Basket making is one of these simple, easily-learned, easily-operated and profitable occupations, so well adapted to women, that it is a wonder more of them do not engage in it.
The country women at Aitken, S. C., make thousands of pretty and useful baskets from pine needles, and sell them at good prices.
A lady who was visiting there learned the art of making these baskets, and later her sister moved out west, where she learned how the Indians made the baskets for which they are so famous. Some of the materials used, including certain kinds of grasses, she sent back to her sister at home, and these were made into baskets of various pretty patterns, which sold readily, at good prices, to florists and others. In fact, her basket-making business grew into such proportions that she was obliged to employ a number of girls to assist her in turning them out as fast as they could be sold.
The beauty of it is that her expenses are next to nothing, as her home is her factory, the material is not expensive, no advertising or printing of literature is necessary, and the proceeds of the output, aside from the wages of the girls, are practically all profit.
As this lady lives in a city, she also derives a very neat income from teaching the basket-making art to other women, and these in turn, make a good living from their work, without glutting the market, for as long as florists have calls for flowers, they need these pretty baskets to put them in—and that means an additional profit on the flowers.
PLAN No. 93. POTATO CHIPS AND DOUGHNUTS
With a husband who was sick and without money, a new England woman, living in a small city, found it incumbent upon herself to do some planning to supply the family with food.
Having an intimate knowledge and special aptitude for making exceptionally fine potato chips and doughnuts, she decided that if she could once succeed in getting people to try her products she would be assured of a ready sale for them, and immediately went to work to prepare a small quantity of each, put up in her own style. Packing them neatly in a clean, new basket, she called at a number of well-to-do homes and asked the lady of the house to try a sample order. Nearly all these ladies were willing to do so, and were so greatly delighted with the superior manner in which they were made that upon her next call she was given a large number of orders to supply families regularly with what they regarded as positive delicacies.
In nine weeks she had made a net profit of $80 on her potato chips and $90 on her doughnuts, and from that time on she was so busy filling orders that she was obliged to employ a boy with a bicycle to make her deliveries.
There are thousands of other women who can do just what this woman did, and rise from a condition of actual want to one of plenty, and without asking favors of anyone. If they will make it a matter of strict business, they may succeed as she did.