Here are a few other things to complete the list of one hundred which you can make in your own home. You will discover many others for yourself as your trade increases, and your friends make suggestions. The secret of success is to find out what people want, and then give them a better and cheaper article than they can get elsewhere. You will find your customers’ wants changing according to the season or the newest fad. Things which you expected to sell will often be left on your hands. You must be prepared to take advantage of this. Drop the price when the demand falls, and always have in your mind some new article of home manufacture to take the place of that whose popularity is waning. Keep eyes and ears strained for the newest thing. As it was said of a certain burglar that he never saw a lock without the thought, “How can I pick it?” so you should never witness the sale of any article without the query, “How can I make it?” The following are easily made, and some of them very profitable:
134. Hot Gems. – If you can work up a demand for hot gems, you can make a good profit. Take a pint each of flour and milk, an egg, and half a teaspoonful of salt. Beat the egg until light, add the milk and salt to it, and beat gradually into the flour. Bake twenty minutes in hot gem-pans. The quantities given will make a dozen gems. Notice should be given of the hour of the day when they may be expected to be fresh from the oven. Charge twenty-five cents a dozen.
135. Sliced Watermelon. – Nothing so delights the heart of a boy. Cut a large ripe melon into half-slices, rather thick, and lay them on ice in the show window. Cost of melon and ice, fifty cents. Twenty slices at five cents each, $1. Profit, one-half.
136. Toothsome Pies. – Roll two strips of paste for the upper and lower crusts. Place the latter in position after moistening the plate, and fill with the prepared material already sweetened and seasoned. Lay on the upper crust, and make a little slit in the center. Put in hot oven, close draft after fifteen minutes, and bake from fifty minutes to one hour. Charge twenty-five cents for good deep pies.
137. Ice Cream. – You can do well with this in warm weather, if you have a room suitable for serving. One pint of sugar, one of water, and three of cream, the yolks of five eggs and a large tablespoonful of the flavoring extract. Boil the sugar and water twenty-five minutes. Beat the eggs with one fourth of a teaspoonful of salt. Place the basin of boiling syrup in another of boiling water, and, stirring the yolks of the eggs into the syrup, beat rapidly for three minutes. Take the basin from the fire, place it in a pan of ice water, and beat until cold. Add the cream and extract, and, placing the mixture in the freezer, pack around with ice, alternating with thin layers of salt. Turn the crank until the cream is frozen hard.
138. Pork and Beans. – You can make a large profit on pork and beans in places where there is a demand for them. Both are cheap, and you can make a handsome profit on a dish selling for thirty-five cents, the dish to be returned. It is well if you can to make a bargain to supply families once a week on particular days. This dish takes well in all parts of New England.
139. Tomato Ketchup. – Raising your own tomatoes, you can make it at a trifling cost, and reap a profit at ten cents for small bottles. For twelve ripe, peeled tomatoes, take two large onions, four green peppers, and chop fine. Add two tablespoonfuls of salt, two of brown sugar, two of ginger, one of cinnamon, one of mustard, a nutmeg, grated; and four cupfuls of vinegar. Boil all together for three hours, stirring frequently, and bottle while hot.
140. Mince Meat. – Many housekeepers prefer to buy the preparation rather than to be at the trouble of making it. Lean beef, two pounds; beef suet, one pound; apples, five pounds; seeded raisins, two pounds; currants, two pounds; citron, three-fourths of a pound; pounded mace and pounded cinnamon, two tablespoonfuls each; one of grated nutmeg; one each of cloves and allspice; brown sugar two and one-half pounds; sherry wine, one quart; brandy, one pint. Put up in three-pound cans. The compound should make six cans, and you should charge seventy-five cents a can for so choice a product. You can reduce the expense, if your customers wish a cheaper article.
141. Dried Apples. – If you have a few apple trees, you will often find it more profitable to dry for future sale than to sell the green fruit. Pare, core, and slice. Lay the slices in shallow pans or on clean boards, and expose to the air until thoroughly dried. Then pack and store for the winter market. You should get at least ten cents a pound.
142. Peanuts. – No risk of loss on these for they will always sell. Buy from a shipper or wholesale grocer a bag of peanuts and roast them in the oven until they are a fine brown, taking care not to burn. Profits in a bag of peanuts selling at five cents, one-half pint, 100 per cent.
143. Cigarettes. – Roll a pinch of tobacco in a piece of white paper and scent with any agreeable perfume. More profit than in cigars.
144. Tallow Candles. – Still used in the country, and to some extent by poor people in the city. Take beef and mutton suet in the proportion of one to two. Melt, and fill tin molds in which the wick has been previously inserted. The cost is little beyond the work. Charge twenty-five cents per dozen.
145. Lung Preserver. – (Rock and Rye). Here is the secret of this popular remedy for coughs, colds and lung troubles. Rye whisky, three gallons; syrup, made of rock candy, one gallon. Cost of whiskey and syrup, $3.50. Put up in pint bottles at fifty cents each, $16. Profits, $12.50, or nearly 300 per cent.
146. Poison Killer. – You may not sell much of this, but it is a useful article to have in the house, and will keep indefinitely. Buy a quantity of powder of aristol, and put it in small pepper-boxes, or in any box with a perforated lid, holding a few ounces. Dust the affected part freely with this, and the effect on the poisoned flesh will be magical. Use for any inflammation. Advertise it in placards.
147. Mucilage. – Dissolve gum-arabic in water until the whole is of the consistency of cream, and keep it from contact with the air. Add a few drops of sweet oil to prevent it from souring. The cost is almost nothing. You can sell it at five cents a bottle.
148. Pop Corn. – Use a large popper, and when the corn comes out white and hot, add a little molasses to make it adhere, and flavor with some popular extract. Mold it in balls, rectangles, or in any other fancy shape. A bushel of shelled corn which costs a dollar will make 125 balls. These at five cents apiece come to $6.25.
This completes the list of one hundred articles for your store. Observe that they are all made at home, and for that reason the profits are from 50 to 500 per cent., while in the ordinary way of buying from the wholesaler the storekeeper has to be satisfied with from 10 to 20 per cent. You will discover for yourself many other articles which can be made at home and sold at a profit, and you will not confine yourself to homemade goods, but will handle anything for which there is a demand whether you can make it yourself or not. Of course, if you make all the above goods, you will need much help, the cost of which will diminish somewhat the profits, but the design is that you begin on a modest scale, at first doing all the manufacturing yourself, and call in assistance as your business and capital grow. In writing this chapter the author has contemplated a lady as keeping a store of this kind, but a gentleman can do much of the work as well, and some sections of it better. Perhaps the ideal store would be that kept by husband and wife with growing children to assist. Now let us have the experience of a lady who has tried our plan.
Mrs. J- G- says: “By the death of my husband I was left alone with three children, Wilhelm fifteen, Gertrude thirteen, and Egbert ten. I had no means, though, fortunately, my little place in the suburban town of T- was free of debt. It consisted of a neat house and three acres of land. Having a fondness for plants, I cultivated them in curious ways, while keeping my little family together by taking in sewing. One day a lady who was spending the summer in T- called and inquired what I would take for a pea vine which was growing in a tumbler of water. I was surprised, as I had not thought of making merchandise of my plant pets. She purchased a number of pretty little odd things of vegetable life with which I had amused myself, and suggested that I might earn something by cultivating rare forms of plants. It was a new idea to me. I had not thought there was any money in what had been to me only a pastime, but I increased the number of my plant curiosities, and the lady and her friends bought them all.
“Then my friend said to me, ‘Why don’t you keep a Home Store? You have so much taste