Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 28

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The teacher who finds the sharpening of pencils for her pupils a large and disagreeable part of her daily duties, will welcome this plan as a perfect godsend: that the plan, when properly operated by a live man, is a money-maker, is demonstrated by the fact that a Chicago man made big profits out of it.

He bought a large number of that botanical wonder known as the Resurrection Plant, or Anasta-tica, which can be obtained at a cost of 2 cents each, or less, when ordered in large quantities, and even when retailed at as low a price as 10 cents each, yield an enormous profit. To those not familiar with this remarkable plant, it may be well to explain that, altho it stays green while kept in water changed often enough to prevent it becoming stagnant or rancid, when taken out of the water it dries and curls up and goes to sleep, remaining in this state for years, and re-awakening or being “resurrected” immediately upon being placed in water again, when it will open up and commence to grow in half an hour or less. When tired of seeing it grow, you simply take it out of the water, let it “go to sleep” again, and re-awaken or resurrect it at any time you desire. Many people would gladly pay several dollars for a simple plant, but in the operation of this plan you can well afford to sell them at 10 cents each, as you realize a profit of 8 cents apiece, and one in every schoolroom in the land will prove a constant source of delight, as well as of educational value.

This is the way the Chicago man works the plan to the pleasure of teachers and pupils, and his own profit of something like $300 per week: he not only buys thousands of these Resurrection Plants, at, say, 2 cents each, but also a number of the best pencil sharpening machines, which cost him about 90 cents each. He consigns one of these machines and thirty of the Resurrection Plants to each teacher in a public school and requests her to announce that the pencil sharpener will belong to that particular room, for the full use of all of them, if each pupil will take home one of the plants and bring 10 cents back to her the next morning, explaining to them the peculiar characteristics of the plant. Of course, every child gladly performs this small service, and the teacher then remits to the consigner, the $3.00 collected, and he has exactly doubled his money, as both the pencil sharpener and the thirty plants cost him but $1.50. If there are over thirty pupils in the room, that simply means more plants and more profits, for with the second consignment of thirty plants it is not necessary to send the pencil sharpener, and the Chicago man’s profit on that transaction is therefore $2.40 instead of $1.50.

As there are many thousands of public schools in this country, and nearly all of them have a number of rooms, anyone who is good at figures can easily make a reasonable calculation as to the probable profits.