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28 H. G. Hastings & Co., Seedsmen. Atlanta. Georgia. 
HASTINGS’ OWN PAGE 
A Personal Talk With My Friends 
Out of the 100 pages of this catalogue I have reserved this one for a personal talk with you. 
I started this business 21 years ago. I had one clear, distinct idea then. I believed I was right. I had the idea of : 
“seed quality” that has been the foundation on which this present large business has been built. ! 
During that first year there were two points of business policy settled that have never been departed from. One | 
of these was “Never have but one grade of seed in the house and that the best.” The other was “Never lower quality 
to meet ‘cut prices’ of seedhouses that do sell low quality seeds.” j 
Twenty years ago it was hard to convince most buyers that there was much difference in seeds, but I kept stead- 1 
ily at work along that line until today we have the largest business of its kind in the South, and there are few larger | 
in this country. I am not saying this as boasting but as a plain statement of fact. 
I sincerely wish it were possible for each one of the two hundred thousand friends that plant Hastings’ seeds to , 
visit our establishment here in Atlanta, and see Just how careful we are in handling seeds of all kinds. I wish you . 
could see our recleaning and grading machinery at work; see the orders go through the house from the time the letter i 
is opened until the seed is on the way to the Atlanta postoffice or else turned over to the express or railroad companies , 
if they are to go by express or freight. 'You would be greatly impressed with the care we take to prevent mistakes. i 
While filling your orders is an important part of our work (103 people on our payroll here last spring), yet back of 
it all and most important is the growing of the seeds. Unless the growing work is right, your seed won’t be right. 
In the last 5 years I, and those associated with me in this business, have traveled some 50,000 miles in seed crop 
inspection work to see that the growers are keeping the seed crops up to our standard. 
In our test and trial ground work a sample of every kind of vegetable and field seed listed in this catalogue is 
planted and grown to maturity so that we can know every year the quality of every variety we sell. 
Our Cotton and Seed Breeding Farm, in charge of our expert, Mr. D. S. Starr, is the only one of its kind in the 
world. It is the first time in the history of the seed business in the United States that a seedhouse has taken up and 
is carrying on scientific plant breeding as a department of the business. 
The Hastings Farm of 3,140 acres in Troup county, Georgia, will be, when in full operation, the largest acreage 
under one ownership in seed growing in the United States. 
All this trial ground and test work; the thousands of miles of traveling each year; our scientific seed breeding 
work; the Hastings’ Farm; the highly developed system of recleaning and grading seed and of order filling here in 
Atlanta are all maintained and operated to meet the requirements of my idea of 21 years ago of the right kind of “seed 
quality.” Every one of you get exactly the same quality of seed and your order, no matter how small, gets the benefit 
of this highly and most carefully organized system. 
I always did have different ideas about the seed business from most of the other seed people. Most of my friends 
in the seed business look on it just as a matter of buying and selling the same as your merchant or grocer sells flour or 
sugar. I never could look at it that way. To me the seed business was a matter of the confidence you placed in me. 
On my knowledge and carefulness was very largely dependent the success of your crops, at least, so far as they can be 
affected by “seed quality.” I feel that moral responsibility and every year it gets larger. During the year 1910 crops j 
valued at over fifty million dollars were grown from seeds from this house. 
During these years I have had the best of co-operation from you. Every order you sent helped build this business ; 
up, helped put all these forces for better “seed quality” in operation. ; 
I want to take this opportunity to thank each one of you for your co-operation, both through your orders and j 
through the kind words of appreciation that have come in hundreds upon hundreds of letters. I am always glad to hear j 
from you. If we can help you in the way of information about your farm or garden work we shall be glad to do it. ' 
This catalogue is the largest and best we have ever issued. I want you to know just what we are doing and for that ! 
reason we have printed a number of scenes from the Hastings Farms and our Seed Breeding grounds. 
The seeds we have for you in 1911 are the finest in quality that have ever gone out of our house and I am sure 
you ’will be more than satisfied with the seeds we send you this spring. 
We are not perfect but I know of no seedhouse in this country that has a better record for fair, square dealing than j 
this one. I, and those associated with me, have worked hard to get that kind of a reputation among seed buyers. 
If you come to Atlanta, be sure and come to see me. If you can’t visit here personally, you can rest assured that i 
your seed order will have just the same careful, liberal treatment and be filled with exactly the same quality of seed | 
as if you saw the order filled yourself. We have only one quality of seed and that’s the very best that is grown. After i 
21 years that “seed quality” idea that I started out with is more firmly fixed than it was at the start, and the “quality” 
of “Hastings’ Seeds” gets better every year, 
II. G. HASTINGS | 
