Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1888-01-27
WORK FOR GIRLS.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT FOR "Ex-
TRAS" AT GOOD WAGES.

Well Paid Situations Going Begging
for Smart and Pretty Young Ladies'.
An Objectionable Teature--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 dry
goods houses, stationery stores and confec-
tionery shops. They arc kept busy from tho
fortnight before Christmas until tho week
after New Years day.
Inquiries among loading firms show that
no less than $4,000 young women have got
temporary employment at coed wages dur
ing tho holiday season, and that several thou
sand moro could have found similar service
The number of these holiday extras" EN-
ployed by individual firms range from 100 to
1850. They receive better wages than regu-
lar employees in similar capacities.
During the season girls working as extra
hands have been paid from 80 to $3.50
week. Regular wages for the same services
ore from IS 80 to Sl3 80 n week Even at the
advanced figures it has been almost impossi-
ble, several leading firms assert, to obtain the
kind Of extras desired. Ono large house
estimated that their holiday business had
fallen at least SIS, GOO 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 in
number so much as in kind
NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS.
"What particular qualifications must the
girls havef"
'They must be ablo 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, belt 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
go 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
bright, handsome, stylishly dressed young
woman than be transixed by the frigid stare
of prim, persimmony feminine person, with
false hair and a rasping voicef'
Eyes, but in the dry goods trade tho 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 1t may
seem, for whom we arc more anxious to have
pretty girl clerks. Hore is the secret: The
average woman hates nothing in this world
30 heartily as a woman who is better looking
or better dressed than herself. Yet there is
nothing she will go around the block quicker
TO see on the sly. The average woman also
likes nothing better than a chance to domi-
neer over some other woman. In the pretty
and often stylishly dressed shop girl she has
a passive victim The better looking and
better dressed the girls, the more jealously
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. |