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THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
The N ational Nurseryman 
Established 1893 by C. L. YATES. Incorporated 1902 
Published monthly by 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN PUBLISHING CO., Inc. 
Hatboro, Pa. 
Editor .ERNEST HEMMING, Flourtown, Pa. 
The leading trade journal issued for Growers and Dealers in 
Nursery Stocks of all kinds. It circulates throughout the 
United States, Canada and Europe. 
AWARDED THE GRAND PRIZE AT PARIS EXPOSITION, 1900 
SUBSCRIPTION RATES 
One Year in Advance .$1.50 
Foreign Subscriptions, in advance .$2.00 
Six Months .$1.00 
Advertising rates will he sent upon application. Advertisements 
should reach this ofdce by the 20th of the month previous to the date 
cf issue. 
Payment in advance required for foreign advertisements. Drafts 
on New York or postal orders, instead of checks, are requested by the 
Business Manager, Hatboro, Pa. 
Correspondence from all points and articles of interest to nursery¬ 
men and horticulturists are cordially solicited. 
Photographs and news notes of interest to nurserymen should be 
addressed. Editor, Flourtown, Pa., and should be mailed to arrive not 
later than the 25th of the month. 
Entored an necnnd-class matter June 22, 1916, at the post office at 
Hathoro, Peinisylrania, under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
Hatboro, Pa., January 1917 
Science is knowing. Art is 
PUTTING THE doing. The nursery business 
NURSERY RUSINESS as yet is neither one nor the 
ON A other. The best we can say 
SCIENTIFIC RASIS in regard to it is, that it is 
merely a practice, and many 
will mentally remark, “a had one,” largely be¬ 
cause the ])ractice is not based on knowledge so much 
as exigencies, which produce the long train of evils such 
as over production, cut throat competition, low prices, 
lack of uniformity in business customs, etc. 
John Ruskin says “The doing that makes commerce is 
born of thinking that makes scholars.” 
The one supreme effort in every line of business, is to 
put it on a scientific basis, and if the component parts of 
a business do not get together, and do it for themselves, 
the monopoly comes along and does it for them, crowding 
those who do not come into line to the wall. 
We need to put the nursery business on a scientific 
basis, and the first step is to organize our knowledge by 
means of statistics to guide us in production and of costs 
to enable us to fix the selling price. If we organize our 
knowledge we shall soon be scientific nurserymen. 
Many nurseries are getting along 
SKILLED LAROR very short handed. This may not 
be a veiy desirable condition, but it 
is proving to many that, perhaps at times, when there was 
an abundance of cheap labor it was not used to the best 
advantage, and if nurserymen would only take the lesson 
to heart, and at times when skilled labor is scarce reduce 
their production accordingly, they would find they would 
really be in pocket. It is quality rather than quantity 
in both labor and products that is wanted. It may be 
very fascinating to plant immense acreages and employ 
great quantities of unskilled help, but after all the results 
are naturally large quantities of poorly grown stock. 
We are too a])t in America to try to do big things, but in 
the Horticultural World it is not the big things that count. 
hut the painstaking detail, in fact, the temperament of 
the horticulturist and nurseryman should really be fash¬ 
ioned along the lines in which his own plants grow. As 
everyone knows perfect plants are painfully slow in com¬ 
ing to maturity and require constant care and attention 
in training. 
With the cost of labor so greatly 
RISING PRIGP]S increased, and everything else that 
goes in the production of nursery 
stock, it is simply out of the question to attempt to do 
business without raising the prices. The nurseryman 
need not be afraid that it will restrict the sales because 
his customers will hardly expect otherwise with every 
other line of goods soaring in price. 
The advance should be reasonable and based, as near 
as possible, on the cost of production. 
In addition to the higher cost of producing domestic 
slock, imported plants are likely to be scarcer and higher, 
due to the high cost and uncertainty of transportation. 
Many consignments of box were abandoned at the 
wharf the past fall through arriving in poor condition. 
PEDIGREE IN PLANTS 
Prof. G. R. Waldron, Agricultural Gollege, North Da¬ 
kota, gave an informal talk before the Minnesota State 
Horticultural Society on December 8tb on the subject of 
“Pedigree in Plants.” 
Prof. Waldron did not discuss the scientific aspects of 
the subject at all, but simply related the results of one 
of their recent experiments in which so-called “pedigree” 
strawberries, obtained from certain nurserymen, were 
planted along side of others upon which no claim was 
made. This work was started four years ago. In no 
case did the so-called pedigree plants head the list, in the 
matter of yield, and in most instances they fell consid¬ 
erably below the plants that did not lay any claim to long 
lines of distinctive ancestry. 
Attention was also called to results obtained in Mis¬ 
souri where runners were taken for a period of twelve 
years from the highest producing and the lowest produc¬ 
ing plants, respectively. At the end of that time it was 
found that there was no difference in the favor of the 
plot that had come through the line of high producers, 
as compared with the line of low producing plants. 
He called attention to the work done in Missouri on 
apples, in which scions from two Ben Davis trees, show¬ 
ing the greatest contrast in matter of yield, size, etc., were 
used in grafting two sets of trees. The trees had borne 
three crops, and it was impossible to distinguish any dif¬ 
ference on the average between the two different sets. 
This would indicate that whatever the theoretical or 
scientific considerations may be, there is scarcely any 
warrant at the present time for claiming superiority for 
any strain of plants asexually propagated. Recognizing, 
of course, the existence of such a phenomenon as bud 
variation, but there is no pretention on the part of the 
nurserymen advertising pedigree plants that these alleged 
superior strains of fruit have arisen in that way. The 
claim is made that improvement has been made by ordin¬ 
ary selection and this claim so far is not substantiated. 
