Apbil 2, 1908. 



The Weekly Florists Review* 



Fig. 7. One of the Generating Unite. 



Fig. 5. View in Boiler Room. 



Descend the stairway to the main hall. 

 American Beauty has the place of honor 

 in the center. Some 1,000 blooms in 

 vases containing fifty and 100 flowers 

 each make a grand display. Even the 

 immense hall cannot dwarf them; each 

 vase resembles a standard rose bush in 

 full bloom. Their only fault, if fault it 

 be, is that they do not fade prettily. 



Kichmond comes next. Strong in 

 Beauty's weakest point, their rich glow- 

 ing color attracts the eye at once, the 

 quality such as to leave little to be de- 

 sired. Mme. Chatenay comes next, a vase 

 from Robert Simpson, of Clifton, N. J., 

 having stems of extraordinary length, 

 with excellent foliage and good flowers. 

 The color of this fine rose does not ap- 

 peal to me. 



Killarney is easily the best pink rose 

 in the hall and here is a surprise, for 

 W. H. Elliott, of Madbury, N. H., had a 

 vase of single-jointed stems of unusual 

 length, say twenty-four to thirty-six 

 inches, surmounted by exceptionally 

 large, fine blooms. The double-jointed 

 of Killarney are fully four feet long. 



The other standard varieties are pres- 

 ent in numbers. Ivory being exceptionally 

 fine. The novelties are all full of inter- 

 est, but to me the novelty most surpris- 

 ing of all is Safrano, a rose discarded 

 before my day but shown here' in such 

 extraordinary form by W. H. Elliott as 

 to be a wonder to a rose expert like 

 W. W. Coles. 



The Wholesale Houses. 



A majority of our party, or, to be 

 accurate, five of the nine, toured some 

 of the wholesale houses to learn wherein 

 lay their wonderful success. The selec- 

 tion made by chance, assisted kindly by 

 a policeman and most kindly by I. G. 

 Bertermann, of Indianapolis, included E. 

 C. Amling, Bassett & "Washburn, J. A. 

 Budlong and Poehlmann Bros. Co. The 

 facts learned seemed to fully jifttify 

 Prank P. Myers' assertion that even the 

 Indians had been educated to use flowers 

 by these Chicago hustlers. The magnifi- 

 cent railroad facilities are largely re- 

 sponsible for the vast business transacted 

 — but this is trite. 



Morton Grove. 

 Poehlmann Bros. Co. has a range of 



glass at Morton Grove that amply repays 

 a visit. The great area, the second larg- 

 est near Chicago, is divided into two sec- 

 tions: Section A is devoted chiefly to 

 American Beauties and carnations, with 

 some Asparagus plumosus and other side 

 lines; Section B, to all the leading va- 

 rieties of roses. Both ranges are well 

 built on good business lines; the stock 

 in them is uniformly good. The bat- 

 teries of large boilers run at high press- 

 ure, the coal handling by hydraulic 

 pressure, the ice-making machine, the 

 dynamo, the suction pump, the air pump 

 for syringing cold air through the water 

 pipes, were all objects of deep interest. 



The Banquet. 



The banquet given by the Chicago Flo- 

 rists' .Club at the Union restaurant in 

 honor of the national rose society was in 

 every way successful. Probably 100 

 members of the profession, many of them 

 of national reputation, sat down to an 

 excellent dinner. Willis N. Budd acted 

 as toastmaster and his happy manner of 

 presenting the speakers did much to 

 evoke replies that were felicitous and to 



the point. The best of good feeling pre- 

 vailed throughout. 



Perhaps nothing will better illustrate 

 the hustling Chicago spirit than an inci- 

 dent that occurred at this banquet. When 

 the guests were ready to take their places 

 at the table a flashlight photograph of 

 the room was taken; about an hour after 

 a neatly mounted proof of the picture 

 was shown to each of the diners. 



Peter Reinberg's. 



It rained and rained, so you could not 

 expect that water-soaked party of seven 

 to get enthusiastic over even a million 

 and a quarter square feet of glass, but 

 the last man of the party had the pleas- 

 ure to be overtaken by Peter Reinberg 

 himself and had a pleasant chat with the 

 man who is the living contradiction to 

 the ones who ask you sneeringly whether 

 you ever heard of a millionaire florist. 

 This too brief chat was interrupted by 

 the alderman's henchmen (he is up for 

 reelection, you know), but it lasted long 

 enough to make one of the seven forget 

 that his feet were wet and that it was 

 raining very hard indeed. 



John Welsh Young. 



Fig. 9. The Ammonia G)mpressor. 



