Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 245, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1912 — Notes and Comment [ARTICLE]

Notes and Comment

Of Interest to Women

SHE SEWS FOR E^CHELORS. How a Widow Built Up a Fine Business Without a Cent of Capita! How much money an uneducated woman, without a cent of capital, can make by conducting as a busiuess what many other women have long made a makeshift of'is shown by '.he success met by a certain wagon driver’s widow in New York City, who is visiting every young bachelor business man she hears of with the offer to wash, iron, mend, and sew buttons on all his clothing for the sum of $1 a week. From the day she gets a man’s business she washes his soiled clothes so immaculately, knits up the rents so neatly, sews on the buttons so firmly, and brings each week’s consignment back so promptly that her mauy customers now look back on their slovelF” ly public laundry days as a nightmare “ The woman began soon after her husband’s death with only one customer, and struggled on for a long time with only a few. Then she got the entree into one of the big Young Men’s Christian Association buildings and by doing perfect work came out vicfbrious in a competition with the basement barber, who gets a commission as agent unusually vicious laundry in the neighborhood. Now the woman’s son is busy all day making collections and deliveries, her neighbor’s eldest daughters employed as her assistant, the family income is about twice as large as when the woman’s husband was alive, and the woman Is thinking of engaging another assistant to do the actual work, while she herself devotes he. energies to getting new business in other Young Men’s Christian Associations and bachelor apartments and boarding houses.