PLAN No. 519. COPYING PATTERNS ON CLOTH
An invalid woman, who liked working pretty designs on cloth goods, yet found difficulty in obtaining patterns to her liking, discovered a way of copying her own drawings on cloth, so that they could be worked as though they were stamped.
She mixed a quantity of finely powdered sealing wax with alcohol, until it was thoroughly dissolved. Then she dipped a clean pen in this liquid, and traced the desired pattern on tracing paper, and let it dry. She put this paper, marked side down, on the cloth on which she wished to copy the pattern, and pressed with a hot iron. The scaling wax in the liquid melted from the heat and stuck to the cloth, and formed a duplicate of the design she had drawn.
She was so well pleased with the results of the experience that she decided to make a profit out of the information, so she advertised in the classified columns of the daily papers that on receipt of 25 cents she would instruct anyone how to do this work. Remittances came in, and the printed instructions were duly mailed, to the satisfaction of hundreds of women who sent for them.
PLAN No. 520. MAKING FURNITURE POLISH
If you knew that furniture polish was largely all profit, the selling of it would look like a good business to engage in. A young Tacoma man thought so well of the plan that he adopted it, and made a good income from it. He compounded it from the following ingredients, and it did the work:
He mixed equal parts of linseed oil, turpentine, vinegar and spirits of wine, shook them well, and applied to the furniture with a piece of linen cloth, afterwards polishing with a dry flannel cloth. It made old, dingy, scratched furniture look like new, and he sold large quantities of it, not only to families, but to furniture stores, second-hand dealers, and others.
Then he employed boys to go from house to house, leaving a small sample, with directions for use, with each housewife, asking her to give it a trial. A circular was also left with each sample, stating that in a short time an agent would call and sell the recipe for making it for 25 cents, and that enough of the ingredients to make a gallon of it could be purchased at any drug store for less than 50 cents.
As this looked so much more economical than to buy furniture polish at 25 to 40 cents for a small bottle, the originator of the plan found that, after paying the agent a commission of 40 per cent, he was still deriving a net income from it that averaged close to $10 a day.