Two of The Netherlands' top plant pathologists arrived in Washington, D.C. last week on an important commercial mission. They were there to talk the Department of Agriculture out of limiting imports of Netherlands bulbs (1946 imports: $8,000,000). The department wanted to cut bulb shipments to "amounts needed for propagation." Its ostensible reason was the threat of importing contagious plant diseases along with the bulbs.
But the real pressure for the ban had little to do with disease; it came from Washington and Oregon nursery men, who resented the popularity of Dutch bulbs among U.S. home gardeners. Whispered one member of...
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