28 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



March 7, 1912. 



THE FLORISTS' REVffiW 



Q. L. GRANT, Editob and Manaqkk. 



PUBUSHXD IVKBT TBUBSDAT BT 



The Florists* publishing Co. 



580-560 Caxton Building, 



tiOS Houth Dearborn St., Chicago. 



Telephonk, Harbison 5429. 



UalSTKBKD OABLX ADDBKSfl. FLOBVIBW. OHIOAOO 



New York Office: 



lao Forty-Ninth St Brooklyn. N. Y. 



Tblephonk. 26:i2 W. Boroui^ii • ark. 

 J.Austin auaw, Hanaqeu. 



Sabwriptlon price. tl.OO a year. To Canada, $2.00 

 To Europe, $2.6U. 



AdvertlBinK ratns quoted upon request. Only 

 itrlctly trade adveiHsiDg accepted. 



Adyertlsements must reach us by 5 p. m. Tuesday, 

 to insure insertion lu the issue of ttiat week. 



Entered as second class matter Dccemt>er 3. 1897, 



ftt the post-office at CUicagu, ill., under the act of 

 March 3. 1879. 



This paiwr m a niemt>er of the Chicago Trade 



INDEX TO APVEETISEES, PAGE 1 18. 



CONTENTS. 



The Retail Florist 11 



— A St. Patrick's Day Window (Ulus.) 11 



— Are Special Sales a Benefit? 11 



— Chicago Itetall Advertising (Ulus.) 13 



— The Casket Cover (Ulus. ) 18 



Illinois State Florists' Meet 14 



— Charles Loverldge (portrait) 14 



— Charles W. Johnson (portrait) 15 



— The Year In Illinois 16 



— Charles L. Washburn (portrait) 17 



Hardy Cut Ferns 17 



Business Embarrassments 17 



Temperature for Asters 17 



Planting Braslan Seeds (Ulus.) 18 



Notes on Gladioli 18 



— Gladioli aa a Special Crop 18 



Arthur Cowee (portrait) 19 



Violets— Too Withered to be Named 20 



— Violets for Identification 20 



President Vincent's Hopes 20 



The "Coming" House (Ulus.) 21 



Freeslas Not Flowering 21 



To Keep Brushes Soft 21 



Orchids— Dale's Cattleya (Ulus.) 22 



— Seasonable Notes 22 



— Orchids Outdoors In Mexico (Ulus.) 23 



lioses — Pointers in Propagation 24 



Housing Antirrhinums 24 



Seasonable Suggestions — Lemon-Scented Ver- 

 benas 24 



— Dutch Bulbs for Easter 24 



— Splrisas 25 



— Spiraea Queen Alexandra 25 



— .AmiirylUs 25 



— Calceolarias 25 



— Cobsea Scandens 25 



Trade Development in Iowa (Ulus.) 25 



Sweet Peas— Pinching Off Side Shoots 20 



— Bud, When Too Small 26 



Cyanide of Sodium 26 



Obituary 26 



Ward's Epigrams 26 



Newport, R. 1 27 



Price of Glass 28 



Fake Subscription Agents 28 



Chicago 28 



St. Louis '. 35 



Boston 38 



Kansas City 41 



Worcester, Mass 43 



Philadelphia 44 



Pacific Coast Department — Tacoma, Wash... 54 



— Seattle, Wash 54 



— San Francisco 54 



— Los Angeles 55 



^ Portland, Ore 58 



Bulbous Stock Late 58 



Madison, N. J 69 



rinclnnatl 59 



New York 62 



Toronto, Ont 66 



Beatrice, Neb 66 



Seed Trade News 70 



— At Last, the Rains 70 



— Not Tinkering Tariff Yet 72 



— Robinson at Rocky Ford 72 



— Conditions In California 74 



— European Notes 76 



— Los Angeles Seed Notes 76 



— Detroit Seedmen Travel 77 



Vegetable Forcing — Aphis on Lettuce 77 



Nursery News 82 



— Not Tinkering Tariff Yet 82 



— Seedling Evergreens 83 



— Fear Corner In Gordonla s:{ 



Rochester, N. Y 84 



Riverton, N. J 86 



Yonkers, N. Y 86 



Detroit 88 



Bowling 90 



Cleveland 92 



New Orleans 94 



Greenhouse Heating — Leak.v Underground 



Return 108 



— An Addition for Roses 108 



Dayton, Ohio 112 



Brampton, Ont 112 



Pittsburgh 114 



Columbus, Ohio 116 



800ISTT or AXEBIOAN FLOUSn. 

 Incorporated by Act of CongreM, Mardi 4. 1901. 



Officers for 1912: President, R. Vincent, Jr.. 

 White Marsh, Md.; rlce-presldent, Angost Poehl- 

 mann, Morton QroTe, 111.; secretarT, John Toius, 

 Bedford Hills, N. T.; treaanrer. W. W. Kaitlnc. 

 Buffalo, N. T. 



Annual convention, Chicago, 111., Aogost 90 t6 

 23, 1912. 



RESULTS. 



We give them. You get them. 

 "We both have them. 



Feinted letter-heads are so cheap it is 

 extravagance to try to do business with- 

 out them. 



In another week the ground hog will 

 have proved the correctness of his prog- 

 nostication. 



The demand for competent help again 

 exceeds the supply. Gardeners always 

 come into demand as the sap begins to 

 climb. 



Considering that the subscription 



prices are so cheap, a surprisingly large 



number of florists write, in renewing, 



Tliat The Eeview now meets all their 



needs in the way of trade literature. 



L. Merton Gage, secretary of the 

 American Gladiolus Society, sends The 

 Beview a copy of the Handbook of the 

 National Gladiolus Society of Great 

 Britain, which contains much of interest 

 to gladiolus growers in this country. 



It is the general report that trade 

 dropped off after Ash Wednesday rather 

 more sharply than in the last few years, 

 and that it has not yet recovered, but 

 that the winter season was unusually 

 good. The report is general that funeral 

 work was remarkably heavy during the 

 first six weeks of the year. 



Heretofore the problems of the florists 

 have been those of production rather than 

 of distribution, and the great majority 

 of growers located in the residence dis- 

 tricts or the smaller cities still are pro- 

 ducing less than they sell, but for ten 

 months in the year the city wholesalers 

 now must seek an outlet for their Stock, 

 which presents an entirely different situ- 

 ation for the attention of the retailer 

 distributors. 



THE PRICE OF GLASS. 



At the moment there is no price on 

 window glass. That might seem like 

 good news to the greenhouse man, but 

 the fact is that March 1 the factories 

 withdrew all quotations, and the job- 

 bers promptly did likewise, pending an 

 adjustment of wage scales at a meeting 

 in progress this week at Cleveland. The 

 trade understands that as soon as the 

 men have been settled with, new prices 

 for glass will be announced, probably 

 before the end of the week. What the 

 new prices will be is guesswork until 

 they actually are announced, but there 

 is unanimous opinion that there will 

 be an advance. Greenhouse sizes are 

 not in large supply; in fact, they are 

 so well cleaned up that, low as the 

 prices have been, the greenhouse sizes 

 actually have been selling at a higher 

 price than the other sizes in the same 

 bracket. Therefore some of the deal- 

 ers think the advance on greenhouse 

 sizes will not be so great as on other 

 small sizes, while some apply the oppo- 

 site reasoning and look for a bigger 

 boost on the greenhouse sizes than on 

 any others. The probability is that 

 the advance will be not less than 20 

 cents per box, and possibly 30 cents. 



FAKE SUBSCRIPTION AGENTS. 



The Review repeatedly has warned 

 the trade not to pay money to stran- 

 gers for its account — all those author- 

 ized to represent The Review are well 

 known in their respective communities 

 — this paper has no traveling solicitors. 



Pennsylvania and the contiguous 

 states appear to be an especially fertile 

 field for the fake subscription agent,, 

 for most of the complaints of this petty 

 swindle come from that section. In 

 nearly every instance the florists wh» 

 are caught are victimized by an offer 

 of something for nothing. It is the old 

 story. No matter what other publishers 

 may do in the way of giving premiums^ 

 trading stamps, or coupons, no such 

 methods a^e employed by The Review; 

 circulation) built by offering something 

 the prospect will buy when he wouldn't 

 buy the paper for itself is valueless to 

 the advertiser, that's why. The Re- 

 view, like the space in it, is sold on its 

 merits. When someone offers you a 

 book or any other article at half price, 

 or free, if you will pay him for a year 

 of The Review, know thereby that it is 

 time to call the police. 



Special Warning I 



At Philadelphia a man signing him- 

 self M. B. Briggs has represented him- 

 self as a canvasser for the Franklin 

 Square Agency, of New York. There 

 is such an agency, but it is not author- 

 ized to take subscriptions to The Re- 

 view, though Briggs has done so. The 

 Franklin Square Agency states that 

 Briggs is an impostor, for whose arrest 

 and conviction a reward of $25 is of- 

 fered by the Periodical Publishers' As- 

 sociation of America, 156 Fifth avenue. 

 New York city. 



CHICAGO. 



The Great Central Market. 



The week in which February ended 

 and March began gave the wholesalers 

 and growers the biggest kind of a jolt 

 — it gave them cause for serious 

 thought, but the harder they used their 

 thinkers the more disconcerted and be- 

 wildered some of them became; the 

 future is not at all clear. In the years 

 of its greatest growth the profits in 

 the flower business have been so good 

 that there was ample room to make a 

 living for even the growers with the 

 most lax methods; but times have been 

 changing. This season average prices 

 have hardly been up to other years 

 during the time that not much was 

 being cut, and now that the spring 

 crops are on, the bottom has so fallen 

 out of the market that not a few of 

 the large class of happy-go-lucky grow- 

 ers wonder what their finish is going to 

 be. For the wholesalers' part of it, 

 some of them have had so little stock 

 that for the greater part of the winter 

 they have been content to sell it locally 

 and have let the shipping trade drift 

 away; with these the glut is far more 

 serious than it is with the houses that 

 have catered consistently to the out-of.-. 

 town trade. For the last fortnight the 

 market has been going down so steadily, 

 and so rapidly, that even the most 

 business-like growers and the most pro- 

 gressive wholesalers have been asking 

 themselves if it is going to keep on get- 

 ting worse every year or if the recent 

 condition merely has been the result 

 of some combination of circumstances 



