72 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
HORTICULTURAL LAWS . 
Their Relation to the Nurseryman—Restrictions By Legislative 
Bodies Hamper a Legitimate Business—What Should the 
Nurseryman Do—Unjust Restrictions. 
M. MC DONALD, SALEM, ORE. 
An examination of recent horticultural legislation lately 
enacted in various states and provinces of the United States 
and Canada bearing directly upon the sale and distribution 
of nursery products between one state and another, and often 
between one country and another within the same state, 
leads one to wonder whether the propagation of nursery 
products is a legitimate calling, or one that should be classed 
with gambling and other disreputable business that must 
be licensed and controlled under police regulations. 
If restrictions that have lately 
been placed upon the nursery 
business, in the form of horti¬ 
cultural' legislation, keep on 
growing as they have in the past 
few years, it will be utterly im¬ 
possible for nurserymen to ship 
nursery stock beyond the con¬ 
fines of the county in which their 
nurseries may be located. One 
would have thought that with 
the stringent inspection laws that 
have been imposed upon the 
nursery business, especially in 
the Pacific Coast states within 
the past ten or fifteen years; that 
horticultural interests would be 
sufficiently protected without 
further imposing upon the nursery 
business additional and unreason¬ 
able legislation in the form of 
laws compelling the nurserymen 
to give surety bonds and take 
out licenses for themselves and 
their salesmen, as is the case in 
many of the states and provinces 
of the United States and Canada. 
If the nursery business is a legiti¬ 
mate one in which honest men 
may engage, why is it that they are put under such 
restrictions, * while the orchardists that surround them 
are allowed to have infected and tliseased trees, and ship 
fruit that is not only diseased but infested with insect pests, 
without any objection being raised by the authorities, and 
often with their consent and approval. There must be some¬ 
thing fundamentally wrong with a law that can single out one 
particular branch of a business, and the citizens who 
engage in this particular branch, while others whose goods 
are just as dangerous, and more so, to the interests of the 
country, are not subject to any restraint whatever. 
PRIMARY OBJECT OF LAWS. 
Primarily, horticultural laws were supposed to be enacted 
in the interests of horticulture generally, and as a protection 
to all branches of this industry, but instead of being enforced 
in the interests of the whole people, the nursery business 
alone is singled out as the one branch of horticulture in which 
it is necessary to enforce these horticultural laws, and as a 
consequence the nursery business often receives great injury 
from the ignorance and prejudice of horticultural inspectors 
while the real breeding grounds of disease and insect pests— 
old orchards, parks and private grounds—are allowed to 
continue to propagate these diseases and insect pests, regard¬ 
less of the danger to the nursery that may be located close 
by, and while the nurseryman is supposed to keep his trees 
and plants free from disease and insect pests, or the appear¬ 
ance of them, the old orchard goes unchallenged as a menace 
to his business. 
There is not a more careful or painstaking class of men to 
lie found anywhere than the 
nurserymen,always trying to grow 
their trees and plants clean and 
healthy and free from diseases of 
all kinds, while the fruit-grower 
is often allowed to ship his fruit 
over the entire country indiscrim¬ 
inately, without restraint or in¬ 
spection; yet the nursery is not 
allowed to move a single tree or 
plant until it has been inspected 
by some person appointed as a 
horticultural inspector who knows 
infinitely less about these pests 
and diseases than the nurseryman 
does himself. 
If it is a misdemeanor for a 
nurseryman to propagate his trees 
and plants in a state where scale, 
or other insect pests may have 
been found (as Would appear from 
the laws enacted in many states), 
it ought to be even a greater 
crime for orchards, and other in¬ 
fected trees, to be allowed to grow 
and propagate insect pests and 
diseases in close proximity to a 
nursery without any action being 
taken on the part of the inspec¬ 
tor or other horticultural officer, as is too often the case, thus 
endangering the very existence of the business that has been 
compelled to bear the whole burden of horticultural laws. 
In studying this question, we ask why are these things 
so? Any honest, intelligent man who will study the ques¬ 
tion carefully must admit that nurserymen have been unjustly 
dealt with in the enactment and execution of horticultural 
laws, and w T hy? Probably because the formation, enact¬ 
ment and enforcement of such laws have been left largely 
to politicians and office-holders, while the fruit-grower and 
nurseryman, the parties most interested in this subject has 
been content to sit back and leave the enactment of such 
laws to men who do not know anything about the require- 
M. McDonald, Salem, Ore. 
Vice-President American Association of Nurserymen. 
