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THE GLADIOLUS FANCIER'’S 

INTRODUCTORY 
A GAIN, this booklet is planned for you. 
It adopts your point of view. It gives 
% you hitherto unpublished facts upon 
which to base your own conclusions. It is 
not cluttered up with fictitious values. 
A small portion. of the information in this 
booklet is repeated from last year. In such 
instances, the data is still so valuable that 
we cannot possibly leave it out. 
This is our 17th annual catalog. While we 
have been trying for years to say much in as 
little space as possible, this year we must 
outdo our former efforts. For the most part 
we are eliminating mention of prize winnings 
in variety descriptions inasmuch as our re- 
cent yearly tabulation of prize winning vari- 
eties seems to present a better over-all picture. 
Undoubtedly you want others to admire 
your flowers, since appreciation of the general 
quality of your glads by your friends is grati- 
fying. Our greatest effort is expended to 
eliminate your spending time on inferior sorts. 
To accomplish this we do not restrict our 
data to our own offerings and the more you 
read in this Guidebook the more you will be 
convinced that here is a little “instruction 
course” on Gladiolus with an irreducible mini- 
mum of bias. 
For further valuable current literature on 
gladiolus, the one outstanding bargain is ob- 
tainable only through the Ohio State Gladi- 
olus Society, the only society offering a three 
Way combination membership including both 
the Canadian Gladiolus Society and the New 
England Gladiolus Society. For $3.25 —a 
$5.00 value. Past experience relating to 
early exhaustion of N.E. G.S. yearbooks 
dictates the warning that acceptance of the 
offer should be made before the end of Feb- 
ruary. For more complete information see 
our ‘‘Society Page’, page 34 hereof. 
Our business is growing by leaps and 
bounds. Our ability to answer correspondence 
on relatively unessential subjects has almost 
reached the vanishing point. We pack our 
booklet with many pages of answers to many 
questions we get nevertheless. Every question 
vital to the selection and growing of good glads 
we think we have already answered some- 
where in this booklet. 
In an unguarded moment three years ago, 
when we were still able to hire reasonably 
adequate help, we took on the non-lucrative 
volunteer federal job of chairman of our local 
ration board. Three times our area has been 
expanded until now. we cover 10 towns, sub- 
urbs to the south east of Cleveland. And no 
one wants our job. Now the gasolene prob- 
lems alone for 10 towns take so much of our 
time that this work, our modest attempt to 
do our bit in assistance to the war effort, must 
be our excuse (pardonable, we hope) for lack 
of reply to numberless communications. 
No longer are we able to delegate to others, 
even at double recently going wage scales, all 
the detail and manual work we hitherto were 
able to sidestep for here in the center of a vast 
war industrial area both farm and horticul- 
tural labor has disappeared. 
Horticultural costs have gone up and will go . 
higher. Paper and printing and cartoas, too. 
A grower-cataloger of bulbs has certain in- 
escapable costs: planting stock, use of land, 
its preparation, planting, cultivating, digging, 
hauling, curing, cleaning, grading, storage 
quarters, fumigating or other processes to 
combat insects and bulb diseases, advertising 
of one form or another, catalogs, postage, 
packing and shipping. There may be addi- 
tional items of overhead such as clerical, irri- 
gation, spraying, etc. 
Heavier buying of the newer sorts has eaten 
into what should have been retained for 
propagating reserves. Inability to get plant- 
ed much of the small stocks of the older sorts 
also contributed to our failure to offer top 
size bulbs of some varieties. Customers have 
been flooding us with orders (with check) 
against last year’s listings to establish their 
rightful priority to bulbs of varieties in scarce 
supply. This buying has depleted large 
bulbs of several sorts and has prevented us 
from listing any size of several others. 
However, we do not issue a fall list. But 
we do recommend that you place your order 
soon after receipt of this Guidebook to avoid, 
in so far as it is possible, the disappointment 
of sold out items. Especially as to seeds. 
This business is still competitive but prices, 
particularly on the cheaper ‘‘standards’’ are 
up a bit to cover costs. In order to reduce 
clerical work and the general confusion re- 
sulting from discount items and net price 
items, the discounts are abandoned but the 
prices of most of the newer sorts are reduced 
to compensate and in many cases are lowered 
beyond that point. 
Over the years we have built up an enviable 
reputation for generous filling of orders by 
medium of overcount, oversize, samples of 
new sorts to try, free bulbs for society mem- 
berships, free memberships and color charts, 
Cte: 
We appreciate receiving a portion of your 
bulb purchases. We do not necessarily soli- 
cit it all. By inducing you to seek society 
literature we deliberately put you in contact 
with the advertising of our ‘fiercest competi- 
tors’’—J. D. Long, Elmer Gove, Carl Salbach 
and a host of other long time friends in the 
industry. 

Copyright 1945 
HERBERT O. EVANS 
Farm, State Rout 9! 
P. O. Address, SOLON, OHIO 
NOTE—NEW POST OFFICE ADDRESS 
