Personal Development
Near the public highway he built a unique log house to which he attached a
large dining room.
Near the house he put in a gasoline filling station. He built a dozen
single-room log houses along the road, these he rented out to tourists
at $3.00 a night, each.
The dining room, gasoline filling station and log houses brought him a net income of $15,000.00 the first year. The next year he extended his plan by adding fifty more log houses, of three rooms each, which he now rents out as summer country homes to people in a near-by city, at a rental of $150.00 each for the season. The building material cost him nothing, for it grew on his land in abundance (that same land which the college president believed to be worthless).
Moreover, the unique and unusual appearance of the log bungalows
served as an advertisement of the plan, whereas many would have
considered it a real calamity had they been compelled to build out of
such crude materials.
Less than five miles from the location of these log houses this same
man purchased an old worked-out farm of 150 acres, for $25.00 an
acre, a price which the seller believed to be extremely high.
By building a dam, one hundred feet in length, the purchaser of this
old farm turned a stream of water into a lake that covered fifteen
acres of the land, stocked the lake with fish, then sold the farm off in
building lots to people who wanted summering places around the
lake.
The total profit realized from this simple transaction was more than $25,000.00, and the time required for its consummation was one summer. Yet this man of vision and imagination was not "educated" in the orthodox meaning of that term. WHEN you lose your sense of humor, get a job running an elevator, because your life will be a series of UPS and DOWNS, anyway.
Let us keep in mind the fact that it is through these simple illustrations of the use of organized knowledge that one may become educated and powerful. In speaking of the transaction here related, the college president who sold the fifty acres of worthless (?) land for $500.00 said:
"Just think of it! That man, whom most of us might call ignorant, mixed his ignorance with fifty acres of worthless land and made the combination yield more yearly than I earn from five years of application of so-called education." There is an opportunity, if not scores of them, in every State in America, to make use of the idea here described. From now on make it your business to study the lay of all land you see that is similar to that described in this lesson, and you may find a suitable place for developing a similar money-making enterprise.