Page Fox - One Thousand Ways to Make Money

78. Sweet Pickles – (Apple, Pear, or Peach). For six pounds of fruit, use three of sugar, five dozen cloves and a pint of vinegar. Into each apple, pear, or peach, stick two cloves. Have the syrup hot, and cook until tender. Put up in attractive little jars with colored labels. Jars should sell for twenty-five cents.

79. Chow-Chow. – Here is a very taking kind: Take large red-peppers, remove the contents, and fill them with chopped pickles. The red of the peppers against the white of the glass gives a very pretty appearance. Small bottles that can be sold cheap will be the most popular.

80. Pickled Walnuts. – Pick out the nuts as nearly whole as possible, and steep in strong brine for a week, then bottle, add spice, and fill with vinegar boiling hot. Put up in very small jars. Have a jar from which to give samples if the dish is not common in the place.

There are a vast number of other fruits, vegetables, and nuts, which you can use as custom shall demand. If you grow your own fruit and do your own work, the result is nearly all profit. If you have to buy the fruit, the selling-price should be such as to give one third profit. This is the per cent. which all manufacturers expect.

These have a perennial sale. They are not confined to any season or age. Most of them, especially the French makes, come high, but they are composed of a few simple ingredients, and can be made by any person of ordinary skill. Here are a few of the best selling:

81. Rose Oil. – Heat dried rose-leaves in an earthenware pipkin, the leaves being covered with olive-oil, and keep hot for several hours. The oil will extract both odor and color. Strain, and put in little cut-glass bottles.

82. Cologne Water. – Take one pint of alcohol, twelve drops each of bergamot, lemon, neroli, sixty drops of lavender, sixty drops of bergamot, sixty drops of essence of lemon, and sixty drops of orange-water, shake well and cork.

83. French Face Powder. – Poudre de chipre one and one-half pounds, eau (water) of millefleurs one and one-half drachms. Put up in small cut-glass bottles and give it a French name. Poudre de Millefleurs will do.

84. Night-Blooming Cereus. – This is a very delicate and fragrant perfume. Spirit of rose 4 ounces, essence of jasmine 4 ounces, tincture of tonka 2 ounces, tincture of civet 2 ounces, tincture of benzoin 4 ounces. Cost $1.65 per pint. Put up in half-gill bottles at fifty cents each, $4.00. Profit, $2.35.

In selling expensive perfumery, remember that the glass is cheaper than the contents, and you should therefore select thick bottles with small cubical space. Tie pretty colored ribbons around the necks of the bottles, and put them, four or six together, in attractive boxes with the lids removed. You must in every way court the patronage of the ladies, and you can in some cases well afford to give a bottle to the leader of a social set with the understanding that she recommend it to her friends.

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.

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.