Morning journal and courier., 1889-04-08
TRICKS OF SOCIETY.
Maids do not Now Inherit the Dressea
 Of Their Mattresses.

of Their mfstfesses. | From the New York Graphic
 "The ladys maid of to-day is not SC
 lucky as she used to be-" said fashionable woman yesterday. ''More is asked of her
 she has to know all sorts of things, her sal- 1 ary has not increased-it is still from $25 to $50 month-and her perquisites have de- clined."
 "It is no longer the thing in New York to give your maid your old clothes. What do we do with thema Why, sell them to be sure."
 s"You are astonished, I see, but assure you the sWellest sort of women make no great secret of the fact that they sell their clothes. They are bought up by Jewesses, who visit the houses of the fair danes they deal with and transact affairs with great discretion. They are pledged not to resell the dresses here, but take them out West, to the other side, Ksmschatks, Patsgonis, anywhere where the friends of the original owners are not likely to be confronted with them, for in that case embarrassing compli- cations would be imminent.
 "Sometimes another arrangement is made and the dressmaker takes gowns back, but this can only be done when they have been IQsL6QCS. cannot properly be worn more than twice; well, If your dressmaker has large clientele in different circles of society, she can easily take your dress back, renovate 1t 8 little and place it elsewhere.
 "Mrs. Moses Fraley for instance, that St. Louis woman who makes such sensation with her enormous wardrobe at Saratoga, returns her dresses to her dressmaker as a regular thing. That is, in fact, she hires her clothes. She wears so many no one can keep up with her, and then more than that, lots of women hunt up her dressmaker for the particular purpose of begging her to re- produce for them this or that one of Mrs. Fraley's frocks. The dressmaker reluctant- ly consents to do SO, as nearly ss she can, and then sells them the identical thing. Th ey go away much pleased and blissfully unconscious that they are wearing that fam ous lady's old clothes.
 "The people who buy up fresh and fash- ionable clothes here are also in league with dressmakers elsewhere, and the best of their stock is resold to fashionable people as per- fectly new. This is the part of the trade in which most money is cleared, for the last purchaser pays the full market price for very high class of goods, and the first sales to the Jews are at absurdly low figures. The things they cannot pass of as perfectly now are much less profitable, for conscious pur- chasers of secondhand things expect to get them very cheap. People who would and could pay very high prices rather than have..such fact known are among their pur- chasers. Some are the ordinary respectables of no special notability, but most are either ladies who make no pretensions to respects. bility, actresses, artists, or managers.
 "There is place on Broome street in this city where patrons of all these classes slip early and often into quiet little door, ,unor- namented by any sign or calculated in any way to rouse suspicion that it is an abode of trade.
 'tOf course the big managers don't have anything to do with such arrangements, but the big managers lesser actresses sometimes do, and the little managers ind it very convenient resort when they happen to be costuming some spectacle of American comic opera. Even when they only buy things to cut up they get the material much cheaper than they would otherwise. Artists are al- ways longing for costumes of all sorts, and place like this is boon to them"