194 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
fifteen years, and that I very strongly urged you not to consider 
an advertising campaign unless you were prepared to stay by it 
for three years. 1 reiterate that. I do not think it advisable for 
you to touch it, you ought not to spend a cent unless the appro¬ 
priation that you vote, if you vote an appropriation, is one that 
you are prepared to vote for so much a year for three years—you 
can add to it if you see fit, but you ought not to start unless you 
are prepared to carry it through for three years. 
I said yesterday, went into it at great length, which I will not 
go into so much now, I said that of the twenty-three million fam¬ 
ilies in the United States there were a certain seven million who 
had per family $900 or more a year as a family income, and that 
to those people your message as an association, and to those 
people as individuals your message was to be addressed, because 
that $900 per year per family represented the line below which 
the family’s first problem is existence, and above which the fam¬ 
ily’s first problem is living, and if you go only to those families 
whose problem is living, you go to the people who have the means 
and desire to improve the conditions of living. Therefore your 
message should be addressed collectively and individually to 
those seven million families and that through the national ad¬ 
vertising you could easily reach anywhere from one to three fam¬ 
ilies out of the seven, and they not only are those commercially 
most worth while, but infiuentially they are most worth while, 
because it is among that particular seven million families that 
you will find all the sectional leaders in political, financial and re¬ 
ligious lines. 
I spoke yesterday about the small cost of doing national ad¬ 
vertising. I use for example my own house that has a circulation 
of a million and a half for the magazine; I refer to the ones go¬ 
ing to women. If I were to give you the mailing list and you 
were to buy post cards and mail one post card one time for each 
name that it would reach it would cost you $30,000 for the post 
cards, without addressing or printing. I said that you could make 
a campaign for $100,000 that would be larger than the average 
national advertising campaign, and yet I pointed out that that 
$100,000 that you would expend, let us see, how much did it 
amount to—half a cent a family, $250,000 per month, or half a 
cent a family per year. Half a cent a family per year, five to 
the family, that would be one mill per human being per year. 
That will give you a fund of $100,000 to spend, and that is about 
the average, and advertising national campaign is about $60,000, 
so that you would be considerably above the average, and yet 
you would spend one-half cent per family per year. It would 
cost you to send one postal card to each family $460,000 a year to 
send one postal card to every family in the United States once, 
it would cost you $460,000. 
Now, gentlemen, there is just one thing more, and I touch on 
that lightly, because I do not want to be misunderstood, but one 
of the great advantages of selling clothing, and one of the great 
advantages of selling paints and vaimishes and one of the great 
advantages of selling automobiles is that the purchaser of your 
commodity is a walking advertisement, for the goods. For the 
idea. The fact that the automobile drives up in front of the 
house and proclaims itself with its honking horn to the entire 
neighborhood makes its owner anything but dissatisfied, and it 
makes the owner’s wife anything but doubly dissatisfied. 
If you can go into any community and beautify that community 
and assuming that you are intelligent enough in the conduct of 
your own ai'tairs to make that profitable, but by the same token 
you are making it profitable to the man who uses your goods, 
you are making it profitable to the man who sells the lot after 
you have beautified it; you will make it profitable for the entire 
community; but, above everything else, gentlemen, on the top of 
profits you will have contributed in a very large measure to 
really making life worth while, because it has been pointed out— 
have you ever thought of the enormous increase in labor saving 
machinery in the last 100_,years‘? The perfectly amazing in¬ 
crease, the coming of steam, all these things, the electric power, 
all these labor saving devices, and yet as far as we can ascer¬ 
tain today, after 100 years of magnificent development of labor 
saving machinery we work harder than they did 100 years ago. 
Why? Because the standard of living has been raised. 
Advertising men were called by one man in a speech heralds of 
discontent. Let us see. You made us disconteirted with the old 
horse and chaise and sold us a one-cylinder automobile, and iro 
sooner were we proudly puffing wiih one cylinder, than you made 
us discontented with that and smd us a two-cylinder, and we 
were no soorrer proud owners or a two-cylinder car, than you 
heralds of discontent made us want a 4-cylinder car; and we iro 
sooner had a 4-cylinder car, when you made us want a 6-cylinder, 
and then an 8-cylinder and now a ten or twelve-cylinder car. 
And what will you lead us into next? Now, whether or not it 
is advisable to have a public bound to this higher standard of 
living I am not prepared to debate, but, gentlemen, advertising 
men are heralds of discontent. We plant in people’s minds the 
idea that a sun-baked gravel playground around a school house 
is an eyesore and a shame and we make them long for shaded, 
beautiful playgrounds. We make them discontented with what 
they have, and having made them discontented, having planted 
the idea of beauty in their minds, and primarily the desire for 
beauty, we make it possible for you gentlemen and the agents 
lepresenting you, to effect sales without any trouble, although we 
have never appeared in the matter. 
There lies before you then the opimrtunity to sell the entire 
United States of America an idea of planting, planting on the 
highways, planting in the parks, planting in their own homes, 
making this country beautiful, and I pointed out yesterday that 
you will have two million folks, two million young men back from 
France that are going to preach the idea of beautification archi¬ 
tecturally and in a landscape way. You never had an oppor¬ 
tunity in your lives to bring that home before, with two million 
unrequited salesmen who will say to the people in the community 
in which they live, when they read the brief which you set before 
them, “That is so,” and begin to take pride and talk about what 
they saw in France, and compare the conditions in France with 
what they find here, and to elevate the standard of living as it 
represents the real, genuine beauty of the surroundings and 
making life worth while. There is an opportunity, gentlemen, for 
both money and sentiment. 1 thank you. 
The Nurserymen’s Opportunity in the Reconstruction Period 
Address of Albert F. Woods, Pres. Maryland State College, Before the National Nurserymen's 
Association, Chicago, June 25, 1919 
I deeply appreciate the honor of being invited to attend and 
address this great national body of men. I am more than fully 
repaid for the trip by having the opportunity to meet and rub 
shoulders with the great plant and tree propagators of this coun¬ 
try. You are the men that start things. You supply the plants 
or young trees that, with proper treatment, give forth the fruits 
of the land. It is you who provide the plants and shrubs for our 
artificial decorations. How barren many sections of this country 
would be if it were not for our nurserymen! Yours is a business 
that is both commercial and aesthetic; yours is a business that 
