June 11, 1904. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
491 
everyone who had the highest interest of gardeners at heart, 
and who wished to see the best traditions of the gardening 
profession upheld, must come to the conclusion that sooner or 
later these conditions must be changed, otherwise in a generation 
or two gardening would be a profession or calling which would 
be upheld only by persons who had been failures in other 
branches of life, and by persons whose parents saw they were 
lacking in ability, and had to put them to gardening as a last 
resource. (Applause.) No one interested in gardening would 
like to see that, and it was for that reason that they proposed 
to take some means to relieve it. He thought that most head 
gardeners were finding that year by year they experienced more 
difficulty in getting young, intelligent, and well-educated lads 
to take up the profession of gardening. In this connection he 
was very much impressed on noticing the following statement 
in the issue of the “ Royal Horticultural Society’s Journal ” : — 
“ Students will be admitted to the gardens at Wisley on 
the same terms as at Chiswick in recent years, namely, that 
each student on being accepted shall pay a fee of five guineas 
and undertake to remain two years at least at the gardens.” 
The point he wished them to notice was the following : —“ The 
council find that there is generally more demand for those 
who have been trained at the society’s gardens than there are 
students to satisfy the enquirers.” Surely such a statement as 
that should appeal to parents whose greatest difficulty in these 
days was to find suitable occupations at which to put their 
sons. Surely for the paltry sum of five guineas they would 
jump at this opening—an opening which would mean that their 
sons would be entitled to enter the ranks of a profession which 
was the healthiest and most elevating of all callings on earth. 
(Loud applause.) Yet here they had the statement of the Royal 
Horticultural Society that they could not get men under these 
conditions. They were aware of the reason of the lack of the 
supply, because they were pretty well acquainted with the 
character of the demand, and there were very few parents who 
knew anything of the gardener’s status to-day who would care 
to put intelligent children to an occupation which simply meant 
supplying a demand for underpaid and overworked gardeners. 
(Applause.) 
It was in these respects he had mentioned and to remedy 
these grievances that an association was proposed to be formed. 
As one having a few men under him, he must candidly confess 
that they in many cases were responsible for a good deal of the 
bad pay and the long hours of their young men. (Applause.) 
They were so confoundedly conservative, and,, he was afraid, 
were so out of touch with the golden rule about doing unto others 
as they would be done by, that they were more prone to mete 
out to others what had been meted out to them in the past. 
The head gardener would sometimes say : “ When I was a young 
fellow I had to do so-and-so. We never grumbled about it, 
and we were quite as good as you are. We had none of this 
nonsense about recreation and shorter hours.” He was afraid 
they were not always sincere. They would have liked very much 
if others had thought of them, they would have liked the recrea¬ 
tion and the half-holiday occasionally, and they would also have 
liked the better pay. They should therefore be generous enough 
to try to do their best for their subordinates and to make their 
condition better than their own was when they were young men. 
(Applause.) Now lie would say this for the young journeymen 
of to-day. They were not afraid of hard work. (Hear, hear.) 
They did not complain of hard work. What they did complain 
of was long and excessive hours of labour, poor pay, and the 
infringement of their rights. These were the things which 
embittered the young gardeners and made them discontented. 
There was good reason for it, too. He thought, therefore, head 
gardeners should do their best to make the lives of those under 
them happier and brighter than they were. (Applause.) He 
was glad to say that in many instances head gardeners were 
t-rynig, and in many cases were succeeding, in doing this. In 
proof of his assertion, Mr. Pettigrew gave "an instance where a 
head gardener by approaching his employer secured for his 
subordinates the Saturday afternoons, payment of wages' for 
Sunday labour, and an increase of wages. 
All this, he reminded them, was n of brought about by intimi¬ 
dation or by a strike, but simply by pointing out to the employer 
that better conditions of employment and more money would 
bring him a better class of labour, and that this would be to 
Xpt, rrt® 6 ' ( A PP lause, -> iH head gardener was, very 
and »ac 6 u y°^ n f man - He was the victim of circumstances, 
uncW him b T ld down that he could not help himself or those 
S pZJ ri 1 ” the mterests of suck gardeners that it 
member of the. an association. Some hypercritical 
“ It, jo ii udi-enee might say, as outsiders were saying: 
nonsense about bettering the condition of the 
is all 
gardener. He is no worse off than the mechanic or other 
tradesman. It is right enough that he has long hours ; but 
look at his work and his surroundings. These surely are com¬ 
pensation for poor wages and long hours.” No one could appre¬ 
ciate the surroundings of gardeners better than he could, but 
he did not regard these as tangible assets. They would not 
satisfy a person’s tailor’s bill. When they compared the posi¬ 
tion of the gardener with that of other tradesmen they would 
find that the nonsense was not on the side of those who favoured 
the formation of the association, but on the side of the hyper¬ 
critical critics. (Applause.) 
They all could a tale unfold of their experience as young 
gardeners. (Applause.) He gave instances of the hardships 
endured by young gardeners, and of which he had personal 
experience, and, proceeding, referred to the bothy question, 
which, he remarked, appealed to gardeners in private places, 
and stood in the same relation to the young journeyman 
gardener as the housing question did to the artisan. The 
The Veitchian Cap. (See p. 485.) 
housing question and the promotion of good morals went hand 
in hand. If they gave decent houses they got people with 
decent morals. (Applause.) The matter affected young 
gardeners as it affected other people 1 . If the bothy was uncom¬ 
fortable and unbomelike the young gardener was, driven for his 
pleasures and amusement to the public-house, with the result 
that he became anything but a moral man. (Hear, hear.) 
Coming down from the plane of morality and viewing the ques¬ 
tion from the mere aspect of gardening, he contended that 
uncomfortable and crowded bothies were conducive to bad 
gardening. (Applause.) If the young gardener had not a 
decent room in which to read and study lie neglected the higher 
branches of gardening, and simply carried on his occupation by 
rule of thumb. The association by taking these facts into con¬ 
sideration, by attending first of all to 1 the physical welfare of the 
young gardeners, would improve gardening. (Applause.) Such 
an association as they proposed to form must inevitably tend to 
the betterment of wages, the shortening of hours, and the im¬ 
provement of the housing of the young gardeners.. Under these 
improved conditions there would be greater inducements for the 
best educated youths to take up the calling, and so the social 
status of gardeners would be improved. The potentialities of 
small things and small beginnings were so well known to 
gardeners that they might reasonably hope and believe that from 
the formation of a society which at present had most unpre¬ 
tentious aims might yet be evolved much that would revolu¬ 
tionise the gardening world, as similar societies had done other 
callings. For these reasons he thought it behoved every 
