Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-02-07
WORK FOR GIRLS.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT FOR "Ex-
TRaS" AT GOOD WAGES.


During the Holidays-Great Demand
for Smart and Pretty Young Ladies.
An Objectionable Feature-The Law.
Nearly all large New York retail houses
hire extra employees for the holiday trade.
Nine-tenths of these extras are women.
They are hired as clerks and cashiers in dr.
goods houses, stationery stores and confec-
tionery shops. They are kept busy from the
fortnight before Christmas until the week
after New Years day.
Inquiries among leading firms show that
no less than 10000 young women have go:
temporary employment at good wages dur
ing the holiday season, and that several thou
sand more could have found similar service.
The number of these holiday 'extras" EN-
ployed by individual firms range from $50 TO
1900 They receive better wages than regu
lar employees in similar capacities.
During the season girls working as extra
hands have been paid from 50 to $3.50 a
week. Regular wages for the same services
are from $3.50 to $3.50 a week. Even at the
advanced figures it has been almost impossi-
ole, several leading firms assert, to obtain the
kind of extras" desired. One large house
estimated that their holiday business had
fallen at least $4,000 short Of what it would
have been if it could have engaged as many
acceptable girl clerks as it wanted. The su-
perintendent verified this statement by
pointing to score OF want" advertisements
which the firm had inserted in the daily pa
pers for a fortnight. He added, however,
that the trouble was not lack Of applicants il
number so much as in kind.
NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS.
"What particular qualifications must the
girls have?'
'!They must be able to make change, add
simple figures, remember prices, dress neatly
be agreeable, and, above all, have good looks
The last particular is the one in which most
of the girls are lamentably deficient. You
may smile, but good looking shop girls have
a great deal to do with trade at all times, and
especially during the holidays You will
always find the biggest crowds in the stores
which have the prettiest girls. 1t is just like
artistic show window dressing. People will
so where they can see beauty if it doesn't
cost them anything extra This is cold, hard
business sense. Don't you suppose that the
average man would rather be smiled on by a
bright, handsome, stylishly dressed young
woman than be transfixed by the frigid stare
of prirn, persimmony feminine person, with
false hair and a rasping voice!'
Eyes, but in the dry goods trade the GUS
toners are principally women" was sug-
gested.
my dear boy" the superintendent replied,
''you have lots to learn about the psychology
cal order of shopkeeping. Women shoppers
are just the ones above all, strange as it may
seem, for whom we are more anxious to have
pretty girl clerks. Here is the secret: The
average woman hates nothing in this world
so heartily as woman who is better looking
or better dressed than herself. Yet there is
nothing she will so around the block quicker
to see on the sly. The average woman also
likes nothing better than chance to domi-
neer over some other woman. In the pretty
and often stylishly dressed shop girl she has
q passive victim. The better looking and
better dressed the girls, the more jealousy
they will be eyed by women who call them
loud, brazen creatures, while furtively TAX
ing notes for future use from the fashionable
attire of the girls.
AN OBJECTIONABLE FEATURE.
zone Objectionable feature that attends the
hiring of girls for their attractiveness alone
must not be lost sight Of The moss success
full shoplifters in this city are those who are
in league with saleswomen. Our losses from
that source are incalculable and shoplifters
working with saleswomen are u,rely caught.
But SO great is the benefit we derive from the
pretty face, that we cheerfully put up with
whatever loss attends it,"
In many Of the large stores large number
of shop girls from IA to Is years Of age were
noticed, who looked pale and languid, plainly
showing the lack of healthy out door exercise
The society for the suppression of vice has
made several attempts to restrain the large
firms from employing girls, but as the law
specifies that girls willing to work cannot be
molested, the efforts of the society have
failed. The assertion of the society that the
influences which surround the girls are de-
moralizing in the extreme and units them
for household duties, is not combatted by
their employers, who, however, declare that
a girl who is compelled to earn her living
cannot find better way to do so than "clerk.
ing" in store-New York Commercial Adj.
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