30 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
in ;ui order being sent by mail to a catalog or mail order 
concern. 
The traveling salesman has come in for a great deal 
of abuse and ridicule from many sources, but if you 
study the cause, you will discover that the fellow with 
the hammer usually has advertising space to sell or con¬ 
ducts a mail order house with no agent. A great deal of 
complaint is also made against traveling agents because 
stock arrived in poor condition or failed to grow and 
sometimes proved untrue to name, but if this is analyzed 
it will be readily seen that the agent was not the one to 
blame. A salesman cannot purify the methods and poli¬ 
cies of his concern or employer, although he has often 
been compelled to shoulder the blame and abuse that 
rightfully belonged to the nursery which he represented. 
Retail men have been endeavoring to improve the class 
of salesmen that they employ, and the present day sales¬ 
men employed in the nursery business I believe will com¬ 
pare in character and business ability very favorably 
with those engaged in other lines. Put your nursery 
business on the same standard of ethics and practice 
that those engaged in other lines have done, and you will 
have no trouble in securing a type of salesmen that will 
be a credit to the business. We need publicity to sell 
our wares, but above all, we need the traveling sales¬ 
man for without him we perish. 
It is irritating to note the attitude displayed by many 
of our high class farm papers toward the “nursery 
agent” as he is called; they never say anything good 
about him and hold out no encouragement to any bright 
young man contemplating taking up the selling of nur¬ 
sery stock as an occupation. The nursery agent, in their 
opinion, is a black-leg and the business is not elevating; 
he is pictured as a liar, a confidence-man, a holdup ar¬ 
tist, in fact, anything but a gentleman. Why is this—- 
is there any reason for it? Perhaps in olden days the 
character of the average nursery salesman might have 
been questioned. I have heard many derogatory stories 
about the pioneer nursery agent, but those fellows are 
not with us now. Nurserymen are just as anxious to 
employ energetic and competent salesmen, who will 
build up their business among their customers, as they 
are to employ competent men in the office or in the grow¬ 
ing department. Honesty and efficiency are the corner¬ 
stones for any successful business and nurserymen real¬ 
ize that these virtues are just as essential in the sales 
department as they are in any other. 
I have had considerable experience with nursery sales¬ 
men and I have found that the man who produces the 
greatest volume of business is the salesman who takes 
pride in serving his customers honestly. Why should 
not the nursery business be as attractive to a young man 
looking for a position as salesman as any other line? I 
believe it should be, and more so, for the nursery sales¬ 
man is the means of causing more fruit to be produced, 
more beauty to be added to the home through the plant¬ 
ing of trees and shrubs, all of which makes a community 
a better place in which to live. More attention lias been 
given to the production of valuable fruits, beautiful 
shrubs and trees than has been employed in the dissem¬ 
ination and distribution of them to the public, but if the 
nursery business is to expand, the traveling salesman 
must come in for more encouragement and more protec¬ 
tion. 
The past two years has brought about a higher degree 
of standardization in prices and values, which of course, 
is encouraging from a retailer’s standpoint, and if stan¬ 
dards are maintained with honest values as they are in 
most other lines of trade, it will result in attracting more 
high-class salesmen, which means more planting by the 
public. 
I have studied the methods employed by both big and 
small business in regard to the successful distribution of 
their goods, and I have observed that regardless of pub¬ 
licity, regardless of the public demand for everyday ne¬ 
cessities and non-essentials that the last trump card to 
be played in the making of a deal big or small is to send 
a man direct to the buyer to secure if possible his name 
on the dotted line. 
Every man within the hearing of my voice lias ex¬ 
pended from $100 to perhaps several thousand dollars 
during the past year for something that he would not 
have purchased if some salesman had not visited him 
and sold it to him. 1 might mention hundreds of great 
companies and corporations, many of whom have a mon¬ 
opoly of the goods that they manufacture, all of them 
buying expensive space in newspapers, periodicals and 
magazines, but they all employ traveling salesmen who 
sell the greatest part of their output. 
Gentlemen, the future success of our business depends 
entirely upon making the nursery agent’s job an attrac¬ 
tive and honorable profession. We must protect him by 
standardizing our prices, improving our methods and 
by eliminating every questionable practice that can pos¬ 
sibly exist in the nursery business. We need the nur¬ 
sery salesman, he is our one and only hope. Build your 
business around him and it will be a success. 
PENNA. NURSERYMEN MEET 
The annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Nurserymens 
Association was held at Harrisburg, Pa., on Thursday 
January 27th. 
Through the courtesy of Mr. Klugh of the Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture, a dinner was arranged to be ser¬ 
ved at the Elk’s Club at 1 p. m. to the visiting nursery¬ 
men, after which they met in executive session at the 
Y. M. G. A. building. 
The meeting was opened by Robert Pyle, the president 
of the Association. 
The meeting was well attended by the members and in, 
many cases there were several representatives from one 
firm. 
At the executive session routine business was trans¬ 
acted ; reports of the Secretary and Treasurer were read 
and the chairmen of the Executive and Legislative com¬ 
mittees gave verbal reports of the activities of the com¬ 
mittees since the last yearly meeting. 
Wm. Worrell Wagner of the Overbrook Nurseries and 
Thomas J. Lane, Dresher, Pa., were new members elect¬ 
ed. 
The following officers were elected: President, Albert 
F. Meehan, Dresher, Pa.; Vice President, B. F. Barr, 
Lancaster, Pa.; Secretary, Henry T. Moon, Morrisville, 
Pa.; Treasurer, Thomas Rakestraw, Kennett Square, 
