98 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
JOHN LEWIS CHILDS 
Jolin Lewis Childs, Floral Park, L. I, N. Y., died sud¬ 
denly of heart disease March 5th while on the train be¬ 
tween Albany and New York. 
Mr. Childs was more closely identified with the florist 
and seed trade rather than the nursery trade. He was 
sixty-four years old. 
Beginning with a small rented place of a few acres 
about 1874 he built up an immense business which at 
I he present time is the chief industry of an entire village. 
His name is associated with horticulture over the entire 
country, we might say the world. 
MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 
Department of Pomology 
Amherst. 
February 9, 1921. 
Stark Brothers’ Nurseries, 
Louisiana, Missouri. 
Gentlemen:— 
1 beg to acknowledge with thanks the return of the 
question blank which I sent to you some days ago re¬ 
garding your sales of peach trees. 
In reply to your question as to the decrease in bearing 
peach trees I am sure that there are much fewer trees in 
the country than there were five years ago. The reports 
of the 1920 census so far made public seem to indicate 
pretty nearly a 50% decrease and I feel sure that the 
complete returns will show at least a 30% decrease for 
I he whole country. 
Sincerely, 
(signed) J. K. Shaw, Horticulturist. 
delivery in compliance with regulations, to safeguard 
against loss. 
G. L. Marlatt, 
Chairman Federal Horticulture Board. 
Nursery, Mo., February 26th, 1921. 
The National Nurseryman, 
Flourtown, Pennsylvania. 
Gentlemen:— 
We thought possibly that a news item that we noted in 
the Calhoun Herald of Hardin, Illinois, in their February 
10th edition, an editorial or news item could be published 
which may be of interest to the general nursery trade at 
this time. The item reads as follows:— 
“A gqocl number of Calhoun’s orchard owners have learned 
the art of grafting fruit trees and are raising their own Apple 
trees from seedlings. Many thousands of trees will be set out 
this spring and nearly every orchard owner in the country will 
be his own nurseryman hereafter. About 20,000 roots were re¬ 
ceived by farmers in the vicinity of Hardin the past ten days.” 
This is one of the reasons why the sale of nursery grown Ap¬ 
ple trees is not better than it is. The fruit growers of Calhoun 
County who have purchased seedlings from some of our brother 
nurserymen who are in the seedling business, and we under¬ 
stand in a recent correspondence with a nurseryman from that 
County, that there are some of our association members selling 
Apple grafts to these same orchardists and farmers. 
Can we expect anything but ruinous prices to the grower of 
fruit trees, if members of our association persist in such un¬ 
ethical practises? The excuse made by some of these seedling 
growers and sellers of Apple grafts, is that there is only a small 
proportion of these seedling grafts that mature to first class 
stock. But this is not the question. It kills the business of sell¬ 
ing many thousand trees in that County this year. If the fruit 
grower sat down and figured a little, he would realize that it 
would be cheaper for him to pay the nurserymen a fair price 
for a strictly first class article and plant it now and have his 
trees approach bearing age by the time his stock is ready to 
plant into orchard. 
The fruit growers we notice have not kicked about the high 
prices they have been receiving for their fruit, but when the 
nurserymen must charge more for his trees on account of his 
much larger over-head expense, he is unwilling to grant the nur¬ 
serymen a reasonable return on his investment. 
Yours truly, 
H. J. Weber & Sons Nursery Co., 
per F. A. Weber, Sec’y and Treas. 
THE NURSERY TRADE 
Editor, The National Nurseryman, 
Flourtown, Pa. 
The Federal Horticultural Board learns that Holland 
nurserymen are flooding the country with telegrams in¬ 
dicating that anyone can import ornamentals in any 
quantity up to June next and are urging cabling of or¬ 
ders. Importations are not permitted except in accord¬ 
ance with regulations and only under special permit for 
specific reproduction purposes. Purchases made under 
the belief that freedom of purchase is now allowed will 
result in rejection of the material at port of entry and a 
loss to the purchaser. 
Furthermore importations under existing special per¬ 
mits from Holland are coming in with much earth around 
the roots, necessitating the rejection of such species. 
Purchasers from Holland should condition payment on 
Our well intentioned friends have put us on the defen¬ 
sive, which is equivalent to making us admit we were all 
wrong, and so have placed the Nursery Trade in the posi¬ 
tion of assuming responsibility for all acts against bus¬ 
iness morality of a few of its members. 
The Nursery Trade was foolish to take the matter so 
much to heart, or to attempt to feel responsible for them 
in any way except to repudiate them. 
There is nothing unusual in the innocent suffering for 
the guilty, that seems to be a condition of our social 
fabric. 
The renegade church member is held up as a sample 
of what church members are. 
The crooked politician has brought distrust into the 
very name of politics and so all along the line where it 
is possible to speak of men as a group. 
Those with an axe to grind or a selfish interest to push 
