20 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
RESPONSE 
Dr. W. F. Blackman, Winter Park, Fla. 
Mr. Vice-President, Ladies and Gentle¬ 
men : 
I have been asked to respond on be¬ 
half of, the Horticultural Society to these 
words of welcome by the mayor of the 
city, and I do so with great pleasure. 
These words of Mayor McKay have been 
friendly, though few; beautifully so; 
friendly, courteous, hospitable, nor have 
they been sounding brass and tinkling 
cymbals. We know they were sincere and 
honest. They represent the feeling of 
warm welcome which this kindly city 
gives to us as representatives of the fruit 
growing industry of the state. I trust 
we will act in such a way that we will 
not appear before the mayor’s court and 
in that way bring disrepute either to the 
city or the Society. (Laughter.) 
This is the Valley of Baca spoken of 
in the Scriptures—where cigars are made 
in great abundance. (Laughter.) But 
it is also a town of very many other in¬ 
terests and enterprises of great impor¬ 
tance in many directions. When I think 
of what Tampa was about thirty years 
ago; a village, small, straggling, sandy, 
ill-kept, and compare it with the Tampa 
of today, with its splendid buildings, its 
substantial banks, its newspapers, and re¬ 
alize the success that has made these 
things possible, I rejoice greatly, as a 
citizen of Florida, because this success be¬ 
longs not only to Tampa, but to the state 
as a whole. We are all of us proud, of 
Tampa; as proud as we are of any city 
in the state. (Applause.) 
I want to tell Mayor McKay—I think 
he knows it—that we, the horticulturists 
of the state, are a body of very consider¬ 
able importance and force, and we de¬ 
serve these words of welcome. We think 
well of ourselves. We are the represen¬ 
tatives of the most ancient order in ex¬ 
istence ; we were old before there were 
any colleges, any doctors, any lawyers or 
preachers. We are older than the Ma¬ 
sons, the Knights of Pythias, the Odd 
Fellows; not even the churches are so old 
as we nor so important, in some ways. 
We trace our pedigree back to Adam and 
Eve: they were the primary horticultur¬ 
ists, and from their day to ours there has 
been a splendid line of tillers of the soil 
on the earth, and we are the last and the 
best of them, no doubt. We are the 
primary foundation upon which our civi¬ 
lization rests; upon which nations rest, 
and cities, and communities, and the 
whole order of men lives. 
Time was when the farmer was laughed 
at; he was the butt of ridicule; the “rube,” 
the “hayseed,” the “horny handed son 
of toil.” He is no longer so estimated. 
He has developed into a scholar, a scien¬ 
tist, a philosopher. He is coming into 
his own and taking his proper place among 
the orders of men on earth. 
