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Section VII | 
Business Section I 
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Strange though it may seem, a man may be ever so good a florist 
and yet fail to be a successful one. He may be busy as 'a bee and 
have a lot of helpers busy, sell the products of his greenhouse without 
any difficulty, and still not make any more than wages. To be success- 
ful, the grower, whether he be a big one, with acres of glass and a 
whole battery of boilers, or a little one, with a small house and a hot- 
air heating system, has got to be a business man. And he cannot be a 
business man unless he keeps books. 
The big grower with the extensive establishment can employ an 
expert bookkeeper. The small grower cannot; not only that, he does 
not have time to keep a complicated set of books of his own. But he 
ought, by all means, to keep some kind of records which will show 
him “where he is at.” It would be all right to map out for him a 
system of double entry, with means by which he can take stock care- 
fully and allow for development and appreciation of his stock, but 
such a set of books would never be kept in the establishment of the 
average small grower. 
Simple Bookkeeping 
Principally, he wants to know how much money he has taken in 
and how much is coming to him; how much he is paying out to run 
his business and how much it costs him to produce his flowers. Much 
depends upon how accurately he figures out this last item. The man 
with the big establishment may open an account with each section of 
his establishment and charge each bench with the labor, etc., expended 
on it, thus determining whether, when he gets three cents for each Car- 
nation bloom, he is getting enough or not. The small grower could not 
make such extensive record-keeping pay. Yet he must have a way to 
determine whether he is producing at a cost sufficiently under the selling 
price to insure a profit on any one or all varieties. 
If he sells in a non-competitive market he must know how to price 
his retail goods. If he sells in a competitive market he must be sure 
he is producing at a cost which allows a reasonable profit. He also 
must be able to compare all the entries on the debit side of the business 
with all those on the credit side, to know whether he is coming out 
ahead, or whether he is gradually working himself out of a business. 
Some system of records that wiU mean only one entry for each transac- 
tion is what the small grower needs. Some growers have worked out 
