PLAN No. 453. EARNED HIS WAY THROUGH COLLEGE
Two young men in a northwestern city wanted to be lawyers, and both wanted to go to Ann Arbor, Michigan. One had some money, the other had not. The one with money loaned his friend $100 and with $50 saved he had a total capital of $150.
By the time Ann Arbor was reached and the preliminary expenses defrayed, there was just $15 left of the $150, and the young man who had it realized the importance of adding to that as speedily as possible. Therefore, during his vacation, he devoted his time to selling books.
Arriving in a city in central Illinois with a bicycle, a prospectus, and just enough money to stay over night at a cheap hotel, he struck out into the country the next morning, pushing his bicycle through the black, heavy and sticky mud of that rich agricultural section, until he came to a farmhouse. Calling there, he showed the prospectus of the book, explained its merits in a carefully prepared talk, and when the farmer’s wife wavered between yes and no, he clinched a sale by offering to deduct 25 cents from the price if they would let him take dinner. They did, and he sold.
That afternoon he sold another book by offering 50 cents off the price for supper, bed and breakfast, and from that time on he needed no expense money, because he paid for his meals and lodgings by selling books to farmers and deducting the charges for them from the price of the book. And that made many a sale which he would not otherwise have made. At the end of ten weeks’ work he had made $350 as net commissions on his sales.
The next summer he took the agency for another book, which he sold in the towns and cities, thereby avoiding the strenuous work of wading through mud, and that season he earned $400 net in commissions on his sales, so that he had repaid the $100 loan, paid all his tuition and other expenses in college and had some money left.
The third summer, still sticking to the book business, he employed agents and assistants to make sales under his supervision, and made $500 through this work.