The Garden Magazine, January, 1921 
267 
order to protect the country against dangerous plant pests and 
diseases “the time seemed to be at hand for the inauguration 
of a policy that would gradually result in the exclusion of all 
foreign nursery and florist stock.” 
Various appeals by individuals and associations for the modi- 
fication of these and many other apparent inequities proving in- 
effective, and the beneficial research work of the great institutions 
of America, such as the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis 
and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, having been 
either stopped or disastrously checked in so far as such operations 
are dependent on plants obtained from beyond the borders of the 
United States, the horticultural societies of Massachusetts, New 
York, and Pennsylvania called a Conference which met in New 
York on June 15, 1920. At that conference there were present the 
representatives of forty-five societies interested in horticultural 
advance in America, including virtually all the amateur and scien- 
tific associations interested in promoting the study and use of 
ornamental and economic plants in the United States. 
The general sentiment of the meeting was in favor of an adequate and reason- 
able quarantine, but strongly opposed to inequitable regulations, and to the 
practical imposition of an embargo against plants from abroad. The dis- 
cussion showed great respect for the probity of the Federal Horticultural Board, 
but it was believed that this Board did not adequately realize either the ultimate 
result of the quarantine as enforced or the fact that the quarantine was in effect 
an embargo rather than a quarantine. 
The outcome of this meeting was the appointment of a General Committee, 
consisting largely of private individuals interested only as amateur horticultu- 
rists, which appointed a small Executive Committee to consider the situation 
and to formulate a report and a definite plan of action. 
This Executive Committee now deem it prudent and 
necessary to make this, its preliminary report. 
This committee and those whom it represents agree that it is im- 
portant to prevent the importation into this country of insects and 
diseases injurious to vegetation. It believes that necessary and 
reasonable regulations will be obeyed and supported by all patriotic 
citizens, but that if such regulations prove, in practice, to be drastic, 
unreasonable and not actually essential to the end in view, and 
definitely damaging to the progress of horticulture in America, they 
should be modified. It is the function and purpose of this Com- 
mittee to investigate, and to make constructive recommendations 
in consequence of such investigations. 
Horticulture, this Committee holds, is an important agent of civilization. 
It believes that the love and cultivation of flowers and plants attaches men 
and women to their homes, and develops in them better and more stable citizen- 
ship. It is the hope of this Committee that the people of the United States, 
rich and poor, may be able, under proper regulations, easily to obtain all the 
plants needed to beautify their homes. 
For centuries the skilled horticulturists of Europe and Asia, through the 
assistance of their inherited knowledge and labor, working generation after 
generation upon the same subjects and in the same homes and establishments, 
have developed horticulture as it has been developed nowhere else in the world, 
and as we in our new country with our high labor costs and lack of inherited 
knowledge have not been able to develop it. Thus Europe and Asia have 
produced and furnished this country with many beautiful, rare, and valuable 
plants. Under the present quarantine regulations those are nearly all barred, 
because under them only a limited number of certain arbitrarily specified 
plants can be imported. With the contemplated total embargo in force, it 
would never again be possible to secure for the United States any newly dis- 
covered, rare, interesting, valuable exotic fruit or ornamental plants, whether 
species or hybrids. 
It should not be difficult to show the necessity for modifying a 
quarantine which prevents the importation in any quantity of 
plants with sand or soil on their roots, no matter how carefully 
they have been inspected, fumigated, and treated abroad, and 
yet which takes no account of shiploads of soil brought in as bal- 
last from any port, tropical or otherwise, regardless of the fact 
that this soil is never inspected, fumigated, or treated, and may 
contain insects and germs of diseases dangerous to human beings 
or plants. 
If, as we believe is the fact, a sane and efficient quarantine is 
desirable, the officials of the Government owe the people a whole 
duty and not a half duty. A quarantine defined by carefully 
studied law and not by incidental official regulations established 
under a broad law, protecting not merely through the exclusion of 
incidental plants but through the exclusion or treatment of other 
disease- and insect-bearing media, would, if properly proposed, be 
supported by the people. If the necessity is shown, we believe that 
the Federal Horticultural Board, or some other executive agency, 
will be provided with funds to establish quarantine stations at 
enough ports of entry adequately to -protect the nation, and to 
serve at the same time the proper desires and convenience of its 
citizens. It is our confident belief that well-equipped and care- 
fully administered quarantine stations should be established 
at a certain number of ports of entry, such for example as San 
Francisco, Seattle, New York, New Orleans, and Boston. Unless 
some such action is taken, the extension of the present system of 
exclusion by regulation under a blanket law will undoubtedly result 
in the total embargo against further horticultural progress in the 
United States which the report of the Bureau of Plant Industry 
above referred to seems to have had in mind. 
Time has been lost and animosities engendered, and valuable 
imported plants and seeds have been destroyed since the quaran- 
tine became effective, because no well-prepared and adequate 
presentation of the facts has been made to the officials of the 
Department of Agriculture; and it is no reflection on those officials 
to propose for them assistance in the gaining of information, which 
must be gathered slowly, carefully, and at different times and 
places, to show the facts and the effects concerning this plant 
quarantine which is so dangerously near to plant-exclusion. 
It is, therefore, the proposal of this Committee to send a capable 
investigator, furnished with all requisite entomological, pathological, 
and other expert assistance, wherever it may be necessary to gain in- 
formation, interview individuals, compare notes, and obtain state- 
ments and affidavits, upon which the facts can be adequately presented 
to the Federal authorities at Washington. 
It is the purpose of this Committee, when such information has been gathered 
and when the law under which quarantine regulations have been promulgated 
has been carefully studied in connection with the situation, to arrange for such 
argument and presentation, in the belief that there should result a modification 
in some respects and an extension in others of the quarantine regulations tend- 
ing to place horticulture once again on a firm footing with relation to the rest 
of the known world, and to make it possible for any citizen of the United 
States, willing to provide the necessary safeguards, to import such 
plants as he may reasonably require. 
To accomplish the objects above set forth, the Massachusetts 
Horticultural Society, the Horticultural Society of New York, and 
the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society have made substantial pri- 
mary subscriptions, believing that those interested will add the con- 
siderable additional amount required. 
It is confidently believed that those who are opposed to a Chinese 
Wall plant-policy for America, who think that we are entitled to 
other plants which may be discovered anywhere as valuable to us as 
have been the apple, the lilac, the potato, and countless other familiar 
but exotic plants in use to-day, will aid the work of this Commit- 
tee in contributions and in effort. 
CSFWou are therefore asked to evidence your interest by a substan- 
tial subscription, to be sent to the Treasurer of the Committee, Mr. 
T. A. Havemeyer, 50 Broad Street, New York City. 
Great care will be used in expending the funds of the Committee, none of 
which will be devoted to lobbying or the obtaining of influence. All expen- 
ditures will be authorized by the Committee, and all payments carefully audited. 
In addition to their own contributions, the members of the Committee serve 
without pay and pay their own traveling and other expenses. 
Communications and information regarding this matter may be 
sent to any member of the undersigned Executive Committee, or to its 
Secretary and Attorney, Mr. Herbert W. Schlaffhorst, care of 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 300 Massachusetts Avenue, 
Boston, Mass. 
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE 
J. Horace McFarland, Chairman, 
Editor, American Rose Anmuil, Harrisburg, Penna. 
T. A. Havemeyer, Treasurer, 
Horticultural Society of New York, 
50 Broad Street, New York City. 
Albert C. Burrage, 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 
85 Ames Building, Boston, Mass. 
James Boyd, 
President Pennsylvania Horticultural 
Society, 65 Finance Building, Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 
Frederic Cranefield, 
Secretary Wisconsin State Horti- 
cultural Society, 701 Gay Building, 
Madison, IVis. 
Mrs. Francis King, 
President IVoman's National Farm 
and Garden Association, Alma, Mich. 
Dr. George T. Moore, 
Director Missouri Botanical Garden, 
St. Louis, Mo. 
Frederic R. Newbold, 
Horticultural Society of New York , 
109 E. "id Street, New York City. 
Mrs. Percy Turnure, 
Garden Club of America, 
30 E. 60 th Street, New York City. 
E. C. Vick, 
Secretary American Dahlia Society; 
1328 Broadway, New York City. 
John C. Wister, 
President American Iris Society; 
Secretary American Rose Society, 
606 Finance Building, Philadelphia, 
Pa. 
