intended and attempted, we believe the maintenance force 

 necessary for adequate care of what now exists should be about 

 no men, which is about iyi times as many as are now employed. 



As said above, it would be possible to advise some modifications 

 in the above classification by adapting certain areas to somewhat 

 different types of treatment than those which we conceive to 

 have been intended, and thereby diminish the cost of mainte- 

 nance; but, to put our opinion broadly, if you had available a 

 sum of money producing annually an income three times that 

 which is now spent for maintenance, we should advise putting 

 practically all of that sum into a maintenance endowment rather 

 than invest any of it in new "improvements" at the expense of 

 continued deficiency in the maintenance budget. 



To put the matter in dollars and cents, we think the most 

 urgent need for the improvement of the grounds is an increase 

 in the annual maintenance budget for gardeners, laborers, watch- 

 men, foremen, supplies (including manure), tools, equipment, 

 etc., from the present figure of about $70,000 to about $200,000 

 with a further gradual increase in connection with any new im- 

 provements or changes in conditions of use or in labor conditions, 

 which may tend to increase the maintenance burden. 



Appendix A gives some comparative figures of maintenance 

 labor and maintenance costs, which we have used in arriving at 

 our tentative conclusions of this subject. 



We see no signs whatever of such a flocking of capable men into 

 the ranks of gardeners and gardening laborers in America as 

 would tend to lower the costs of such work as compared with the 

 costs of all the other things that money buys. If anything, the 

 tendency seems likely to be the other way, as it has been for some 

 time in the past. The private individual can and does "pull in 

 his horns" on the matter of gardening maintenance, by having 

 less of that sort of thing to maintain in proportion to what he has 

 of the other conveniences and amenities of life, as the latter be- 

 come relatively less costly than gardening. The Botanical 

 Garden, as a specialized institution, if it is to do its job well, 

 has got to meet the increased cost of the most essential part of 

 its function without sacrifice of quality. Otherwise it is mani- 

 festly failing as a Garden, however useful it may be in other 

 respects. 



But whatever program you adopt as to increase of maintenance 

 funds, it seems likely that the increase will come only by degrees 

 and that a serious deficiency must be faced for some time to come. 



One of the great difficulties of such a condition is the temptation 

 to yield first to an impulse that would rob Peter to pay Paul and 



[9] 



