Among the Flowers With Rexford 



PRACTICAL HELPS IX FLORICULTURE FOR AMATEURS 



SOME four or five rears ago there 

 appeared in one of our prominent 

 monthlies an article on violet-grow- 

 ing as a means of livelihood for women. 

 In this article the business was made to 

 appear so profitable, and the expense so 

 slight, that I was literally flooded with 

 letters frord women asking for further in- 

 formation concerning it. Women who 

 had been teachers, clerks, and bookkeepers, 

 whose health was breaking down nnder 

 hard work and confinement, bnt who must 

 earn their own living, were eager to go 

 into so pleasant and profitable a business. 

 Would I advise them to do so? 



I cannot remember that I ever found 

 myself in a more disagreeable position 

 than that in which I was placed by these 

 letters. Some of the stories told by the 

 writers were pitiful. They must give up 

 their old occupations, because they no 

 longer had strength to carry them on. 

 They knew how to do nothing else, but 

 something else must be done to keep soul 

 and body together. Some had families 

 dependent on them for support. Did I 

 suppose it possible- for them to earn a liv- 

 ing by growing violets, as the article ad- 

 vised? Some of them had saved a little 

 money, which they would invest in the 

 undertaking. But nearly every one, ad- 

 mitted that they were entirely ignorant 

 about flower growing. 



You can see the position I was in. 

 These women were, many of them, des- 

 perate in their fight for a living. If I 

 advised them not to undertake the busi- 

 ness, it meant bitterest discouragement for 

 them. It seemed cruel to shatter their 

 hopes by telling them that I did not be- 

 lieve it possible for any person entirely 

 ignorant of such a business to make the 

 success of it pictured in the article they 

 had read, but what else could I do? I 



had to tell them that I considered the ar- 

 ticle untrustworthy and misleading, that 

 flower growing for profit was a business 

 that required skill and knowledge which 

 could only result from careful study and 

 practical training. I presume I received 

 more than a thousand letters to which I 

 made such a reply. 



Many of these women were so influenced 

 by the rose-colored theories- of the article 

 in question that, in spite of advice against 

 it, they undertook to grow violets without 

 any practical knowledge of the business, 

 and many of them wrote me, a-^+er failing 

 at it, that they wished they had been gov- 

 erned by what I said to them. They had 

 learned by experience, some of it costly, 

 and all of it bitterly disappointing, that 

 to grow flowers profitably one must under- 

 stand the business precisely as he under- 

 stands any other trade, that without per- 

 sonal knowledge of it, it is not possible 

 to achieve success, and that a desire to 

 succeed at it does not make up for an utter 

 lack of that knowledge. Xot one of all 

 the women who reported the results of her 

 efforts to earn a living by growing violets 

 had made a success. 



I write this bit of personal experience 

 because I am constantly receiving letters 

 from women who have an idea that it is 

 possible for them to make a good living 

 by growing flowers. They get this idea 

 from reading articles similar to the one 

 referred to, written by persons who have 

 no actual knowledge of what they write 

 about. The harm done by such articles is 

 incalculable, for they result in the loss of 

 hard-earned savings, and that dishearten- 

 ing disappointment that comes from fail- 

 ure, when we find we have been misled 

 and deceived by those who deal in theories 

 as if they were actualities. I write to dis- 

 courage those who are not willing to learn 



