Page 283 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

was like this: One day, while Mr. Towns chanced to be watching the

janitor of a local building, which housed a number of dentists, carting away
ashes from the building’s incinerator, a sudden idea came to him. “Give me a
sample of those ashes,” he remarked. He took the ashes to his office and
assayed them. He discovered that the sample contained enough gold to
average $140 worth of gold to the ton!

So his hunch was right. Dentists work with gold; filing, scraping and molding
it. Naturally, tiny particles of gold fell to the floor and were swept up, finally
ending up in the ashes of the incinerator. He contracted to buy the sweepings
from this building.

Thus began one of America’s strangest businesses, and one of the most
profitable in consideration of the investment required. Beginning in San
Antonio, Mr. Towns rapidly expanded his purchases. He bought sweepings
from medical office buildings in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, one Dallas
building’s sweepings assaying $700 worth of gold to the ton.

Today Mr. Towns buys sweepings from medical office buildings in thirty
different states. He receives about ten tons of ashes and sweepings per month,
with the assay running all the way from a little better than $100 to $2,000 per
ton. Yet the famed Juneau gold mine of Alaska is being operated successfully
with an assay of only fifty cents worth of gold per ton.

Naturally, this is a specialized business, requiring special skill and
knowledge. Not everyone could do it, of course. It does show, however, the
buried opportunities that lie all about you, if you will keep your eyes and
mind open for them!

AClubTruckGarden

A

TRUCK farmer in New York State had been raising garden truck for several
years and peddling it house to house. For some time he had been dissatisfied