82 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
actly 101 times, the discrepancy occurring when two men 
offered him the salt and pepper at once. There is a reason 
why one finds it difficult to pass the salt singly and alone. There 
is an affinity between pepper and salt. We have heard them men¬ 
tioned together since earliest childhood. Even the tailor em¬ 
ploys the words in conjunction and you know exactly what he 
means by a pepper-and-salt suit. They are always on the table 
together; their containers are almost identical; they go to¬ 
gether. Pepper and salt are automatically one: they simply go 
together and that is all there is to it.” 
Now what I mean is that goods and service are inseparably 
Joined and joined in the interest of both buyer and seller. 
Service is a thread-bare word. It is common in the mouth. 
It is an over-worked word, although its idea cannot be over¬ 
worked. I do not mean that nurserymen are not rendering real 
service and honest service in their business. They are, because 
few merchants have service so constantly demanded of them. 
Few merchants are so often asked for advice and information. 
When you buy almost anything, you know what you want; but 
few people know exactly what they want when they come to 
you to buy your trees and plants. And so they ask your advice. 
You give it freely and usually without pay. If you go to a lum¬ 
ber-merchant to buy timbers and boards and shingles for a new 
house, he sells them to you; but he doesn’t throw in building- 
plans and specifications for your house nor does he supervise its 
building, and above all, he doesn’t undertake to warrant that 
it won’t burn down. But you are asked to do the corresponding 
things for the price of your goods. You render service with 
their sale. It is proper that you should render every reasonable 
service before and after a sale, because whatever you do to make 
your goods more satisfactory and profitable to those who buy 
them must ultimately benefit your business. 
Some time ago my wife had trouble with her electric vacuum 
cleaner. It wouldn’t work. My wife telephoned the merchant she 
had bought it from and asked what the trouble was. Very soon 
a man from the store showed up, took it apart, extracted from its 
interior my pencil, half a dozen burnt matches and a few other 
out-of-place articles, put it together, tried it out and pronounced 
it was all right after seeing it work satisfactorily. My wife 
asked what the repair charge was. The man said. “Nothing.” 
That interested me at once and I asked the man how he could 
put in his time, representing money, to repair a machine that 
had been sold and paid for? “Well,” he said, “we sold that one, 
but we have others to sell. We can’t expect to sell machines 
unless they do the work. We’ve got to make them do the work 
they’re sold to do. That is what makes folks buy them.” 
Now, trees have got to do the things they are expected to do, 
just like the vacuum cleaners. 
I wish each of you, when you get home, would refer to your 
copy of the report of the 1921 Convention of the American Asso¬ 
ciation of Nurserymen and read again the address delivered 
there by former Secretary of Agriculture Meredith. It will give 
you a better idea of the great department to which your business 
is so closely related and over which Mr. Meredith presided with 
such ability and distinction. But what I wish you to read with 
especial care is this: the last paragraph of Mr. Meredith’s ad¬ 
dress and his parting message to you nurserymen: 
“There is this suggestion I should like to make you in your 
business: Why not, when you make a sale, follow it up and ask 
the man if he has pruned that stock at the right time; if he 
is using an insecticide; suggest that he spray that stock, and 
if it needs to be covered in the winter, drop him a note and 
say: ‘Don’t forget to cover up that stock you bought.’ It is con¬ 
tact with your customers, and many of the criticisms that come 
are no doubt because you know the growing of nursery stock, 
the growing of flowering stock, of roses and shrubs, is an intri¬ 
cate thing and buyers do not know about those things. And if 
I were in the nursery business, it seems to me I would put in 
a follow-up system and with every order I sold, I would keep 
up with that fellow, giving him advice: ‘Do it now;’ and that 
I would hold my customers and that I would get better results 
than otherwise.” 
Mr. Meredith said something there. He gave nurserymen some 
mighty good advice, definite and constructive. Mr. Meredith is 
one of our big, successful men. And what he said so forcefully 
cannot be made more emphatic by anything I could add. My rea¬ 
son for giving it emphasis now is the apparent response to that 
suggestion heard the next day in the annual address of the then 
president of the American Association of Nurserymen. The 
president said: 
“The nurseryman must deliver to the planter or to the trans¬ 
portation company, as the case may be, good trees in a healthy 
and vigorous growing condition. The nurseryman’s duty and 
responsibility should end there. He has already taken his risk 
with the elements and natural enemies for three or four years 
years in producing those trees. It is not up to the nurseryman 
to carry his responsibility on, over and into the back-yard of 
the planter.” 
While referring particularly to the matter of replacing stock, 
the concluding sentence is so broad and embracing and so gen¬ 
eral in its possible application, that, having the importance of 
an official pronouncement of policy on behalf of the trade by its 
spokesman, it might in the absence of qualification or objection, 
be reasonably accepted by the public as representing the attitude 
of nurserymen generally. 
“It is not up to the nurseryman to carry his responsibility on, 
over and into the back-yard of the planter.” 
I submit that it is up to the nurseryman to do that very thing. 
That it is in his highest interest to do everything that can be 
done to assist buyers to get the greatest possible value out of 
what they buy. And I believe that I speak the general senti¬ 
ment of nurserymen when I say that. No nurseryman expects 
every tree to grow, and he should not guarantee the trees he 
sells to grow, nor encourage buyers, in catalogues or in adver¬ 
tisements, to expect all of them to grow. But the nurseryman 
can follow up his sales, as suggested by Mr. Meredith, with ad¬ 
vice as to planting and pruning and spraying, even though such 
service is not called for in the order, and he should, and he will, 
if he is a wise merchant, do all that he can do to make his 
goods satisfactory and profitable to those who buy them. My 
vacuum-cleaner man didn’t tell me that he couldn’t follow his 
vacuum-cleaner into my kitchen: he came and showed my wife 
how to make it do what it was bought to do. And he was under 
no other obligation than that imposed by the best interest of 
his business. I believe he has sold several other vacuum clean¬ 
ers in the neighborhood since. 
After reading you what Secretary Meredith said about ways in 
which you can, with profit to your business, follow your goods 
even after they have reached the planter, there is little I can 
say except to elaborate somewhat on details and to inquire if 
extra service is needed. Is there any advice and assistance you 
can give to planters? Do they need it? 
I have read with interest and much surprise, a statement 
printed in Dr. Liberty H. Bailey’s Cyclopaedia of Horticulture. 
It is stated on page 2293 of Volume IV that of all trees and 
plants sold by nurserymen, it is probable that less than one per¬ 
cent arrive at an age to prove of value to the planters. Now, I 
quote that with surprise and also with doubt and questioning. 
The article is personally contributed by Dr. Bailey and signed 
by him. It is not the careless statement of an unimportant con¬ 
tributor. Dr. Bailey is not a man who makes statements care¬ 
lessly. Those of you who were there will remember Dr. Bailey’s 
address at the Niagara Falls Convention of the American Asso¬ 
ciation of Nurserymen in 1900. His subject was: “What becomes 
of all the Nursery Trees?” and one of his statements in the ad¬ 
dress delivered on that occasion was, that there were then in 
the nurseries of the country, twice as many apple trees as there 
were in all the orchards of the country. I do not recall that 
the statement was challenged. I have heard, or read, no dispute 
of Dr. Bailey’s one per cent, estimate in his Cyclopaedia. But 
here is one of America’s foremost educators, for many years 
Dean of the School of Agriculture at Cornell University, a man 
who has lectured in many places, the author of numerous books 
on fruit-growing, recognized here and abroad as an authority, 
who tells us that not one per cent, of what we sell proves of 
value to the buyers. I have not the facts or the figures to refute 
the statements quoted, but as to the one per cent., I should like 
to know where and how Dr. Bailey got his figures. And if the 
estimate is in any measure whatever indicative of the percent¬ 
age of mortality in the goods we sell, is it not something to think 
about? Is it not worth while seriously to ask ourselves—no 
matter what the percentage—if there are not things we can do 
that will help buyers to get more out of what they buy from 
us? 
Figures have been quoted from the new census that show a 
marked falling off from the figures of ten years ago in the num¬ 
ber of bearing fruit trees in this country. And I have seen 
those figures quoted optimistically and even exultantly by nur¬ 
serymen at times, as indicating a larger market and a greater 
demand for trees in the future. It is assumed that those trees 
will be replanted. But it might be well to inquire into the 
causes of that falling-off. It is not a normal condition and there 
may be a possibility that some part of the reduction may not 
be due to a lack of stock to plant. And if any part of it at all can 
be traced to discontent or discouragement with trees bought, 
then we should see what we can do about it. 
With every care and attention that propagators can give to 
their stock, it is yet true that when their trees are delivered to 
