One Thousand Ways to Make Money by Page Fox

864. BAKED BRICK.--Late improvements in baking brick have reduced the

time required to bake 100,000 bricks from fourteen to four days, and the amount of fuel from forty cords of wood to sixteen. The following suggestions by a brick-burner will show the path of fortune to those who can reduce the time still further. Mix a little charcoal in the clay. Double the length of the brick. If by either of these ways you can make the bricks a trifle cheaper, while retaining their qualities, you have acquired a fortune. “Lucky” Baldwin, a man afterward famous for his mining and real estate speculations, made his first large money in brick-burning. “I had no experience whatever then,” he said, “but I studied up the subject, thoroughly mastered the details, and cleared $1,500 in a month.”