THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
287 
seemed to be at hand for the inauguration of a policy 
that would gradually result in the exclusion of all for¬ 
eign nursery and florist stock.” 
Various appeals hy individuals and associations for the 
modification of these and many other apparent inequities 
proving ineffective, and the beneficial research work of 
the great institutions of America, such as the Missouri 
Botanical Garden in St. Louis and the Arnold Arboretum 
of Harvard University, having been either stopped or 
disastrously checked in so far as such operations are de¬ 
pendent on plants obtained from beyond the borders of 
the United States, the horticultural societies of Massa¬ 
chusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania called a Confer¬ 
ence which met in New York on June 15, 1920. At that 
conference there were present the representatives of 
forty-five societies interested in horticultural advance in 
America, including virtually all the amateur and scien¬ 
tific associations interested in promoting the study and 
use of ornamental and economic plants in the United 
States. 
The general sentiment of the meeting was in favor of an ade¬ 
quate and reasonable quarantine, but strongly opposed to in¬ 
equitable regulations, and to the practical imposition of an em¬ 
bargo against plants from abroad. The discussion showed great 
respect for the probity of the Federal Horticultural Board, but it 
was believed that this Board did not adequately realize either the 
ultmate result of the quarantine as enforced or the fact that the 
quarantine was in effect an embargo rather than a quarantine. 
The outcome of this meeting was the appointment of a General 
Committee, consisting largely of private individuals interested 
only as amateur horticulturists, which appointed a small Execu¬ 
tive Committee to consider the situation and to formulate a re¬ 
port and a definite plan of acion. 
This Executive Committee now deems it prudent and 
necessary to make this, its preliminary report. 
This Committee and those whom it represents agree 
that it is important to prevent the importation into this 
country of insects and diseases injurious to vegetation. 
It believes that necessary and reasonable regulations 
will be obeyed and supported hy all patriotic citizens, 
but that if such regulations prove, in practice, to be 
drastic, unreasonable and not actually essential to the 
end in view, and definitely damaging to the progress of 
horticulture in America, they should be modified. It is 
the function and purpose of this Committee to investigate 
and to make constructive recommendations in conse¬ 
quence of such investigations. 
Horticulture, this Committee holds, is an important agent of 
civilization. It believes that the love and cultivation of flowers 
and plants attaches men and women to their homes, and de¬ 
velops in them better and more stable citizenship. It is the hope 
of this Committee that the people of the United States, rich and 
poor, may be able, under proper regulations, easily to obtain all 
the plants needed to beautify their homes. 
For centuries the skilled horticulturists of Europe and Asia, 
through the assistance of their inherited knowledge and labor, 
working generation after generation upon the same subjects and 
in the same homes and establishments, have developed horticul¬ 
ture as it has been developed nowhere else in the world, and as 
we in our new country with our high labor costs and lack of in¬ 
herited knowledge have not been able to develop it. Thus Europe 
and Asia have produced and furnished this country with many 
beautiful, rare, and valuable plants. Under the present quaran¬ 
tine regulations those are nearly all barred, because under them 
only a limited number of certain arbitrarily specified plants can 
be imported. With the contemplated total embargo in force, it 
would never again be possible to secure for the Unted States any 
newly discovered, rare, interesting, valuable exotic fruit or or¬ 
namental plants, whether species or hybrids. 
It should not be difficult to show the necessity for 
modifying a quarantine which prevents the importation 
in any quantity of plants with sand or soil on their roots, 
no matter how carefully they have been inspected, fum¬ 
igated, and treated abroad, and yet which takes no ac¬ 
count of shiploads of soil brought in as ballast from any 
port, tropical or otherwise, regardless of the fact that 
this soil is never inspected, fumigated, or treated, and 
may contain insects and germs of diseases dangerous to 
human beings or plants. 
If, as we believe is the fact, a sane and efficient quar¬ 
antine is desirable, the officials of the Government owe 
the people a whole duty and not a half duty. A quaran¬ 
tine defined by carefully studied law and not by inciden¬ 
tal official regulations established under a broad law, 
protecting not merely through the exclusion of incidental 
plants but through the exclusion or treatment of other 
disease- and insect-bearing media, would, if properly 
proposed, be supported by the people. If the necessity is 
shown, we believe that the Federal Horticultural Board, 
or some other executive agency, will be provided with 
funds to establish quarantine stations at enough ports of 
entry adequately to protect the nation, and to serve at 
the same time the proper desires and convenience of its 
citizens. It is our confident belief that well-equipped 
and carefully administered quarantine stations should he 
established at a certain number of ports of entry, such 
for example as San Francisco, Seattle, New York, New 
Orleans, and Boston. Unless some such action is taken, 
the extension of the present system of exclusion by reg¬ 
ulation under a blanket law will undoubtedly result in 
the total embargo against further horticultural progress 
in the United States which the report of the Bureau of 
Plant Industry above referred to seems to have had in 
mind. 
Time has been lost and animosities engendered, and 
valuable imported plants and seeds have been destroyed 
since the quarantine became effective, because no well- 
prepared and adequate presentation of the facts has been 
made to the officials of the Department of Agriculture; 
and it is no reflection on those officials to propose for 
them assistance in the gaining of information, which 
must be gathered slowly, carefully, and at different times 
and places, to show the facts and the effects concerning 
this plant-quarantine which is so dangerously near to 
plant-exclusion. 
It is, therefore, the proposal of this Committee to send 
a capable investigator, furnished with all requisite en¬ 
tomological, pathological, and other expert assistance, 
wherever it may be necessary to gain information, inter¬ 
view individuals, compare notes, and obtain statements 
and affidavits, upon which the facts can be adequately 
presented to the Federal authorities at Washington. 
It is the purpose of this Committee, when such information has 
been gathered and when the law under which quarantine regula¬ 
tions have been promulgated has been carefully studied in con¬ 
nection with the situation, to arrange for such argument and 
presentation, in the belief that there should result a modification 
in some respects and an extension in others of the quarantine 
regulations tending to place horticulture once again on a firm 
footing with relation to the rest of the known world, and to 
make it possible for any citizen of the United States, willing to 
provide the necessary safeguards, to import such plants as he 
may reasonably require. 
To accomplish the objects above set forth, the Massa¬ 
chusetts Horticultural Society, the Horticultural Society 
of New York, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural So¬ 
ciety have made substantial primary subscriptions, be- 
