738. The Guaranteed Egg.—A great business can be done with a guaranteed egg. Success depends upon the absolute perfection of your egg. Have a stamp made, and stamp every egg with the name of your farm, and offer to replace any one found faulty. Also stamp the date on which they are taken from the nest. In this way you will absolutely protect your product from the frauds of dealers, your eggs will attain a wide reputation, will have an unlimited demand, and you will grow rich. There is a mine of gold in this suggestion.
739. Double Vegetable Culture.—Here is an idea of a New Jersey farmer. He has conceived the notion of grafting tomatoes on potatoes vines, or an air crop on a root crop, and thus raising vegetables at both ends. There is nothing impracticable in the notion, and it is doubtless entirely feasible, if only he is liberal enough with his fertilizers. This is an idea for growers who have only a limited space, and where land is high.
740. English Shires.—Colts from Lord Rothschild’s stud farm last year averaged $875. It costs little more to keep a good horse than a poor one. There are great possibilities in the raising of fine-blooded horses. The colt that won the great Futurity race this year could have been easily bought for $700 before the race. Now $20,000 will not purchase him. “Plunger” Walton made $350,000 in two years on the turf. At the Elmendorf stud farm near Lexington, Ky., a short time ago thirty-three yearling colts were sold at prices ranging from $150 to $5,100, the average price being $1,460.87 per head; at the same time twenty yearling fillies brought an average of $676.50 per head, the forty-three yearling colts and fillies being the product of one breeding farm and selling in one day for $47,130 or an average of $1,095.80 per head.
741. Fortunes in Nut Shells.—Land too poor for meadow or even for pasture may be utilized for nut-growing. The trees require little attention, but will produce bushels of nuts if the soil is properly stirred and fertilized every year. One man in Connecticut raises each year 100 bushels of hickory nuts from ten trees, and sells them at $2 a bushel. The rocky, waste lands of New England can grow millions of these trees. Chestnuts can be grown cheaper than wheat. The standard price is $4 to $8 per bushel, but large chestnuts, early in the season, that is, in September and October, bring from $10 to $15 per bushel. Judge Salt, of Burlington, N. J., says he has a chestnut tree in the middle of a wheat field that pays more than the wheat. The average is about $19 per tree, and twenty trees have ample room in an acre. This makes $300 per acre with but little cost for cultivation. Here is something of importance about the pecan. The chief pomologist at Washington, D. C., says: “The cultivation of nuts will soon be one of the greatest and most profitable industries in the United States, and there is no use in denying the fact that the Texas soft shell pecan is the favorite nut of the world.” The average yield of these nuts in North Carolina is $300 to $500 per acre. Some pecan trees in New Jersey are producing annually five to six bushels of delicious, thin-shelled nuts.
CHAPTER XVII.
MONEY IN LITERATURE.
Profits of the Pen—Ten Cents a Word—A Millionaire Novelist—$3,000 for a Short Story—How Hall Caine Won a Fortune—A Pilgrimage of Publishers—“One Thousand Times Across the Atlantic”—$5,000 for a Song—Suggestions to Writers—What It Pays to Write.
Literature requires the least capital of any enterprise with the possibilities of rich reward and wide renown. A pen, a bottle of ink, a ream of paper, and—brains. These are all. There is no occupation so discouraging to the one who lacks the last-named quality and few so alluring to those who possess it. Authors are supposed to write for fame, but fame and fortune are twin sisters which are seldom separated. Hack writers are indeed hard worked and poorly paid, but in the higher walks of literature rewards are generous. In London, the rates to first-class writers are $100 per 1,000 words. In one case $135 was paid, and in another $175 demanded. Amelia Barr, the famous novelist, receives $20,000 a year from the sale of her books. There is a great deal of subterranean literature unknown to the critics and the magazine writers, but which, nevertheless, pays handsomely. One Richebourg, of Paris, has 4,000,000 readers, and often receives $12,000 for the serial rights alone, yet he is unknown to the magazine public. In this country the “Albatross Novels,” by Albert Ross, sold to the extent of a million copies, and the author acquired such a fortune that he was able to engage in charity on a magnificent scale, yet the author is unknown to fame.
Among the instances of the pecuniary rewards for single works are “Les Miserables,” by Victor Hugo, which brought $80,000 and “Trilby,” which netted the author the princely sum of $400,000. “Quo Vadis,” by Sienkiewicz, sells all over the world, but its author had already made half a million dollars with his pen before he wrote that popular book.
It is not our purpose in this chapter to treat of books requiring transcendent genius to create, but rather to suggest titles of works which may be composed by less gifted authors, books, which if written with fair ability cannot fail to be of interest and profit.
742. The Popular Novel.—This is the best paying form of literature. The pen that can touch the popular heart may not be a gold one, but it will bring gold into the pockets of him who wields it. Amelie Rives received $6,000 for “According to St. John.” Lord Lytton received $7,500 for some of his novels. Of the “Heavenly Twins,” 50,000 copies were sold in 1894; of the “Bonny Brier Bush,” 30,000 in five months; and of the “Manxman” 50,000 in four months. Of Mrs. Henry Wood’s “East Lynne,” 400,000 have been sold, and her thirty-four books have reached altogether over 1,000,000 copies. In France, there are sold every year of Feuilleton’s works, 50,000; of Daudet’s, 80,000, and of Zola’s, 90,000. Hall Caine received outright a check for $50,000 for “The Christian.” He had struck the popular chord with the “Deemster.” There was almost a pilgrimage of publishers to the Isle of Man to make engagements for the pen of the new writer when that book was launched upon the market.