To be most successful, you must choose the thing you can do best and for which there is the greatest need in your community, for on these two factors depend your pleasure in your work and the extent of your market. For example, if you live in a town where people do much of their own sewing a cutting and fitting serves will be received more enthusiastically than a sewing service. If you community is one that entertains extensively, novelties that will be attractive for bridge prizes will find a ready market....
So reads the aspiring professional dressmaker in 1924 in a section called "Specializing in Sewing" from Sewing for Profit from the Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences. The book points out that choosing one type of garment or work--children's clothing, lingerie, aprons, etc--makes the most sense.
I like this passages because it shows a concern for both pleasure in your work AND the market. Both seem necessary to success to my mind. I am reading a modern personal finance book written by an economist and am struck by how he measures everything by the amount of money you have to spend each year. Yes, he does not want to urge anyone to stay in an abusive marriage or to work at a hated job, but his yardstick for happiness mostly measures dollars. I like this much passage better because it balances personal pleasure and the hard reality of the marketplace.
