

Many florists are bringing home the turkey this season, but 

 it requires more powder and shot than in previous years. 



VERY holiday has a mean- 

 ing. For the florist some 

 mean much hard work, 

 while others mean merely 

 a busy day or two; only 

 one or two really mean a 

 surcease from labor, a real 

 holiday. Thanksgiving 

 lias, however, aside from 

 its business meaning, an as- 

 pect for our trade that makes this day a 

 different sort of holiday from the rest. 

 Aside from its appointment by presiden- 

 tial proclamation "to be observed by the 

 people as a day of thanksgiving, devo- 

 tion and prayer," it affords an oppor- 

 tunity for the florist, when the turkey 

 and pumpkin pie have been disposed of, 

 to size up the season before him and cal- 

 culate the opportunity for him in it and 

 the preparations he must make to 

 gain the most advantage from it. By 

 Thanksgiving day, coming at the out- 

 set of the florist's season, the busi- 

 ness already done and the orders al- 

 ready received acquaint him, to some 

 extent, with what may be expected 

 to come. Forecasts have already 

 been made, by him and by others. 

 But an estimate in August is not the 

 same as experience in November. So, 

 at our day of thanks for what has 

 been received, it is possible and val- 

 uable to cast our eyes on what may 

 be expected to come. 



Variations. 



The business already done this sea- 

 son varies with the locality. The ef- 

 fect of the activity, or the dullness, of 

 other industries is felt by our own. 

 When the bottom dropped out of the 

 copper, leather, cotton and automobile 

 markets, to mention no others, the cities 

 which were dependent largely on one or 

 another of those commodities and their 

 manufacture returned correspondingly 

 depressing reports on the sale of flow- 

 ers. When recovery was felt in the 

 automobile industry and cotton made a 

 spectacular rise in price, some of the dis- 

 tricts earlier in the dumps climbed out 

 of them. As other lines of business 

 underwent the necessary readjustment, 

 the florists in the centers dependent 

 upon those lines for support suffered a 

 falling off in business. Then, as recov- 

 ery came, the sale of flowers picked up 

 also. Thus it is that widely varying re- 

 ports have been received at any given 



time; some districts were on the down- 

 grade when others were on the rise. In 

 some communities where the interests 

 are so varied that one of them has not a 

 predominating influence upon the mer- 

 chants there, the readjustment goes on 

 with so little disarrangement of the 

 community's business life as a whole 

 that the fortunate florists there are 

 nearly doing the same business that they 

 did a year ago. 



Attitude. 



The variation in the reports of flo- 

 rists concerning the season's business 

 so far may be also partly explained by 

 the different attitude assumed by indi- 

 viduals in our trade. Some of them look 

 upon a business readjustment of the 

 present kind as parallel to human sick- 



ness. Temporarily they are down and 

 out. They go to bed, in a business way, 

 and wait till nature takes her course and 

 the illness passes. Sometimes, as in hu- 

 man ailments, the patient never recovers, 

 but, up to this time, it is fortunately the 

 case that mortalities have been notably 

 few among florists' firms. But reports 

 from such "sick" ones are, of course, 

 discouraging in tone. 



Stimulation. 



Others in our trade do not take this 

 view of the present situation. They do 

 not feel willing to wait for nature to 

 take her course. They feel, in this case 

 as in human ills, a change of some sort 

 may be beneficial. In some instances a 

 stimulant may be applied, and the pa- 

 tient's increased effort overcomes the 

 threatened sickness. 



A good deal of the success of each one 

 of us in meeting the present conditions 

 lies in the diagnosis we are able to make 

 of our individual businesses. If we are 

 able to put our fingers on the cause of 

 our individual troubles, we are well on 

 our way to overcoming them. In the 

 case of one — of many, indeed — plenty of 

 business is done, but the money is not 

 forthcoming; collections must be pushed 

 far harder than they have been before. 

 In another ease the customers are not 

 coming in as they did; greater effort 

 must be made to draw them to the store 

 and to make new patrons. A common 

 instance is that expansion has been 

 made in store, equipment and working 

 force in pace with the increase in busi- 

 ness in the last three or four years, and 

 now the contraction cannot be made at 

 a corresponding degree. To do a 

 1916 business with a 1920 equipment 

 is to the highest extent wasteful and 

 unprofitable; of course, few florists 

 have gone back so far, but the' figure 

 expresses the plight of some. Just as 

 the "war babies" had as spectacular 

 decline as they did growth, so the 

 florists who counted upon the phe- 

 nomenal business of two extraordi- 

 nary seasons as the basis of future 

 activities are now reaping the results 

 of the extravagances into which such 

 a course of thought led them. 



Beconclllatlon. 



Such florists will admit, upon 

 query, that their business today 

 would have been quite satisfactory 

 in the days before one disturbance and 

 another upset the normal course of our 

 trade. How to reconcile a corn-bread 

 meal and a frosted cake appetite is the 

 problem, in other terms, of a number of 

 florists. Theirs is the task of studying 

 the smallest details of their present or- 

 ganization and equipment with a view 

 to ascertaining where reduction can be 

 made without crippling and where econ- 

 omy can be practiced without injury. 

 This task, in a number of cases, has al- 

 ready been largely accomplished, with 

 such success that these florists are now 

 where they can do business profitably, 

 have their worries off their mind, and 

 are going out to make more sales. 



This trade was fortunate in being able 

 to see the change in business conditions, 

 evident in other lines, long before it af- 

 fected us. This gave some shrewder flo- 



