34 



The Florists* Review 



Max 18, 1922 



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STATING THE FLORISTS' CASE 



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S. A. r. COMMITTEE'S VIEW. 



Board Wrongly Named. 



It is unfortunate that this board is 

 named the "federal horticultural 

 board," for its functions are entomo- 

 logical, rather than horticultural. It is 

 wrong that the United States customs 

 classification of "nursery stock" is 

 used by the board, for by including such 

 classes of plant material as orchids, 

 palms, forcing bulbs and plants imported 

 exclusively by florists in the term 

 "nursery stock," confusion is created 

 in quite different interests. Quarantine 

 37 excludes a far larger volume and 

 variety of necessary plant material from 

 florists than from nurserymen. We urge 

 that the consideration of "florists' 

 stock," imported by florists, and 

 "nursery stock," imported by nursery- 

 men, be kept quite separate at this con- 

 ference as far as practicable. In this 

 statement we refer only to florists' 

 stock imported by florists. 



Horticulture does not recognize 

 boundaries; plants grow naturally in 

 localities where climatic and other con- 

 ditions are most favorable; so the best 

 varieties growing in every civilized 

 country today were imported from some 

 other country. Our hot summers com- 

 bined with our cold winters make it 

 necessary for this country to import 

 more raw materials and plant products 

 than any other, and the prosperity of 

 our citizens creates a larger demand 

 for the best varieties of plant life than 

 any other country enjoys. And as the 

 florists' industry in this country owes 

 its enormous expansion largely to the 

 diversified variety of plants and flowers 

 it is able to offer the buying public, it 

 is obvious that any restrictions on im- 

 ports, especially on raw materials or 

 plant products that cannot be commer- 

 cially produced here, must be disastrous 

 not only to horticultural trade interests, 

 but ultimately to the United States. 



Origin of Control. 



To see why we need government con- 

 trol of imports we must go back to the 

 year 1912 just before the plant quaran- 

 tine act was passed by Congress. Large 

 shipments of plant products as well as 

 nursery stock were arriving from for- 

 eign countries under no federal control; 

 some states had adequate inspection 

 laws, properly enforced; other states 

 had inadequate laws and lax enforce- 

 ment; some states had no inspection 

 law; so the department said that in 

 view of that lack of uniformity in 

 statute and enforcement and the occa- 

 sional absence of any inspection, and 

 considering the common interest, the 

 department ought to be given authority 

 to see that importations from districts 

 harboring a pest new to this country or 

 not generally distributed here was given 

 proper inspection by federal oflBcers. 



statement by tlie tariff and leglsliitivp commit- 

 tee of the S. A. F. at the conference of the fed- 

 rral horticnltural board at Washington, D. C, 

 May 15, signed by the members: .Tames Mc- 

 HutchiBon. chairman; J. D. Eisele, F. R. Pier- 

 son, A. Ij. Miller, Leonard Vaughan, Henry F. 

 Michell and William F. Gude. 



That was the whole plea at that time 

 — for inspection. The trade organiza- 

 tions recognized the necessity for such 

 a law. The florists are continually fight- 

 ing insect pests and plant diseases, it is 

 part of their business, and they wanted 

 :ill the help the department could give 

 in combating the existing pests, and, of 

 course, keeping out others. So the law 

 was passed by Congress and gave the 

 Secretary, through the board, wide pow- 

 ers. Then the quarantine/ orders began 

 to come, until we now have fifty-four f>f 

 tliem. This law did not givS-tho board 

 power to legislate, to prohibit imports 

 because they happened to be horticul- 

 tural imports, to build a Chinese wall 

 around the United States in a horticul- 

 tural sense, with a few small openings; 

 in fact, it limited the issuance of quar- 

 antine orders in these four important 

 ways: (1) The quarantine must be to 

 prevent the introduction into the United 

 States of insect pests and plant diseases 

 (2) which are new to or not heretofore 

 widely prevalent or distributed within 

 or throughout the United States, (3) 

 The order can only prohibit importation 

 from a country or locality where "such 

 diseases or insect infestation exists," 

 and (4) the country or locality, and the 

 class of plant products to be excluded 

 must be specified in the order. 



If Belgium has, say, a dangerous dis- 

 ease which is new to or not widely prev- 

 alent here affecting araucarias, this law 

 gives power to exclude araucarias from 

 iJelgium if that is the only way to ex- 

 elude tlie disease; it clearly does not 

 give the department or the board the 

 j)ower or right to exclude nearly all 

 plant products from every country or 

 locality on the earth on suspicion, as 

 quarantine 37 does. 



Board Has Wandered. 



We have outlined the original plan 

 for inspection and certification as re- 

 quired by the department and endorsed 

 by the trade organizations; now let us 

 come back to the present and see how 

 far the board has wandered from the 

 original plan. I quote the words of the 

 chairman of the board as printed in the 

 florists' trade papers: 



As to returning to tlie old, practically free en- 

 try of foreign plants, a test over a 7-year pe- 

 riod was given to the iwssibllity of safeguard- 

 ing such plant iMiportatlons by inspection and 

 disinfection, and tills test indicated the absolute 

 inadeijuacy and failure of this method of exclud- 

 ing new pests and forced the conclusion on this 

 department, and on the plant experts of all of 

 our states, that the only safeguard for the fu- 

 ture was the exclusion of all plant stock not ab- 

 solutely essential to the agricultural, horticul- 

 tural and forestry needs of the I'nited States, 



In other words, the chairman says 

 tliat, liaving tried to do what the law 

 authorizes and having failed, the board 

 decides to do something else, something 

 entirely without and beyond the limits 

 of the legal authority conferred by Con- 

 gress. We florists cannot agree with, or 

 subscribe to, any proposition that it is 

 necessary or effective to exclude impor- 

 tant classes of plants and plant products 

 because of the alleged inadequacy of 

 inspection. If the board 's inspectors 

 cannot do the work effectively or lack 

 equipment, then the department can get 

 other inspectors and provide the neces- 

 sary equipment. 



Effect of Quarantine. 



Now let us look for a moment at the 

 effect of the present policy of the board 

 as embodied in quarantine 37 — and the 

 full results are not yet visible. Belgium, 

 that shipped approximately 32,000 pack- 

 ages of plants and plant products an- 

 nually prior to quarantine 37 (1,934 tons 

 in 1913), now ships less than fifty pack- 

 ages (three tons in 1920). One little 

 district in Holland (Boskoop), that for- 

 merly shipped 35,000 cases annually, 

 now ships less than 300; our entire im- 

 ports of plants antt plant products, ex- 

 cluding bulbs, from Holland in 1920 was 

 less than three per cent of our 1916 im- 

 ports. (The Holland- America line car- 

 ried in 1916 81,636 cases of bulbs and 

 39,145 cases of nursery stock, as against 

 14,036 cases of bulbs and 808 cases of 

 nursery stock in 1920. Total 120,781 for 

 1916 and 14,&44 for 1920.) France and 

 Japan, that formerly shipped hundreds 

 of varieties of ornamentals, now ship 

 none, except under special permits. Out 

 of the thousands of varieties and classes 

 of plant products formerly imported, we 

 can now freely import but seven, of 

 which five are bulbs — and these can only 

 be imported under permit. Of the esti- 

 mated 950,000 Azalea indica formerly 

 annually imported from Belgium, only 

 an occasional plant is now to be seen at 

 cur national flower shows. Where are 

 our bay trees, our araucarias? Where 

 are our new orchids and hundreds of 

 other exotics to come from! And yet 

 the board's chairman says that quaran- 

 tine 37 is not an embargo, and points to 

 the stock being allowed entry under spe- 

 cial permits — which is equivalent to lim- 

 iting the waters of the Potomac to what 

 will come through a 12-inch pipe and 

 pointing to the great volume of water 

 til at comes through the pipe. 



And we are told that these restrictions 

 and embargoes are necessary to protect 

 the country from insect pests and plant 

 diseases. The same argument could be 

 used by medical enthusiasts to stop im- 

 migration to our shores to protect the 

 country from human ills and diseases, 

 but people would sicken and die just the 

 ?ame. Or the police department might 

 shut out all immigration for fear that a 

 criminal might occasionally come, but 

 we would have crime just the same. 



Why Pick on Florists? 



We are told that many of the pests 

 that now plague us came in on shipments 

 of plant products, but we contend that 

 was before we had our present system 

 of federal and state inspection, and be- 

 fore the exporting nations had theirs. 

 We admit there are pests on all plant 

 products, on home-grown as well as on 

 foreign-grown, on our incoming ship- 

 ments of greenhouse products as well as 

 on our outgoing shipments of wheat and 

 other cereals, but so long as these pests 

 are not new or dangerous we should 

 expect only the same degree of reason- 

 able freedom from other nations' prod- 

 ucts as they expect from our^ Of 

 florists' imports fully ninety-eight'^per 

 cent come from inspected establishments 

 and ninety-five per cent go direct into 

 greenhouses; so the risk of importing 



