THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
189 
Along towards the Spring he began to receive his stocks from 
France. The honest Frenchmen told him that they left over 
there in good shape and he had every reason to believe that they 
would reach this country in fine condition, because he had 
always found the Frenchmen wonderfully honest. The stocks 
arrived. They were not just as good as he would like to have 
seen the mahaleb, or some of the other stocks. He regretted that. 
He went over and slipped out one caution to the foreman and 
honest employees to be very careful, because this was going to 
be a banner plant, and he wanted everything to be in first class 
condition. 
As Spring wore on he found himself tied up in the office so 
that he could not give any attention to the planting. He called 
in the foreman and honest employees and instructed them care¬ 
fully about the planting. They must be very careful, they must 
see that the grafts were in fine condition and that the honest 
stock from the honest Frenchmen were in fine shape. He said, 
“Plant thoroughly, boys, firm the ground well and do everything 
up in first class shape. I am depending on you.” 
The busy season wore on. He worked 12 to 14 hours a day. 
Even on Sundays he had to work on the retail trade somewhat. 
He found a few buyers dropped in, wanted to look at the ever¬ 
greens and shade trees, and while he had been brought up to 
go to church, yet he could not possibly get away. He was 
working hard every day in the week. 
After the planting season was over he found, owing to the 
fact that the trade was hanging on longer than usual, he could 
not go out in the nursery, so he called in the foreman and the 
honest employees and asked them how everything was looking. 
They informed him that the grafts were 99%% of a stand, the 
foreign stocks that the honest Frenchmen had sent over, they 
had regraded them when they came and regraded them in the 
Fall and they had a very good stand; the ornamentals were fine, 
everything was just looking good, and he had a prosperous feel¬ 
ing. He ordered a Cadillac, when really he belonged in the Ford 
class, and did not know he was fooling himself. And he began 
to pay his Spring bills, which was a foolish thing to do—they 
were not due yet—but he felt so very good over the report of the 
foreman and honest workmen that he did a lot of foolish things 
early in the season. 
He had a little wife—and they are generally the boss and ought 
to be—and she suggested he was working very hard and that 
they ought to take a ride, and on Sunday they started out and of 
course they landed right in the nursery, as all good nurserymen 
do when they are out for a drive and he came to the graft field 
first and something had happened to the field The foreman had 
told him it was 99% of a stand and he found a lot of graft ma¬ 
terial rubbed off, the grafts were not doing right, some were 
sickly. He walked across the field and made up his mind that 
he did not have a good stand. He went over to the French 
stock; he found Mahaleb 33 1-3 per cent, stand, plums from 
France were not very good, the ones from Italy were not very 
good. He went over the Carolina Poplar and there was a stand 
of 11,999 out of 12,000. Nobody wants Carolina Poplar. The 
buds were not good. He went home leather discouraged. He 
called in the foreman in the morning and asked him about it. 
The foreman said, “Oh, Mr. Nurseryman, you are wrong, the per 
cent, is 90. I have carefully gone over it and I know just what 
I am talking about, and you know I am all right, because you 
brought me up. I have been here for twenty-five years and I 
would not lie to you on a bet.” 
The little girl sitting back in the office, who had been stick¬ 
ing around there fifteen to twenty years, after the foreman went 
out, said, “Mr. Nurseryman, what do you think about that 
stand?” “Well,” he said, “I can’t help but believe that the fore¬ 
man is a little off.’ She said, “I will tell you what, you send 
John out, John is an honest boy, let him count, he knows a lot 
about it, let him go over it and bring the counts to me and I 
will draw off the percentages and we will know just where we 
stand.” That is what every nurseryman ought to do. 
He acted on the little girl’s advice, he thought she was level 
headed, she had been his right hand for a good many years. 
The counts were brought in, the percentages drawn off and he 
found he had about 55 to 60 per cent, stand on an average. Some 
things were 33 1-3, some jumped up to 80, outside of Carolina Pop¬ 
lar and Van Houtii. He did not have a 90 per cent, stand in the 
nursery. That is the way he told it to me. 
He felt a little downhearted, disappointed in his employees and 
he naturally turned and looked over his office force, wanted some¬ 
body to confide in, somebody to talk to. In the other room, be¬ 
hind the glass partition was his son, just returned from college, 
an awful nice boy, well brought up, good fellow, loved by every¬ 
one, highly educated. He had taken the nurseryman’s course. 
He knew all about botany, horticulture, but he did not know 
whether an Elberta peach was propagated by budding, or whether 
it just growed liked Topsy. He had not learned that. Dad had 
forgotten to give him a practical nursery training and Dad had 
made a wonderful mistake. He had not said to the boy during 
vacation, “Take your dinner pail, boy, go out with the men. It 
won’t hurt you a bit, because I have men working for me just 
as good, some of them a little better than I. There are men 
who have learned the game from the ground up.” Dad had for¬ 
gotten that, so he turned away. He could not consult with his 
son, the one that he loved and the one he hoped would succeed 
him in his business. 
He looked over his office force, two or three boys, snappy young 
fellows, knew all about bookkeeping systems, know what the 
profits would be, they were good judges of bobbed hair, all those 
things, but they had not in the summer times gone out in the 
nursery and dug in the ground and learned something about the 
nursery game. Instead of that, they were playing golf during 
the slow season, or sitting with their feet propped up, growling 
about how hard they had worked during the busy season. There¬ 
fore, he could not turn either to his son or office men, because 
they were not practical. 
He asked his wife about it that night. She was a mighty good 
little woman, she had wound grafts for him the first winter that 
they were in business, she had helped him in many years, she 
had gotten up at 3 o’clock in the morning and cut asparagus 
and pie plant, in the early years, to take to the market to live 
on while their stock was growing; she was a grand little woman. 
It was about convention time and she said, “Mr. Nurseryman, go 
to the convention, because on the program they will have men 
to solve your problems.” He wanted his problem solved, he took 
her advice, he went off to some hot place and went into the 
convention hall. He was going to have his problem solved, be¬ 
cause he knew that the great association would put men on their 
program that talked about nothing but the nursery business and 
talked about the problems that the nurserymen wanted settled. 
He heard the speech of welcome. It was a very good one. You 
are welcome as long as you pay $6.00 a day and sit cooped up 
in a little room that is not big enough for a man to turn around 
in. He heard the president’s speech, it was absolutely all right, 
full of hope and courage, just what he needed. Then it was an¬ 
nounced that Mr. So and So, a great big man, a man that is 
known all over the nation—and the fact was, he was not known 
outside of the block in which he lived—that he would talk and 
Mr. Nurseryman buttoned up his coat and swelled up. He was 
going to hear something good, now he was going to get help. A 
great big stout fellow came out on the stage and he looked down 
his audience, and he began to tell them what poor business men 
nurserymen were; he told them that they were not recognized as 
business men over the nation, that they were just farmers, horti¬ 
culturists, that they had no system in business. He did not tell 
them that two-thirds of the business institutions of the United 
States are burdened down so with system that they are not de¬ 
claring dividends. 
This man was saddened, it hurt him. He had been brought 
up to respect the nursery business. His father before him was 
a nurseryman, he wanted his boy to be a nurseryman. The nur¬ 
sery business was a religion to him; it hurt him, gentlemen, 
it hurt him. 
Well, the next man on the program was a professor, a splendid 
little fellow. He told him about bugs that had existed in the 
United States for forty years, but they were now going to keep 
them out of Europe, they had started 40 years too late. He told 
them about the bug that stung Moses and Cleopatra, the one 
that Caesar had run up against, but he did not tell them how to 
get rid of it. He told them about root knot, did not tell why 
some inspectors throw out trees on account of root knot, and some 
of them tell the nurseryman that root knot does no harm. He 
did not tell them that the apples that won the prize at Paris 
grew on root knot trees, he just told them a lot of stuff but did 
not give any remedies. Mr. Nurseryman did not feel that he 
got anything out of that. 
Finally other members appeared. There was not a practical 
man on the program. Finally he heard sweet music and there 
came on the platform a group of men all dressed in white robes, 
carrying harps and wearing crowns and they told the nursery¬ 
men that they had been naughty, that they must do better, they 
must be purified, sanctified and saved, if they did not, they were 
going to be lost. He had been brought up to think that the 
nursery business was a respectable business, he had been a God 
fearing man, he had been looked up to in his community when 
any important questions were called up he was called in. He 
thought the nursery business was a good business. He wanted his 
boy to be a nurseryman; in fact, it would have broken his heart 
if his boy had talked about following any other business. 
