THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
249 
A Practical Business Meeting of Nurserymen 
Read at the Milwaukee Convention of the American Association of Nurserymen by W. H. Wyman, North 
Abington, Mass. 
I F it is to be worth while for nurserymen to leave their 
business and travel long distances to attend this Con¬ 
vention, it must be a Practical Business Meeting of 
Nurserymen. If it is not, it is not worth while to attend 
it. If it is not, it has departed from the serious purpose, 
had in mind by the men who forty-one years ago called it 
into being. Until very recently, I thing the tendency 
has been somewhat away from the practical business for 
which the organization was effected. We have, as it 
seems to me, allowed this gathering to drift from prac¬ 
tical business, too much to merry-making. Many of us 
feel that it is not necessary to travel several hundred 
miles to attend a vaudeville, or an orgie to Bacchus, and 
to indulge in many things we would not countenance, in 
the towns where we are known, and in which our child¬ 
ren are reared. 
I believe this Convention should strenously set its face 
against all this and place itself on record, as disapproving 
for the future, of anything in the way of entertainment, 
on the part of the nurserymen of the city or state in 
which the Convention convenes. It often costs more to 
entertain the Convention than the local nurserymen can 
well afford to pay; and all such entertainment is, per¬ 
force, perfunctory, and all are relieved when it is over. 
For one, I do not attend Conventions to be entertained, 
but to be instructed and to do business with men I can 
not as readily meet, in any other way. 
Can any of you imagine Thomas Meehan, Peter Ell- 
wanger, Patrick Barry, J. J. Harrison, John W. Adams, 
Jacob W. Manning, and others who have made their nur¬ 
series household names in America,—can you imagine 
those men coming together for such frolics as have to, too 
great an extent characterized some of our Convention 
meetings in the last fifteen years? If you can, I confess 
my inability to do so. So much by way of introduction 
Now to the real purpose of this paper. I believe one of 
the first items of business to which we should set our¬ 
selves is to work out a plan, as to how we can put the bus¬ 
iness upon a dignified basis. At the present time, there 
is no generally recognized standard of business probity. 
Each nurseryman has his own individual standard, which 
ranges from low F to high G. It will be found a some¬ 
what difficult thing to standardize the various products 
that we produce; but it should not be so difficult a task, 
to standardize the concerns producing those products. 
The Landscape Architects of America have an organiza¬ 
tion, that in a way, standardizes every one of its mem¬ 
bers. They have a code of written or unwritten laws 
which, if violated, subjects the membership to discipline. 
There is with them a standard of professional honor ana 
integrity, that is ennobling and wholesome. The very 
fact that an individual is a member of that federation ad¬ 
mits him to fellowship with all men of the profession 
however high they may be, in their attainments. 
Though I am not a mason, I presume that you who are 
masons, admit to your inner sanctuary a fellow man upon 
whose person is displayed the square and compass. It 
is not the emblem that unlocks the door, but that for 
which the emblem stands. So it should be with the 
membership of this, our national organization. Its 
membership should be lifted up to a higher standard. 
That standard should be one of quality and not quantity. 
The youngest and smallest should have equal standing 
with the largest and the oldest, if only they conform to 
the standards set. It should be that any man who is a 
member of the American Association of Nurserymen, 
should need no other badge to vouch for his integrity. 
A man or firm who does not grade fairly, honestly rep¬ 
resent his goods, do as he agrees, and pay his bills 
promptly, should not be allowed to continue membership 
in this Association. 
The Nurserymen—not the nursery stock this time, 
needs to be standardized. And in the setting of the stan¬ 
dards, many things should be taken into account. It 
should be our aim to put our business on a higher plant 
than that on which it now rests. 
Our products are hawked about in all sorts of places 
arid in all sorts of ways. One can purchase a given 
plant at any price ranging from five cents to seventy-five. 
At whose door lies the blame? Not at the door of all, 
but of some nurserymen. Nursery business should be 
done by nurserymen and men of kindred pursuits. It 
should not be allowed to be subjected to the degradation 
of the auction room and the “bargain counter” so called. 
The public would be better served if they had their hor¬ 
ticultural products dealt out to them, by nurserymen who 
were properly standardized by membership in the Amer¬ 
ican Association of Nurserymen. And I would make as 
one of the requisites, in that standardization, as a condi¬ 
tion of membership, that no man shall sell to any outside 
this Association, any nursery stock at a price, below his 
published listed prices. And in no instance shall any 
person or firm allow their products to be sent to any auc¬ 
tion room for sale. 
At the present time, if I am correctly informed, quite a 
number of the foreign nurserymen or their agents, that 
are coming to us for our business, are also going to every¬ 
body else and unloading all the stock they can dispose of 
at prices below which they are charging us for what pur¬ 
ports to be the same articles. Either this is true, or 
they are dumping goods not true to name, upon those 
dealers who are in turn, imposing upon an unsophis¬ 
ticated public. Probably both are true, with the result 
that the nurserymen and the public are the losers. 
The nurserymen lose prestige because the public knows 
it was some nurseryman who produced these goods and 
labelled them, and when stock proves to be untrue to 
name, and worthless except for the first season, the public 
concludes that all nurserymen are unreliable. Judging 
from this experience, they have a partial right to such a 
conclusion. Then again the nurseryman suffers in the 
loss of trade that should be his, and the ruinous waste¬ 
ful competition that some are tempted to meet, and which 
