WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 234, 1 April 1912, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

{Conducted by "Eileen.") A WONDERFUL ROMANCE. WOMAN'S WATERCRESS WEALTH. "For a woman by her own unaided efforts to have amassed £20,000 three or four times over by selling watercress is "surely one of the most wonderful romances of business London has ever seen," says the Daily Mirror. Yet this has been done by Mrs. James, sjf Covent Garden, who started her busing career with only two baskets of watercress and now has practically a monopoly of the watercress trade. One of the few women merchants in London, she has a fine house in Kennington, owns a watercress farm and country house, and keeps a river motor launch. Mrs. James, by hard fighting and stern struggling, gradually built up her big connection. 'She now supplies nearly every large London hotel and restaurant. At first it 'was very slow, uphill work, for the money witlr which Mrs. James was able, eventually, to purchase lier watercress farm had to be earned in pence. Her business day commences when most people are asleep. By ten o'clock in the morning she has finished with the market, and attends to her. office work at home. In the.evening she goes j round the stations to meet the after- ■ noon's consignments of watercress, and sells them right off to the barrow merchants to be retailed all over London. The Daily Mirror visited Mrs. James at Itennington, and found her, after a hard day's work that commences af three o'clock in the morning, busy with her chickens, which is the hobby of her spare time. "Hard work," she said, "is the secret of success in business—at least, I've found it s.o—and I have been out in al! weathers selling watercress for seventoei and eighteen hours a day since I wai five years old. "Study your customers, never disap point them, and give the best, and yoi must get on. I've been lucky in business, but I've had plenty of hard luck ii other things. I've made a fortune oi as much as £20,000 three or four times }'^ e ' " °^' lers hfwe spent it. "Holidays don't appeal to me. My greatest happiness is in my work, and I enjoy myself most of all looking aftei my customers. "Work suits me best of all. Once 1 retired from business, and I lost 3st in i weight in nine months. Last August I I went for a trip to America "with my J daughters on ithe Carmania and came | back on the Lusitania. I was hungry t/ [ get back to the market, and tired { / looking at the sea and listening to p&i I pie's silly talk. "Women have got just as good ; chance as men in the market if they will put the necessary work into the i business."