84 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
and houses by windmills and steam pumps. About 175 
men are employed through the season. This number is 
increased to 250 during packing and planting. A few 
of the yearly orders are for 150,000 feet of lumber for 
tree boxes, 10 cars of baled moss and excelsior for pack¬ 
ing, 500 tons of coal for greenhouses ; 200,000 cata¬ 
logues are issued for retail trade ; over $ 12,000 is paid for 
postage stamps for catalogues and seeds, etc., sent by 
mail. In the seed department a specialty has been 
made of Yellow Globe Danvers onion and one of the 
best strains in the wjorld produced by years of careful 
selection ; 1,000 bushels of onions were planted for 
the seed crop of 1893. 
The extent of the nurseries of this company is better 
appreciated when seen than when described. There is 
a single block of pear trees of 500,000, a block of 
800,000 plums, 300,000 cherries, and 350,000 yearling 
peaches. Two hundred bushels of peach pits have been 
planted for this season’s budding. 
The company grows largely ornamental trees, Nor¬ 
way maple, silver maple, Carolina poplar, golden-leaf 
poplar- It sold 70,000 Carolina poplars last spring. 
PAPERS ON TRADE TOPICS. 
Following are additional papers on topics of interest 
to the trade, presented at the recent meeting of the 
American Association of Nurserymen in Chicago : 
THE IMPROVEMENT OF NURSERY STOCK. 
T. J. Lacy, Washington, La. 
It gives me much pleasure to note the improvement 
in nursery business during the past fifty years. Then 
there were but few nurseries in the United States, and 
those very small, now they may be counted by the 
thousands and many of them with hundreds of acres. 
Nearly all of the orchards then were seedling trees of 
poor quality and apples sold for the low price of ten to 
fifteen cents per bushel. No one thought of planting a 
large orchard as it would not pay—with that kind of 
fruit. 
Fifty years ago blackberries, raspberries, and even 
strawberries were thought of only as wild fruit, and 
grapes were considered as belonging to foreign countries, 
and only to be consumed by the rich. In the North and 
West, all this has since been changed and nurserymen 
have brought up the fruits adapted to that climate to 
great perfection ; but in the South it is quite different, 
especially in the far South, near the Gulf of Mexico, 
where northern fruits do not succeed well. There the 
improvement in fruits commenced much later, but it has 
made rapid strides. Since the railroads to the Pacific, 
and steamships to China and Japan have enabled us to 
get fruit trees to suit our climate, we have made won¬ 
derful improvement in a very few years, and with care 
and attention we have plenty of good fresh fruit alDthe 
year. But we must not rest satisfied ; we must remem¬ 
ber that we live in the age of the greatest improvements 
in the world’s history, and we, as nurserymen, must not 
lag behind. Though we have done well and improved 
in every way, there is still much to do, much to learn ; 
therefore, let every nurseryman make the best stock of 
the best varieties suited to his own locality ; it will be a 
guarantee of what can be done in that part of the 
country, will increase the confidence of every one inter¬ 
ested in fruit growing, and will improve nursery stock 
in all our fair land. 
SHOULD WHOLESALE PRICES GO TO PLANTERS ? 
D. A. Porterfield, Traer, Ta. 
Should wholesale nurserymen send their prices to 
planters ? We have heard the tree dealer and tree agent 
discussed more or less at these meetings, and some have 
even gone so far as to say we should hire good agents to 
do our selling and not depend on dealers ; some of us 
have been trying this plan, and when we send a man out 
to sell nursery stock it is very annoying, to say the least, 
for that man in order to sell two dollars worth of stock 
to have to let customers take time to look over six or 
eight wholesale price-lists, and then have to compete 
with the lowest of them, besides paying freight. Last 
spring one of our men went to a farmer who wanted a 
few evergreens, and the first thing the farmer did was to 
bring out six or eight wholesale price-lists for him to 
compete with ; he got the order but had to sell the stock 
for less than it was worth. 
We do not object to the nurseryman sending his 
prices to whomsoever he pleases, but we do not think he 
should send them prices so low that we could not pur¬ 
chase from him and sell at a margin. There are not 
many orders sent in, for the agent who goes to the 
farmer gets the order in spite of the wholesale lists ; but 
it tends to demoralize the trade, and, in fact, we know 
of no other class of men that are so reckless in sending 
out prices as are the nurserymen. The dry-goods or 
clothing man would not think of selling goods to any but 
the dealer, and we cannot understand why the nursery¬ 
men should; or, at least, why he should not sell to the 
planter at a small advance above his wholesale lists. 
We do not believe in monopolies or trusts, nor do we 
think the treemen should combine, but we do think we 
could make it more pleasant for others, and just as satis¬ 
factory to ourselves, to use judgment in the matter of 
advertising. We know that in order to win we must 
advertise to a greater or less extent, and in order to do 
this, we must tell the people what we have and how we 
are going to sell it ; but a farmer is a man who would 
take better care of a tree that he paid twenty-five cents 
for than one he got for ten cents. We do not believe in 
getting two prices from them, but we cannot afford to 
