230 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
face, owing to the conditions that exist there now, that 
it would pay us to give this feature serious and deliberate 
attention. 
However, in our zeal for progress we ought not forget 
the struggles and trials of our brother nurserymen in the 
old world. It seems to me that it is a fitting time to 
extend our hands in sympathy to our fellow nurserymen 
in Europe, and to most earnestly hope that peace is not 
far distant, and that normal times and conditions will 
soon return to them as it has been with us in America. 
Ought we not be thankful that our troubles and wor¬ 
ries are local; that our zeppelin attacks are the Gypsy 
and Brown Tail Moth; our submarine campaigns the 
Woolly Aphis; our invading armies the Leaf Rollers and 
Green Aphis, and our accumulated reserves merely 
Kieffer Pears and Apples. 
Our opportunities for effectiveness and expansion were 
a Whitney with a few tools in a Southern cellar; a 
Howell with crude needles and shuttles making a sewing 
machine, and a Professor Bell, poor, experimenting with 
the simplest apparatus who have given an uplift to civil¬ 
ization. 
After one of Alexander’s campaigns, he was asked if 
he intended to take the next city, if he had the opportunity. 
“Opportunity” he thundered, “why I make opportunities.” 
So with our work, we must make our opportunities, and 
it seems to me that the conditions were never more favor¬ 
able. True it is that we try to look upon the ideal when 
we assemble here together, and the delayed shipments, 
the congested traffic, the late frosts, the hurry of the busy 
season, and the worry of the packing sheds are all for¬ 
gotten. But as Mr. Chase pointed out in his address last 
never greater. In horticulture and agriculture a whole 
great empire is yet to be won in the arid West. Vast 
regions must he fitted to civilization, “Not by imperialism 
which blasts, but by permeation which reclaims.” 
Ex-President Orlando Harrison, urged the training of 
young men from the colleges to take up our work and fit 
themselves for the duties that lie before them; so with 
us today, let us encourage every young man to see the 
opportunities that are before him. Let us bring to him 
the joy of our work and teach him as Lorimer the self- 
made merchant, who writes to his son at Harvard, “You 
will meet fools enough in the day time without hunting 
up the main herd at night,” for the nursery business will 
tax the efforts of every man and will leave no time for 
idleness. Ours is a great work, and the opportunities 
were never greater for individual achievement—“It is a 
Fulton with a paddle wheel; a Michael Faraday with 
bottles and tin pans in the attic of an apothecary’s shop; 
year, “There is nothing to be gained by worry” and like 
“Foot-prints on the Sands of Time” should be left behind 
us. Ella Wheeler Wilcox has very fittingly said: “ ’Tis 
easy enough to be pleasant when life flows along like a 
song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile 
when everything goes wrong.” 
Our organization has been made more perfect, our con¬ 
stitution and by-laws have been wisely revised, and our 
organization of co-workers have put their shoulders to 
the wheel, and I see great opportunities for advancement 
in our work. True we want the best, and there is warn¬ 
ing in the sound philosophy of the mountaineer when he 
was asked, where is the best hotel; “Stranger there ain’t 
no best I reckon, but the least worst is over yonder.” J. 
B. Mayhew and Henry Chase on our Fortieth Anniversary 
at Detroit last year blazed the way for a bigger and better 
American Association of Nurserymen with the sole ob- 
