AMONG THE SHOP-GIRLS.
Why this army of women, many thousand strong, is standing behind counters, over-worked and underpaid, the average duration of life among them as a class lessening every year, is a question with which we can at present deal only indirectly. It is sufficient to state that the retail stores of wellnigh every order, though chiefly the dry-goods retail trade, have found their quickness and aptness to learn, the honesty and general faithfulness of women, and their cheapness essentials in their work; and that this combination of qualities—cheapness dominating all—has given them permanent place in the modern system of trade. A tour among many of the larger establishments confirmed the statement made by employers in smaller ones, the summary being given in the words of a manager of one of the largest retail houses to be found in the United States.
“We don’t want men,” he said. “We wouldn’t have them even if they came at the same price. Of course cheapness has something to do with it, and will have, but for my part give me a woman to deal with every time. Now there’s an illustration over at that hat-counter. We were short of hands to-day, and I had to send for three girls that had applied for places, but were green—didn’t know the business. It didn’t take them ten minutes to get the hang of doing things, and there they are, and you’d never know which was old and which was new hand. Of course they don’t know all about qualities and so on, but the head of the department looks out for that. No, give me women every time. I’ve been a manager thirteen years, and we never had but four dishonest girls, and we’ve had to discharge over forty boys in the same time. Boys smoke and lose at cards, and do a hundred things that women don’t, and they get worse instead of better. I go in for women.”
“How good is their chance of promotion?”
“We never lose sight of a woman that shows any business capacity, but of course that’s only as a rule in heads of departments. A saleswoman gets about the same right along. Two thirds of the girls here are public-school girls and live at home. You see that makes things pretty easy, for the family pool their earnings and they dress well and live well. We don’t take from the poorer class at all. These girls earn from four and a half to eight dollars a week. A few get ten dollars, and they’re not likely to do better than that. Forty dollars a month is a fortune to a woman. A man must have his little fling, you know. Women manage better.”
“If they are really worth so much to you, why can’t you give better pay? What chance has a girl to save anything, unless she lives at home?”
“We give as high pay as anybody, and we don’t give more because for every girl here there are a dozen waiting to take her place. As to saving, she doesn’t want to save. There isn’t a girl here that doesn’t expect to marry before long, and she puts what she makes on her back, because a fellow naturally goes for the best-looking and the best-dressed girl. That’s the woman question as I’ve figured it out, and you’ll find it the same everywhere.”
Practically he was right, for the report, though varying slightly, summed up as substantially the same. Descending a grade, it was found that even in the second and third rate stores the system of fines for any damage soon taught the girls carefulness, and that while a few were discharged for hopeless incompetency, the majority served faithfully and well.
“I dare say they’re put upon,” said the manager of one of the cheaper establishments. “They’re sassy enough, a good many of them, and some of the better ones suffer for their goings-on. But they ain’t a bad set—not half; and these women that come in complaining that they ain’t well-treated, nine times out of ten it’s their own airs that brought it on. It’s a shop-girl’s interest to behave herself and satisfy customers, and she’s more apt to do it than not, according to my experience.”
“They’d drive a man clean out of his mind,” said another. “The tricks of girls are beyond telling. If it wasn’t for fines there wouldn’t one in twenty be here on time, and the same way with a dozen other things. But they learn quick, and they turn in anywhere where they’re wanted. They make the best kind of clerks, after all.”