June 21, 1890. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
sunk, providing occupation for an army of workers, 
enlarging and improving the food supplies of the 
nation, whilst nothing is more certain than that the 
agriculturists of the future must study the methods and 
practices of their horticultural brethren if they 
wish to turn the land they occupy to the best ad¬ 
vantage.” Gentlemen, it is for the unfortunate 
amongst that army of devoted workers that we 
are asking your help to-night, and I don’t think 
I can more strongly recommend them to you. As 
regards the candidates, they are not admitted 
indiscriminately. They have to pass the scrutiny 
of the committee, which is headed by our honoured 
friend, Mr. John Lee, and they have to produce 
testimonials of good conduct, showing that they have 
conducted themselves as those should do who apply for 
a pension such as we offer. Now it is argued by some 
that many of these poor people have brought distress 
upon themselves. I have often been told that if 
only people in the prime of life took the necessary 
precaution they would be able to save sufficient for the 
old or rainy day as it is called. Gentlemen, there are 
some, no doubt, who do bring trouble on themselves, 
but I venture to ask you to believe that they are a 
very small minority. There are some who are in want 
who have probably only done what a great many of us 
have done—endeavoured to increase what little money 
they may have had by what they believed to be a fair 
and sound speculation. They have not always 
succeeded, and I appeal to every gentleman here to¬ 
night whether he has always succeeded. We are 
not in the position in which they are, and I ask you to 
remember those who have been less fortunate than 
ourselves. The life and occupation of a gardener is in 
many senses a very precarious one. When bad times 
set in, I appeal to you, is it not the gardener who is 
first made to feel it ? Is not the gardener frequently 
called upon to accept a lower rate of wages, or to make 
room for a cheaper man as he is called, and falsely so 
called. I think that you will agree with me that that 
is so. If you put the wages of a gardener at £70 a year, 
that I believe is a high average. I am very thankful 
to say that. there are exceptional cases, but taking 
the average at £70, I ask if you would like to keep 
yourselves respectably, pay a premium very likely 
for learning your business, and then keep a family 
out of £70 a year, and, perhaps, be out of a 
situation for weeks and months. The case of the 
gardener is a hard case in many instances, and on 
that ground I appeal to your liberality to help those 
who are obliged to come to us in their old age. I know 
of no more deserving set of servants than the gardeners 
of this country, men who are obliged to be scientific as 
well as practical, and I earnestly ask you to be liberal 
to-night in the help yougiveto them. Thatthegardeners 
are anxious to help themselves I beg you to take my 
word. In my position as chairman I have received a 
great many letters from gardeners in all parts of the 
country. Among them were the following:—“I 
enclose P.O., value £2 15s., on behalf of the Gardeners’ 
Royal Benevolent Institution, and I am sorry that it is 
not in my power to help more, myself having a family 
of ten children.” Another is—“ I enclose P.0. for 
£1 3s. 6 d. I should very much like to have been in a 
position to subscribe more, but I have had my wife 
under the doctor’s hands for j ust upon nine years, and 
myself for nearly two years on and off.” These are 
some of the persons we ask you to assist. With 
regard to the cost of management it would be well if I 
gave you a few figures. Our principal expenses are 
connected with the office and the staff, consisting 
of onr jolly old friend Roger Cutler, and a youth. 
There are also incidental expenses such as postage, 
because our constituency is all over the country. But 
I should like to give you some figures to show you the 
progress of the Institution, and the decrease in the 
expenses of management. In 1850 we paid in pensions 
£492; in 1860, £733 ; in 1870, £787 ; in 1880, 
£1,074 ; in 1889, £2,348. The annual subscriptions 
in 1850 were £542 ; last year they were £1,328. 
The donations in 1850 were £206 ; last year 
they were £3,400. The invested capital in 1859 was 
£2,250, and last year £23,000. The expenses of 
management were, in 1850, twenty per cent. ; in 1860, 
twenty-one per cent.; in 1880, eighteen per cent.; 
last year they were twelve per cent. Again I 
ask your liberality on behalf of our Institution, for I 
am sorry to say that the fund, however large, is not 
sufficient. At the last election we were able to elect 
only eight candidates by voting, and sixteen are still 
waiting until we can afford to have another election, 
and there are others who are waiting to become 
candidates, and therefore without a liberal response to¬ 
night there are candidates who will probably have to 
wait until another year, and you can easily understand 
what hope deferred means when there is nothing before 
them except the workhouse. I beg you to think of 
those poor people who are waiting and endeavouring to 
make their remaining years in this world happy. 
(Loud cheers). 
Mr. N. N. Sherwood, one of the. trustees, in respond¬ 
ing to the toast, said he had to thank the chairman for 
the excellent way in which he had expounded the 
merits of this excellent Institution. There was no 
doubt about it that during the fifty-one years that the 
Institution had existed it had made most rapid bounds. 
He thought they would agree in that when they came 
to consider that at the present time they had funded 
.£23,000, and over 1,200 yearly subscribers. But still 
they wanted more. The society had without doubt 
one of the most excellent secretaries it was possible to 
have. Mi'. Cutler’s exertions had brought the society 
to its present perfection. In conclusion he thanked 
those present for attending, and for the donations they 
had given on behalf of the gardeners whose hearts and 
homes they would make happy by their liberality. 
Mr. W. T. Thiselton Dyer, in proposing the health 
of the chairman, said there was not one, perhaps, more 
than himself who felt, for reasons they could easily 
imagine, that horticulture was an arduous task. He 
believed it was the very first thing our progenitors 
devoted themselves to, and they would call to mind 
that success attended it then, as now, by the sweat of 
their brow. He always felt how much they owed to 
gardeners, and he was glad to express his admiration 
for endeavouring to bring back the Eden they had lost. 
He had the honour to be associated with a very large 
number of English gardeners, and he was bound to say 
that the more he knew of them the more he liked them, 
and the more he admired the qualities of self-reliance, 
intelligence and skill which the English gardeners 
exhibited. When he was told that a society like that 
might perhaps in some insidious way warp and spoil 
the fibre and self-reliance of these men, he frankly did 
not believe it. In all classes of the community mis¬ 
fortune happened, and he understood it was their 
object to rescue those who had fallen on bad times 
through no fault of their own, and to reclaim them from 
the extremity of pauperism, which was a horror to the 
English mind. Now, as to the toast, he said they all 
admired the work done by the chairman. He re¬ 
membered when the Royal Horticultural Society was 
at its last gasp, when it seemed past human aid to 
reanimate such a wreck, and he believed it was mainly 
by the administrative energy of their chairman that 
the wreck was launched into its present smooth water. 
It seemed to him that Mr. Yeitch claimed their 
affection, and he asked them to drink the health of 
their excellent chairman with enthusiasm. 
The Chairman, in reply, said he most cordially 
thanked them for the manner in which the toast had 
been proposed and received. He assured them that that 
would be remembered by him as one of tho most happy 
nights of his life, and he deeply thanked them for 
supporting him. What he had been able to do, he had 
done with the greatest possible amount of pleasure. 
One of his earliest recollections was of a conversation 
between his father and old Mr. Henderson, of Pine 
Apple Place, about the Institution, and he supposed he 
had got the Institution into his very constitution, and 
he hoped it would remain there as long as he lived. 
One of the experiences of chairmen was that they 
received some strange correspondence. He would like 
to read two letters which he had received as showing 
the different views taken. One was as follows:— 1 'I have 
pleasure in owning receipt of your letter of the 12th 
inst., and fully sympathise with the Gardeners’ Insti¬ 
tution. The subject, however, seems so large that when 
I consider that fifty-one years has only resulted in 154 
old men out of all the gardeners of the United 
Kingdom being pensioned, it seems beyond my grasp.” 
The writer forgot said the chairman, all those who 
had died during the past fifty-one years. The letter 
continued ;—“ I also see no reason why coachmen, 
policemen, porters, and clergymen should not be 
pensioned as much as gardeners, if it could only be 
managed. Only a few months ago a clergyman wrote 
to me on the subject of the pensioning of clergymen. 
I quite agreed with him as to the advantage of his 
proposal, but pointed out that the other classes were 
at least equally deserving, and I was not able to sub¬ 
scribe to them all. I shall always try to do what little 
good I can in subscriptions on account of my own 
village, but must leave the dwellers in London and 
other large towns to attend to the royal institutions. ” 
Of course, said the chairman, he replied to the best of 
his ability, but he was unable to “ draw ” the writer. 
On the other hand, he had received the following 
letter from a Loudon banker :—“Gardens and gardeners 
contribute so much to my happiness that I enclose a 
cheque for ten guineas with great pleasure.” Well, 
such letters as the first did not hurt them ; they were 
very thankful for all they got, and the rest they forgot 
as soon as they possibly could. In conclusion, he 
begged to thank the stewards on that occasion, to whom 
he was deeply grateful for their support. Ho hoped 
they would attend in large numbers next year to hear 
Mr. Edmund Yates, who had promised to preside. 
Mr. Shirley Hirberd proposed the toast of “The 
President and Vice-President of the Institution.” He 
said gardening was an anxious occupation. It had its 
dark side, because although they had been for years 
discussing the subject of fruit culture, they looked 
round on their Apple trees and saw nothing on them, 
and even the celebrated Paradise Apple had become an 
Apple of discord. But Nature had her compensations, 
because although they had nothing on their trees, 
Nature had been kind enough to give them a magnifi¬ 
cent exhibition this year of Buttercups and Daisies. 
Turning to the subject of the toast, he said the Duke of 
Westminster, who was the president, was a good pro¬ 
moter of horticulture, and had promised £1,000 towards 
the Horticultural Hall. Mr. Herbert J. Adams was 
the vice-president, and a patron and friend of horticul¬ 
ture. He considered that this country was greatly 
blessed in the fact that our aristocracy took an interest 
in the affairs of the people. There was nothing too 
small for their attention, and scarcely anything too 
large for their ability, and it was well for the people to 
thoroughly employ them, as that was the best pre¬ 
ventive of absenteeism. 
Mr. H. J. Adams in response expressed his great 
pleasure in doing what he could to promote the interests 
of the Institution. 
The Chairman next proposed the health of Mr. Cutler, 
who, he said, was the best secretary of any institution 
in London, and to whom that Institution was greatly 
indebted. 
Mr. Cutler, who was received with loud and pro¬ 
longed cheering, said he attributed the progress of the 
Institution to two things—the goodness of their cause, 
and the good management of the committee—and some 
people said there was a third reason—the incomparable 
cheek of the secretary. He had much pleasure in 
announcing that the subscriptions that night amounted 
to just upon £3,000. Subscriptions had been received 
from the highest to the lowest in the land. The chair¬ 
man’s list amounted to £1,220. The gardeners alone 
had contributed no less than £770. Mr. George Munro 
had got from amongst his friends in Covent Garden 
£122, and Mr. William Robinson had given them 100 
guineas. He himself had been connected with the 
Institution for forty-nine years, and he hoped, by God’s 
blessing, he might be spared till next January, when 
he trusted they would elect him again. (Cheers). 
The Chairman proposed the toast of “Our Provincial 
and Foreign Friends,” coupling with it the names of 
Mr. George Dickson, of Chester, as representing their 
friends throughout the country; M. De Graaff, of 
Leyden, Holland, “the King of Amaryllis growers;” 
and M. D’Haene, of Ghent, “one of the most enter¬ 
prising of all Belgian nurserymen.” 
Mr. Dickson in reply said an institution of that sort 
could not possibly go back because it had the good 
will of everyone, and he thought that in the splendid 
subscriptions of that evening they had still further 
advanced. He took the opportunity of suggesting that 
Rule 15 should be wiped out, giving an instance where 
it worked harshly in the case of a widow. He said it 
did not hold good that because a person was in receipt 
of parish relief that person was unfitted for the relief 
afforded by the Institution. 
M. De Graff expressed his deep sympathy with the 
objects of the Institution, and wished them all success. 
M. D’Haene, who responded in French, said he had 
long ago heard of the Institution, but he had never 
assisted at one of its meetings before. He thought if the 
Governments of the Continent, w'ho were troubling 
themselves so much about economic and social questions, 
were to adopt the rules of this well-managed Institution 
they would be able to settle matters most satisfactorily. 
Mr. Parkinson proposedtheCommitteeofManagement 
and Stewards of the evening, to which Mr. Munro and 
Mr. Webber responded, the latter gentleman explaining, 
in reply to Mr. Dickson, that any person in receipt of 
parish relief forfeited all other moneys to the parish, 
and therefore the rule could not be altered. 
The Chairman then gave the last toast of the evening 
— “To our next merry meeting.” 
A delightful evening was made still more enjoyable by 
the singing of Miss Ethel Winn, Miss Mary Belval, Mr. 
John Bartlett, and Mr. Robert Hilton, and the two lady 
artistes were presented by the Chairman with interesting 
souvenirs in the shape of handsome bracelets. 
