They secured two or three students by personal solicitation, and the wife began teaching them shorthand and typewriting, though she was only one lesson ahead of them, a fact of which the students remained blissfully ignorant. The husband took charge of the practical business course of instruction, and the pupils made rapid progress, for they were being taught along right lines.
In the meantime, the wife did her own housework, took care of the children, sewed, cooked, and performed all the household duties, while looking after the progress of her pupils, attending to her husband’s correspondence, etc. By using practical methods of instruction, they turned out very competent classes, and soon found it necessary to increase their facilities by moving to larger quarters and adding to their equipment, besides hiring additional teachers in the various departments. Today they have a prosperous business and shorthand school.
PLAN No. 88. OPENING A MENDING SHOP
A young woman in an eastern city, being in poor health and having an invalid mother to support, decided to open a shop for mending and fine sewing, as she was very skillful in the use of the needle.
She rented a small ground floor apartment in a good location, and put out a neat sign announcing the opening of a “Mending and Darning Shop. Fine sewing of all kinds.” She made a specialty of fine damask, hemming table cloths and napkins and darning old ones, and did her work so neatly that her services soon became in great demand among the housewives of the community. She distributed her business cards throughout the neighborhood, and these brought her in a great many orders.
Finally a large department store offered to add a mending and darning department to its activities, and place her in charge at a good salary. She accepted the offer, and has made such a success that she is now the head of this department, with several girls doing the greater part of the work under her personal direction. Just a little plan of her own, but it brought her independence.
PLAN No. 89. HOME WALL-PAPER AGENCY
A California man who had formerly been in the wall-paper business and found himself entirely wiped out by a fire, decided to make another start by using his home as the basis of operations for supplying his patrons with wall paper at very much less than the usual prices, the profit in that community being sufficiently large to permit great reductions in even the best grades.
A large manufacturer gladly sent him a book of samples of all kinds of wall paper, and with this he visited hundreds of homes, where he exhibited the various styles. The prices he named were far below those of the down-town stores, as he had no rent or clerk to pay. He took a surprisingly large number of orders, and realized a handsome profit on each sale. Many of his customers felt they could put on the paper themselves, but in those cases where he did this work for them, he charged a fair price, and soon found he had all the work he could possibly do. As his patronage increased, he found it necessary to employ a young man to do the papering in those cases where it was required, while his entire time was devoted to the taking of orders. He had excellent taste in the matter of harmonious decorations, and made many sales through showing the housewives the artistic effects that could be produced by selecting the design best adapted to the furnishings of the home.
At the end of the first year, he found his profits were much greater than those of any year he had conducted his store, and this without the investment of a single dollar.