THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
399 
mighty good property.” Later on, you all go to the 
Convention and there it is decided that 9-16 peach 
should not be sold for less than 6c. come home feeling 
good and sit up with your dormants. Send out some 
price lists, quote on a few want lists. (Which reminds 
us that we have heard good nurserymen say nobody was 
expected to adhere to printed prices.) Query, why print 
them then? Why show your hand, if as one man said 
you have not the “pernacity” to abide by the showing, 
but time passes with the dormant peach, fall and winter 
comes on and there is still a lot unsold. Like Kitchener’s 
army that was to move in May, it is then there comes 
creeping over the anatomy of the man with his “Tra-la— 
flowers that bloom in the spring song,”—that curious 
disease known as “cold feet.” I would not attempt to 
outline the pathology of this disease, which is subtly in- 
The grade, quality, integrity of all nursery stock now¬ 
adays must conform to a certain fixed standard. If the 
tree has been standardized, then the price also should he 
standardized and fixed above the fluctuations of crop 
conditions or supply and demand, and price and tree 
should be in permanent co-ordination. But the nursery 
trade is so tied and bound with the chain of its own in¬ 
firmities, no one man can of himself help himself, and 
as we see it, absolutely the only hope, the only solution 
(and we would as well face it) lies in organized co-opera¬ 
tion. Merge your national association into a sort of 
Board of Trade, such as I believe the English have. 
Membership in it to be elective and the high sign of 
standing and reliability. To the Executive Committee, 
let annual, confidential and sworn reports be made by 
each member, setting forth the inventory of trees on 
French Pear and yearling Pear Buds, August 5, 1915, Washington Nursery Co., Toppenish, Wash. 
fectious and virulently contagious. It spreads over the 
whole system ,causes an uneasy palpitation of the hopes 
of the heart, disturbs digestion of facts, ways and means, 
and when finally somebody cuts the guy ropes that had 
been holding down the huge peach surplus, the crisis 
comes in the illness of our friend of the spring fantasy, 
(who it would appear, while he claimed no “yellows in 
his peach, was pretty well streaked with it himself)—and 
he bursts forth into a brain storm 
“Whoa, she’s gone. Peach is on the toboggan, she's 
running away. And I’ve got so many nice, clean, 
smooth, pretty peach trees, and they aren’t worth a cent 
to me standing in the nursery row and I do owe so much 
money. 0 Lord, what have I done to bring this evil on 
me, it isn’t my fault, how long w ill my enemies encom¬ 
pass me.” It is the nurseryman’s Jeremiad, sung each 
spring to varying tunes. 
hand, those sold the previous season, the cost of same and 
the price obtained for them, in short, figures from which 
a comprehensive report can be complied, showing the 
exact supply, the general tread of the demand and as¬ 
sociated business conditions. What we need in the as¬ 
sociation, we think, more than we ought to be needing a 
lawyer, is a sort of nurseryman’s actuary, a traveling 
auditor, w^ho can come into our olfices, take our books, 
pick up a bunch of figures and drum into our dull heads 
exactly what they mean. 
On the reports to the Board, the man who overstates 
or falsifies, should he expelled. Alter the general re¬ 
port has been submitted to the session, a majority vote 
should then give expression to what it believes to be a 
minimum scale of prices, for a given period in each sec¬ 
tion. The firm violating this expression of opinion and 
intention should be expelled, and there should he no com- 
