“The girls chosen are usually from the bargain counter, or those who are to be promoted from cash and bundle work or those who have shown good spirit, but who have gone to work at fourteen years and lack training and right standards. Sometimes girls who have just entered the store are chosen. Wages of candidates range from $5 to $8, but at the end of the course a graduate is guaranteed $6 as a minimum wage, and her advance depends upon her own ability.
“The girls are in the school every day from 8.30 to 11.30; then after an hour for luncheon, they go to the stores for the rest of the day, that is, from 12.30 to 5.30. My plan with the class is to take one big subject every day: all lectures are reviewed orally and the girls write all significant points in note books.”
The subject matter of the class, planned with the view of making efficient, successful saleswomen, has emphasized five main lines of study: 1. The development of a wholesome, attractive personality. Hygiene, especially personal hygiene. This includes study of daily menus for saleswomen, ventilation, bathing, sleep, exercise, recreation. 2. The general system of stores: sales-slip practice, store directory, business arithmetic, business forms and cash accounts, lectures. 3. Qualities of stock: color, design, textiles. 4. Selling as a science: discussion of store experiences, talks on salesmanship, such as attitude to firm, customer, and fellow-employe, demonstration of selling in class, salesmanship lectures. 5. The right attitude toward the work.
The following schedule gives the present arrangement of lectures and talks in the Boston school:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:30 | Store discussion | Hygiene | Sales slip | Arithmetic | Sales slip | Business forms & cash acct. |
| 9:15 | Salesmanship talk | Outline in note-book | Demonstration of salesmanship by selling in class | Color | Outlines and notes | Textiles |
| 10:00 | Notes | Lecture | Color | Lecture | Textiles | |
| 11:00 | Spelling | Notes | Notes on sales observed | Spelling | Review of Lectures | Notes |
| English | English |
The New York experiment is of more recent date, and has shaped itself differently. Its beginnings in the fall of 1908 are due chiefly to the efforts of Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, who persuaded the officers of the board of education to introduce a class in salesmanship in the public night schools, and to Miss Diana Hirschler, formerly welfare secretary in Wm. Filene’s Sons Co. of Boston, who conducted the class. The class was intended primarily for saleswomen already at work who wished to equip themselves more thoroughly. The first night there was not a single enrolment, but as news of the course spread, the attendance reached an average of twenty-five. This in itself—this attendance night after night of girls already tired by their work during the day—is evidence of the strong appeal made by the class.
Unlike most other kinds of industrial training, salesmanship classes require neither tools nor special equipment. They do require teachers and a text book. While Miss Hirschler was teaching her classes, she began writing a text book and making plans for training other teachers so that the value of the class might be extended to more than could be enrolled for her instruction. The newly-established New York Institute of Mercantile Training engaged Miss Hirschler and adopted her plans. Classes for window trimmers and sign writers were already under way. To them were added offices and staff for a school of salesmanship. It was a moot point for a while whether classes for salespersons should actually be held in these offices, or whether the scope of the work should be extended to reach the present directors of salespersons,—the store superintendents who now in so many cases hold morning classes for sections of their force. This latter course, Miss Hirschler decided, would be the best one to follow. Whereas by the former plan she might make more efficient a handful out of the thousands of salespeople in this one city, by the latter plan she would indirectly be reaching thousands not only in New York, but in as many other American cities as had stores to coöperate with her. The essential thing, she felt, was to train teachers. At present there were few even would-be teachers. While we were waiting for them, we might use the present situation by helping to make more efficient the involuntary teachers, the men at the head of stores who now ineffectually seek to grapple with the difficulties of their selling force.
Accordingly a correspondence school was started for store superintendents. While the general outline of the text book is followed, this course is adapted individually to each student. In a number of cases Miss Hirschler has visited the stores, personally looked over the situation, and made suggestions as to the organization of salesmanship classes, the selection of applicants, and the best methods of securing the coöperation of the salespeople. Enrolled in her course are store superintendents from New England, the South and the far West. Each one of these men is in turn reaching hundreds, sometimes thousands of salespeople.
The next step neither Miss Hirschler nor we who are the consumers can prophesy with certainty. Yet it seems reasonable to expect that in time store officials, who at best can give only a small part of their time to teaching their employes, will wish to be relieved of this task by professional teachers of salesmanship who, like other vocational teachers, give all their time to their work. By that time we shall have passed out of the period of experimentation. We shall have reached a point where we can say with definiteness what part of the student’s time should be spent in the study of textiles, what part in the study of color and design, what part in the study of applied psychology. We shall have reached a conclusion as to the relative value of lecture work and practise selling.
Selling goods may thus have become as definite and recognized a vocation as plumbing or dressmaking. Thus defined and established, this vocation which could have been taught in the beginning only by the faith and courage of private interests, may come to its own by recognition among the vocational day courses now being started in our system of public instruction.