The morning times., 1895-12-30
JILLS OF ALL TRADES.
A woman's Advice to Other Women
Who Vary Their Vacations.

A Woman's Advice to Other Women
Who Vary Their Vacations.
Working girls of the most hopeless class,
we are sometimes assured, are those who
wander from trade to trade, says a writer
in the London Queen. They are boxmakcrs
one week. confectioners' hands the next,
matchmakers the week after that. They
fill up crevices in the labor system with as
much Indifference rs sa wdust shaken about
in packing case settles into one corner or
another.
Except as stopgaps, they are never OF any
particular use in their employment, and
they are first TO go short OF 4 place when
work is scarce. They are not more lacking
in personal ambition than in ambition for
the good name and good conditions OF the
trade in which temporarily they a re enrolled.
They are as much part Of the hire system
as suite of furniture, as much liable TO be
knocked about and TO be precariously paid
for.
Yet I doubt whether the Jill of all
Trades in the industrial ranks is quite
such an irritating and troublesome being
as her counterpart in the professional class.
Our poorer Jill'sfaults are at lea ST passive,
and are mainly noxious to herself. She
runs aboutfilling up miscellaneous vacancies
quite quietly, does our industrial Jill:
she troubles nobody to steer her GRANT
course, she askes no one for advice.
The middle class Jill, on the contrary, is
forever in quest of advice, and she has as
many counsellors as strings to her employ
ment bow.
Persons whose weakness Is to advise
young women about careers find in her
their constant chastisement: for the course
upon which she seeks advice is the only
course that you may be certain she will
not follow, the goal to which she Is os-
tcnsibiy labeled being, as in the case of some
wayward vehicles, sure indication that
she is en- route else whittier.
That Jacks of all-trades were on the
scene while women were still sticking
firmly to their one last of domesticity
ia not. perhaps, a fact that matters much.
There are the industrial Jacks, who are
divisble into the two classes of loafers
and of invaluably handy men.
And there are the mddie-class Jacks.
who oscillate between the professions-one
slipping between the two stools of the
bar and the press, another between sol
diering and stockhroling; tn ird is
nominally patent agent and really COM
poses serenades for the flute; fourth is
internationally firstrate actor and more
constantly very bad designer; fifth
could succeed as an essayist if he were
not set on failing as dramatist.
But the Jacks with all their faults may
be left to the attention of their wives and
friends. II is seldom for want of negative
advice that a man puts his eggs into more
than one basket. How remarka bly, negative,
too, the advice of friends usually is In re-
gard to professions! But that would lead
my argument away on to Il branch line.
The main course, however, which in
tended to pursue with this exhortation was
TO urge the majority OF young women who
have made tolerably careful choice TO
continue in one stay"
"Stick to your busincss-stick, stick,
stick" is the persuasion that most girls
need. Stick long enough, and in the end
you will succeed"
After all there are not many things that
keep cheerfulness better sustained than
success. Girls talk of giving up some career
in order to ''see life"
But what Is the use OF standing by to
watch other people make their lives,
compared with making one Of your own?
performance in life, however brilliant,
there is always a secret bitterness.
Be never SO rniddiing or so ordinary, but
ne something; and, il possible, continue to
be the same thing.