Cbe IRatlonal IRutwyman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXIX. HATBQRO, PENN A., NOVEMBER.1921 N^TTl 
Southwestern Association of Nurserymen 
Address of President J. M. Ramsey, Austin, Texas, Dallas, Texas, Sept. 27, 1921. 
Your officers and members of the Executive Commit¬ 
tee have been reasonably active this year, and I believe 
an increased membership and attendance and greater 
interest in our Association will be the result. 
Our meetings are for pleasure and profit. I do not feel 
the necessity of talking about the pleasures that come 
to us in our business life or that attend our annual con¬ 
ventions, but of that thing with which few of us have 
had to deal in many years, which perhaps we desire 
above most other things just now— PROFIT. 
I would not exchange the satisfaction a nurseryman 
should have in the realization of true service rendered 
to his fellow man for all the profit of the world, but I 
would like to see added to that satisfaction a safe bank 
balance, that will take care of the emergencies of life 
and allow some of the material benefits and comforts 
that the ordinary, successful manufacturer or business 
man and his family enjoy. 
We are all successful enough growers and propaga¬ 
tors of trees and plants, but most of us are very poor 
sellers or distributors. Witness the cut throat prices 
very often offered about the middle of the season, and 
the huge brush piles following in the spring in spite of 
them. Prices below the cost of production and handling, 
which do not allow a fair margin of profit, never paid 
a nurseryman. 
I cannot help but compare the Florist and the Nursery¬ 
man. 
Mr. Florist sells the flowers of American Beauty 
Roses at from $5.00 to $25.00 a dozen, according to the 
time of the year. 
Mr. Nurseryman sells American Beauty Rose bushes, 
that will produce a dozen handsome roses apiece the 
first year and more as the years go by, for $5.00 to $10.- 
00 a dozen. 
Mr. Florist sells a small box of flowers that will bring 
fragrance and cheer to a room for two or three days, 
while for the same money Mr. Nurseryman will sell a 
dozen fruit trees that will produce luscious peaches, 
pears, plums, apples or figs from ten to twenty years and 
yield two hundred bushels of fruit. 
The census of 1910 showed the total value of nursery 
products in the United States to be $21,051,000 and the 
florists’ products $34,872,000. The florists did 65 per cent 
more business than the Nurserymen, and for two 
reasons I feel sure that the census of 1920 will show a 
still greater increase in the florist’s business. These 
reasons are: 
1. The slogan of the Florists: “SAY IT WITH 
FLOWERS,” which does not need to be discussed. 
2. The fact that since 1910 so many people have left 
the country that now more than fifty per cent of the 
population of the United States live in the cities (not in¬ 
cluding towns). 
We wish all success to the florists and congratulate 
them on their cooperation and education of the public 
to use their goods. 
Every one naturally loves flowers, and the florists, 
have taken advantage of this natural God-given trait! 
It is true that they can reach the larger city population 
more easily and readily than the nurserymen can reach 
the rural districts. 
But every one naturally loves to plant a tree or flow¬ 
ering shrub, and likes some kind of fruit, which is 
Nature’s cure for many physical ills, and yet we have 
not taken advantage of this natural propensity of every 
human being, except in a very small way. 
If we can not at once have organized publicity and 
cooperation to the end of making active the natural, 
though perhaps dormant, desire and love to grow trees 
and plants, then let us stress these things ourselves in¬ 
dividually. 
Beside the love of the beautiful, the nurseryman, who 
sells fruit trees, has other more powerful influences, 
which he has never sufficiently used. I refer to the ap¬ 
petite and the pocket book. 
Our literature and advertisements should arouse the 
appetite and show how a fruit tree or vine will bring 
gold out of the soil, black, sandy, limestone, bottom, 
hill-side, or up-land. 
Advertise fruit trees at twenty cents, and sell them at 
twenty cents, and go to the poor house, or work your 
family like slaves, and deny your children the benefits 
of the best education, travel', and other fine things of 
life. . . .if you want to. 
But let me tell you if you will put quality into your 
trees and plants and tell about it, and sell at a figure 
that more than covers cost, you will sell more trees and 
make more money, and render your customers one hun¬ 
dred per cent better service for the money. 
Some nurserymen have been growing almost ex¬ 
clusively the same varieties for ten and twenty years. 
This is a mistake. There are many newer varieties of 
recent introduction surpassing others of similar type, 
that people should have. I do not approve reckless intro¬ 
duction of untried kinds, but in the name of progress 
we should be finding and developing new varieties of 
fruits, for they are to be found and developed. 
I dare say there is a much larger proportion of city 
people who buy cut flowers than of farmers who buy 
fruit trees. 
Have any of your agents this year reported poor 
