Engineer in Clover

Ever since Manhattan florist Max Schling brought some corms (bulbs) of wood sorrel (oxalis repens) from the Caucasus in 1906, the four-leaf clover has been an article of commerce. Its market: a small and variable share of the nearly $500,000,000-a-year premium and advertising novelty business (convention buttons, greeting cards, etc.).

But oxalis repens, which runs freely to four leaves, is not real clover, has telltale nicks in the leaves. This year, for the first time, oxalis raisers found their market seriously invaded by the genuine article, trifolium repens. Millions of perfect four-leaf specimens arrived from Balboa Heights in the Panama Canal Zone, are flooding the U. S. They are raised by the Canal's chief telephone engineer, tanned, Connecticut-born C(harles) T. Daniels.

CT's father was a florist who searched years for a pure strain of four-leaf clover. Son Charles, after 17 years of selecting the four-leaf plants of generation after generation of clover, finally turned the trick. Now, in his spare time, he mass-produces them, will soon have a capacity of 10,000,000 stems per year. The plants are grown by hydroponics--in trays filled with a chemical solution instead of dirt--and are covered to protect them from rain. When harvested, the leaves are graded large, medium, small, are pressed and dried in special electric presses. To sort and grade the clovers Daniels employs 24 Panamanian girls. At first the girls had so little use for money they would not work. Now his wife gives each a Sears, Roebuck catalogue on pay days, puts their orders in the mail for them.

Best way to boost the sale of four-leaf clovers is to boost the superstition that they bring good luck. Daniels' U. S. agents do just that. Pittsburgh florists Lubin & Smalley sent one (made up as a charm) to a local sports announcer; the same day the Pittsburgh Pirates won a doubleheader. A Negress bought one to help her play the numbers, hit the pot at once. Result: Lubin & Smalley's stock of clovers was sold overnight. But Daniels' biggest market is advertisers.

Selling mainly in bulk, the 6,000,000 clovers he has already sold this year will bring him over $40,000 gross, of which a comfortable part is net. Last week (on Friday the 13th) his Manhattan agent got the biggest order yet, from Travelers Insurance Co. for 1,000,000 clovers. Encased in a transparent celluloid calendar, they are craftily inscribed "For Luck . . . a four-leaf clover. For Protection . . . The Travelers."

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