Page Fox

“ Tracks to Wealth.—The inventor who can produce a scheme to cause the customer to become his unconscious advertiser has found the very highroad to success. Such a scheme might be a word in raised letters on the heel of a shoe. Thousands, especially in country towns where there are no sidewalks, would constantly be leaving impressions in the mud, and people would be astonished to find advertisements stamped on the very earth. ”

“ The Secret of Work.—Men will employ you if you mean business. When you find men working, work with them. Lend a hand. Every employer{16} would rather employ a busy man than an idle man. When he sees you working, he will watch you. If he likes you, he will make you an offer. A glazier, being refused work at a place where a church was being erected, put down his kit of tools, picked up the broken pieces of glass which the workmen had thrown away, and, laboring just as if he had been hired to work, fashioned the finest church window in the world, and became rich and famous. ”

“ A very large proportion of all patents prove remunerative; this is the reason so many are applied for, and so many millions of capital invested in their workings. There is scarcely an article for amusement, convenience, or necessity, in use to-day that has not at some time or other been the subject of a patent either in whole or in part. The sale of every such article yields the inventor a profit. If we purchase a box of matches a portion of the price goes to the inventor; if we buy a bicycle the chances are that we pay royalty to a dozen or more inventors at once. ”

“ The Glass-blower.—For twenty-five cents you can get a book with full instructions in the curious art of glass-blowing. The wondrous forms you will be able to produce, the pleasure of the work, and above all the money derived from the sale of your products, will delight the heart of any boy. There is money in glass-blowing after you have mastered the art, but if you would make a business of it you must apprentice yourself for a time to a master of the trade. ”

“ One man claims that $10,000 can be realized in two weeks by the opportune venture of $1,000 in real estate. Another offers stock in a $10,000 mine which he is sure will shortly be worth $100,000. A third offers $5,000 for the use of $3,000 one year in mining operations. A fourth wants a backer for a new power, in which $5,000,000 will be easily realized. Most of these “opportunities” are doubtless illusive, while many are bare-faced frauds; yet among the myriads there may be some genuine chances for money-making. A shrewd man might find a bonanza in this mine of opportunities. ”

“ No invention of early or modern times contains such possibilities of economy in commerce, of revolution in means of transportation, and of limitless fortune to the lucky discoverer, as this one that promises or threatens to displace coal, as yet the greatest factor in the world’s progress. Here is a prize alluring enough to call out the keenest and most devoted powers of the scientific inventor. ”

“ It is a fallacy that he has no claim on you when off duty. Do not give him the idea that you have no interest in the business except to get your salary, and no time to spare him except what you are paid for. Do not watch the clock; do not filch a few moments at the beginning or end of the day’s work, and do not ask leave of absence except when absolutely necessary. Do overwork and unpaid-for work, and when you see a point in favor of your firm, fasten to it. ”

“ Guide for Shoppers.—A department store in New York recently made a census of its customers, and from the count kept for a single week it was estimated that 3,125,000 persons passed through its doors every year. This for a single store. But there are thousands of stores. Vast numbers of these people are from the country, and do not know where they can trade to the best advantage. What a field is here for a shoppers’ guide! Ascertain what stores make a specialty of certain goods, what ones sell the cheapest in certain lines, and what days they make bargains in certain wares. ”

“ Odd Ways of Making Money—Millions for Cents—How to Live Without Paying Rent—X-Rays and X-Bills—Fortunes in Old Iron—Newspapers, Like Wine, Increase in Price With Age—High Price for a Wig—900 per cent. Profit in Old Books—What the “Old Furniture Man” Makes—The Five-cent Millionaire—Profits of Peddlers—Why Pawnbrokers Get Rich.
The ways of making money are as multifarious as the diversity of human industry. Some men earn a fortune, some discover it, some win it, and some marry it. Every year new schemes are developed for the earning of one’s bread. ”

“ Multiply this by 1,393,920,000,000,000 feet, which the surface of the ocean presents, and we gather some little notion of the inconceivable power that is running to waste. When will come the inventor who will harness the sea and set it to lighting our cities and carrying men and mail-bags? There is said to be millions upon millions of gold strewn on the ocean’s bed as the result of wrecks, but there is vastly more gold for the daring inventor in the waves that forever pound upon the beach. ”

“ Do you know that in the village of Freeville, Tompkins County, New York, there is a republic composed of many hundred persons ruled entirely by boys, and these the worst of boys, taken mostly from the slums of our cities, a class which could not be governed in the ordinary way? It is hardly too much to say that it is the most suggestive experiment in self-government in all history, and it awaits the pen of a practiced{232} writer. The movement is doubtless to be permanent and popular, and the first one to pen it in graphic style will doubtless gather a good harvest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is absolutely essential that your employer should have the utmost confidence in your integrity. Try by every means to gain that confidence. Court examination. Invite inspection. Remember that his profound belief in you—belief in you when out of business hours as well as in—is your surest stepping-stone to promotion. Character is power. Your success depends as much upon what you are as upon what you know or do. Stephen Girard once trusted his drayman to buy a shipload of tea worth $200,000. ”

“ It will be seen in the foregoing how every leading impulse in human nature is appealed to—curiosity and cupidity, honesty and economy, personal flattery and local pride. If, in addition to these powerful inducements to patronage, you combine shrewdness in buying and cautiousness in trusting, if your goods are excellent in quality and generous in quantity, if your place of business is neat and attractive, and your service marked by promptness and politeness ”

“ Happy is the man who can combine pleasure and profit. Most men use the rod and gun for sport, but there are a number of persons who follow the business “professionally.” Especially in the great forests of the north are found thousands of men to whom the skins of wild beasts may be said to be meat and drink. Some of them even attain a competence and retire on their savings from the sale of furs. This is less surprising when we remember that people in the great northern wilderness spend little beyond what is needful for the bare necessaries of life. ”

“ Simply because capitalists have not been wise enough to improve this great waste. In Holland, by a system of diking, land in a similar condition is now covered by great warehouses and factories, and cannot be bought for hundreds of millions of dollars. Here is the opportunity for capitalists. Why invest money in far-off gold fields when you have a Klondike here at the very threshold of the metropolis? ”

“ The great newspapers contain every day vast mines of advertising matter. There are many merchants who pay over $100,000 a year in letting the public know the cheapness and value of their goods, and one enterprising company, the proprietors of a celebrated baking powder, expend $1,000,000 a year in advertising their product. These merchants are constantly seeking the best means to get their wares before the public eye; also manufacturers, builders, real estate agents, railroad companies, and in fact all persons doing business on a large scale, are seeking to let men know how and what they do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How to Make Money at Home—One Hundred Ways to Get Gain in Your Own House—How to Get One Hundred Per Cent. Profit—Make Your Own Goods—Cheaper to Make than to Buy—Anybody Can do It—A Woman as Well as a Man—A Chance for Persons With Small Capital—Three Profits in One Sale. ”

“ When a Bernhardt or an Irving is to perform, an announcement is made that the box-office will be open at 9 o’clock on a certain morning, as early as 10, or even 6, on the previous evening you will see a solitary man wend his way to the theater and silently square his back against the door. In time he is followed by another, and yet another, so that by midnight perhaps a dozen or twenty of these grim-faced men are lined against the wall. Not one of them has the slightest idea of seeing the play. It is simply their way of earning a living. ”

“ Supply Companies.—A supply company differs from an ordinary merchants’ firm in that it does not keep goods in stock. It is a mammoth general agency for procuring whatsoever you desire. Specimens only are kept in the store, and from these the customers make selections. The advantage of supply companies is the saving of large rentals, of expensive clerk-hire, and of loss or damage in the long keeping of goods, and, most of all, of risk in unsalable articles, and in the fall of prices. Thus, a supply company can undersell an ordinary dealer, and if alert and prompt can make vast profits. ”

“ Vast Forces yet Unknown—The Human Form a Key to unlock Nature’s Caskets of Gold—The Storage of Air—The Waste of Steam—The March of Electricity—How One Company saved $50 a Day—Sunbeams for Sale—Winds and Waves awaiting Man’s Sail and Wheel—How a Western Man Invented a Sand Mill—Enormous Power of Sea Waves—A New Use for the Artesian Well—Eureka! The Right Kind of a Storage Battery—Opportunities for Enterprise and Wealth.
The finding and unlocking of the forces of nature have been sources of some of the world’s largest fortunes. ”

“ Four odd people—a little, shabbily dressed old woman, a splendidly attired and pompous gentleman, a country youth in blouse and overalls, and a man in the garb of a priest, make up the queerest quartette imaginable. They at once attract attention, but when they begin to sing a crowd gathers instantly. ”

“ When we consider the immense cost and vast number of these buildings, aggregating thousand of millions of dollars, the demand for building materials surpasses all computation and imagination. During the next few decades untold myriads of persons will get rich, either in this discovery of new fields for these materials, exploiting the old ones, or in the invention of new building matter. ”