Thursday, May 8, 2014
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Woodruff Seed Scoops - Lovely Utilitarian Things; Plus Company History
These have all the charm of the Russian nesting dolls! They turn up on ebay off and on, the ones below nicely showing their use.
I was happy to find out the Woodruff family was from Orange, Connecticut...my state. I found a few bits and pieces that fill in a good picture of the company.
S.D. Woodruff & Sons (Orange, Connecticut, later also New York City) from 1898-1937.
A great link with many photos adding to the Woodruff story is the Orange, Connecticut Historical Society site. I like to find things from Connecticut since I live there :-)
American Florist, Volume 26 - 1906 gives us some field photos and an ad.
"The company produced garden seed and became one of the largest dealers of garden seeds, selling both at wholesale and retail levels, in the east. They not only grew the standard varieties of garden vegetables, but have also done considerable experimenting and originated and introduced several varieties. These included 'Country Gentleman' sweet corn, 'Early Ford Hook' tomatoes and the 'Ensign Bagley' and 'Admiral Foote' potatoes." from http://www.saveseeds.org/'Country Gentleman'
Could there be anything finer than a perfect ear of corn? Over the years, different varieties have been popular at different times, but this one has held its own for the better part of 100 years.
'Country Gentleman' was developed to solve a problem in an even older variety called 'Shoe Peg'. The original 'Shoe Peg' was a very high quality white corn. It was sweet, tender, and very tasty, named because its kernels were tall and narrow, shaped something like a shoe peg. About the only flaw this variety had was that its ears were smallish. Seedsmen set to work to solve this problem, and Frank C. Woodruff of S. D. Woodruff & Sons came up with this variety in 1890. A year later, Peter Henderson listed it in his catalog. Even as late as 1932, it was still, according to noted horticulturist U. P. Hedrick, the "best of its type".
'Country Gentleman' grows about seven feet tall. It produces cobs that measure eight or nine inches long. Like the original 'Shoe Peg,' it has peg-like kernels that appear tightly packed on the cob, but not in even rows like most other varieties of corn. Today, 'Country Gentleman' is another of the many varieties that are disappearing from seed catalogs. Twenty years ago, more than 40 companies sold it. Now, it's down to half that many.
This obit says a lot...
Stiles D. Woodruff
Stiles D. Woodruff, senior member of the firm of S. D. Woodruff & Sons, Orange, Conn., died April 11.
Mr. Woodruff enjoyed comparatively good health to the last, although a sufferer with heart trouble, and had only been confined to his bed for a few weeks before his death. He was always an exceedingly active man, with a hobby toward selecting seed stocks, and producing the best of everything that he grew. One of his achievements was the originating of the Country Gentleman corn, which came out in 1892. He began his seed growing industry in 1865 upon his return from the civil war, and some of his early experiences make interesting reading for the present day seed grower.' The first seed crops grown were turnip, beet, parsnip, cabbage and sweet corn. The ruling prices for the first few years to the wholesale seed trade in 100 pound lots for turnip, beet and parsnip was 40 cents per pound. Cabbage then sold for $3 per pound, and sweet corn for $3 per bushel. Onion seed was grown shortly after, and then prices ranging from $3 to $5 per pound at wholesale were received by Mr. Woodruff for the seeds he produced. Market gardening was taken up in a limited way shortly after the war, and his records show some fabulous prices for vegetables. The year 1870 is recorded as one with a great drought, and wholesale prices this year were extremely high. Cabbage sold for $25 per 100 heads, sweet corn $5 per 100 ears, and tomatoes and lima beans $3 per bushel.
Mr. Woodruff confined his business to growing seeds for the wholesale trade until 1892, when he took into partnership his two sons, Frank C. and Watson S. The firm has been progressive and kept pace with the remarkable strides and advances that are general throughout the seed trade. Where pounds and quarts were handled years ago, hundreds of pounds and hundreds of bushels are handled now. The firm, of which he was the founder, makes a specialty of garden seeds in variety, growing extensively on their own seed farms such seeds as beet, carrot, parsnip, turnip, onion, tomato, sweet corn, etc., and they also make, a specialty of Maine seed potatoes and onion sets. They have seed potato store houses in Aroostook county, Maine, and have recently leased a large house at Queen's, L. I., where a large stock will be carried, in addition to their places of business at Orange, Conn., and New York.
Notwithstanding the fact that his business demanded close application to bring it to such a successful condition, Mr. Woodruff found time to hold many positions of trust, and he twice represented his town in the state legislature. Besides the two sons mentioned above, he leaves another, Robert J., an attorney, who is prosecuting attorney for the common pleas court, New Haven county, and one daughter, Mary.
And just for fun...go to rareseeds: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for a great page that shows many different corn seeds (including Country Gentleman, of course) but other cool, rare varieties like the Yurackallhua Incan Giant
This turned up at a UK sales site...The History Store. Nice design...lovely onion.
.Tuesday, May 6, 2014
The Send Out Sunshine Club and KMA Radio
After I posted a piece on the midwest radio seedsmen I found these photos on Ebay which prompted me to look around to find more on Mr. May. The article below from the Iowa Journal of History- 1944, covers it nicely. The radio station was the heart of a large social community whose influence made many isolated farm peoples days more socially connected, but also changed lives through outreach to shut-ins and the poor.
Was it Henri Matisse who thought he was going to be a lawyer, but changed to art? Mr. May did the same thing.
I admit, this post is more radio and history than seed and history :-)
Like Henry Field's Seed Company, theEarl May Seed Companystarted from a very small beginning. In 1915Earl E. May,a young man who had found the practice of law too dull for his active mind, came to Shenandoah and connected himself with the Mount Arbor Nurseries which were under thedirection of E. S. Welch. Probably he could not have found a better place to get a thorough nursery training and he soon decided that he wanted a seed and nursery business of his own. He was not long in organizing the company which now bears his name.
Twenty-five years ago, on January 1,1919, Mr. May took over the old Armstrong Seedhouse with the design of starting a seed, nursery, and landscaping business. He could hire only two people for his office staff, and together they spent many toilsome hours preparing catalogues, writing letters and soliciting potential customers. Today Mr. May chuckles when he recalls how a large eastern advertising agency in New York laid out the first selling campaign and how they vainly tried to sell seeds to the farmers with clever mottoes, flowery advertising phrases, and many other advertising stunts that were considered very effective in those days.
The growth of the business was gradual. Mr. May often had to depend more on his indomitable courage and faith than on the actual business increases. Almost singlehanded he took care of the business the first few years, filling orders, managing correspondence, and all the time wondering how he was going to pay the bills for the catalogues and advertising. At first it was an uphill fight, but Earl May had courage and ability. The policy of giving service in a prompt, efficient way and supplying only quality nursery stock and seeds gained the company added customers and friends each year, so that the volume of the business grew slowly but steadily.
In 1924, when radio was considered as a hobby, or at best a means of entertainment, Earl May, like Henry Field, realized that it could be used as a means of education and publicity in order to bring to the attention of thousands of people interesting facts about planting and landscaping and the care of ornamental trees, fruits, and flowers. His first programs were presented from Omaha, over WOW. For these early broadcasts Mr. May took talent from Shenandoah to the Omaha studio. Later in 1924 he built a special studio in the May Seed Company building and through the Omaha station transmitted his programs sixty-six miles by wire. The results of these early broadcasts were so gratifying that Mr. May immediately began planning his own station. On August 12,1925, operating at that time on a wave length of 252 meters with a power of five hundred watts, KMA broadcast its initial program.
Earl May's idea of using radio to broadcast useful information as well as entertainment became extremely popular. He created so great an interest in planting and gardening that almost a million names were added to his mailing list, and his nursery and seed business showed a phenomenal increase. While Mr. May gives radio ample credit for making thousands of people planting-conscious, his own personal ability at the microphone proved a tremendous factor. In two years he built up a cooperative spirit of good will by the service program that is well defined by KMA's slogan: "Keep Millions Advised."
Mr. May was soon receiving so many inquiries from customers who desired to purchase various items in addition to seeds and nursery stock, that he decided to include a line of staple foods such as dried fruit, canned fruit, fresh frozen fish, citrus fruit, buying them in carload lots and applying the efficient merchandising methods to this business which had succeeded so well in the seed and nursery business. In those years one reason for the surprising growth of the company was Mr. May's ability to adapt radio as an advertising medium to the peculiar needs of his own business.
Earl May Seed Company Grew from Small Firm to Great Institution in the Earl E. May Seed Company Special Edition of The EveningSentinel (Shenandoah), January 27, 1937.
KMA's first studio consisted of one room on the second floor of the seed building on North Elm Street, Shenandoah. After he had polled over 450,000 votes in the Announcers' Contest, and won the Radio-Digest-Gold-Cup Award for the world's most popular announcer, Earl May decided to build a home for KMA. It was finished in the fall of 1927, and thousands of people came to see the beautiful auditorium called Mayfair. Designed in Moorish architecture, its auditorium seats one thousand people. The studio is in full view from the auditorium, separated from it only by a huge piece of plate glass, eight by twenty-two feet in dimensions, and weighing three tons in its steel frame.
In radio Earl May was a leader, not a follower, and many of today's common practices of radio were in use at an early day in his programs at Shenandoah. For example, the now popular audience-participation type of radio program was developed by him back in 1926 and 1927 at a time when most broadcasters were trying to keep people out of the studios. Early morning broadcasts were unheard of until he inaugurated the first regular program of its kind on October 30,1925. A program which started at five-thirty in the morning achieved a success that surprised everyone but Mr.May. Regular news broadcasts from press wires were instituted by him in 1928.8
In contrast with most broadcasters of the day, Earl May developed the informal style of radio program, inviting the opinions of the listeners and making his broadcasts serve as a "clearing house" for ideas and problems. With his unusual radio voice and his ability to describe in an interesting manner, he started to give word pictures of agricultural conditions, methods, and people which the audience present and those "listening in" can understand.
Article continues after images...
He even got an advertiser to help defray the cost of this pamphlet! Good businessman.
Up to 1930, about ninety per cent of the Earl E. May Seed Company business was mail order, but improved highways made it possible for more and more people to drive into towns to do their shopping in person, so as an experiment an Earl May Store was established in Lincoln, Nebraska. The success of the new store was immediate, and now twenty-five to thirty Earl May nursery and seed stores are located in various towns and cities throughout Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri. Thousands of tons of merchandise, seeds, and nursery stock are shipped every season to these Earl May stores.
From a volume of a few thousand dollars in 1919 and 1920, the business has grown to a present day volume of about two million dollars. At the height of the season, the Earl E. May Seed Company employs approximately five hundred people. The quantity of merchandise distributed through this organization reaches staggering figures. For example, the sale of oranges and grape fruit runs between sixty and eighty cars per season. About three million baby chicks are sold each spring.
KMA has also grown and developed. It is now a corporation in its own right, doing business as the May Broadcasting Company. It is affiliated with the Blue Network, Inc., and with the Mutual Broadcasting System. It operates full time, on a frequency of 960 kilocycles, with 5000 watts day and night time power. New RCA equipment was installed in the summer of 1936, insuring the highest perfection in tone, quality, and clear reception. KMA's 488 foot tower was the highest self-supporting structure in the State of Iowa at the time of its erection in 1936. The control station is housed in a two-story white frame building located north of Shenandoah on highway number fortyeight. A full-sized basement under the house supplies space for an air conditioning plant, garage, and heating unit.
» The Evening Sentinel (Shenandoah), January 27, 1987.
Living quarters of the engineer are located on the top floor, while the main floor houses the modern broadcasting equipment. The programs originate in the studio at the downtown auditorium at the main building of the Earl E. May Seed and Nursery Company. The new control station and transmitter house were built at a cost of $83,356.00. Expenses of the radio department average between $9,000 and $10,000 monthly. Radio, as an advertising medium, is undoubtedly here to stay, and the phenomenal growth of the Earl E. May Seed Company furnishes one example.10
Each year Earl May features the KMA Radio Jubilee. The idea was born on October 30, 1925, on the occasion of KMA's Australian "DX program". Plans had been laid in advance for a continuous thirty-six hour broadcast featuring special talent and entertainment, and in the wee small hours, special portions of the program were dedicated to far distant points such as Australia, New Zealand, and Alaska, Listener-interest was aroused to the extent that several hundred people crowded the studios and the adjoining offices to see the entertainers and learn just how broadcasting was handled. Refreshments were arranged for the entertaining and radio staff, but many of the listeners who had come from some distance were invited to join in and visit with Mr. May and all the personnel. The next year, plans were made to serve pancakes to all the visitors through the cooperation of the Doud Milling Company of Denison, Iowa. In this way a new feature was introduced.
The name "Radio Jubilee" was coined that year and special entertainment features were added including games, contests, and special prizes for the radio visitors from the most distant points. In 1928 close to 100,000 visitors swarmed into the studio, auditorium, offices, tents, and temporary space reserved for the occasion. For the refreshment of guests 138,624 pancakes were served in a tent across the street from the Mayfair Studio. Nine hundred pounds of sugar and 308 gallons of cream were required for the coffee to go with the pancakes and 611 pounds of butter and 500 gallons of syrup were used on the pancakes. In addition, 2490 pounds of bacon, 1475 pounds of prunes, and 1000 packages of cereal were served.
io "KMA's New Station Makes It One of Best in Middle west" in The Evening Sentinel (Shenandoah), January 27, 1987.
This gives an idea of the magnitude of the task when one tries to feed 100,000 people in four or five days. In the thirties the Horticultural and Vegetable Show was added as a special feature of the Radio Jubilee and this has since come to be one of the outstanding shows of its kind in the Farm Belt. Comments have been made by judges, some of them from Iowa State College at Ames, that the exhibits at this show rival those of the State Fair in quality as well as quantity.
Station KFNF occasionally has its jubilee week at the same time as KMA, during which it, too, has special entertainment features and serves "hot dogs" and coffee to thousands of visitors. Other communities have their carnivals, their rodeos, and their celebrations, but Shenandoah has its Radio Jubilee, an institution thoroughly in keeping with its slogan "The Radio City" of Iowa, which speaks far and wide the reputation of Shenandoah as a trade center.
Besides developing their own commercial interest the stations also serve the public in many ways. For example, in welfare work KMA not only maintains a welfare program director, but performs a consistent year-around service. One of the staff provides daily programs for shut-ins and underprivileged listeners. In the years in which Mrs. Edythe Stirlen has held this post, she has built up an organization of thousands of charitable persons who aid her in this work of brightening the hours of shut-ins. These persons have joined the SOS (Send Out Sunshine) Clubs and contribute time, work, or money to enable Mrs. Stirlen to provide wheel chairs, radios, spectacles, clothing, and other items to worthy cases. In 1940, for example, she gave away 10 wheel chairs, 200 radio sets, 15 radio batteries, 10 pairs of spectacles, 8 typewriters, 3 hospital beds, 6 pairs of blankets, and 500 baby chicks.12
KMA's Annual Radio Jubilees Inaugurated October 30, 1935, in The Evening Sentinel
(Shenandoah), January 27, 1937.
In addition, quantities of garden seeds, heating pads, Bibles, clothing, and furniture were supplied. These SOS clubs, with a membership of 2500, are active in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, Topeka, Kansas, St. Joseph, Missouri, Marshalltown and Ottumwa, Iowa, Rush City, Minnesota, and other middlewestern cities. The SOS Signal is published in connection with the clubs; this is a monthly magazine which has a regular circulation of one thousand copies.
The stations have also done much to bring about cultural development in the Middle West. Because of them Shenandoah has become garden-conscious and boasts of an unusual number of fine lawns and gardens. The whole town works towards the annual spring flower show in which the townspeople and the stations enter lavish exhibits including peonies, iris, roses, shrubs, and house plants which attract huge crowds from the surrounding States.
The two stations carry many news broadcasts, religious services, educational and home economics programs, market and service reports; and devote much time to humanitarian campaigns, such as the Red Cross, 4-H Clubs, Boy Scouts, and public school affairs. Among some of the prominent speakers have been Henry Wallace, James Farley, Governors of nearly all the midwestern States, and Billy Sunday. All the programs of both stations are arranged for the people of the Middle West and are designed to bring them not only the necessary information concerning their farms and gardens but also the type of entertainment they will most enjoy.
Marjorie Ross Heise
Monday, May 5, 2014
Charles Saxon's Deft Touch
Charles Saxon is one of my favorite illustrators of the human condition. I have used a few over the last months as the season progresses. Wish we had more.
It isn't lilac time yet but the leaves are out here in Woodstock, CT. Saxon's view of buttoned down people trying to add the exuberance of flowers to their world, or getting in touch with their inner gardner, is always so kind.
December 7, 1988 - New York Times
Charles Saxon, 68, a Cartoonist For 92 Covers of The New Yorker
By GLENN COLLINS
Charles Saxon, a cartoonist whose elegant drawings deftly deflated the pomposities of the corporate board room and the suburban country club, died of heart failure yesterday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Stamford, Conn. He was 68 years old and lived in New Canaan, Conn.Mr. Saxon's work appeared in most major magazines, in advertisements for dozens of corporate clients, and in three book collections. He did 725 drawings and 92 covers for The New Yorker magazine, where he had worked as a staff cartoonist since 1956.One of his best-known and most representative cartoons, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1984, depicts a roomful of corporate executives harking to the wisdom of their board chairman, who is making the pronouncement: ''Of course, honesty is one of the better policies.''''In his art he always sought to do not just humor but also social commentary,'' said Vance Packard, the author who was his friend and neighbor in New Canaan for 34 years. ''His main interest was in the life styles of the presumably sophisticated, and he saw himself as an interpreter of their world.''A 1982 New Yorker cartoon depicted two quintessential Saxon suburbanites. In the drawing, a man enters his living room to answer a phone call, and finds his wife with her hand over the phone, saying to him: ''It's all right dear. Kidder Peabody. For me.'' 'Social History'To Lee Lorenz, art editor of The New Yorker, ''Chuck's elegantly designed and meticulously rendered covers and drawings were in the classic tradition of social satire that reaches back to Daumier and Gavarni,'' he said. ''Seen as a whole, his work constitutes a unique social history of our time.''''These people out in suburbia are easy targets for humor,'' Mr. Lorenz said, ''but Chuck saw beyond that to the bitter side of it: people too cautious to take advantage of the very opportunities that their privileged position offered them.''An example was a four-page sequence of drawings in The New Yorker that ran in 1968, titled ''The Fountain of Youth.'' It depicted a corporate surburbanite who, when given the chance to sip from the fountain of youth, is tempted, but loses his chance when he hesitates too long. He frets about whether his peers will take the chance, and, ultimately, worries that it might affect his pension plan. When he gets home, his wife asks him, ''What did you do in the woods today?'' His answer: ''I got lost.''Charles David Saxon was born on Nov. 13, 1920, in Brooklyn. ''My father and his whole family were musicians in England,'' he said in a 1982 interview in Connecticut Magazine. ''My great-uncle Barney was court violinist to Queen Victoria.''
Charles Saxon, a cartoonist whose elegant drawings deftly deflated the pomposities of the corporate board room and the suburban country club, died of heart failure yesterday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Stamford, Conn. He was 68 years old and lived in New Canaan, Conn.Mr. Saxon's work appeared in most major magazines, in advertisements for dozens of corporate clients, and in three book collections. He did 725 drawings and 92 covers for The New Yorker magazine, where he had worked as a staff cartoonist since 1956.One of his best-known and most representative cartoons, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1984, depicts a roomful of corporate executives harking to the wisdom of their board chairman, who is making the pronouncement: ''Of course, honesty is one of the better policies.''''In his art he always sought to do not just humor but also social commentary,'' said Vance Packard, the author who was his friend and neighbor in New Canaan for 34 years. ''His main interest was in the life styles of the presumably sophisticated, and he saw himself as an interpreter of their world.''A 1982 New Yorker cartoon depicted two quintessential Saxon suburbanites. In the drawing, a man enters his living room to answer a phone call, and finds his wife with her hand over the phone, saying to him: ''It's all right dear. Kidder Peabody. For me.'' 'Social History'To Lee Lorenz, art editor of The New Yorker, ''Chuck's elegantly designed and meticulously rendered covers and drawings were in the classic tradition of social satire that reaches back to Daumier and Gavarni,'' he said. ''Seen as a whole, his work constitutes a unique social history of our time.''''These people out in suburbia are easy targets for humor,'' Mr. Lorenz said, ''but Chuck saw beyond that to the bitter side of it: people too cautious to take advantage of the very opportunities that their privileged position offered them.''An example was a four-page sequence of drawings in The New Yorker that ran in 1968, titled ''The Fountain of Youth.'' It depicted a corporate surburbanite who, when given the chance to sip from the fountain of youth, is tempted, but loses his chance when he hesitates too long. He frets about whether his peers will take the chance, and, ultimately, worries that it might affect his pension plan. When he gets home, his wife asks him, ''What did you do in the woods today?'' His answer: ''I got lost.''Charles David Saxon was born on Nov. 13, 1920, in Brooklyn. ''My father and his whole family were musicians in England,'' he said in a 1982 interview in Connecticut Magazine. ''My great-uncle Barney was court violinist to Queen Victoria.''
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Delightful Cruciferous Maiden from Boston
"The Boston Seedsmen" Parker & Wood -1883 to 1893 and a whole bunch of other guys.
I was getting tired of following leads that were far from home, so I looked into my pile of bits and pieces and found this delightful cruciferous maiden from Boston. This is a trade card.
In 1883, Cyrus and William E. Wood bought a half interest in the firm of Parker & Gannett, seed merchants at 49 North Market street, Boston. This firm sold the goods made by the Woods in Arlington, and later the firm name became Parker & Wood.
Cyrus Wood remained in this business only a year, and William E. Wood bought out Mr. Parker's interest, reorganizing the firm and admitting as partners Edward A. Hatch and Joseph B. Robinson under the firm name of Parker & Wood, as before.
In 1890 Mr. Robinson sold his interest to his partners, and in August, 1893, Parker & Wood consolidated with Joseph Breck & Son, an old and successful seed house at 51 North Market street, under the name of Joseph Breck & Son Corporation, and Mr. Wood sold his interests to the new company, who immediately converted the two stores into one.
Off topic: Is that a Carpenter Gothic house in the background? >>>>>>
This is Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, CT., a Carpenter Gothic summer home museum.
Who is Osgood?
And then, I found more! These particular seed sellers seemed to jump around a lot creating different combinations. While I would like to see a simple infographic charting their capitalistic matings, life is too short and I am outta here.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Henry Field - "Putting the Person Into Personality"
You know, I can't find a seed packet for the Field Seed Co. when it was in the earlier company version, before the "& Nursery". Why can't I? Ebay doesn't turn them up. Doesn't turn up any for any decade actually. They must have had packets.
I guess I don't care today. However, Ebay did toss up this yardstick cane from the Iowa State Fair! Much better than a seed packet.
Below is an article on his advertising style and strategy. It is a great puff piece but I can't see why an advertising magazine would puff Field..
1918 - Advertising and Selling
I guess I don't care today. However, Ebay did toss up this yardstick cane from the Iowa State Fair! Much better than a seed packet.
Below is an article on his advertising style and strategy. It is a great puff piece but I can't see why an advertising magazine would puff Field..
This truck was there, too.
And this!! I love this facet of the Henry Field's interests.
Actually "Putting the Person Into Personality"
As Illustrated by the Success of an Iowa Seedsman
By CHESLA C. SHERLOCK
1918 - Advertising and Selling
We hear a great deal of "personality" in advertising literature these days. The plea is for personality in all copy, for advertisers realize that personality has a greater influence upon the mind of the buying public than any other quality which may be reflected in the printed page.
And when I am reminded of that craze for personality in advertising matter, I instantly recall Henry Field of Shenandoah, Iowa.
Field is a seedsman who started in business at eight years of age. His passion has been for growing things since his earliest recollection. He handled the farm garden as a mere child and was inspired to put up his first seed packets by the catalog of old Henry Vick.
His first real occupation was as a market gardener. He found that people soon formed the habit of coming to him for the kind of seed that "he used him
self" and before long he was spending the winter months selling seed to his neighbors.
His first catalog was a small fourpage price list which he printed himself at night. He has done his own printing ever since.
He started in the seed business in earnest in 1902 by building a five-hundred-dollar frame building. In 1913 his business amounted to $170,973 and in 1918 it reached $1,115,962.14.
His business has grown with leaps and bounds since the first year. This hasn't been accidental or because he did not face keen competition. There are plenty of good seed companies in the field and most of them are thoroughly reliable. Seed men sell seed today that grows. They have to do that, if they are to survive.
Henry Field grows his own seed and he is a particular fellow about it. He wants things right and he sees to it that they are right. But most of his competitors are shrewd enough to insist upon the same quality in their goods.
If you want to know why Henry Field has succeeded in building up a million dollar business in a little country town, you have only to read his advertising literature to know the reason. Henry Field has the knack of getting personality into his copy.
In the first place, he has personality. He is different. He has that unique quality of getting under the hide of the average fellow he deals with and in arousing the latter's confidence. He has the sales magnetism, if you please.
His catalog is nothing but a long distance mirror of himself. He writes every word of it, and even his description of the most uninteresting farm or garden seed is live and palpitating under his homely phrases.
He is not afraid to say his say in plain, unvarnished language and if he thinks a seed is poor or a certain crop a failure, he says so, even when offering the seed for sale.
On the very first page of his catalog, Henry Field wins his customers by taking them into his confidence. He tells them about his business, how it started and how he worked those first few years. It is a story close to the soil, and it has a universal appeal to his trade. He makes the reader feel that he is a plain, hard-working fellow like himself who wants to be honest before anything else, and who lives up to the Golden Rule. In other words,Henry Field is still a farmer, a market-gardener and nothing else. He sells seeds because people want his seed.
In another place, he says: "I hope you'll like the catalog. It's a sort of home-made affair and not specially artistic, but I have tried to make it helpful and honest and entertaining. And we have done all the work on it ourselves from start to finish.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Henry Field's Book of a Thousand Gardens - 1912
Henry Field had the knack for appealing to the people who took their gardening seriously! This book is the results of an essay contest, the subject being your garden's results... ...using Henry Field seeds of course!
Reading testimonials is addictive, plus this book gives you a peek into many peoples' lives in 1912.
Reading testimonials is addictive, plus this book gives you a peek into many peoples' lives in 1912.
The Book of a Thousand Gardens: Being the True Accounts of the Trials and Tribulations and Successes in a Dry Year of Something Less Than a Thousand Gardens in Many States and Climates, as Told in a Bunch of Letters to Henry Field by His Loyal Friends - His Customers
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