174 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ciety that does not appreciate the work 
the committee did in presenting that bill. 
I am sure there is not a member of this 
Society who does not thank the members 
of that legislative committee for the work 
they did. In thanking them for that 
work, I do not know that we should nec¬ 
essarily adopt their conclusions. Mr. 
Temple is perfectly right in standing up 
for something that he presented and had 
a great deal of work in connection with. 
He went into it from his standpoint and 
thought it was a good bill, and I think 
Mr. Temple is to be upheld to the extent 
that they did the best they could, and I 
am sorry if there should be anything ap¬ 
proaching ill feeling about this. 
I do think the Society should know ex¬ 
actly what they are voting on. 
The nurserymen believe that the bill 
.could not pass the legislature. They do 
not believe it to be—the nurserymen I 
am speaking of now—to the best interest 
of the state that it should pass. The nur¬ 
serymen have to have protection of some 
; kind, or go out of business, and with 
three or four million dollars worth of 
property it became necessary to take some 
prompt action or that property would be 
jeopardized, if not wiped out. I sub¬ 
mit that the nurserymen are entitled to 
some protection. 
I hope this matter will be rightly set¬ 
tled. I do not think because we differ 
from another man’s idea that his motives 
-are wrong. I respect any man who will 
.stand up for what he believes to be right. 
That is why I am on the floor now, to 
uphold the so-called nursery bill and re¬ 
lieve the executive committee of any onus 
in any way. They simply did nothing; 
They sanctioned neither bill. They did not 
believe the Temple bill to be the one which 
should be upheld by this Society, and they 
left it for the Society to say whether they 
would uphold it. They did not sanction 
the nurserymen’s bill, the one in which 
I am interested. We did not think we 
should endorse it as the Executive Com¬ 
mittee of the Society, but put the whole 
matter before the Society to act on as 
they saw fit. 
Mr. Temple: Just in closing my ar¬ 
gument, I want to drive a few facts home. 
In the first place, the so-called “Temple 
Bill” has absolutely no Temple in it. I 
did not instigate one line of that bill. I 
take no interest whatever in its passage 
or rejection by this Society, other than 
my interest as a producer of citrus fruits. 
Therefore, I have no personal pique in 
the matter. 
This bill carries with it an appropria¬ 
tion of $25,ocx) for its operation, and 
not $60,000, as was stated during the 
argument. 
Again, it is strange to me that with all 
the fault found with this bill tonight, 
that those faults have not been found and 
passed on by the people of the State of 
Washington. The first good horticul¬ 
tural bill ever adopted was, I believe, the 
California bill, and that bill was admit¬ 
ted to be good and sufficient, and yet they 
afterwards had to add things to that to 
make it more specific and more drastic. 
Later, Washington, adopted the features 
of the old and new bills, and added to it 
still further elaborations as shown by the 
necessities of the case, and the bill as 
presented to this Society contains not one 
word or idea of our own, or of that com¬ 
mittee. We have taken existing laws that 
have borne the tests of time, and sifted 
