meat a large portion of the year, besides supplying to your store a limited quantity of nice white-leaf lard, which should be sold in little bright tin pails.
104. White Pork. – If you do not care for swine’s flesh, you can sell it for from twelve to twenty cents a pound. People are glad to buy fresh-killed meat and to pay a good price for it when their ordinary purchases have been many days slaughtered, and often freighted a thousand miles.
105. Poultry to Order. – Do not keep your hens beyond the second year, as they are not so good layers after that age. Have always a stock of fat fowls ready for market. Spring Chickens. Here is another line in which you can invest. A chick costs in feed about twenty-five cents for the season, and they sell readily for a dollar a pair.
Section 11. Garden Vegetables
If you have a small garden, you can supply your store with fresh vegetables during the season. It is very important that they should be fresh. Having your own garden, you can guarantee that quality to your customers. Take orders for the following day so that the vegetables may come straight from the garden into the hands of the consumer. Here are the six which grocers say sell for the largest profit.
106. Cut-to-Order Asparagus. – Asparagus is at least one-half better when newly cut. Choose the white variety, and tie in small bunches. Sell at fifteen cents a bunch.
107. Quick Market Strawberries. – Pick them fresh every morning. Put them in the usual boxes, and set them on a stand in front of the store. Have one or two large ones on the top of each box, and lay around them two or three strawberry leaves wet with dew.
108. Round Tomatoes. – If possible, have them so fine and large that five will fill a quart box. Sold even as low as five cents a box they are very profitable. This is at the rate of a penny apiece, and a thrifty tomato plant will bear fifty.
109. Pint Peas. – Peas in the pod are not attractive, but very young peas when shelled and put in little bright tin pails are irresistible. The very sight of them tickles the palate. Rise early, and pick and shell a pint of peas. If they do not sell, you can have them for your own dinner. Do not keep them overnight, as the succulent quality is soon lost after shelling.
110. String Beans. – Nothing easier to raise, nothing easier to sell. You can raise a bushel on a square rod if properly managed. Sell at fifteen cents a half-peck.
111. Green Corn. – Sell at twenty-five cents a dozen ears. Be careful to pick before the kernels become large. Have a notice, “Corn Picked to Order.”
We have found out from the grocers what garden products sell the best. Now, suppose you have only a single rod of ground (about the size of a large room), and want to know how to plant it to the best advantage. Below will be found a comparative table of what, under generous cultivation, may be expected of each of the above in the way of hard cash from a single rod of soil.
Asparagus (40 bunches at 15 cents a bunch), $6.00; strawberries (33 baskets at 15 cents a basket), $4.95; tomatoes (150 quarts at 5 cents a quart), $7.50; peas (16 pints at 25 cents a pint), $4.00; beans (1 bushel at 15 cents half-peck), $1.20; corn (8 dozen ears at 25 cents a dozen), $2.00.
If you have twenty square rods instead of one, your revenue from your garden may be increased by that multiple, and you will have an opportunity to try all the above sources of profit. Find out what fruits and vegetables sell best in your neighborhood, and plant accordingly. And remember that the key to your success in garden produce is the single word fresh.
Section 12. School Supplies
There are a number of articles in use in our schools which can be made at home. Once let it be known that you can make and sell as good a quality as the imported article, and at a cheaper price, and you will have the patronage of all the schools in your vicinity. Advertise wisely, and in cases where the trustees furnish the things, make a low bid for the entire school supply.
112. Book Covers. – Save all your paper bags, iron them out smoothly, and make them into book covers. Sell them at three cents apiece, or take the contract to cover all the books in the school at two cents apiece.
113. Artificial Slates. – Take forty-one parts of sand, four parts of lampblack, four parts of boiled linseed or cottonseed oil. Boil thoroughly, and reduce the mixture by adding spirits of turpentine so that it may be easily applied to a thin piece of pasteboard. Give three coats, drying between each coat. Finish by rubbing smooth with a piece of cotton waste soaked in spirits of turpentine. You have an excellent slate or memorandum book, which may be sold for ten cents. Use a slate pencil. Made in large quantities, these are very profitable.
114. Cheap Ink. – Boil one and a half pounds of logwood with sufficient residue water to leave a residue of two and a half quarts. When cold, add one and a half drams of yellow bichromate of potash, and stir thoroughly, and the ink is ready for use. The above will fill twenty-five large ink bottles, which, at five cents apiece, come to $1.25. Cost, 25 to 35 cents.
115. School Bag. – Take a piece of cheap white linen and make it into a pretty bag, with a strap to go over the shoulder. Have a colored stamp to put on the initials of the purchaser. Sell for twenty-five cents.
116. Pen Wiper. – Take any cheap material, and cut in three circles of different sizes. Scallop the edges, and stitch together at the center. If the circles are of different color as well as size, it will be attractive to the children, and still more so if the smallest circle has an initial letter. Sell for five cents.
117. Children’s Luncheon. – Thousands of parents would rather pay a trifling sum than be put to the trouble of providing and preparing lunch. Make a little repast cheap and neat. One large or two small sandwiches, a small dish of jelly or a tart, a pickle or a piece of cake. Put in a collapsible paper box, and tie with red or blue ribbon. Cost about six or seven cents. Sell for ten cents.
Section 13. Christmas Presents
You can do well with these if you are supple with your fingers and nimble with your tongue. Learn what artistic designs are becoming popular, and keep abreast of the latest fads. The fabric called denim is coming more into use every year, and as it is very cheap, and comes in all colors, it is especially suited for making, covering, and adorning all kinds of household handiwork. A ramble through the large metropolitan stores with a request to see the various lines of goods used for trimming and ornamenting will astonish you. The endless varieties of silks, satins, velvets, plushes, linens, laces, feathers, and so forth, should suggest to a lively mind infinite possibilities in the way of made-up articles of market value. Our list below must be taken only as samples of what a fertile mind and ingenious fingers can accomplish.
118. Sofa Pillow. – Take a piece of India silk of different colors, and let them all taper to a common center upon which a monogram is worked. Relieve the bareness of the white by a running vine and morning glories. A pillow of this kind which cost $3 sold for $8. The varieties of the sofa pillow are almost endless. Get a book of designs and learn to make the Organdy, Butterfly, Duck, Clover, Daisy, Cretonne, Yacht, Mull, Poppy, and many others.
119. Jewel Tray. – Cut a circle of delicate écru linen twenty-two inches in circumference, and sew a piece of bonnet wire around it, notching or looping it so as to give an escaloped edge. Have a pretty little motto in the center, and fill the remaining space with snowdrops worked in ivory white, each tiny petal tipped with pale green, and with a long green stem. When properly worked, this is very pretty, and ought to command a good price.
120. American Flag. – Make it five feet in length by three in width, and smaller flags in the same proportion. There should be seven stripes of red bunting, six of white, and a field of blue. On
