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20 the most conservative men in the trade, and therefore the most difficult of approach) gave me orders for William K. Harris and Robert Craig. My gain was twofold; I did the business I aimed at and made acquaintance with men who in all likelihood would perhaps never have given me a chance in the supply line. I began to acquire new customers, men whom I had never met before. And whereas in former years I had confined myself to the stores exclusively, now I found it necessary to make the outskirts of the cities to visit greenhouses. Naturally this took more of my time; but time did not count so long as it paid. I was perfectly satisfied with my results, and the future looked bright and promising.

The Department Store on Handling Florists' Stock

Twenty years ago the horticultural business was exclusively in the hands of florists. Department stores had not as yet entered the field. It was John Wanamaker, of Philadelphia, who first conceived the idea of adding a line of foliage plants to his numerous other lines. The older florists may remember that a prominent concern in Philadelphia refused to sell to him, and by doing so enhanced its standing among the florists, the impression going abroad that the concern safe-guarded the florists from the invader, or invasion into a line belonging exclusively to them. Nothing daunted, however, John Wanamaker's buyer turned to William K. Harris and purchased a lot of plants. I never knew of this incident until I reached Cincinnati. In that city I learned it for the first time in this manner: Approaching a prominent florist one fine morning with a line of Areca lutescens, which I was told he could use, I informed him that I represented a house whose stock I knew would please him.

"And whose house is that?" he inquired.

"William K. Harris, of Philadelphia," I replied promptly, taking it for granted that the very name would insure an immediate order.

To my great surprise, he blurted out:

"You may as well save your time and breath. I wouldn't buy from William K. Harris if I could not get a plant anywhere else in the world!"

"What's the trouble?" I asked.

"Any concern that sells a department store need expect no trade from florists. Why," he added after a moment, "the florists of Philadelphia itself have boycotted him!"

This incident gave me a new point of view, however, and for a while I was somewhat guarded and abstained from mentioning the name of Wm. K. Harris wherever I deemed it wise not to do so. Here again I must refer to the character of the man whom I admired so much. He could foresee things which were to happen in the near future, and like all great men in advance of their times was bound to be misunderstood and condemned for a while by his contemporaries. The fact that one large concern refused to sell to a department store he well knew would not deter the department stores from entering the field of horticulture if they found it to their advantage to do so. When John Wanamaker came to Mr. Harris's place to purchase rubber plants, Pandanus Veitchii, Arecas, and so on, he could see no reason why John Wanamaker's money should be powerless to purchase his plants. As he later told me himself, the florist business, like any other, is a matter of dollars and cents, and not sentiment; and you cannot draw the line against a department store any more than a department store can draw the line against the florist handling jardinières or other paraphernalia handled by department stores.

"The time will come, and very soon, too," he said, "when every grower will be only too glad to market his output wherever marketable. The fact that I am the first one to sell to a department store may help some for the time being; but they