This is the way the Chicago man works the plan to the pleasure of teachers and pupils, and his own profit of something like $300 per week: he not only buys thousands of these Resurrection Plants, at, say, 2 cents each, but also a number of the best pencil sharpening machines, which cost him about 90 cents each. He consigns one of these machines and thirty of the Resurrection Plants to each teacher in a public school and requests her to announce that the pencil sharpener will belong to that particular room, for the full use of all of them, if each pupil will take home one of the plants and bring 10 cents back to her the next morning, explaining to them the peculiar characteristics of the plant. Of course, every child gladly performs this small service, and the teacher then remits to the consigner, the $3.00 collected, and he has exactly doubled his money, as both the pencil sharpener and the thirty plants cost him but $1.50. If there are over thirty pupils in the room, that simply means more plants and more profits, for with the second consignment of thirty plants it is not necessary to send the pencil sharpener, and the Chicago man’s profit on that transaction is therefore $2.40 instead of $1.50.

As there are many thousands of public schools in this country, and nearly all of them have a number of rooms, anyone who is good at figures can easily make a reasonable calculation as to the probable profits.

One Thousand Ways To Make A Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money — Part 28

PLAN No. 21. $5,000 A YEAR FROM 8¹⁄₂ ACRES

One Thousand Ways To Make A Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money — Part 28

“The touch of a woman’s hand” is what turned eight and one-half acres of unattractive, idle land on the shores of Long Island Sound into a productive little farm that is now netting it’s owner a profit of over $5,000 a year! Don’t believe it? Listen!

One Thousand Ways To Make A Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money — Part 28

To be sure, she had a few hundred dollars--just enough to buy it and improve it with a cheap little cottage, a small barn and some poultry sheds, and plant it to fruit trees, besides every sort of vegetable that enjoyed the greatest demand. She now has an orchard containing the best varieties of fruit trees, 1,000 apple, 500 peach, 100 pear, 100 quince, 100 cherry--besides one-fourth acre in grapes, one-half acre in raspberries, blackberries, etc., and still has plenty of room left for vegetables, planting them between the rows of fruit trees, thus affording ample cultivation for all. She employs one man regularly at $40 per month, and hires extra help in the busy seasons of the year.