The Bozeman weekly chronicle., 1888-02-29
WORK FOR GIRLS.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT FOR lex
rRAs" AT GOOD WAGES,

Well Paid Situations Going q Begging
| During the Holidays-Great Demand
for Smart and Pretty Young Ladies'.
| An Objectionable Feature-The Inv.
Nearly all large New York retail houses
hire extra employees for the holiday trade.
Nine-tenths Of these 'extrasn are women.
They are hired as clerks and cashiers in dry
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 $4,000 young women have got
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 "extrasn EN-
ployed by individual firms range from 15O 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 $125O week. Even at the
advanced figures it has been almost impossi-
ble, several leading firms assert, to obtain the
kind Of 'extras" desired. One large house
estimated that their holiday business had
fallen at least $15, 900 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 "wantn advertisements
which the firm had inserted in the daily pa
pers for q fortnight. He added, however.
that the trouble was not lack of applicants in
number SO much as in kind.
NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS.
"What particular qualifications must the
girls haver'
"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 Ia the one in which most
Of the girls are lamentably deficient, You
may smile, but good looking shop girls have
q great deal to do with trade at all times, and
especially during the holidays. You win
always find the biggest crowds in the stores
which have the prettiest girls It is Just like
artistic show window dressing. People will
go where they can see beauty II IL 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 transflxed by the frigid stare
OF prim, persimmony feminine person, with
salse hair and rasping voicef'
"Yes, 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 psychologist
cal order of shopkeeping. Women shoppers
are just the ones above all, strange as it NAV
seem, for whom we are more anxious to have
pretty girl clerks Here is the secret: The
average woman hates nothing in this world
90 heartily as woman who is better Looking
or better dressed than herself. Yet there Is
nothing she will go around the block quicker
to sec 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 jealously
they viii be eyed by women who call them
loud, brazen creatures, while furtively tax
Ing notes for future use from the fashionable
attire of the girla
AN OBJECTIONABLE YrAruRE.
Zone Objectionable feature that attends tha
hiring Of girls for their attractiyeuess alone
must mot be lost sight of. The most success-
iui shoplifters In this city are those who are
IN league with saleswomen. Our losses from
tnat source are tncaleulable, and shoplifters
WORKING with salesyomen are rarely caught
Bnt 20 great Is the benefit we derive from the
pretty face, that we ohserfully put up with
whatever loss attends it,"
In many of the large stores q large number
of shop girls from IA to 10 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
frms 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- |
morahzing In the extreme and unfits them |
for household duties. ia not combatted by
their employers. who, however, declare that
girl who % compelled to earn her living
cannot find better way to do 80 than "clerk. |
lngn In stora-New York Commercial Ad-