One Thousand Ways to Make Money by Page Fox

MONEY IN BUILDING MATERIALS. Boundless Wealth in Brick, Wood and Stone--Farmers Who have Untouched and Unknown Mines--A Man With 2,000,000 Acres--How a Farmer Astonished a Lawyer--A New Way to Measure Land--Men Who Don’t Know They are Rich--Are You One?--More Money in the Builder’s Stone than in the Philosopher’s Stone--Secrets of Brick Making--The Exploits of “Lucky” Baldwin--A Man Who Lives in a Glass House--The Floor of the Future--Time is Money, but the Shorter the Time the More the Money. It is certain that nearly all the structures now upon the earth will have to be rebuilt during the next half century. When we consider the immense cost and vast number of these buildings, aggregating thousand of millions of dollars, the demand for building materials surpasses all computation and imagination. During the next few decades untold myriads of persons will get rich, either in this discovery of new fields for these materials, exploiting the old ones, or in the invention of new building matter. “How large is your farm?” inquired a lawyer of a verdant farmer whom he meant to guy. The man of the law winked at his companion as much as to say, “See what sport I will have with the old fool!” “Well,” said the haymaker, “I reckon I have about 2,000,000 acres.” “Two million acres!” gasped the attorney, gazing round; “pray, where is it?” “Down yere,” replied the farmer, pointing his long, skinny fingers at the ground. “I have got a hundred acres on top, and I reckon I own about down to the middle of the y’arth.” The man of the soil spake wiser than he knew. He was rich, but not exactly in the way he imagined, for a granite quarry of the finest kind was found on his land, which caused him to realize a large sum.