Like most boys, Edward wanted a little money now and then for spending, but his mother was not always able to spare the pennies that he desired.  So he had to fall back on his own resources to earn small sums by running errands for neighbors and in other ways familiar to boys of his age.  One day he came across an Italian who was earning money in a rather unusual way.  This Italian would collect the bright-colored pictures that adorned the labels of fruit and vegetable cans.  He would paste these pictures into a scrap-book and sell it to a mother as a picture-book for her children.  Edward saw that the Italian’s idea smacked of originality and he asked the man where he got his pictures.

“From the cans I find on lots and in ash-barrels,” was the reply.

“If you had more pictures, you could make more books and so earn more money, couldn’t you?” asked Edward, as an idea struck him.

“Yes,” answered the Italian.

“How much will you give me if I bring you a hundred pictures?” asked Edward.

“A cent apiece,” said the Italian.

“All right,” agreed Edward.

The boy went to work at once, and in three days he had collected the first hundred pictures, gave them to the Italian, and received his first dollar.

“Now,” said Edward, as he had visions of larger returns from his efforts, “your books have pictures of only four or five kinds, like apples, pears, tomatoes, and green peas.  How much will you give me for pictures of special fruit which you haven’t got, like apricots, green-gages, and pineapples?”

“Two cents each,” replied the Italian.

“No,” bargained Edward.  “They’re much harder to find than the others.  I’ll get you some for three cents each.”

“All right,” said the vender, realizing that the boy was stating the case correctly.

Edward had calculated that if he would search the vacant lots in back of the homes of the well-to-do, where the servants followed the tidy habit of throwing cans and refuse over the back fences, he would find an assortment of canned-fruit labels different from those used by persons of moderate means.  He made a visit to those places and found the less familiar pictures just as he thought he would.  Thus he was not only able to sell his labels to the Italian for three cents instead of a cent apiece, but to give greater variety to the vender’s scrap-books.

In this manner Edward Bok learned to make the most of his opportunities even during his earliest years in America.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST JOB:  FIFTY CENTS A WEEK