ing for a place? We tell you how to find it. Are you poorly paid for your work? We tell you how to get better wages. Have you goods you want to sell? We suggest new plans.
Are the profits of shop, store, office, or farm unsatisfactory? We tell you how to increase your income.
Do you want to change your business? We suggest a vast number of new ways to make money.
Have you a boy whom you wish to put to a trade? We tell you what occupations pay the best.
Do you wish to make money in your own home? We give you a list of 100 paying articles which you can make and sell.
Have you a little plot of ground around your house? We tell you how to make it yield you a yearly revenue.
Do you want to know how our rich men made their money? We give the secrets away by the hundred.
Do you want to know what to do with your savings? We give you a list of the best-paying investments.
Have you practical ideas? Are you skilled in the use of tools? Would you like to take out a patent? We present to you a list of over 300 inventions needed, and in some cases even suggest how the article should be made.
Have you literary ability? or reportorial talent? or advertising genius? We mention 100 ways by which you may be able to make a living by the pen.
In short the 1,000 ways of money-making in this book are 1,000 nails to hang your fortune on. Others have profited by these suggestions. Why may not you?
Introduction
The object of this work is to help people who are out of employment to secure a situation; to enable persons of small means to engage in business and become their own employers; to give men and women in various lines of enterprise ideas whereby they may succeed; and to suggest new roads to fortune by the employment of capital. The author has been moved to the undertaking by the reflection that there exists nowhere a book of similar character. There have indeed been published a multitude of books which profess to tell men how to succeed, but they all consist of merely professional counsel expressed in general terms. We are told that the secrets of success are “industry and accuracy,” “the grasping of every opportunity,” “being wide awake,” “getting up early and sitting up late,” and other cheap sayings quite as well known to the taker as to the giver. Even men who have made their mark, when they come to treat of their career in writing, seem unable to give any concrete suggestions which will prove helpful to other struggling thousands, but simply tell us they won by “hard work,” or by “close attention to business.”
The author of this book has gone to work on a totally different plan. I have patiently collected the facts in the rise of men to wealth and power, have collated the instances and instruments of fortune, and from these have sifted out the real secrets of success. When as in a few cases, the worn-out proverbs and principles are quoted, these are immediately reinforced by individual examples of persons who attributed their advancement to the following of these rules; but, in general, the suggestions are new, and in very many cases plans and lines of work are proposed by the author which are entirely original, and so far as he knows, absolutely untried. Hence, the work becomes of incomparable value to business men who are constantly seeking new means to interest the public and to dispose of their goods.
Of course, the vast field of action treated of in this work lies beyond the experience of any one man, but the author has talked with business men in every walk in life and gleaned from them the essential facts in their career; in many instances these facts are not the things they have done, but the things they would do if they could begin again, thus giving the reader the benefit both of their success and failure. As a book offering opportunities to the ambitious; presenting openings to those seeking a wider scope for their faculties; affording stimulation to persons of sluggish blood; and giving away trade and business secrets never before divulged; the author feels confident that the little work stands unrivaled, and as such he modestly offers it to the public for its approval.
One thousand ways to make money
Chapter I
How to get a place
You Can Get It – Positions Yawning for Young Men – Any Young Man May Become Rich – Men Who Began at the Bottom and Reached the Top – How A. T. Stewart Got His Start – John Jacob Astor’s Secret of Success – How Stephen Girard’s Drayman Made a Fortune – $100,000 for Being Polite – How One Man’s Error Made Another Man’s Fortune – Secret of the Bon Marché in Paris – How Edison Succeeded – A Sure Way to Rise – How a Young Man Got His Salary Increased $2,000 – A Sharp Yankee Peddler.
Young men are often discouraged because the desirable places all seem to be filled. But remember there is always room for the right man. Says a New York millionaire: “I hold that any young man, possessing a good constitution and a fair degree of intelligence, may become rich.” Says another business man: “I have made a personal canvass of a dozen of the largest business houses in five different commercial and professional lines to see to what extent there exist openings for young men.” In only two of the houses approached were the heads of the firms satisfied the positions of trust in those houses were filled by capable men. And in each of these two houses I was told that “of course, if the right sort of a young man came along who could tell us something about our business we did not already know, we should not let him slip through our fingers. Positions can always be created. In four of the houses, positions had been open for six months or more, and the sharpest kind of a lookout kept for possible occupants. These positions commanded salaries all the way from $2,000 to $5,000 a year. In the publishing business, I know of no less than six positions actually yawning for the men to come and fill them – not clerical positions, but positions of executive authority. Young men are desired in these places because of their progressive ideas and capacity to endure work.”
Another prominent man who interviewed the heads of several large firms writes in a recent periodical as follows: “It is not with these firms a question of salary; it is a question of securing the highest skill with the most perfect reliability. This being secured, almost any salary to be named will be cheerfully paid. A characteristic of the business world to-day is that its institutions, empires in themselves, have grown to be too large for the handling of ordinary men. These institutions are multiplying in excess of the number of men whose business skill is broad and large enough to direct and command them. Hence, the really commanding business brain is at an immense premium in the market. A salary of $50,000 a year as president of a railroad or manufacturing company at first sight seems exorbitant; but the payment of such a salary usually means pure business. The right or the wrong man at the head of a great business interest means the making or the unmaking of fortunes for the stockholders. Only a single glance at the industrial world is needed to show that here is room for the advent of genius of the first order. This world, seething like a caldron, is boiling to the brim with questions of the most vexing and menacing kind.”
Look at the men who reached the top of fortune’s ladder, and see under what discouraging circumstances they began. James Fisk, called the Prince of the Erie, rose to that position from a ragged newsboy. Stephen Girard began on nothing, and became the greatest millionaire of his time. Young men, would you scorn to row a boat for a living? Cornelius Vanderbilt plied a boat between Staten Island and New York. Would you tramp the country as a surveyor for a map? Jay Gould began in that way, and forty years later satisfied certain doubters of his financial standing by showing them certificates of stocks worth $80,000,000. Do you fear to have your hands calloused with ax or saw? John W. Mackay, who acquired a fortune of $20,000,000, started in life as a shipwright. Is it beneath your social station to handle butter and eggs? “Lucky” Baldwin, the multi-millionaire, kept a country store and made his first venture by taking his goods overland in a cart to Salt Lake City. Are your fingers too delicate for the broom handle? A. T. Stewart began his business career by sweeping out the store. Do you
