398 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
PRICES. 
By Miss E. B. Drake 
E VERY spring the nurserymen of America hold a 
sort of Regatta, on the River of Trade. Instead 
of boats, slim neat, built on yacht lines, stript 
for action, with perfect team-work between captain and 
crews, a sure knowledge of cross currents and an eye 
fixed on the goal; the boats are clumsy craft, loaded to 
the gunwales, out of ballast, and the steersmen are con¬ 
fused, panicky and ignorant of their course. Every 
little pennant has a meaning of its own “Low Prices, 
Special Prices, Write US for Prices, We will meet all 
comers, Any old Price.” The marvel is that there has 
not been an Eastland disaster. 
We think and work and sell in terms of PRICES, that 
is the magic word with which we plead for attention, 
with which we seek to conjure orders. It is our whole 
dictionary, vocabulary, repertory. Price is of course 
important, it is the consideration, but the more it varies, 
the more we cut it down, the more we take off,—the 
more indifferent our trade becomes, it is like woman, 
compared to a shadow, “When you pursue, she leaves; 
when you leave, she pursues.” 
In handling perishables, and especially in this business 
of growing trees, the old law of supply and demand is 
inadequate. Overproduction is the lack of proportion 
or balance between the growing department and selling 
equipment. In the old sense, you cannot compute the 
supnly and demand of nursery stock, because all sides 
of the equation are unknown quantities. We have ab¬ 
solutely no data on supplv, and as someone said at the 
national convention, the Demand is a field that has not 
been even scratched. We scatter our price lists and 
catalogs in all directions, forgetting we have not the as¬ 
sortments needed in York State or New England, that we 
know nothing of their peculiar demands and conditions 
and hence we waste our ammunition as we cannot im¬ 
press attention. Salaried agents, for $100 to $125 go 
out as salesmen, without a fragment of knowledge of the 
trees or varieties they are selling, how to fill gaps in an 
orehard’s succession of ripening, or to advise remedies 
when there is trouble. They are merely hot air jam¬ 
mers, that is the quality of their salesmanship. 
And all the time we have right at our doors, a field that 
comprises I would say 80 per cent, of the farm-steads 
and homes, where choice fruits are earnestly desired, and 
where the intention to buy and plant is the very best, but 
the act of buying postponed from year to year. The 
demand is exactly what we make it, but the trouble has 
been that we have failed to increase our selling equip¬ 
ment, in proportion as we have increased our growing 
department, and when the demand is not sufficient to 
take up present stocks, it is because we have failed to 
bring the man and the order together, at the right mo¬ 
ment. 
To make the nursery business stable, the price should 
be figured to cover 
The cost of production 
The cost of selling 
And a fair profit 
Rut how to figure the cost of production? You have 
heard it said that June Ruds could be grown and dug for 
$10 per M. Like the Scotchman, I have “me doots” but 
grant the estimate. Now, when your wife comes to you 
with a serious face and says “My dear, you know I oc¬ 
cupy a prominent place in the social life of this town, and 
you know too in the past year, how much I have been 
asked out. I must pay off these obligations and so I’ve 
decided to give a big party Thursday week and invite 
everybody.” And when you begin to talk about hard 
times, she will reply, “Why I can do the whole thing for 
$25. I’ll ask the Brown girls to help receive and Mrs. 
Jones and Mrs. Smith to help serve. I need some salad 
forks, but I can borrow a couple of dozen from Mrs. 
Green. And so, when you come to think of it, my dear, 
$25.00 is a very small price to pay for the position I 
know that you are proud and glad for your wife to oc¬ 
cupy, etc.” 
And, gentlemen, every one of you will smile in a su¬ 
perior sort of way and say “Now, isn’t that just like a 
woman? She thinks she can pool all her social debts 
for the year and I can get off on $25. She forgets this 
new house she made me buy, those new dresses she or¬ 
dered, that big rug she selected for her Christmas 
present,—all those things I have had to supply in con¬ 
nection with and to make possible these parties and the 
social position to which she aspires.” 
And just so, gentlemen with the June Ruds. Granting 
that you can grow and dig and store them in your heel¬ 
ing grounds or packing house, for ten dollars, as figured 
by the tangible proof of your check stubs and expense ac¬ 
count, but what about those intangible items, the use of 
your land, depreciation of tools, the plowing and cultivat¬ 
ing those old mules gave them, the new tools that seemed 
just to suit the work and which you buy every year, then 
the handling and rehandling in the packing house, the 
packing, hauling and perhaps some freight. 
Are we to present our trade with the use of our whole 
equipment, are we to derive no interest or income from 
our investment? To get within the neighborhood of 
the Cost of Production of any line of nursery stock, we 
had better refresh our memories on the old multiplication 
table of two, and double our tangible or known figures, 
on every line. 
Then comes the cost of selling. You can’t hold 
efficient office work down to less than 15 per cent, of 
sales can you? On top of this add special advertising, 
special trips, discounts, etc. How far are we falling 
short every year on our June Bud crop and what is pay¬ 
ing the deficit? 
Not apples, surely. This line is too much abused to 
call for further discussion. But observe this one 
vagary in our price schedules. Dealers are asked 6, 8, 
and 10c for apple trees, which you all admit cost more 
per tree to produce, in the South, than any other kind of 
tree, and yet pears, plums, cherries, shrubs that were 
never budded or grafted but grown from cuttings, are 
sold at 12 and 15c. The dealer will use more apple 
than all these other items combined. Why not move 
up the price of the apple and perhaps take a little off 
(but please make it very little) these other items, to save 
our face and the dealer’s feelings? 
Every spring, you hear something like this. Visitors 
come in, look around “Well, what do you know? Etc., 
etc. “Well, the word this spring is that “peach” is 
