1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



607 



about as fast as we want to use them. Aft- 

 er I finish my repast I dip my fingers in 

 the fountain near by and moisten my lips, 

 and use my handkerchief for a napkin, and 

 Mrs. Root does not feel hard, nor complain 

 a bit because she has nothing whatever to 

 do in preparing or furnishing the closing 

 meal of the day. 



Now, there is still another way in which 

 I am cutting out the need of a middle- 

 woman. My sponge bath, for some weeks 

 back, has been taken just before I go to rest. 

 There are several reasons why I prefer a 

 bath before retiring, rather than in the 

 morning. First, I get to sleep better. Sec- 

 ond, if I have done any perspiring work 

 during the day, I get washed off clean be- 

 fore I put on my clean night-dress; and 

 by being very thoroughly washed before 

 retiring, the sheets will go ever so much 

 longer without washing; and in this way I 

 save the need of a middlewoman. By the 

 way, is it an easy thing for you to get a 

 woman to do the washing in your neighbor- 

 hood? We have thought that, since the 

 saloons went out of commission, the women 

 who used to do the washing for a living are 

 becoming scarcer and scarcer; and as sup- 

 ply and demand regulate these things, the 

 price of washing goes away up (and the 



?uality of the work often away down) ; and 

 believe it is an axiom in economic philos- 

 ophy that we should try to dispense with 

 things when the price gets to be prohibitive. 

 Now, then, if you wash every day as I do 

 before you retire, your nightgown, jiillow- 

 slips, and sheets (also underwear) will last 

 a long while without the services of the 

 middlewoman. If that woman happens to 

 be your good wife, she will give you a vote 

 of thanks, I am sure, for any effort you 

 may make to lighten her cares and respon- 

 sibilities. 



A FAKE GROCERY COMPANY. 



Mr. A. I. Hoot:— Ah I have been reading Glean- 

 ings for a number of years, and have taken special 

 interest in your writings, I wish to call your atten- 

 tion to a fake grocery company which is going 

 through the country. One man by the name of 

 Story goes ahead and takes the orders, and a man 

 by the name of Smith follows two weeks later and 

 delivers the goods. The fake which I have reference 

 to is this: The man who goes ahead taking the or- 

 der says their soap bars weigh a lull pound, where 

 others weigh only 12 oz. Mother ordered one box 

 of 30 bars, or 30 lbs., and she got only 27 12-oz. bars 

 —only 20 lbs. and 4 oz. instead of 30. Please publish 

 this so as to put some people "next to them." 



Helena, Mo., Aug. 17. E. W. Trachsei.. 



My good friend, I would^ as a rule, refuse 

 to have any thing to do with traveling men 

 of this kind. Better trade with merchants 

 in your own town whom you know and can 

 trust. But in the case you mention you 

 should have refused to make any advance 

 for goods until you had seen them and ex- 

 amined them. This should always be the 

 rule, especially when trading with strangers. 

 Perhaps I might suggest that soap is gener- 

 ally losing in weight on account of evapora- 

 tion; but this could be no possible excuse 

 for furnishing only 27 bars when they agreed 

 to furnish 30. 



"GETTING RICH QUICK," "PROFIT-SHAR- 

 ING," ETC. 



I do not know but I shall have to keep 

 some warning like the above in every issue; 

 and let me repeat briefly, I would advise 

 you to have nothing to do with any j^eriod- 

 ical, especially any home paper, whose ed- 

 itor keeps urging you to invest or take stock 

 in some enterprise of his own — I do not care 

 whether it is the Wo7nan's National Daily 

 or Farmer Orth's Poultry Journal. I 

 would not permit any publication to have a 

 l)lace in the home that keeps continually 

 urging you to invest in its special specula- 

 tion. The poultry journal mentioned above 

 recently devoted two pages to urging its 

 l)atrons, one and all, to invest in a new 

 magazine. It went on to tell how much 

 money the editors of our different maga- 

 zines have made in a short time; and out 

 of the kindness (?) of the editor he unself- 

 ishly proposes to permit all his friends to 

 join in with him and get rich in just a little 

 while without hard work. Very likely the 

 stories he tells about magazine editors and 

 l)ublishers getting to be millionaires in just 

 a little while are, in the main, true; but be- 

 cause one man made a lot of money out of 

 strawberries, celery, or publishing a mag- 

 azine, it does not by any means follow that 

 you can do the same, or that any one can 

 tlo it. .Just because people insist that they 

 can do what others have done, the world is 

 full of blasted hopes in poultry, «stra wher- 

 ries, celery, and publishing magazines. 

 Perhaps everybody does not know that a 

 new magazine is coming out almost every 

 week, and I do not know but every day 

 would be nearer the truth. We see a sam- 

 l)le coi)y put out with a great flourish. 

 Sometimes three or four copies follow, and 

 that is the last of them. The probability 

 is, there is just as good a chance for you to 

 get rich quick at what you are doing this 

 very minute as any thing else you can go 

 into. " Let us not be weary in well doing; 

 for in due time we shall reap if we faint 

 not." 



.Just one word more in closing. A man 

 who. is doing a good business already will 

 not be urging his friends, neighbors, and 

 everybody else, to go in with him and get a 

 share of that good business. The above 

 will apply to Florida land speculation as 

 well as any thing else. 



After the above was in i)rint I ran on the 

 following, which I clip from a recent num- 

 ber of the Rural New- Yorker: 



The Circle PubUshlug Co., publisher of the Circle Magazine, 

 at 50 Mad'son Ave., has filed a petition in bankruptcy, with li- 

 abilities $111,200 and assets $51,832. 



In this connection we repeat what we have so 

 often said, that we do not know of a single success- 

 ful publication that is or has been trying to sell 

 stock or borrow money on notes from its subscrib- 

 ers. Publishers who try to induce subscribers to 

 furnish the money for their ventures are fond of 

 quoting the large profits made by other publishers: 

 but the successful publishers do not offer their 

 stock to the public. Whatever value a publication 

 has is principally what is called " good will " or 

 franchise: and while this may render a good in- 

 come to the management, it may and often does 

 disappear with changes of management, and is al- 

 together too uncertain a quantity for the invest- 



