18 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
double standard of honesty, that is, that they person¬ 
ally were strictly honest but they would not hesitate 
to liire a tree dealer, and though they would not trust 
him with their own i)ocketbook in making their col¬ 
lections, they are quite willing to trust him with their 
name. The tree dealer would explain to them that he 
knew how to go out and skin them. He made no 
bones of the fact that he skinned the people, but he 
would tell them he and his gang of skinners that 
went with him could sell $25,000 worth of their 
goods, and so they hired him and put him out, pro¬ 
ceeded to wash their hands and sav to themselves in 
all seriousness: “It’s too bad those fellows do bus¬ 
iness that way. I would not do it. ’ ’ The nursery¬ 
man who has adopted this plan, is, in my judgment, 
equally guilty with the tree dealer who has perform¬ 
ed the act. 
The haphazard methods of nurserymen has 
caused their business financially to be a failure; has 
caused a profession which should be at the top of the 
list for esteem, to be almost looked down upon and 
despised and classed as the worst of grafts. How 
many of you have seen the look of surprise come over 
the other traveling man’s face when you are riding 
with him in the pullman or stopping at a first class 
hotel and noticed the tendency of him to move over 
just a little and give you more room! 
We go to the convention and taffy each other, ban¬ 
quet, and sight-see, and really convince ourselves we 
are a progressive lot. Whereas, we are fifty years 
behind the time. We are in a rut. We have pro¬ 
gressed only as we have been driven to progress. 
You say we have progressed in the way of grading 
and eliminating diseased stock. It is because we 
were driven to this field by what we thought was 
some mighty hard legislation of some of the states, 
which wanted better trees. 
So, all of our discussion, committee work, and ap¬ 
propriation have been made for our own selfish pur¬ 
pose in trying to immediately increase our own pro¬ 
fits. Until as a trade, we waken up and accept the 
more modern call that is being heeded by business 
men and professional men in all other lines, to think 
of the welfare of the other people, we will not pro¬ 
gress in our business. 
Better quality trees and paying more attention to 
their parentage will, it is true, cost us a good deal of 
money and will, it is true, give us no immediate 
benefit, but this is an age of scientific advancement, 
an age when the requirement is for full efficiency, an 
age in which, if we do not x>i'Ogress in the nursery 
business and inaugurate new methods, our business 
will be revolutionized from without. Just as business 
methods of selling stock has been revolutionized in 
Kansas by the Blue Sky law, you can already note a 
movement in that line by the law that was proposed 
in New York legislature a year ago. The trade pa¬ 
per, American. Fruit.s, descri))es this measure under 
the caption, “Unreasonable New York Legislative 
Measure,” and nurser^unen, one and all, wrote in 
and joined in on the condemnation of such a harsli 
law. I could not take that view of it. Instead, I 
wrote as many of you may have noted, that the nur¬ 
sery business had not kept pace with other industries 
and that if the nursery business could not be put on a 
new and higher standard of our own volition, we 
may be benefitted by being compelled to adopt high¬ 
er standards and that I believed it is necessary to 
adopt such standards as will insure trees being true 
to name, and that althouglffeven then some mistakes 
would be made, but after all as a matter of equity 
and fairness, should not the man suffer the loss who 
is responsible for the mistake! 
Your association is interested in the future of your 
business. You cannot jump into improving the qual¬ 
ity of trees and growing them all from known paren¬ 
tage or true to name in a year, nor in several years. 
You will never make a score in this line nor take it 
up if you are only interested in the nursery business 
from a financial standpoint. Financially, I should 
not say it was a good present investment, but if you 
love the business and want to do something to help 
revolutionize a business, and bring it up where it 
rightfully belongs, then I should say you should be¬ 
come interested in growing trees from known paren¬ 
tage or true to name. 
Time is too short here to go into detail and quote 
as could be done from the leading scientific men and 
horticulturists of the country, their views and exper¬ 
iences in this matter which has demonstrated beyond 
a doubt, that better trees can be grown by propagat¬ 
ing them from special individual trees of superior 
characteristics such as young bearing, color, and 
quality. 
While we, of course, must all admit on the start 
that environment such as soil, water, climatic in- 
fiuence, pruning, and spraying cause not only a large 
])art but the chief part of any tree to be successful, 
you cannot bring out of a tree that quality which ii 
does not possess by inheritance, and this has beeji 
demonstrated in the work of a number of us who 
have paid some attention to the observation of scor¬ 
ing trees, and we just take time to quote 
one example from an article of Citrus Trees 
by John Y. Beatty in the last number of 
the Fruit-grower and Farmer in which he 
says: “In a Dixon grove of Marsh’s seed¬ 
less grape fruit, 123 trees out of 500 have been found 
to be unproductive. These 123 trees have given an 
average yield by actual measurement, of one picked 
box, but the trees were poor, mostly unsalable fruit, 
Avhile the other 377 have yielded an average of 10 
])icked boxes per tree of the highest grade, selling at 
$7.50 per box in New York. Prof. Shammel has 
