TIISJ SECRETS OF SUCCESS. 
How a great Seed and Plant 
Business and a Town was built up. 
What two farmer’s boys did. 
What came from a thimbleful of seeds 
sown in a bos of dirt, A true story 
for boys, men or women, who 
want to Make Money 
Rapidly. 
About twenty-five years ago, two 
boys were trying to make a living on a side- 
bill farm in North Eastern Pennsylvania. 
They found raising potatoes, corn, oats and 
buckwheat, was a good way to keep them 
in food, but there was no money in it. 
They then tried gardening, raising cab¬ 
bage, green-corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, 
&c., to sell in the coal-mining city of Scran¬ 
ton. By this means they got a little cash, 
but their business was limited on account 
of distance to market (14 miles) and the 
difficult}’ of getting sufficient manure to 
keep the land rich enough to produce pay¬ 
ing crops. In gardening they had learned 
to raise plants for their own use, giving 
away the surplus. 
One day a neighbor got a hundred cabbage 
idants and insisted upon paying twenty-five 
cents for them. The boys for the first time 
realized that plants had a money value , and 
then attention was turned toward plant-, 
growing; they determined if farmers want¬ 
ed plants badly enough to pay for them, 
they would supply them. Up to this time 
they had always grown late cabbage plants 
in boxes raised four or five feet from the 
ground and fastened to some building, as 
was then the custom of all the farmers. 
That was to keep them away from the de¬ 
structive cabbage fleas. It was uphill work 
putting the dirt up in these high boxes, 
they were unhandy to get at, to weed or 
water. The lumber soon became rotten, 
and sometimes the dirt becoming saturated 
during heavy rains, would all come down 
‘in a heap. Besides, they found the flea 
could fly, and would often destroy all the 
plants even in these raised beds. Therefore 
they abandoned the old style way, and 
made beds in the garden, the same as for 
vegetables, right down on the ground. 
That year they made an accidental discov¬ 
ery of how to keep off the fleas, and having 
also the good luck to sell all their plants 
to farmers, who came after them, they felt 
safe in ventaring, the next spring, to put 
six rods of ground in cabbage plants. They 
were not a little anxious as to how they 
were to sell so many plants. On the six 
rods, one pound of seed would produce 
from thirty to forty thousand plants Par¬ 
ents and neighbors wisely shook their 
heads, telling the boys they were venturing 
in too heavily and could never sell so many. 
The boys were not discouraged, though 
doubtful about the result themselves. One 
remarked to the other that he “wished they 
might some year sell enough plants to buy 
a buggy,” so they concluded to let all the 
farmers know they had plants for sale. One 
of the boys had a set of stencil tools, and 
cut a plate with them, with which he print¬ 
ed a brief announcement that they had 
fine cabbage plants for sale, at 25 cents per 
hundred or .$2.00 per thousand, and scat¬ 
tered these rude bills through the surround¬ 
ing country; leaving them at the neighbor¬ 
ing stores, post-office, mills, &c. The re¬ 
sult was the farmers came one rainy day 
in June, and carried off every plant large 
enough to set, and left about $75.00 In 
cash with the boys. Encouraged by such 
success they increased their plant planta¬ 
tion the next jear to one eighth of an acre, 
or twenty rods of ground. On that, with 
three pounds of seeds, they resolved, to 
glow 100,000 plants. People who saw so 
many plants growing that spring called the 
boys fools, and sneeringly asked where 
they expected to sell them all. Tiie boys 
had learned the power of advertising. 
They knew their plants were well grow^n, 
healthy, and better in every way than the 
farmers could grow* for themselves. They 
knew (for the farmers had told them so.) 
that if the people were sure of getting such 
nice plants, so cheaply, whenever they 
wanted, they would not try to raise them 
for themselves. They also knew that not 
one farmer in a hundred, who did try it, 
would succeed in growing good plants. 
They employed the aid of a printing press, 
and had several hundred hand-bills struck 
