THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
1 he joint committee also waited upon the secretary of agricul¬ 
ture, and received from him the most cordial support. Messrs. 
Wilson and Watrous of your committee remained in Washing¬ 
ton and very soon, through the aid of Senator Gear of Iowa, 
secured a hearing before a sub-committee appointed by the 
senate committee of agriculture and presented the case to 
them in such a manner as to secure their approval. 
“ Much correspondence was had with members and senators 
in congress, asking their support, and everything seemed to 
promise a speedy and successful termination of our labors, 
when the war with Spain broke out. Since then the efforts of 
congress have been all towards putting the nation in a position 
to come honorably out of the great task undertaken. 
“ Your committee believe that, in view of the great interests 
involved, this Association should continue its efforts to secure 
an early passage of the bill prepared, in as nearly its original 
form as possible, and that the present committee should be 
granted further time to complete this work, or that a new com¬ 
mittee should be raised at this meeting and charged with the 
same duty.” 
President Rouse—“There has been considerable criticism 
of the position taken by the Association on the San Jose scale 
question. I do not think that position has been understood. 
Neither this Association nor any other nursery association has 
advertised the scale. We have been forced into action look¬ 
ing toward the protection of our interests. The federal bill 
was proposed in the hope of securing uniform legislation in 
place of the widely varying state laws. I will ask Mr. Watrous 
to explain the matter further.” 
Mr. Watrous—“One thing which caused the criticism to be 
raised was the German edict against American trees and fruit. 
Some thought that the federal insect bill was the cause of that 
edict. But Andrew White, our ambassador to Germany, told 
me the edict was the result of the laws passed by the several 
states, especially in the case of Oregon. From that I gathered 
that the German edict was not the result of anything we had 
done. We have simply endeavored to provide a system by 
means of which nurserymen may ship their stock. The present 
and prospective state laws present many diffiulties.” 
By unanimous vote the report of the committee was adopted 
and the committee was continued. Upon motion of Mr. 
Albaugh, the secretary was instructed to send the following 
telegram to Speaker Reed of the house of representatives and 
to Congressman James W. Wadsworth, of New York : 
Omaha, Neb., June 8, 1898 . 
IIon. T. B. Reed, Washington, D. G. 
The American Association of Nurserymen, in its twenty-third annual 
convention assembled at Omaha, Nebraska, June eighth, do earnestly 
urge the immediate passage of the proposed federal insect bill. 
Irving Rouse, President. 
MR. ALBAUGH’S ADDRESS. 
Mr. Albaugh then talked on the subject “Is the Insect Agi¬ 
tation of the Day a Good or Bad Thing for Nurserymen ?” 
In the course of his remarks he said : 
For four or five years we have had oefore us the ablest entomologists 
of the country. They have shown us the animalcules in the drops of 
water, and new, horrible and disastrous insects that were going to ruin 
the nurseryman’s business sure enough, and we have sat with gaping 
mouths and widely distended eyes, wondering what would become of 
the poor but honest nurseryman from this time henceforth. 
We go into different states and we look on the statute books, and we 
find some very raw laws framed and adopted by the farmers and passed 
with a home made nurserymen ring. A man hardly is allowed to 
7i 
breathe if he goes into that state and is an agent for trees, or a nurs¬ 
eryman. 
We have in Ohio a little San Jose law, though not very drastic, and 
when we met—and I see before me here some of the Ohio nurserymen 
who were there with that committee—and found tree planters and 
farmers who wanted to draft the law so that every tree that was sold 
by a nurseryman, that ever, at any time, afterwards, had the ring-bone 
or spavine or the “ buster,” or anything else the matter with it, that 
nurseryman should be held for actual and prospective and vindictive 
damages, we did not let the bill pass. 
Last winter, some time, some smart fellows across the line in the 
Dominion conceived a very brilliant idea, and although they had San 
Jose scale over in Canada in a number of places, they all at once, and 
of a sudden, without even moving an amendment and hardly taking 
time to make the previous question authoritative, passed a most drastic 
law, under which no trees could be shipped from the United States 
into Canada at all, and they claim as reasons for it that the San Jose 
scale was in some parts of the United States. (They are as plenty a 
thing as sparrows in Canada.) 
And then across the ocean, within the last year, another wise set of 
solons in one of the countries—Mr. President, Sprechen Sie Deutsch ? 
Parlez-vous Francais? Well, over there, where they sprechen Deutsch, 
in Germany, they were getting too many Golden Pippins and Ben 
Davis from out here in this wild and woolly western country ; that 
attracted even the Germans, who do not like red, you know, and they 
were selling, as the saying goes, “like hot cakes,” and then the great 
German reichstag, which means the parliament, put their heads to¬ 
gether and concluded that on account of that awful, villainous insect, 
the San Jose scale, of which they had read in every horticultural paper 
in the United States, they had better not have any apples sent to 
Germany at all, any more, and so they passed laws prohibiting the in¬ 
troduction of all fruits from the United States, and they said it was on 
account of the San Jose scale. So that what we innocently sat down 
to learn about at our meetings, and went home and learned how to 
fight, and how to take care of, and how to watch our nursery, has 
proved to be in a number of cases a monster that turned upon us and 
nearly devoured us. 
A man wrote me not very long ago from the peach region that his 
peach leaves were all affected by a new and wonderful disease, and he 
sent me one or two peach leaves in a letter, and he said he knew that 
it was caused by that new and terrific insect, the peach tree borer. I 
looked at the leaves, and they were affected, like a great many peaches 
are this year, on account of the cold and wet weather, with the curled 
leaf, and as to the peach tree borer being a new and very dangerous 
insect, especially new, I can say to you in all confidence, being a name¬ 
sake of the great navigator, that he had them there,—those peach tree 
borers, in the Ark. 
If an apple tree happens to have a knot of the woolly aphis, and a tree 
agent goes to deliver it, some wiseacre will tell him, at once, that there 
is a mark of a new and dangerous disease, and that he will be fully 
warranted in law not to touch it at all, and he don’t touch it. 
If I happen to get a few huudred grape vines from my friend 
Hubbard that have a few marks on it from a phylloxera that he has 
happened to overlook, even looking through his glasses, (and in all my 
forty years experience I have not known that it was such a dangerous 
thing,) he says, “ There is a new disease, and I want you to take those 
grape vines right off my farm.” 
It is wonderful how little we used to know as nurserymen about the 
diseases of trees and plants, but it is super wonderful how much less 
the average man knows about a disease that has been taken, 
in a number of instances that I know of, as the cause and reason for 
refusing to accept trees that were in good and healthy condition, and 
throwing numerous lawsuits and expenses and trouble upon the nurs¬ 
eryman who has been living on such high prices (nit) for the last four 
or five years. 
I have great respect for that class of “buggers”—I mean insect- 
searchers—who have endeavored to enlighten us nurserymen in rej ard 
to all the villainous insects that we have to contend with, but I have 
wondered a great deal in the last year whether it has been the very best 
thing to try to educate, in the papers, and by speeches and cuts, the 
average farmer so that he would know one insect from the other. It 
has had its effect, and its effect has been just as I have described,— 
