social set with the understanding that she recommend it to her friends.
Section 7. Varnishes and Polishes
With your plants, meats, preserves, candies, and perfumery, you have already got much beyond your show-window. You now have a “department store” on a small scale, and as you make the goods yourself you ought to be making money. There are some things you can add for which the demand will not be great, but then the cost of making is small. Besides, the goods, put up in bright tin boxes with colored labels and built up in pyramids on your shelves, will give your store an artistic and attractive appearance. Here are a few things that might profitably occupy your spare moments:
85. Stove Blacking. – Take half a pound of black lead finely powdered, and mix with the whites of three eggs well-beaten; then dilute it with sour beer or porter till it becomes as thin as shoe-blacking; after stirring it, set it over hot coals to simmer for twenty minutes; then, after it has become cold, box and label.
86. Shoe Blacking. – Mix six parts of fine bone-black, twenty-eight of syrup or four of sugar, three of train-oil, and one of sulphuric acid. Let the mixture stand for eight hours, then add with vigorous and constant stirring four parts of the decoction of tan, eighteen of bone-black, and three of sulphuric acid, and pour the compound into a little tin boxes. Cost, one cent per box; sell for five cents.
87. Furniture Cream. – Take eight parts of white wax, two of resin, and one pint of true Venice turpentine. Melt at a gentle heat, and pour the warm mass into a stone jar with six parts of rectified oil of turpentine. After twenty-four hours it should have the consistency of soft butter. Sell in small ten-cent boxes.
88. Leather Polish. – Beat the yolks of two eggs and the white of one; mix a tablespoonful of gin and a teaspoonful of sugar; thicken it with ivory black, add it to the eggs, and use as common blacking. This will give a fine polish to harnesses and leather cushions, and also may be used as a dressing for ladies’ shoes.
These are the varnishes and polishes that sell the most readily, but you must not think they will sell without advertisement, recommendation, and display. Label them attractively, and tell just what they will do. It is well to have a little hand press so that you can print your own labels, and also some marking-ink for posters. Use ink freely; and, if you can get the recommendation of some townsman who has tried one of your varnishes or polishes, give it a large display.
Section 8. Soaps and Starches
Soaps are easily made and very profitable. Several firms have made fortunes in soap during the last few years. You can make just as good an article in your own home and reap all the profits. With starches, take pains to let your customers know that you have different ones for different kinds of goods. Many use the same starch for all kinds of washing. You must show people that your starches are made especially for various kinds of garments, and that the effect will not be so good if the wrong starch is used, or one kind applied indiscriminately to all kinds of goods.
89. Poland Starch. – Mix flour and cold water until the mass will pour easily, then stir it into a pot of boiling water, and let it boil five or six minutes, stirring frequently. A little spermaceti will make it smoother. When cold, put in pasteboard boxes and sell cheap.
90. Glue Starch. – (For calicoes.) Boil a piece of glue, four inches square, in three quarts of water. Put it in a well-corked bottle, and sell for a little more than Poland.
91. Gum Arabic Starch. – (For lawns and white muslin.) Pound to a powder two ounces of fine, white gum-arabic; put it into a pitcher, and pour a pint or more of boiling water upon it, and cover it well. Let it stand all night, and in the morning pour it carefully from the dregs into a clean bottle, and cork it tight. Recommend this to your customers, and tell them that a tablespoonful of this stirred into a pint of starch made in the ordinary manner will restore lawns to almost their original freshness.
92. Starch Luster. – This is a substance which, when added to starch, gives the cloth not only a high polish, but a dazzling whiteness. To produce this result, a little piece the size of a copper cent is added to half a pound of starch and boiled with it for two or three minutes. Now we will give you the whole secret. The substance is nothing more than stearine, paraffine, or wax, sometimes colored by a slight admixture of ultramarine blue. You can buy it in quantities for a trifle, and sell it in little balls or wafers at a profit of 500 per cent.
93. Hard Soap. – Five pails of soft soap, two pounds of salt and one pound of resin. Simmer together and when thoroughly fused turn out in shallow pans so as to be easily cut. This costs little more than the labor and by being able to undersell rivals you should have a monopoly in soap.
94. Savon d’Amande. – This is a celebrated French toilet soap. The recipe is French suet nine parts, olive oil one part, saponified by caustic soda. Toilet soaps are also made of white tallow, olive, almond and palm-oil, soaps either alone or combined in various proportions and scented. The perfume is melted in a bright copper pan by the heat of a water bath.
Section 9. Soft Drinks
You may now if you have a counter try a few soft drinks. A soda fountain is expensive and perhaps would not pay at this stage, but you might try it when you have more capital and customers. First try. —
95. Root Beer. – Get a bottle of the extract, and make it according to the directions. Cost of ten gallons extract and sugar, $1. Put up in pint bottles at five cents a bottle $4. Profit, $3.
96. Ginger Pop. – Put into an earthen pot two pounds of loaf sugar, two ounces of cream tartar, two ounces of best ginger bruised, and two lemons cut into slices. Pour over them three gallons of boiling water, when lukewarm, toast a slice of bread, spread it thickly with yeast and put it into the liquor. Mix with it also the whites of two eggs and their crushed shells. Let it stand till next morning. Then strain and bottle. It will be ready for use in three or four days. Profits about the same as the last.
97. Lemonade and Orangeade. – Get juicy fruit, and allow one orange or lemon to a glass. The tumblers for orangeade should be smaller than those for lemonade. Profits about two and one-half cents a glass.
Have your counter for drinks as near the door as you can. Keep your bottles on ice. Make your lemonade to order, and let it be known that all your beer is home-brewed. Ask your patrons if they like it, and take kindly any suggestions they may make. Let them know you want to please them.
Section 10. Dairy and Other Farm Produce
If you live in the country, or if your grounds are large enough, you can add immensely to your profits by keeping a cow, a pig, some poultry, and a few hives of bees. You will now need help – a boy to milk your cow, run on errands, and deliver goods; and a girl to help you in the work-room and to assist in the store.
98, Golden Butter; 99, Fresh Eggs; 100, Sweet Milk; 101, Sparkling Honey; 102, New Cheese; and 103, Clean Lard, are among the attractions and the sources of revenue you can add to your already prosperous business. Churn your butter till it is entirely free of the milk, salt it well and put it up in tempting balls, rolls or pats. A little finely-strained carrot-juice will give it a golden color without any disagreeable taste. For poultry, the Wyandottes and Plymouth Rocks are the best year-round layers. Have a sign “Eggs Laid Yesterday,” or “This Morning’s Eggs.” Sell milk by the glass, pint or quart; only be sure it is always fresh. Get a small cheese-press, and if you find a good sale for your cheese, milk, and butter, add to your stock of cows. Find out which of the three dairy products pays the best, and work accordingly. Invite people to taste your good things, and tell them that everything is homemade and fresh. Bees are perhaps the most profitable things in the world, as they entail no expense after the first outfit. Have honey both strained and
