2:50 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
moss,” I will also remark a “setting hen never gets fat,” 
and about all there is to the nursery game is experience, 
as a rolling stone I may have been hut the experience in 
the game I feel has more than repaid me and I have 
rolled about my last roll, as I have rolled into the para¬ 
dise of the great Northwest and rolled into one of the 
greatest nursery concerns in the world. From the view- 
])oint of a foreman, I often wonder how- he lingers 
through life as his salary or compensation is small com- 
])ared with other professions. Most any trade can be 
learned in from two to four years as an ap{)rentice and 
then they can command the highest w-ages the profession 
j)ays. Not so in the case of the nurseryman. He serves 
liis life out as an apprentice for the reason his })rofession 
or trade cannot he mastered in one’s lifetime. In other 
words, at the end of his career he may not he drawing 
th(‘ salary of the man in some other line or trade who 
has not put in one-lifth the time in his game that the nur¬ 
seryman has in his. 
Sometimes I think our employers also get set in their 
ways to a certain degree, the same as their foreman. As 
far as grow ing stock superior to other nurserymen is con¬ 
cerned, they should go slow with their statements. In 
reading over the literature and advertising matter of some 
of the nurseries of the country you would almost think 
they were the only concerns worth the patronage of the 
public. Better hack up. You can’t he it all—you can’t fool 
them all. The nurseryman of the balmy South can’t grow 
many things successfully as the Northern nurseryman, 
and the Northern nurseryman can’t successfully grow^ 
many things his Southern brother can. In the nursery 
game, as in any other, wt. should all remember there are 
others. 
I am positive in my assertion that the nursery business 
is different from any other business in the world, in this 
res])ect it is in a class by itself. I will say here without 
fear of contradiction that the nursery owners of today are 
the greatest gamblers in the world—not gamblers liter¬ 
ally speaking, hut gamblers with everything pertaining to 
I heir business. They gamble w ith over-production, with 
no production, with laboring men, with lahoiiess men, 
w ith the rain, with the sun and then their gambling is 
only begun. They gamble w ith the aphis, w ith the can¬ 
ker, with the crown gall, with the hanker; the game is 
just a gamble, gamble, gamble from one thing to another, 
hut wiien he feels his race is run he will feel better to¬ 
ward his brother. The above are only a few" minor ex¬ 
periences and troubles that the nurserymen of today have 
to contend w ith. The labor problem is one of the great- 
('st problems that w e have to contend with today. I am 
only speaking of nursery labor and my owui personal ex- 
perience since a hoy of seventeen during the last twenty- 
live years. I have handled many thousands of men, men 
of all creeds and nationalities, and have come to the con¬ 
clusion that this problem can never satisfactorily he 
solved. Speaking only as a laboring man myself, it seems 
to me the greatest enemy labor has is itself. I want to 
make myself clear. I am speaking only of the kind of 
labor I have emj)loyed in tw enty-live or more years and 
only in the nursery game. From North to South, across 
the country and from the (lenlral States to the Pacific 
Northwest, I personally don’t believe in a set scale of 
w ages in the nursery business for one reason there are 
too many different kinds of w"ork and for another. I think 
a man should receive rew"ard according to his efforts. 
If a man earns say, one-third more than some one else, 
he gets it and if the other fellow kicks he can get in the 
collar and get it too. 
I think it just as w rong for a nurseryman to hold back 
on a good man as it is for a laborer not to try to earn his 
w ages. The man w ho is willing can almost establish his 
ow n w ages in nursery w ork. I have never seen the place 
or time there w as not a job for a man that would work 
really hard. What constitutes a good nursery hand? A 
man that has practical honest-to-goodness experience 
and actually loves hard w"ork; if he has not got these re- 
(juirements then hand me down the man that w"ill listen 
to wdiat he is told and never talk hack, hake his brains 
dow n a hud row w hen it is 110 in the shade and no shade, 
w"ade the mud up to his hoot tops and no boots. Any 
man that loves hard work and lots of it and can show" 
speed makes a real nice nursery hand. 
I notice w e are now" entering on a new nursery era in 
the way of nursery help and that the nurseryman’s labor 
troubles are about over. In the near future all he will 
have to do to obtain the best of experienced help will be 
to pul in a long distance phone call to the nursery univer¬ 
sity and get it by parcel post. When it arrives he no 
doubt will have his hair pasted hack, have side boards, 
white flannel pants, spats, patent leather oxfords, and 
last hut not least, manicured finger nails. He would he 
w orth about as much to a busy foreman as a college in¬ 
spector in shipping season. I am speaking only of my 
own experience along this line. I have the first college 
man to make good in the nursery game and have em¬ 
ployed as many as any foreman in this country. 
I am not opposed to theory or a nursery school or 
schools, but believe the schools should he nothing more 
or less than nurseries and run by nurseiymen that know" 
the game, fostered by the different states and run only 
for educational purposes and not as competitors to other 
nurserymen. If a business-can’t be learned in a life-time 
by actual every-day experience w hen associated w"ith the 
best nurserymen of the country, then how can you ex¬ 
pect a young man to accomplish as much in a year or so 
in a college instructed often by a man that probably never 
worked a week in a nursery in his life, who could not 
tell a peach tree from a paw paw, or a leaf hopper from 
a turtle dove, or set two hundred buds in as many days, 
or put up a thousand grafts before Gabriel blow"S his 
horn? 
My advice to any young man with nursery inspirations 
is: secure a job w ith some good concern, forget that word 
snap, make up your mind, come wdiat may I w"ill spend 
I he rest of my life at hard w"ork trying to learn something 
about the nursery business. 
The nursery owners today may feel blue and gloomy 
ami the future look dark, hut there will come a rift in 
the clouds; there also may be a hand w"riting on the w"all. 
I imagine it will read something like this: Cheer up, nur¬ 
serymen, you are soon due for a lot of new experience 
in the nursery business. 
