2. Custom Work: Stenciling curtains, scarfs, table covers, sofa pillows; designing patterns for embroidery for table covers, doilies, bags, buttons, shirtwaists, skirts, parasols, and chiffon scarfs.
3. Order Work for Other Departments: Decorating book covers, desk sets, boxes, dress trimmings—panels, lapels, vests; collars and cuffs, insertions for hand and machine; banding for hats, letters, monograms: designs for doilies, scarfs, curtains, work-bags.
Placement Bureau
From the first the school made some provision for placing its pupils satisfactorily in the trades for which they are trained. Originally the heads of departments attended to it, each for her own students, but as the school grew and the department work increased this method ceased to be practical. An arrangement was made, therefore, with the Alliance Employment Bureau to place the girls of the Manhattan Trade School when they were ready to leave the school or whenever they applied for help thereafter. This was a most helpful connection when the work was beginning, but it was understood that when the school reached the point in its development where the volume of business was great enough, and other conditions warranted it, a Placement Bureau should be opened in the school itself. This long-cherished idea went into operation in October, 1908, when a Placement Secretary was engaged and the school bureau was opened. This plan has already proved advantageous. In the first place a bureau so situated can, by keeping in constant touch with the departments, obtain intimate and detailed information about the character, the work, the special aptitudes, and the physique of each girl. Such data are extremely valuable in making wise placements, but are difficult of access for an outside agency. In the second place such a school bureau, open to graduates, tends to bring them occasionally to it, and thus strengthens their interest in and loyalty to the school by giving a practical reality to their connection with it.
Aims
The aims and working plans of the Placement Bureau are the following: (1) To secure suitable positions for girls leaving the school—those forced out by poverty as well as those who have really completed their courses. The problem is to get the square peg into the square hole, and it is solved by having a very intimate knowledge of each peg, and by knowing of as large a variety of holes as possible from which to choose. (2) To be a means of connection and communication between the school and the trades, on the one hand, and the school and its former pupils on the other. (3) To gather data about trade conditions that shall be helpful to the several departments, or in deciding school policies. (4) To build up a series of records that shall be of general sociological value as well as of immediate use for school purposes.
Kinds and Methods of Work
In connection with the placement itself there are four lines of activity:
1. Interviews in the office, when girls come in to apply for positions, and when employers ask for workers. Much valuable data as to the experiences of the girls who have been some time in the trade have been gathered in this way. In the case of the employer, if he is not already familiar with the school, an effort is made to induce him (or her) to go through it.
2. Trade Visits of investigation. It is the policy of the Bureau not to place a girl in any establishment until it has been visited, unless it is one already well known to the school, in which case the visit may follow instead of preceding the placement. These visits are often made upon the request of employers or in response to advertisements, if, as sometimes happens, a girl wishes to be placed and the employers already known do not need additional help.