PLAN No. 262. MONEY FROM GEESE
Very few people seem to know that although geese pay greater profits than any other domestic bird, they cost much less to raise than other species of fowl. But a farmer’s wife in Kansas knew this, and she utilized her knowledge in a very profitable way.
She realized that the market for live goose feathers never could become glutted, and that dressed geese for Thanksgiving and Christmas time brought enormous prices.
She began early in the summer as she knew they were expensive to keep over winter. She bought one pair and a setting of eggs and from these she raised fifteen fine young geese within the first three months. Another setting brought out twelve more, and by fall she had a nice flock of thrifty young ones. By late November they were almost full grown, raised entirely on green stuff, so that just before Thanksgiving she plucked them all, including the old ones, and had a fine lot of fresh, clean feathers which later sold for very high prices. Then, after plucking the birds, she killed them all, dressed them, and sold every one of them before Thanksgiving. She could have sold many more for they were choice, fat birds, and all young except the two she started with.
When she counted up her total receipts from the sale of the feathers and the dressed geese, she was surprised, and the next year she went into the business on a much larger scale, with correspondingly increased profits, which were sufficient to make her livelihood.
PLAN No. 263. STARTED WITH THE LIBRARY COLUMN IN NEWSPAPER
A literary woman in a small city, realizing the inability of many people to make proper selections of books from the public library, in conjunction with the librarian, induced the editor of the local daily paper to let her establish a “library column” in the Saturday issue, in which she sought to instruct the public regarding the choice of books, the use of the card catalog, the consultation of shop lists, the periodical index, and various reference works. She was to be paid $5.00 a week, if she “made good,” which she did.
Then she inaugurated a “club column” in the same issue of the paper, and gave interesting news of club meetings, with comments upon the work done, etc., and for this she received another $5.00.
Later the editor urged her to add a “home department” to her work, at still another $5.00 a week, and on this modest salary she managed to live comfortably. In two years, however, she was offered the control of the home department of the Sunday edition of a large city daily at more than twice her $15 a week in the small town, and she promptly accepted it.