Gbe national nurseryman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXXI HATBORO, PENNA,, NOVEMBER 1923 No. 71 
COST FINDING 
A lot has been said and written about cost finding in 
the case of nursery stock. It is difficult to arrive at the 
actual cost of growing trees. It is comparatively easy 
to find out whether a farm or field is profitable or un¬ 
profitable. Varieties are usually grown in such quanti¬ 
ties and in such situations that it is not easy to separate 
and apply the cost elements to different kinds of stock 
in the field. In all but the very largest nurseries, a single 
field or block will contain not only many varieties but 
several different kinds of stock. 
This matter of cost finding is always an interesting 
subject for argument; but the discussion it prompts is 
always academic: it settles nothing and arrives nowhere. 
I think that is what makes the subject so interesting. 
For the very reason that cost finding is always one of the 
live questions—some reference to it in the October 
National Nurseryman being the latest reminder—I am 
going to add my comment. The last word has not been 
spoken. And never will be. But I wish to lay down two 
propositions: 
(1) That finding costs for growing nursery stock, 
will benefit nobody; 
(2) That such costs can't be found. 
In other words, the matter resolves itself into a dis¬ 
cussion of the inutility of the attainment of the impossi¬ 
ble—to use a borrowed phrase. 
If a grower's apple trees cost him a certain sum per 
tree to grow them last year, that establishes nothing ap¬ 
plicable to any other blocks of apple trees. Nor anything 
with respect to that particular lot of trees, that can be 
used to anybody’s profit. A nurseryman may plant the 
same number of seedlings another spring with no assur¬ 
ance that he will dig anywhere near the same number of 
matured trees. The manufacturer who starts his season 
with so many hides, will always turn out approximately 
the same number of pairs of shoes in any other year, 
starting with an equal number of hides. That is because 
the relation of raw materials to finished product is a 
fixed ratio in nearly all manufacturing. The manufac¬ 
turer can control all the processes of manufacture. The 
nurseryman, like all agriculturists, is wholly dependent 
on conditions that he cannot control: weather, rain-fall 
and the seasons. 
Interest in cost finding seems to come from the idea 
that costs, if known, are in some way going to affect sell¬ 
ing prices. Well, they would not. And they should not. 
In the first place, your apple trees last year, cost you so 
many cents per tree to grow them; but you did not know 
that cost until your trees were fully matured, dug and 
under cover. A hail storm could have wiped them out 
at the last minute; loss of half the crop would have 
doubled the cost of the half remaining. Your trees are 
largely sold—that is, with most nurserymen—before 
their cost is known or can be known. Your sales are 
largely made in the summer and you are betting on the 
weather and growing conditions and accidents. The 
actual cost is known only after much of the stock -has 
been sold. And that cost, when known, gives you no as¬ 
surance that the cost of the next crop will be the same. 
It may be more and it may be less. The average price 
over a period of years with crops some distance apart, 
will show great fluctuations. All farm crops meet high 
and low prices and for precisely the same reason. A 
nurseryman can know, out of experience over a period 
of years, whether a certain variety or class of stock is 
profitable or unprofitable for him to grow. Nurserymen 
drop old lines and take up new ones. Their conditions of 
soil and climate may not be just right for some things or 
they may be at some disadvantage in distributing, that 
cannot be overcome. Cost finding is valuable only if it 
directs the propagating to profitable things and to the 
dropping of varieties that can be done without or bought 
more advantageously from growers with more favorable 
conditions for growing them. It pays to know what is 
profitable to grow and what is not, as compared with the 
production of those things elsewhere and under other 
conditions. 
Should the cost of production, even if known, deter¬ 
mine the selling price? I have said on many occasions, 
that I think not. You are selling something different 
from manufactured goods. You are not manufacturing: 
you are, in a way, creating something. Growing trees 
and plants is much more than applying labor to raw 
materials: it is something of an art. I do not think I am 
stretching the point when I say that the grower who 
produces a block of shapely and perfectly trained coni¬ 
fers, is an artist. That skill, that art, is entitled to its 
reward; and the measure of the reward should not be an 
arbitrary percentage added to the sum of labor and raw- 
materials cost. After all, a nurseryman does not sell 
peach trees; he sells peaches. He does not sell Roses; 
he sells color and fragrance and beauty in the garden. 
And my thought is that a fair price for those things is 
their value to the buyer; not their cost to you. Millet and 
Corot spent less for paint than it costs you to paint your 
nursery stakes. And they did not sell paint and canvas. 
Your lawyer charges you a hundred dollars to answer 
a question that takes ten minutes of his time; but he has 
invested money and years in learning the law; he collects 
some of the tuition from you and on the basis of its value 
to you. Nurserymen invest much money and many years 
in learning the nursery business; their investment is in- 
