THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
193 
been at Washington he could have gone to the zoo and 
proven the giraffe does exist also a Federal Horticulture 
Board, the latter strongly intrenched in the government 
of the United States which represents the majority of 
the people’s will. 
Doctor Marlatt showed wise statesmanship in arrang¬ 
ing a hearing before Secretary Wallace and exposing 
the lack of cohesion and unity among horticultural in¬ 
terests, including the florists. He proved the objections 
to the ruling of the Horticultural Board where very 
largely of selfish nature and that even the florists and 
nurserymen were not of one mind upon Quarantine 37. 
We can readily understand our critic saying, “We 
can’t see it.” Not having hindsight it is not to be won¬ 
dered he did not have forsight enough to advise the 
conflicting interests to get together and present their ob¬ 
jection to the Board’s ruling as a unit. We hold no brief 
lor the Horticultural Board, but we do recognize it as a 
firmly established department of the government, 
neither did we pass an opinion of the legality of the 
Board or the justice of its methods, nor did we get tan¬ 
gled up in our statements concerning it. 
ADVERTISING 
Address by Major P. F. O'Keefe, Boston, Mass., at the Annual 
Meeting of the American Association of Nurserymen 
at Detroit. Mich., June 28, 1922. 
Mr. President, and members of the American Association of 
urserymen, I certainly appreciate the introduction of Mr. 
Pyle, particularly that reference to my modesty. I do not think 
that the chairman, or the members of the society of Ameri¬ 
can Florists, particularly the Publicity Committee, would 
agiee with Mr. Pyle, because they think I am anything but mod¬ 
est. 
I came in here late last night from Boston, just in time to 
be present at the close of the banquet, and to witness the en¬ 
thusiasm over there at the Detroit Athletic Club, and I could 
not help but contrast it in my mind with my last attempt to visit 
this organization. Mr. Atkins suggested that I make a trip from 
Boston to New York, to attend a meeting of the American As- 
sociation of Nurserymen at the City Club, New York, and talk 
to them on advertising, and I very willingly made the trip and 
when I got there, after waiting around and cooling my heels 
thi ee-quarters of an hour in the lobby, Mr. Atkins came down 
and told me that they did not think they cared to hear from me. 
I hope you gentlemen will think, when I get through, that pos¬ 
sibly I had something to say to them. Nevertheless, I am never 
discouraged by any such thing as that, because in my business, 
if I got everything that I went after the first time I went after 
it, everybody would be in the business and we would have more 
competition than we have today. 
I was pleased to be at the meeting last night. There was cer¬ 
tainly a feeling of friendliness and good cheer that was re¬ 
markable. As Mr. Powell has said we have been identified and 
associated with the florists’ campaign from its inception, and 
I believe that I can say with all modesty, that we have been able 
to save them from some mistakes. 
When I went to Cleveland, Ohio, in December, 1917, to talk 
to the publicity committee at Hotel Hollenden, they had prac¬ 
tically decided on a slogan, which was, “Send Flowers, always 
a good idea.” I immediately recognized, when I heard it, that 
this slogan commerciallly was not of much value, and I sug¬ 
gested the slogan “Say it with Flowers,” and obtained the ad¬ 
vertising. 
We have gone along with the Florists at an appropriation so 
small that it is almost inconceivable. We have not spent in 
the four years we have been conducting the national advertis¬ 
ing campaign for the Florists, One Hundred Thousand Dollars 
in the entire four years and Mr. Simmons, of the Simmons Hard¬ 
ware Company, St. Louis, told one of the members of the pub¬ 
licity committee at one time, that if he could get a slogan that 
would do as much for his business as the slogan “Say it with 
Flowers” has done for the Florist trade, that he would give a 
million dollars for it and I firmly believe the slogan “Say it with 
Flowers” is worth a million dollars co-operatively, to the Florists 
of this country. There is not a man engaged in the business, 
whether grower, wholesaler or commission man, who will not 
tell you his business is from 25 per cent to 50 per cent more 
today that what it was before this national advertising cam¬ 
paign commenced, and in spite of the fact that we approached 
the campaign under very auspicious circumstances. 
While the war was at its height, when people were curtailing 
every possible expense, when flowers were in the so-called lux¬ 
ury class, when the Fuel Administration at Washington was 
curtailing greenhouse fuel 50 per cent, in spite of all these ad¬ 
verse circumstances, the florists’ business went ahead. I do not 
think any florist will deny that that was due to the advertising. 
But there is a misconception in regard to the definition of ad¬ 
vertising,, about the word, advertising itself, and the advertis¬ 
ing business. Now, I had palpitation of the heart this morning 
when I sat here and heard Mr. Lake describe the speakers that 
were going to follow here, that they come and talk to you and 
knock the nursery business and that they would tell you how 
to do business and that they might preach the millenium, and I 
made up my mind I was going to change my tack, and I tell 
you now I do not know a thing about the nursery business. I 
do know something about the advertising business, and if I did 
not, after 35 years, I ought to go into another line. I know a 
little about it, and I do not feel, gentlemen, any superior know¬ 
ledge on any other subject. I should like to say something 
about the advertising business, because sometimes putting one 
thing with another, you will get a combination that will prove 
of value to all concerned. 
Now, in regard to advertising, I do not think it is necessary 
for me to dwell at much length on advertising itself, because, 
while the business is comparatively new, while 30 or 25 years 
ago all the advertising successes that were made were made 
through newspaper advertising, while all the advertising suc¬ 
cesses that were made were made entirely by the patent medi¬ 
cine people, you can readily understand that the advertising 
business is still in its infancy and that it has tremendous pos¬ 
sibilities. And when you consider that the successful manufac¬ 
turer, the successful retailer, lays aside each year a certain pro¬ 
portion of the greatest volume of his business, all the way 
from 3 to 5 or 10 to 15 per cent, and that he lays aside that pro¬ 
portion as religiously as he does his apportion for electric 
light, for water, for rent, for health, for salaries, you can under¬ 
stand that no man who is making money and is going on from 
year to year successfully and making more money, more profit 
each year than he made the preceding years, is no fool and he 
is not throwing away his money. 
Now, gentlemen, as I stated before, I do not know anything 
about the nursery business. I am glad that there are no nur¬ 
serymen in the penitentiaries of this country, as Mr. Lake 
said, in some ways, but I am sorry in other ways, because I 
thought possibly if there were a few there, it might make the 
penitentiary more inviting and inculcate a love for the beautiful 
in the minds of the other inmates, so that they would want to 
stay outside and witness the beauties of nature in other envi¬ 
ronments. While I should like to see some of them there for 
that reason, I do not want to see anybody that is in this room 
there, and I think it is a good business to go into on account— 
it struck me—because it is a sure way of keeping out of the 
penitentiary. 
Now, gentlemen, in regard to advertising, you know the story 
of the successes that have been made by iarge national adver¬ 
tisers. We are spending today $250,000 for the Douglas Shoe 
People, Governor William L. Douglas, in the magazines. He 
spends a great deal more in the newspapers, but the magazine 
account is in our charge. You know the story of co operative 
campaigns, the story of the California Fruit Growers, the story 
of the California Raisin Growers, where they were, a disorgan¬ 
ized mass of farmers who tended their vines and waited, Micaw- 
ber-like for something to turn up, until they found at the end of 
the season, they had a lot of stock, that the Orange Growers of 
California could not begin to dispose of their crop; how they 
came together under the heading of the California Fruit Grow¬ 
ers’ Association and organized in addition the California 
Raisin Growers’ Association, the Fruit Growers’ Exchange, 
which did all the marketing, and you know and I know how 
successful they have been. 
We know the story of the California walnut growers, who, 
the first year when they had a crop, had a surplus of 40,000 
pounds of walnuts, that they could not do anything with, and 
next year, before they got their plans under way, they had 
100,000 pounds of walnuts that they did no know what to do 
with. People had been in the habit of buying walnuts at Christ¬ 
mas time and for the rest of the year they forgot all about it. 
They are going ahead today and they are selling all the walnuts 
