One Thousand Ways to Make Money

166. The School Store. – If you live near a public school, a small store containing candies, school supplies and knickknacks for the children will be found to bring much profit. The store need not be large or conspicuous. A room in a private house will do. Children, like bees, are all fond of sweets. The store need be open only for an hour in the morning, or noon, and at the close of school, so that other work may be carried on at the same time. A dressmaker, with hours arranged so as not to conflict, could combine very well these two ways of earning a living.

167. The Hand Album. – Have an album made in usual style, except that the places for pictures are omitted. Smear each page with soft wax to the depth of one-sixth of an inch. When a friend calls, slightly heat a page and request him to lay his hands, palms down, upon it. In that way you can preserve the digits of your friends, and you will be surprised to find there is as much difference in hands as in faces. When your album is full, if you choose you can consult a patent lawyer, and arrange to protect your invention. A novelty of this kind would doubtless be immensely popular, and enable the author to reap a financial harvest.

168. The Novelty Bakery. – A woman who knows how to make tempting creations in flour can make a good living. Begin by taking your goods to the Woman’s Exchange, of which almost every large city has at least one. If your baking is novel, from the Exchange will come demands from private customers, and even orders from hotels. A New England woman, beginning in a small way, in a few months had an income of $33 per week.

169. The Front Yard Snap. – With a photographer’s outfit, go through the better class residential sections of a city or town and take the pictures of the children which you will see in every street, and in almost every front yard. Get a child in a most striking position, on a wheel, or in a swing or hammock, or at play. Secure parent’s consent to take the picture. No matter if they declare that they will not purchase, they will yield when they see a pretty picture of their child. Much money can be made at this.

170. The Pet Dog. – Do you know that pet dogs often bring enormous prices? You want the Yorkshire terriers, or the King Charles spaniels, or some of the rare Japanese breeds. A lady in New York counts on $500 yearly as the income from the families raised from one dog, a King Charles spaniel.

171. The Box Lunch. – There is a large field for some one to cultivate in our great office buildings and factories. Thousands would pay for a light lunch which costs five cents, and is sold for ten cents. Rent a small room near a business center. Make known your occupation. Go through the places of business if possible, or if not take a stand near the door, and if your lunch is tastefully arranged, it will find many buyers. After a time you will get regular customers. Profits 100 per cent.

172. The Hair-Dresser. – A refined business for women is the dressing of hair. For $25 you can learn the business. Place samples of all kinds of bangs and switches in the window. They can be sold for a great profit, and if industrious, you can build up in a good neighborhood an excellent paying business, and best of all, it can be done in your own home.

173. Typo and Steno. – In many large cities typewriting and stenography may be learned in the Y. W. C. A. Then with a machine and a rented room cheaply furnished a woman is all ready for business. Many women are making $25 per week. One enterprising young lady takes dictated matter in short hand, and then typewrites it at her leisure, thus saving much time to her busy patrons.

174. The Sewing School. – Here is a vast unworked field. If you understand needlework, and have a little business enterprise, you are certain to succeed. Advertise in the papers and get out circulars, stating that for the small sum of twenty-five cents per week you will teach all pupils plain and fancy sewing. Form your pupils into classes, and if you are gentle and patient, as well as skillful at the needle, you will in a short time have the work which mothers are glad to get rid of. And it can all be done in your own home.

175. Flat Hunting. – Rent a small office and advertise that for a trifling fee you will exactly suit persons looking for homes, and save them all the trouble. Three or four hours a day are spent in house-hunting, and two in the office. You must have a book with your customers’ demands set down in detail, and another book with a careful description of each house to let. A commission might be exacted from both owner and renter. An enterprising woman could in a short time build up a large business in this way.

176. A Tea Room. – Hire a counter in a fashionable store much frequented by ladies. Have a sign that fresh tea is sold here, made to order with good cream. Small accessories may be fresh rolls, toasted crumpets, bread and butter, and other light articles of food. Ladies weary with shopping will surely come to your counter to be refreshed. A lady in one of our large cities made a fortune by this means. The requirements are dazzling cleanliness, a smiling welcome, a cheerful place near the door, and hot, fresh tea.

177. Dress Mending. – Here is a good field. There is a vast army of women who would patronize a mending office rather than run around the city to find a sewing woman, or use their own limited time in the use of the needle. Have a tariff of prices for mending gloves, sewing on buttons, renewing the sleeves, putting braid around the bottom of dresses, etc. The right woman could earn a good living at this business.

178. Lace Handling. – The mending and washing of fine laces is a work that is given to experts, and commands high prices, yet is easily learned. In five lessons at a dollar apiece any lady of ordinary intelligence can learn, or, cheaper yet, one can sometimes give services in return for instruction. You are then in a position to earn a great deal of money. Issue a thousand circulars to the wealthier people of the city, letting them know of your enterprise. This plan combines the three advantages of fascinating employment, good pay, and work done at home.

179. Intelligence Office on the subscription plan. – Buy a copy of the “Social Register;” send circulars to all persons named therein; announce that you have opened an intelligence office on a new plan. For $10 a year you will keep them supplied with as many servants as they want, and you will guarantee satisfaction. Make a specialty of securing servants for people going out of town. Thus you will go far toward solving the perplexing question for your patrons, and make an excellent living for yourself.

180. Professional Mending. – Hotels, boarding houses and bachelor apartments have loud and long calls for mending. Mothers with little ones, professional women, and school-teachers, as well as men, have neither time nor taste for this kind of work. Have an outfit in a small satchel, which should contain a light lunch, a white apron, and various assortments of tapes, buttons, etc. In a short time one would have a regular round of customers. One lady who did this never had to go out of one large hotel for work.

181. The College Cram. – There is room for a lady with a knowledge of the classics and a faculty for teaching to take boys and young men and carry them over the hard spots in their education. These hard spots, which are known as examinations, conditions, etc., are the bane and bugbear of many a young man’s education. In one town a lady earns $100 per month by taking pupils through the intricacies of algebra and Latin.

182. Shoe and Wrap Room. – A room in some fashionable quarter where ladies could go after a journey on the cars and have the dust brushed off their wraps and their shoes polished would doubtless prove remunerative.

183. General Convenience Room. – The last idea might be combined with this. Have a room in which, for the charge of a dime, one could get a glass of ice-water, could read the morning paper, have his clothes brushed, and look over a map of the city or a directory, and have all the advantages of a toilet room.

184. Sick-Room Delicacies. – Another unoccupied field is the preparation of delicacies for the sick. Bouillon, chocolate, jellies and many other kinds of delicacies could be prepared and placed in a show window in some fashionable part of the town. The conditions of success are exquisite neatness and daintiness. It would pay well, for people stop at no cost in providing for their sick friends.

185. Shopping Commission. – If you live at a little distance from the city, a good business may be built up by shopping for your friends and neighbors. By dint of experience you know where to buy, and when your practice is built up you can buy cheaper by reason of larger purchases, and you can give both of these advantages to your patrons. Many women might find here both a congenial and profitable field.

186. School Luncheon. – Here is another good field. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren have to eat a cold luncheon. Rent a small room near a schoolhouse, and provide bouillon, clam and chicken soups, sandwiches, baked beans, lamb pies, with white and brown bread, plain cake and fruit. You will help to preserve the digestion of myriads of children, as well as fill your own pocket with cash.

187. Hatching Birds. – Buy half a dozen songsters at $1.50 apiece, the females at half that price. Get proper cages, mate the birds, provide soft nests made chiefly of cotton; and with care you can do an excellent business. Birds in good condition mate two or three times a year. One lady, with eighteen pairs of canary birds netted $500 a year.

188. Butter and Egg Store. – Butter and eggs are two things which every housekeeper wants fresh, but which are difficult to obtain. Get some reliable farmer to supply you at stated dates, and procure a list of customers. Then with a boy to deliver and a push cart for the merchandise, you have little to do but figure your profits. An advantage of this plan is that it gives you the most of your time for other work. The business may be extended almost ad infinitum.

189. Saratoga Chips. – These are a sample of what may be done with a single good article by one who knows how. One family has a weekly income of $12.50 from this means.

190. Fancy Lamp Shades. – Made of crêpe papers they are very cheap, and look almost as well as silk. Any woman of ordinary ability can make them, and they sell readily. She can buy for sixty cents material for a shade which she can sell for $1.25, thus more than doubling her money.

191. Bee-Keeping. – This is another means of large profit. It can be carried on even in a city where there is a small plot of ground. Fill all the space not occupied by the hives with white clover and such other flowers as your study of bees will tell you they delight in. Buy a book about bees. The advantage of this industry is that the cost of supporting the bees is practically nothing. There is no risk. After the first small expenditure of capital for boxes and hives all is profit.

192. Cleansing and Bleaching. – There are many things too costly to be intrusted to an ordinary washerwoman, and many other cleansing processes that do not come within that woman’s sphere. Cleaning feathers, velvets, furs, gloves, silks, and many other articles afford a wide opportunity for one who understands the business. Who can take grease spots from carpets, fruit stains from napkins and table covers, paint from windows, thumb-marks from books, and scratches from furniture? Here is a useful field.

193. Fancy Soaps. – Fortunes have been made from fancy soaps. The process of making is easy, and the variety of method is so great, and the possible ingredients so many, that there need be no danger of infringing on anyone’s trademark. Get a recipe-book and practice on the kinds given in the formulas; then branch out into new kinds. The sale will depend upon your ability. Give your product an attractive appearance.

194. Home Architecture. – Write to the secretaries or agents of church building societies. Many of these societies publish pamphlets, in which, in addition to the designs for churches, will be found many cuts for pretty little parsonages. From these you can compile an attractive little book of home architecture, which would sell to every person contemplating building a home; and almost every one living in a rented house hopes some day to rear his own domicile. If you have a friend who is an architect, he would procure for you other books of plans.

195. Home Ornaments. – What is a home without at least a few trifling ornaments? An inventive mind can think of a hundred inexpensive ways of beautifying a room. But most people are not inventive. If, therefore, you have that gift, and can think of a few novelties in lace and embroidered goods which you can make and sell for fractions of a dollar, you will have opened your way to constant and remunerative employment.

196. Doubtful Debts. – It is well known that in efforts that require perseverance and persistence women succeed better than men. Grocers, butchers, real estate agents, and in fact almost every business man, has a large number of accounts, a considerable per cent. of which he considers worthless. To any one who could succeed in collecting them, the dealer would give a very large per cent., in some cases even amounting to half the bill. Many of these are really collectible if attempted with the persuasive arts of womanhood. Here is a large and profitable field for a woman having the right qualifications.

197. Dressing Dolls. – A fair profit can be made by taking orders for making dolls’ dresses, as they can be bought and dressed for about one-half the cost of those already dressed. Persons giving the order should be required to bring the materials for the dress.

198. Fruit Preservers. – Vast numbers of people are in the country during the fruit season, and cannot “do up” fruits; they must depend on the grocer. Let a thrifty, economical woman who knows how equip herself with sugar, fruit, cans and preserve kettles, and she will not long wait for customers if she makes her business known. The second year, her patrons having tested her talents and tasted her fruits, and finding them so much better than “store goods,” will flood her with orders.

199. A Mushroom Cellar. – An enterprising woman hired a cellar at a rent of $10 per month, had it fitted up with shelves, placed on these shelves in order, straw, fertilizers, and soil; then put on mushroom spawn, renewing it at intervals, as also at longer intervals the soil. Average sale of mushrooms per week, $31.50. Average expenses, $8.80. Profit per week, $22.70.

200. Poultry Raising. – Following is the experience of another woman in raising poultry. She bought forty-five Minorcas, because they lay a large white egg, and are nonsitters and prolific layers. Each hen laid on an average one hundred and sixty-four eggs per annum. She purchased also forty Brahmas for sitters and for fattening. Total expenses for fowls and for keeping, $278.70. Total receipts, $1,144.11. Net profit, $865.31.

201. Home Hothouse. – Thousands of people will buy plants already started who would not go to the trouble to buy seeds, slips, and pots. There is also a large demand for cut flowers all the year round. Have a cellar for rooting, and a south room for sunning. A liberal use of cards and circulars, stating what you propose to do, will surely bring custom. The secret of the florists’ business is to provide flowers for every month in the year, and to force or retard the flowers that suit the demands of each month. This is a very pretty employment for a woman, and can be done in her own home. There are three hundred and twelve floral establishments in this country managed by women. The work is easy and tasteful to ladies. The elements of success are the habit of early rising, business ability, close superintendence of laborers, intelligent advertising, knowledge of plants, and promptness in filling orders. The best location is near a large cemetery. One florist thus located takes in from $1,500 to $2,000 per month during the busy season.

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