably 

 of the highest quality. As a matter of 

 fact, most of the growers are benching 

 •mall plants. 



BAN ON TILL AUTUMN 



The present restrictions on travel to 

 Europe, while slightly relaxed of late, 

 do not yet allow persons to travel 

 abroad purely for pleasure. Nor will 

 they be allowed to do so until after No- 

 vember 1, according to the Department 

 of State. •■ 



Secretary Lansing announced July 26 

 that passports will not be issued to those 

 desiring to go abroad solely for pleasure 

 until after November 1. 



^'Hereafter no peidoVi desiring to 

 visit European countries, except enemy 

 countries and Russia, will be required 

 to show urgent reasons or be restricted 

 as to age," said the statement. "Such 

 person will merely be required to show 

 that the object of the visit is legitimate 

 and reasonable." 



HELP WANTEDl 



"If every soldier were back on the 

 job tomorrow, we should still be 4,000,- 

 000 workers short, on account of the 

 stoppage of immigration in the last four 

 years, ' ' says H. E. Miles, chief of the 

 United States Training Service, which 

 is trying to devise means of raising the 

 standards of production to offset the 

 shortage of labor. Col. Arthur Woods 

 puts the figure at 7,000,000. 



Whichever figures are correct, the fact 

 is clear that the scarcity of labor is 

 of extreme importance. The coal trade 

 has complained; the lack of immigrants 

 from whom to recruit mine labor has 

 held back production this year. The 

 textile mills are voicing sad feelings; 

 they cannot get enough operatives for 

 their machines. From the industries re- 

 quiring rough or little skilled labor 

 comes a unanimous tale of woe. 



And the florists ' trade feels the pinch, 

 too. The Want Ad pages of The Review 

 swell with appeals for Help Wanted. 

 The large growers must pay more than 

 they ever did before, and yet must often 

 put up with "hobo" labor. Men with 

 experience, however little it may be, 

 are in constant demand. Even un- 

 skilled workers to assist are hard to get. 

 If the statistics of immigration ex- 

 perts are true, conditions are not going 

 to improve much. Immigration dwin- 

 dled to a scanty stream during the war. 

 Now the foreigners who reaped richly 

 in the times of high wages are swarm- 

 ing back to the freed nations of Eu- 

 rope with their savings. The tide, hith- 

 erto strongly in our favor, is tending in 

 the opposite direction. 



The scarcity in the ranks of rough 

 labor has been felt in all grades of em- 



ployment. Even the callings where 

 women supplanted men under the pres- 

 sure of war cannot get full supply with 

 the men mostly back from overseas. 

 Though the munition plants have closed 

 down, normal industries have increased 

 their activity and absorbed the work- 

 men released. As the industries which 

 were repressed during the war girow in 

 output, the strain on the labor market 

 will be greater. There seems no pros- 

 pect but for continued heavy demand 

 for labor. 



WHY BUSINESS IS BOOMING 



The testimony of merchants is that de- 

 spite high prices the American people 

 are spending money on a much, larger 

 scale and for much more expensive arti- 

 cles than ever before. It is described as 

 a period of "frenzied buying." The old 

 restraint seems to be thrown aside and 

 money is appreciated only as a means to 

 indulge in some new extravagance. 



We presume the feeling of release 

 from the necessary economies of the war 

 period has done a great deal toward fos- 

 tering the desire to spend money. There 

 are, moreover, many people who never 

 had so much money as they have now, 

 and their tendency is naturally to make 

 a show, to "get something out of it," 

 something to impre8» the neighbors. 

 Coupled with the reaetfionr from the war 

 there is a Bort of general apprehension 

 of what will happen ii^^. This appre- 

 hension translates its^'into a spirit of 

 "after us the delug«>*' and frenzied 

 buying goes merrily on.' — Chicago Trib- 

 une. 



DOINQ ITS WOBE. 



That the little liners in The Review 



are doing their regular work even in 



midsummer is shown by letters like 



these: , , , 



The ad we had in The Review last week was 

 a great success. We have received many orders 

 from it. Every florist should use The Review 

 for good results. — Alabama Floral Co., Birming- 

 ham, Ala., July 23, 1919. 



Discontinue all our plant ads in the Classifled 

 section; they are making us too much business. 

 — Kemble-Smith Co., Boone, la., July 28, 1919. 



If 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. 



CHICAaO. 



Tlie Market. 



Business increased to a considerable 

 degree last week, and where the second 

 full week in July was only about as 

 good as last year, the third full week of 

 the month was distinctly better than a 

 year ago. The demand was stronger in 

 spite of warm weather. The supply of 

 stock was not increased and naturally 

 prices stiffened. No grower could com- 

 plain of such summer prifies .aa wfere 

 realized from July 21 to 28. Shipping 

 demand was strong enough to clear out 

 all the stock of quality to stand a jour- 

 ney, so that local retailers had to be on 

 the ground early and pay good prices in 

 order to get necessary supplies. Here 

 and. there one hears that business is dull, 

 and no doubt it is dull compared to win- 

 ter standards, but compared with sum- 

 mer standards, business is excellent. 

 There is demand for more good stock 

 than the market affords and prices are 

 far from low, quality considered. 



