FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY p 
9 
fruits, plants and shrubs in this great 
State of unparalleled diversities of soil 
and climate, make these meetings of your 
experts and leaders imperative. But there 
are also many problems and conditions 
with which you are, in the large, vitally 
interested. 
You are, of course, directly interested 
in your extensive nurseries, and in their 
inspection and certification. Nothing can 
be of more concern to the grower than to 
have every assurance, which reasonable 
care and foresight can assure, that when 
he pays his good money for bread, he shall 
not receive a stone; that his labor and ef¬ 
forts upon a tree shall cause it to produce 
that variety which he was told he bought. 
And it is axiomatic that a square deal for 
the grower is a square deal for the nur¬ 
seryman. It is the province and it must- 
ever be the purpose of your inspecting of¬ 
ficials to do as nearly as possible exact 
justice to both nurseryman and grower. 
But a few years ago, you had practically 
no such department in the State. For lack 
of it, as is well known, the State and the 
citrus industry paid most dearly. To help 
this department efficiently perform its 
functions, whether such help be the sug¬ 
gestion of new or different plans or prac¬ 
tices, or whether it be of friendly criticism 
of some plan, or any other just sugges¬ 
tion, is a subject in which you are directly 
interested, and I am sure this department 
of our State activity does and will wel¬ 
come and value your judgment and your 
advice. 
What I have said concerning the nur¬ 
sery inspection department of our State 
applies with equal force to the importance 
of upbuilding, maintaining and assisting 
our port quarantine inspections. No man 
has less sympathy with the creation of 
useless public positions than do I. But 
such is not this case. No State of the 
Union has such diversified actualities and 
possibilities as has this State, and it is 
nothing* less than common sense to safe¬ 
guard and protect them against disease 
or depredation coming from without. 
This department, inadequate though it is, 
has many times paid for itself. Every 
grove property in this State is worth much 
more money, as an investment, because of 
this safeguard. And the same statement 
is as applicable, and as true, to every farm. 
Another direct problem, which is under 
our present law more of a private, as dis¬ 
tinguished from a public, nature, is one of 
advertising your products. Personally I 
know very little about it, but as I ride over 
this State and see the thousands upon 
thousands of acres of groves, both citrus 
and pecans, soon to come into bearing, I 
am impressed with the fact that greater 
effort to bring before the consuming 
world the actual merits of our citrus prod¬ 
ucts must necessarily follow. The old slo¬ 
gan, “If the- world but knew,” is directly 
applicable. In this, however, your effort 
will be a happy and gratifying and easy 
one, for I care not whom you may select 
nor how fertile his imagination may be, 
nor how adept a painter with printer’s ink 
he may be, you can retire to your slumbers 
at night with the calm assurance that he 
cannot over-describe the excellencies of 
the Florida orange. 
And then, your problems come in con¬ 
tact with those affecting persons not di- 
