The Rorists' Review 



Mat 22, 1913. 



c 



itiiiMiiiiiHiiiiiiiiHiiHitiiiiiiiiiiiJiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiJiiiiiiliiiJiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiJiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 



GREENHOUSE INDUSTRY iur 

 9g AS A MARKET FOR COAL 



SECOND LARGEST ITEM. 



Cost of Fuel in the Trade. 



Five years ago the coal salesman 

 who got the greenhouse trade was the 

 jolly good fellow. Today — and the flo- 

 rists' contracts are each season better 

 worth having — the man who brings 

 home the bacon is the one who can tell 

 the florist how to reduce his fuel bill 

 and make it work out in practice. 



Is there any other industry in which 

 fuel consumes so large a part of gross 

 income f Perhaps! And if there is, 

 that field is especially well worth the 

 careful, serious, studious attention of 

 the coal trade. 



Just how much coal goes under green- 

 house boilers in a season nobody really 

 knows, but it is so big that it seemed 

 important to the United States Census 

 Bureau to find out. However, the cen- 

 sus people did not make out very well 

 with floriculture; such of the figures 

 as have been published have been 

 sharply questioned by the trade author- 

 ities, and the Census Bureau never has 

 ventured to tell what it found out 

 about fuel consumption. Of course the 

 fuel consumption varies widely with 

 the character of the coal and the tight- 

 ness of the greenhouses. To a certain 

 extent, also, it varies with the severity 

 of the season, the character of the heat- 

 ing apparatus and the ability of the 

 man in charge. Nowadays, too, a great 

 many greenhouse establishments oper- 

 ate pumps, dynamos and refrigerating 

 apparatus, adding something to the 

 cost of fuel over what would be re- 

 quired for warmth alone. 



Eighteen Founds to Foot. 



Taking the replies of a number of 

 widely separated florists, burning va- 

 rious kinds of fuel under various con- 

 ditions, it appears that the average sea- 

 son 's consumption is about eighteen 

 pounds of coal for each square foot of 

 glass exposure. That is no rule of 

 thumb, but it seems to be a fairly accu- 

 rate general average and, curiously 

 enough, the average seems to be ex- 

 tremely close to the experience of the 

 larger establishments of the middle 

 west, where acres are under glass and 

 where New River and Pocahontas coals 

 are the favorite fuels. 



Now, eighteen pounds of coal of 

 itself does not make a very big pile, 

 but there are any number of greenhouse 

 establishments through the United 

 States that contain from a million to 

 two million square feet of glass. He is 

 not a very big florist who does not 

 have 50,000 feet, and even the small- 

 est florists burn two or three cars of 

 coal a season. 



In Cook county, Illinois, alone there 

 is over ten million feet of greenhouse 

 glass! Just how many feet of glass 

 there are in the greenhouses of the 

 United States nobody knows. The cen- 

 sus tried to find out, but hasn't pub- 



Thls article, In which the trade will be Inter- 

 ested, appeared May 17 in The Black Diamond, 

 a leading coal trade Journal. 



lished its findings. [In its issue of 

 May 1, The Review published the cen- 

 sus figures of area covered by glass in 

 1909, showing 105,165,730 square feet. 

 — Ed.] Those in position to keep best 

 in touch with such matters estimate 

 that the greenhouse industrjr has just 

 about tripled in size and in importance 

 to the coal trade in the last fifteen 

 years. The principal increase now by 

 new people entering the field is in the 

 west, though glass area still increases 

 rapidly in the east and the bulk of 

 those in the business still are in the 

 section east of the Mississippi and north 

 of the Ohio. 



Heavy Cost of Cartage. 



Ten years ago the greenhouse trade 

 entered a boom period — the florist did 

 not care any more about the cost of 

 fuel than he did about the price of the 

 luncheon the coal salesman bought him 

 when the florist came to town. But 

 things are different now. While the 

 industry still is growing rapidly — the 

 mills that make a specialty of green- 

 house structural material build millions 

 of feet of greenhouses a year and in- 

 crease their output every season — the 

 old, happy-go-lucky methods no longer 

 suffice. There is a good profit in the 

 business — no one ever hears of a grower 

 going bankrupt — but the old-time easy 

 money is not there. Production has 



so nearly caught up with demand, at 

 the big growing centers at least, that 

 the good money depends on improving 

 quality, maintaining production and 

 keeping down the cost of operation. 



One of the ways of cutting cost of 

 operation is of direct interest to the 

 wholesale coal trade. The older green- 

 houses were located just anywhere. 

 Nowadays no one would think of start- 

 ing a greenhouse range for growing 

 cut flowers anywhere except beside a 

 railroad, where a sidetrack is obtain- 

 able, so that coal can be received in 

 dump cars. As an instance of this, a 

 big greenhouse plant near Chicago just 

 now is removing at a cost of close to 

 $100,000 from a location over half a 

 mile from the railroad to one beside 

 the railroad's right of way. The own- 

 ers found that from a small beginning 

 the cost of cartage had increased with 

 the size of the plant until it amounted 

 to $6,000 per year. 



Ooing After Business. 

 Wages is the big item of cost in a 

 greenhouse. It is a popular idea that 

 flowers "just grow," but the fact is 

 that good flowers in quantity can only 

 be had at the cost of skilled labor, and 

 lots of it. There are many greenhouses 

 that carry 200 to 300 names on the 

 payroll. Puel is the next biggest item 

 of expense; also, it is the one in which 

 the most important saving can be made. 

 The grower cannot cut down his help 

 without his income suffering, but if he 



Boiler Room of the J. W. Davis G>., Davenport, la. 



[In cold weather this battery of boilers burni from forty to fifty tons of coal each twenty-four hours.] 



