e peddler" but I am going to say it if it breaks the
heart of every horticultural baby in the land. Since a time to which the
memory of man runneth not back, the poor "tree peddler" has been abused
and maligned by horticultural speakers and writers. In conventions he
has been ridiculed and denounced. Every cross-road nursery-man not
possessed of stock sufficient to warrant a line of advertising even in
his local paper, nor business force enough to send an agent through his
own neighborhood to take orders for trees, has spoken in a horticultural
meeting or written a letter to his favorite paper, warning the farmers
against the wiles of the oily tongued fellow with colored fruit plates,
specimens of preserved fruits, and an order book for trees, shrubs, and
vines. And I think I have known of some of the big fish in the nursery
business who with one end of their tongues have lashed some other big
fish in the same business for employing irresponsible agents to sell
stock for them, while with the other end they were commanding a small
army of the same class of agents to go forth into all the world and
preach the gospel of tree planting and--sell trees. Others have sold and
continue to sell trees to peddlers without limit, for cash, and of any
and all varieties called for, while they denounced the system of
peddling in unmeasured terms. Now it is just as possible for a tree
peddler to be an honest man as it is for the man who grows trees to sell
to be honest. I do not say that all men belonging to either class are
honest. It would be equally absurd to say that all of either class are
dishonest. I despise the quack, the liar, the deceiver in any business,
and I have no respect or love for the man who will sell worthless
varieties of trees or wrongly named varieties, knowingly. Honesty here
as elsewhere is the best policy. But here is a fact, as I believe: It is
better to plant an inferior tree than none at all, and I know of
neighbors who would go down into their graves without ever planting a
tree if some persuasive peddler had not talked it into them to do so,
and these same neighbors now have quite respectable orchards. Here is
another fact: One half the orders sent to nursery-men by farmers during
the past twenty years have called for varieties utterly worthless for
the localities in which they were to be planted. And the tree peddler
often gratifies the purchaser by pretending to sell to him a sort which
he has made up his