80 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
PROF. J. C. BLAIR 
Dean of the Horticultural School, State University of Illinois, 
Who Lectured Before the Illinois Nurserymen 
SALES PLUS 
By John Watson 
Ex-President of the American Association of Nurserymen, at 
the Convention of the Illinois Nurserymen's Association in Chi¬ 
cago. January 19, 1922. 
My first thought is one of appreciation for the courteous hos¬ 
pitality that gives me opportunity to meet with you in your an¬ 
nual convention; and my first duty is that of expressing my ap¬ 
preciation. Your invitation to address you was a very pleasant 
surprise and I accepted it in the evident spirit of its sending. I 
have come the long distance from the Atlantic seaboard, let me 
hasten to add, not because of any thought of importance in what 
I have to say to you, but wholly as the most adequate expression 
I can make in acknowledgment of your kindness. At the very 
beginning, I put myself upon your generosity to forgive and even 
to forget all the foolish things I shall say. If in the mass you 
find a single idea, a single constructive suggestion that you can 
turn to your profit, then I shall feel fully repaid for coming here 
and you. I hope, will feel partly recompensed for whatever at¬ 
tention you are generous enough to give me. 
I want you, before I begin, to feel sure that I fully appreciate 
the importance, the value and the dignity of the nursery bus¬ 
iness. I mean, appreciate your own realization of those things. 
So that if I say anything that sounds like criticism, you will un¬ 
derstand that it is intended to be constructive criticism. We do 
not criticise the things that are not worth the effort; we don’t 
bother about things that are not worth-while. The things we 
seek to improve are the things that are worth improving; what 
is good, we seek to make better. I hope I do not put an extrava¬ 
gant estimate on the importance of this industry. I consult the 
last census figures and I find that in 1920, the last year for which 
figures were gathered by the Government, the total sales of trees 
and plants and nursery stock of all kinds amounted to $21,000,- 
000; while the fruit crop for the same year—the fruit crop from 
trees sold by you nurserymen—put into the pockets of the fruit¬ 
growers over $710,000,000. It seems to me that nothing so elo¬ 
quently points out the value of your annual contribution to the 
country’s wealth as the fact that one year’s fruit crop would buy 
thirty-five times as much salable stock as you have in all your 
nurseries; that it would buy not only all the stock you have now, 
but that it would buy as well the nurseries themselves and every 
dollar’s worth of property connected with the entire nursery in¬ 
dustry. 
And there is another important thing about your business; it 
is the fact of its continuity, the lapping of one year over onto 
other years; the fact that it requires much time to produce the 
things you sell. 
If this city of Chicago should be destroyed by fire tonight, we 
can not doubt that this commercial center of America would 
spring up, Phoenix-like almost in a day. 
If every moving picture should be destroyed (and I think 
many of them could be spared without loss), we could still go to 
the movies tomorrow night. 
If all the automobiles should be destroyed (which might not 
be such a bad thing, as Mr. Galsworthy has said, for our livers) 
we should not have to walk for very long. I rather think that 
the wizard of Detroit would be stamping out of linoleum with an 
improved biscuit-cutter, an improved and cheaper conveyance 
still. 
If you destroy the regulated liquor business of the country, 
you will bring into existence in two years—as you have brought 
into existence in that time—the largest, the most efficiently or¬ 
ganized and the most profitable industry in the country today; 
the business of boot-legging. 
I have mentioned here our largest and most profitable indus¬ 
tries to point out the big things that can be reproduced quickly. 
But if you destroy the nursery business and the children of 
that business, the orchards, the flower gardens, the park trees 
and the total that you men have turned out in the last fifty years, 
they could not be replaced for many years if at all. How long 
would the gardens go without Roses? How many years would 
we be without shady lanes and cool lawns? I fancy we should 
have to live without Apples for some years unless, of course, we 
invested in some of the new pomological marvels that the adver¬ 
tisements tell us are so precocious as to begin bearing while 
still in the nursery rows! 
Not only is your industry important to others, but it is serious 
to you. Nobody knows better than I know out of continuous and 
intimate contact with you during many years, how seriously you 
nurserymen regard the business you are in. It is really some¬ 
thing more than a business to you. I mean it is something more 
than bread and butter. I suppose every man thinks that way 
about what he does, or ought to. But a nurseryman’s work 
keeps him in close touch with trees and plants: with the really 
wonderful things developed by his skill and may I not say?—by 
his love, for I have yet to find a nurseryman who does not love 
trees and plants. And it is what we love that gives us the stand¬ 
ards by which we try to live. The very nature of the business 
requires that those in it give it their whole time. It is their 
work and also their recreation. 
This statement of what I think about the nursery business 
may or may not be necessary; certainly it is not to those who 
know me well; but it is something that I wish to make very 
clear as necessary to understand some of the things that I shall 
say. 
When extending the invitation that brought me here, your 
Secretary notified me that your program would be limited to the 
single broad subject of “Sales”; but he said that any phase of 
selling would be free to discuss. In telling him that I would call 
my own talk “Sales Plus,” I had it in mind to keep myself free 
to follow whatever path looked most inviting later, for I had no 
idea then what direction I should take. Your printed program 
has given me my cue. Of course, I realize how impossible it is 
for me to measure up to the standard set for me there or to ful¬ 
fill the expectations invited by the complimentary introduction; 
I merely suggest that your program put me on my track. For 
what I shall propose, I hope to be able to demonstrate a reason 
as well as a necessity. 
Mr. Therkildson, whom we have all known ever since he was 
himself in the nursery business, has told you all about selling 
your goods to the city folks. 
Mr. White, remembered by many of us since the days of the 
ever-welcome “True Blue,” has pointed out the vast undeveloped 
market offered by the farmers. 
Now those who live in the cities and those who live in the 
country include about all of us; so there are no other buyers for 
me to tell you about. 
And besides, you are not at all worried about selling just 
now: there is not much to sell; you are pretty well booked-up; 
surplus has vanished from the vocabulary; you are getting good 
prices, or better prices than you used to get. 
So I shall look to the future and talk to you about a sub¬ 
ject that must always go along with and follow sales: it is the 
important “Plus.” 
“Go into your favorite lunch-room some day and take your 
place at the counter with the rest of the line. Then turn to 
the man at your right (or your left) and ask him to pass you 
the salt. See what happens. First, he will pass you the salt¬ 
cellar, as requested. Then he will hesitate just the fraction of 
a second and invariably and inevitably he will follow by passing 
you the pepper, too. A man with a genius (or a vice) for sta¬ 
tistics tried it out for weeks. In 100 instances it worked ex- 
