120 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
the transaction goes beyond the limits covered by the or¬ 
dinary catalog prices which provide reduced rates by 
the hundred or the thousand. 
3. (The most frequent case). In case of placing or¬ 
ders or making up estimates during the period preceding 
the issue of new catalogs (mainly in the winter before 
the spring catalogs have been received) when a change 
of prices from those given in the last season’s catalog is 
reasonable to be expected. 
I am sure that the landscape architects generally 
would greatly welcome a condition of things in the nur¬ 
sery trade under which the announced prices of the nur¬ 
serymen could be accepted at their face value, and the 
placing of orders could be determined simply with re¬ 
gard to quality of stock offered at the announced prices, 
with due allowance for questions of transportation, etc. 
Of course if a nurseryman finds that the prices which 
he has placed upon his stock when he issues a catalog 
before the beginning of the season are so high that he 
can not get enough business in competition with other 
nurserymen and that he can better afford to reduce 
prices than to lose sales, there must be some business¬ 
like and open and above-board method for adjusting his 
prices to the conditions of supply and demand without 
waiting until the issue of his next season’s catalog. I be¬ 
lieve that it is in the interest of the trade as a whole, in 
the interest of customers, and in the long run decidedly 
in the interest of the individual nurserymen, if any 
charge which he deems it expedient to make from his 
catalog prices in response to market conditions is made 
by publicly announcing a percentage discount from the 
catalog prices applying to the whole or a certain portion 
of the stock listed. I believe the announcement of such 
a discount from the previously announced catalog prices 
should be mailed at least to his regular customers and 
to those who are regularly on his catalog mailing list. 
When a request for special quotations on a list of stock 
comes to a nurseryman who is not in the habit of pri¬ 
vately bargaining over every sale but who handles his 
business in a modern and business-like way in the man¬ 
ner above indicated, I believe his proper answer is to 
mail a catalog with his latest discount sheet attached to 
it, or if the person who sends the inquiry is known to 
have the catalog and discount sheet, then merely to refer 
him to the prices so announced. This will reduce cler¬ 
ical expense and trouble for him and in the long run for 
his customers. 
If nurserymen believe that it would help them to deal 
properly with such situations, by avoiding a possible 
impression of discourtesy, I think it possible that a brief 
explanation of the matter might be agreed upon between 
the nurserymen’s organizations and the A. S. L. A., 
which explanation could be printed on slips or on post¬ 
cards and used in reply to these useless requests for 
special quotations. 
The sending out of lists to several nurserymen and 
the submitting and tabulating of special quotations on 
each list from each nurseryman consume so much more 
time and expense (in the landscape architect’s office as 
well as in the nurseryman’s office) than using catalog 
prices and published discount sheets, that a landscape 
architect would be a fool to do it unless he had reason 
to believe that it was necessary in order to learn the ac¬ 
tual instead of the nominal market prices of the stock 
he needs. 
But just in so far as a landscape architect has reason 
to believe that the prices in any given nurseryman's 
catalog, instead of being a reliable indication of the ac¬ 
tual market price of the goods, are merely an expression 
of hope that some of the plants can be sold at the printed 
prices-; then just so far the landscape architect will con¬ 
sider himself forced to ask for special quotations. And 
if any nurseryman finds, regularly and habitually, that 
he can not make a sale through landscape architects 
without cutting the prices in his catalog, and if he hab¬ 
itually does cut these prices rather than lose that par¬ 
ticular part of his market, it seems a pretty fair indica¬ 
tion that his catalog prices are too high for that market, 
and that he would do well either to scale down the 
prices in his next catalog, or announce a larger discount 
from these prices to landscape architects, or make up his 
mind that he doesn’t want their business. 
I think some landscape architects probably do act 
foolishly in this matter by gelling into a habit of sending 
out lists for special quotations without stopping to con¬ 
sider, in each case, whether they really have good rea¬ 
sons for the employment of what should be an abnormal 
method; and I should be glad to call the attention of 
members of the A. S. L. A. to the whole matter by means 
of a circular which the Committee on Relations with 
Trades might draw up after consulting with the Nur¬ 
serymen’s committee; but as I said in the beginning, the 
burden of securing improvement in these matters must 
rest primarily upon the nurserymen themselves. 
I am sending a copy of your letter and this letter to 
our Committee on Relations with Trades, and hope that 
something may come of it. 
Very truly yours, 
(Signed) Frederick Law Olmsted. 
25th April, 1921. 
Mr. Thomas Meehan, 
Dresher, Pa. 
Dear Mr. Meehan: 
In connection with the above correspondence I call 
attention to the following extract from a letter of one 
of the members of this Society bearing on the diversity 
of methods of nurserymen in selling through landscape 
architects: 
“The fact of the situation is that all of our 
northwestern nurserymen, including several from 
Chicago, have as many methods of handling land¬ 
scape architects as there are nurserymen. Some of 
them sell from standard wholesale catalogs, billed 
direct to our clients; others issue no catalogs ex¬ 
pecting us to send them lists for prices; some re¬ 
fuse to sell at any price better than retail; others 
refuse to bill to a private client and even expect the 
landscape architect to use this commission as part 
of his business income.” 
Very truly yours, 
‘ F. L. Olmsted 
