THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
287 
together in a hurried meeting; arranged for further hearings 
—the Board courteously listened to our protests, suggestions 
and arguments—the result being that the Rules and Regula¬ 
tions were much modified in essential particulars before they 
appeared in print. 
The Board also promised to further modify their Rules 
and Regulations, if any features were shown to be unneces- 
sar>" or valueless. They have kept that promise and many 
minor but burdensome clauses have been further modified 
since then. 
Here, I want to say that I left New York, May 17th, I 
wrote my paper on this subject before I left—it contained 
nine new recommendations of changes. I sent a copy of that 
paper to the Board, as promised, and since then they have 
adopted five out of those nine recommendations, and those 
changes are included in the new Rules and Regulations effec¬ 
tive July ist, 1913. This made it necessary for me to write a 
new paper. I mention this to have you excuse any short¬ 
comings in this paper, which was written in spare moments 
during the past few days, without the assistance of much 
data which I have in New York. 
Here are a few of the important changes in the new Rules 
and Regulations effective next July ist. 
(1) No consulated declaration need now accompany the 
shipment; a certificate taking its place; the certificate on 
package to be a fac-simile of the parent certificate. 
(2) The application for permit need not now state quan¬ 
tity and classification of any nursery stock except Pines; this 
eliminates one of the most important burdensome features. 
(3) Instead of the 200 customers of John Jones of 
Angers, France, getting permits, the New York agents of 
John Jones can now get one permit to cover those 200 con¬ 
signments. 
(4) In case of complications at the New York Custom 
House, the broker can nowhave the official red tape unravelled 
by a representative of the Board at New York, instead of 
having to take up the matter with Washington as hereto¬ 
fore. 
You will see from this that the Rules and Regulations are 
gradually being licked into shape. The Act is now in fairly 
workable condition, but in four clauses, the Rules and 
Regulations are still unnecessarily burdensome. I will point 
them out and show why they are unnecessary in my opinion. 
(i) Regulation 2 still includes “Fruit pits and other seeds 
of Fruit and Ornamental Trees or Shrubs.” The Board 
refuses to eliminate these seeds from the provision of the 
Act, saying that they are frequently carriers of dangerous 
insects. They say that Apple and Coniferous seeds are 
commonly infested with a Chalcis or four winged fly, which is 
dangerous to the Apple crop. This may be all true, but I do 
not see why it should be necessary to secure a permit to 
import, say, a bushel of Mahaleb Cherry seeds; why every 
package shoiild be marked with the permit number, the 
shippers and consignees names and addresses, the locality 
where grown, by whom inspected and the date, etc. All this 
is mere red-tape formality, yet if it isn’t complied with, you 
cannot get possession of your seeds. Only recently we had a 
shipment of seeds released in New York, that had been held 
up for seven weeks, because it lacked a certified declaration. 
The American Consul, who consulated the Invoice apparently 
didn’t know of this Law, and the Transportation Company, 
which had the shipment in charge at New York didn’t know 
how to unravel the red-tape. If we had not got on'the job, 
the seeds would probably still be in the bonded stores at New 
York at the Consignee’s risk and expense. Seeds that are 
free from suspicion of pests, should be as free from the pro- 
\dsion of this Act as Vegetable or Flower seeds. 
(2) Without doubt, the most arbitrary, unnecessary and 
objectionable regulation is Nmnber 6, which provides that 
entry will be refused unless each case, bale or package is 
plainly marked to show the permit number, the quantity and 
contents of each package, the locality where grown, the name 
and address of the shipper and consignor and a certificate of 
inspection. Considering that all import packages are 
shipped by marks and numbers, why is it necessary to state on 
the package the shippers and consignor’s name and address? 
The notification the Customs broker makes to the Board and 
the State Entomologist gives this information; the permit 
identifies the package. Why is it necessary to state the con¬ 
tents on the package when the Department already has that 
information? On a shipment of say, 3,000 Bay Trees, each 
in a separate package, why is it necessary to place a label on 
the outside of the tree saying “This is a Bay Tree.” This 
regulation raised the price of Bay Trees 10 to 20% in Belgium 
on exports to America. 
Now that I have shown you how unnecessary this regula¬ 
tion is from the Department’s point of view, I am going to 
show you its injustice, from the point of view of the New York 
Import house, which represents a Boskoop, Holland firm. 
There are 800 nursery firms in Boskoop—all hungry for 
American business. We spend money for traveling expenses 
and advertising to work up a business for our Boskoop firm; 
the customers we get are oirrs, bought and paid for, but this 
regulation takes them from us. 
All cases as packed are placed on the banks of the main' 
canal at Boskoop, so that the steamer can pick them up for 
Rotterdam, and the other 799 Boskoop Nurserymen including 
those who never spent a dollar in America, can read from the 
cases, not only, the name and addresses of our customers, but 
what they buy from us. Is that just? Is it fair to those 
progressive American import firms, which have just about i 
Americanized the foreign business? 
For another illustration, let us take Engli.sh Manetti 
stocks and English Gooseberries, which are grown by many 
people, but only in small quantities—the New York agent 
has only two ways of handling this business—either he must 
represent one English firm and do a very small business, or he 
must get many growers to grow for him. Our firm follows 
the latter course, because it gives us control of the source, the 
quality,-grading and cleanliness. It is harder to get good 
shippers than good buyers. It costs us time, money and 
brains to get those growers to grow the right kind of stock for 
us; those English growers’ names are our property, bought 
and paid for. Those Custorriers’ names and addresses are our 
property, bought and paid for—why should om Govern¬ 
ment, instead of protecting our American industry, compel us 
to give to our shipper our custorriers’ names and addresses 
and to our customers, our shippers’ names and addresses. Is 
