The opening sentence gives the book's true leitmotif: "So you want to be your own boss!"

To be sure, most of the book's 115 pages are given over to instructions for electroplating shoe leather and damn near anything else--plastic, plaster, wood, cloth, glass, rubber, even fruit, flowers, and insects--likely to come within range of the enthusiastic practitioner of this kitschy art. But even these technical chapters explicating the "New Warner Approved Method of Electroplating" are strewn with fascinating tidbits, such as how a "Baby Shoe Electroplating Plant" can be set up in one's home "along only ten feet of wall space." These pages also illustrate many clever uses that can be made of metalized baby shoes--for example, as book ends, pin cushions, cigarette containers, and adornments for ashtrays.

Among the artistic issues examined are ways of attractively arranging shoelaces prior to electroplating and of adding individualized touches to the finished baby shoes. Fledgling practitioners are made aware, too, of a nascent code of ethics for electroplaters:

The Baby Shoes brought to you by your customers have a sentimental value far beyond their material worth. They are irreplaceable reminders of "Baby Days" that will never return. By entrusting such treasures to you, these parents have expressed confidence in your ability to produce a metalized work of art ... each tiny wrinkle and scuff faithfully preserved in a lifetime coating of genuine metal. To deserve this confidence, it is your responsibility to perform each operation as skillfully as possible.

But the book's best pages explain how electroplating baby shoes can fulfill the American yearning to get ahead. Here we learn that "ability and perseverance--although highly important--do not guarantee a venture's success." One must also find enjoyment and the opportunity for individual expression in one's work. "Make a hobby of your business and the money will come!" bringing with it independence and assurance to the upward striver that he truly is "master of his own soul." Unexceptionable truths, no doubt, though probably few readers of this treatise would ever before have associated them with electroplating baby shoes.

That connection is clinched, however, by an "Opportunity Check List" indicating fourteen advantages that this new career field can provide to the aspirant to success--such things as the small investment in equipment and shop space, no employee problems, minimum competition, a substantial profit margin, and, most fetching of all, a never-ending source for new business:

As long as babies are born and a long as parents take pride in their offspring, there will be a steady demand for keepsakes which symbolize the first faltering steps of babyhood. It is a natural market ... for that first pair of tiny shoes--eternally preserved in gleaming Copper, Silver or Gold--is the one and only memento of the first achievement in everyone's life ... learning to walk!

An accompanying chart shows steady growth of that "natural market," too; the Warner Electric Co. was among the first to spot and to exploit the money-making potential of the Baby Boom beginning soon after the end of World War II.

Another advantage of this new career opportunity is the minimal sales effort required. "Just about every parent is receptive to the service you will render" inasmuch as "they can't help but sentimentalize about the babies in the family. ... In their human weakness you'll find your selling strength ... all the salesmanship you will need." Bronzed baby shoes are an "impulse" item, the treatise notes, which means that sales are "almost entirely a question of exposure ... constantly exposing the product to a maximum number of logical prospects."

Chapter 18 discusses in detail seven ways to go about doing this, such as sending postal cards to new parents, advertising in newspapers and magazines, and working through stores, friends, solicitors, and church and fraternal organizations. An exciting "Match the Shoes" promotional contest is described under the last heading, as well as ways to enlist the services of ladies auxiliary members, who will jump at the chance to earn money for their organizations by selling metalized baby shoes: "The idea intrigues them. It is a service that puts them right in their element. Since, by nature, they are all wrapped up in children, they can sell with an enthusiasm that is hard to find in a man who sells strictly for a living."

Two final chapters address "What to Charge for Your Metalizing Service" and "How Much Money Do I Need to Get Started?" The answer to the latter question is "very, very little!"--stated more precisely, "$199.57 or even less!" which certainly seems like a very reasonable amount for an investment that "puts you up in a steady paying, lifetime business."

But did anyone really ever achieve a "lifetime business" or reach the promise of "be your own boss" by electroplating baby shoes? Well, maybe not, at least not in recent decades, when the demand for this service probably has declined in tandem with falling birth rates. But many practitioners must nonetheless once have made a truly zealous effort at bamboozling doting parents, to judge from the many bronzed baby shoe items that still litter the scene today. They show up very often in flea markets, antique malls, consignment shops, and thrift stores, never selling for more than a few dollars.

This treatise is certainly right about one thing: electroplated baby shoes are "eternalized." Alas, it seems that the sentiment that brought them into existence has often been far less durable.