While it may not be always convenient to construct a steamer large enough to take the width of the goods with one operation, and as complete as the one herein described, the quality of the work performed by one of this kind will repay the effort of building it.
Drapery work that is not worth doing well is not worth doing at all, and it is far better to turn out a perfect job at cost, or even at an occasional loss, than to turn out poor work that pays a big profit. The customer who receives firstclass work will usually return and will be willing to pay you a fair price for your work, so that in the end you may be recouped; but the customer who pays a big price for a poor and unsatisfactory article seldom returns to give you another chance.
It would be a magnificent achievement to make a workroom pay thirty-three and one-third per cent. profit, but the chief value of a workroom lies not in its earning power from a per cent. standpoint, but rather in its power to hold and satisfy critical custom and in the educational suggestiveness finished work produces, and which accounts for a large amount of the yard goods which are sold without passing through the workroom.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.