How to Make Money

The year is 1922. The economy is surging, the stock market is climbing, and ordinary Americans dare to imagine their own businesses. This is the world John V. Dunlap addresses in his practical manual for the aspiring entrepreneur. Here is a window into a pivotal moment in American economic history, when anyone with initiative and a little capital could believe in the promise of self-made success. Dunlap offers concrete, often surprising suggestions for small business ventures that require minimal investment, from selling door-to-door to operating small retail establishments, from service businesses to light manufacturing. The book reflects an age when the path to prosperity seemed open and the rules had not yet been written. What makes this volume compelling today is not merely its historical curiosity. It is the glimpse into a particular American mindset: the optimism, the practicality, the belief that work and wit could transform one's circumstances. Reading it now feels like finding a message in a bottle from a vanished economic era, one that both reassures and haunts.