Further, it must be remembered that the world in which the shop-girl follows her occupation is a world of externals. The fortunes, talents, tastes, eager human effort spent in shop-window displays on Fifth Avenue, the shimmer and sparkle of beautiful silks and jewels, the prestige of "carriage trade," the distinction of presence of some of the customers and their wealth and their freedom in buying—all the worldliness of the most moneyed city of the United States here perpetually passes before the eyes of Zettas in their $1.20 muslin waists so carefully scrubbed the midnight before, and of Alices who have had breakfasts for 10 cents. Is it surprising that they should adopt the New York shop-window-display ideal of life manifested everywhere around them?
The saleswomen themselves are the worst victims of their unstandardized employment; and the fact that they spend long years of youth in work involving a serious outlay of their strength, without training them in concentration or individual responsibility or resourcefulness, but apparently dissipating these powers, seems one of the gravest aspects of their occupation.
A proud and very pretty pink-cheeked little English shop-girl, with clear hazel eyes, laid special stress upon unevenness of promotion, in telling of her fortunes in this country.
She was sitting, as she spoke, in the parlor of a Christian "home," which, like that of many others where shop-girls live, was light and clean, but had that unmistakably excellent and chilling air so subtly imparted by the altruistic act of furnishing for others—the air that characterizes spare rooms, hotel parlors, and great numbers of settlement receiving rooms.
"I had always wanted to come to America," she said in her quick English enunciation. "And I saved something and borrowed ten pounds of my brother, and came. Oh, it was hard the first part of the time I was here. I remember, when I first came in at the door of this house, and registered, one of the other shop-girls here was standing at the desk. I had on a heavy winter coat, just a plain, rough-looking coat, but it's warm. That girl gave me such a look, a sort of sneering look—oh, it made me hot! But that's the way American shop-girls are. I never have spoken to that girl.
"I got down to 50 cents before I had a job. There was one store I didn't want to go to. It was cheap, and had a mean name. One afternoon, when it was cold and dark, I walked up to it at last; and it looked so horrid I couldn't go in. There was another cheap store just beyond it, and another. All the shoppers were hurrying along. Oh, it was a terrible time that afternoon, terrible, standing there, looking at those big, cheap New York stores all around me.
"But at last I went in, and they took me on. It wasn't so bad, after all. In about two months I had a chance to go to a better store. I like it pretty well. But I can't save anything. I had $8 a week. Now I have $9. I pay $4.50 a week here for board and lodging, but I always live up to my salary, spending it for clothes and washing. Oh, I worry and worry about money. But I've paid back my $50. I have a nice silk dress now, and a new hat. And now I've got them," she added, with a laugh, "I haven't got anywhere to wear them to. I look forward to Sunday through the week days; but when Sunday comes, I like Monday best.
"Though I think it doesn't make much difference how you do in the store about being promoted. A girl next me who doesn't sell half as much as I do gets $12 where I have $9; and the commission we have on sales in Christmas week wasn't given to me fairly. The store is kind in many ways, and lets the girls sit down every minute when customers aren't there, and has evening classes and club-rooms. But yet the girls are discouraged about not having promotions fairly and not having commissions straight. Right is right."[[4]]
The charmlessness of existence noticeable in most of the working girls' homes was emphasized by a saleswoman in the china department of a Broadway department store, Kate McCray, a pretty young Irishwoman of about twenty-three, who was visited in a hotel she said she didn't like to mention to people, for fear they would think it was queer. "You see, it's a boat, a liner that a gentleman that has a large plantation gave for a hotel for working girls. It seems peculiar to some people for a girl to be living on the river."
Miss McCray paid $3.50 a week board at the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. Her salary was $8 a week. She had been in the same department for four years, and considered it wrong that she received no promotion. She could save nothing, as she did none of her own washing on account of its inroads of fatigue, and she was obliged to dress well. She was, however, in excellent health and especially praised the store's policy of advising the girls to sit down and to rest whenever no customers were present.