The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-17

 tomorrow with sublime Nature in It's primitive grandeur at Niagara The Society of American Florists and orr namental Horticulturists will Be there to hold their annual conventioe, ana with them they will have taken hun dreds of the most beautiful specimens of their art for exhibition. They are the, msn i, who nguratively paint the flowers and add color to the rainbow A great painter was once asked with what he mixed his paints and he la conically replied. "Brains." And so the difference between the splendid American Beauty Rose and its primal ancestor Is the mixture of brains which the florist has applied to wild rose. As one looks at the beautiful creations of the flower Kingdom the florists give us today he has to wonder whether there Is anything beyond them But | they hopefully answer that their art Is yet young. and that it has many beauties in stors for the future. The | in their march of progress toward the ideal in Horticulture.
 The peoples love for the art of God, l as expressed in the flower, costs them not far from s450o0,o0o a year in the l United States. There are nearly 10000 | florist establishments, and they have In | the neighborhood of 100, 900 square
 
 | houses. In 1889 there were only 700.- 900 flower pots sold in the United | States, By 1894 the number annually | manufactured had reached the enor- nous total of 100000 pots. Today the annual production of flower pots is estimated at i5,0o0.00o.
 Tn 1890 the largest green house in | the country had but little more than | four acres of surface In 1t. By 1900 I there were many which had ten acres in them, and one In Cook County, just outside of Chicago with fourteen acres | of ground under glass. Since then this great establishment has been eclipsed | in a number of instances There were | 42,000 acres of land devoted to con- | Tnerelal Horticulture ten years ago, and | 1t is estimated that the census returns l for next year will almost double that | figure.
 The flower habit has become one firm l ly fixed with the people of the United | States. Winter and summer in hard times as well as in good ones, in sea- sons of panic as well as in days of commercial repose the people continue
 to buy their usual number of flowers
 In the reports of the Florist Society 1t
 Is stated that the depression of last | winter not only did not affect the bus.
 lness of the florist, the nurseryman and the seedsraan to any serious ex-. tent but that new firms daily came into the field for business. Tho de- pression of 1903 affected the cut flower business rather seriously, but that was before the habit of patronizing the flower stores had become as fixed as 1t is today.
 The first green house built in this country on modern plans was erected in New York tn 17e4, but 1t Is gener- ally accepted that the florists industry Nyfp af hax xgip gained some commercial standing as carry as 1925. Tie progress of the in- dustry from that time to the present has been 6 steady one, until today there are not far from 10000 florists, whose aggregate annual pay roll for labor Is upwards of $5,e0o,000 New York leads the States in the area and value of florists establishments Pennsylvania follows a close second. and New Jersey and Illinois third and fourth. ,respec- lively.
 Prices of flowers have increased com sidsrsbIy In the past ten years. At the meeting of the Society last year in Philadelphia the florists were discuss ing the glass trust and its increase of the price of glass to them. One of the members made a very warm speech against what be called this iniquitous and arbitrary raise in the price of glass" Then another speaker arose. He said that he had a dream the night before, in which he saw the speaker who had just concluded making great speech against the glass trust and its raise of the price of glass. He said that a little later another speaker arose to defend the glass trust. who showed that the gentleman who had lambasted the glass trust, SO th orough- i ly' had advanced the price of his flow CTS to the consumer more rapidly than nA erIa &Ht.@ had AFy0 glass to him. This sally brought laughter from every part of the hall, but that part of the dream which re- lated to the rise in prices was so true that the, debate on the question came to rather abrupt end.
 The Niagara meeting of the Ameri-. can Florist Society will be its twenty fourth annual meeting. It was founded at Chicago in 1884. Prior to that time there was no National organization of any kind among the florists and gar deners of the country. Ore of the man objects of the organization at its found ing was to get some plan for the in- surance of glass houses from hail All florists. professional and arnteur, gar- deners. seedsmen. nurserymen, super intendents of parks, and the manufact-. urers of wares or supplies for florists use are eligible to membership. The organization of the Society was follow ed by the organization of the Florists Hall Association of North America, It was incorporated in New York. in 1Ss7 It now insures 27.000.o0O square feet of glass against damage by hail. and since its organization has paid over $l00, 900 in losses. It has 1,500 members and over S4o,oo0 in assets. with no liabil- ities.
 There are many societies which do not take in the whole range of flowers, but devote their attention to a single flower. The American Peony Society had It's birth at Detroit in 1908, and It's work has given great stimulus to the movement which has resulted in the popularizing again of this old-fashion- ed flower. The American Rose Society was organized in New York, in 1899, and it has done much toward the devel- opment of the rose. A regular scale of points for judging roses has been adopted and any one exhibiting eighty five points or more is awarded a cer- tifcate of merit h competitive exhib- itions size counts 15: color 30; stem 20: form, substance and foliage, Is each; The Chrvsanthemum Society of Amer lea is another organization devoting its attention to a singlo flower. and the present state of beauty of the American mum" Is a debt owing largely to their devepolment Of it and their adoption of standards of excellence. This society was organized in 1899 at Buffalo. The American Carnatdon Society, which has done so much toward making the car nation one of the most popular flowers of the day. was organized in IS91.
 All of these societies maintain stand ards of excellence and provide for the