She began by selling their grand piano for $800 and buying a second-hand up-right for $185. Then she sold her buffet, china closet, two extra bedroom suites, four good rugs, several sets of silverware, some china, cut-glass, pictures, etc., at private sale, and from these she received $720 more.
Out of her total receipts, she paid the family debts and had $640 left. She paid $300 for a lot in the outskirts of the city; $54 for enough second-hand lumber to build a shack 20x40 in size, she and her husband putting up the building and putting in a cement floor, and lining the building with tar paper. They divided the shack into four rooms with straw matting for partitions, bought second-hand windows at $1 each, and made their own doors. Then they placed rugs on all the floors except the kitchen and moved in, thus saving $40 a month in rent.
They still had $200 in the bank, and out of this she paid $40 for putting down a well, then she gave piano lessons to country children, at 50 cents an hour, and earned $20 a month that way. She set up her grandmother’s old loom and wove rag rugs until she had earned $700 that way, and at the end of three years they had $3,000 in the bank, had raised the house, put in a foundation, dug a cellar and built two porches.
In two years more they were another $2,000 ahead, so her husband resigned his position and they began buying vacant lots at $250 to $400 each, bought old houses “for a song,” tore them down, and with the material built several tiny new bungalows. The husband did the carpenter work, she did the interior decorating work and the children helped a good deal. When a bungalow was finished, they readily sold it for from $1,700 to $2,200 and made a nice profit on each.
To-day they are living in a modern 9-room bungalow, and own twenty-seven vacant lots besides, all paid for, and have an income of $4,000 a year.
PLAN No. 302. HOT SOUPS FOR BUSINESS GIRLS
A practical and profitable idea came to a woman in an eastern city when she thought of the large number of business girls and girls in government employ who so earnestly long for the taste of home-cooked foods, which they never get.
Instantly she had formed her plan to put up ready-to-serve, homemade soups, potpies, beans, clam and fish chowders, and other things, to be delivered in glass jars, just at dinner time, to those girls who would love to have a hot meal at home, if they had anyone to cook it for them, or had time to cook it themselves.
Making sure that nothing left her kitchen until its taste and attractiveness were tested and proven when it reached those tired women and girls, it was a veritable blessing in glass jars.
She baked beans without pork, but with an onion in the center instead, and covered with salad oil. She made Dutch potpie cooked like a stew, made fish and clam chowders and prepared them all in the most appetizing way, so that anyone would relish them.