The saleslady / by Frances R. Donovan

Front matter

AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

331.4

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Introduction

In view of the movement and change so eminently characteristic of our modern world, students of contemporary life are increasingly sensible of a need for a more intimate knowledge of the occupations. The old tribal and local organization of life is everywhere in process of dissolution, but a new and different social and moral order based upon occupational association and interest is coming into existence. The new occupations mean a new division of labor, and every extension of the division of labor implies a wider range of human co-operation. It is in this way that social life expands and civilization grows.

The occupations have been studied heretofore mainly as an economic phenomenon, as one of the incidents to the production and distribution of goods and services. But the economic organization inevitably becomes the basis for a social order, and changes in the occupations inevitably bring with them social consequences. Adam Smith was one of the first to point out the fact that the differences in character and personality which are ordinarily conceived as biologically conditioned and innate are very largely a product of differences in occupation, and since personality, as we have come to conceive it, is merely the subjective individual aspect of a tradition and culture, it transpires that every occupation becomes, or tends to become, the basis for a new society. This statement may seem a little too elaborate, considering the character of the book that it seeks to introduce, but it at least indicates the field in which the subject of the volume lies.

699110 viii INTRODUCTION

The Saleslady is, at any rate, a contribution to our knowledge of changes that are taking place in the life and character of women as a result of their entrance into the broader fields of economic life. It is in manner impressionistic and descriptive rather than systematic and formal. Frances Donovan, the author, is rather more interested in the history than in the sociology of contemporary life. The book she has written, because of its exploratory character, has more the character of a personal narrative and a report of observations than of a systematic treatise. It is written, one may perhaps say, from the point of view of what Lindeman aptly calls the participant observer. The author has been able to enter sympathetically and understanding^ into the experiences of the persons whose lives she depicts, but at the same time she is keenly alive to the larger implications of her own experiences and those of the women with whom she is associated.

What one has here, therefore, is largely a personal document, or a series of documents, in which the intimate life of a group, several groups, in fact, of women is recorded.

Out of this record one gains a very real insight into the conditions under which a new type of woman is evolving, a woman sophisticated, self-reliant, competent — a woman of the world, in short, having her own philosophy and outlook on life and her own conception of values. In this conception it is interesting to note that marriage plays a considerably less important part than it has played in the past and still plays in the lives of most women who have not achieved economic independence. It is interesting to note, also, that "the adventurous character of women," to which Dr. W. I. Thomas referred so interestingly in a paper some years ago, seems to be undergoing change, even if it has not yet com-

INTRODUCTION ix

pletely disappeared. Incidentally, it appears that the little shopgirl whose fortunes have been touchingly described by O. Henry, has been very largely superseded; the saleslady is likely to be a mature woman. Many of them are married or widowed, and in any case they hold their jobs by their competence rather than by their charm. It is difficult, since we have no intimate and realistic accounts of the shopgirl of the mauve decade, to estimate the full extent of the changes that have taken place in the character and conditions of one of the early occupations into which women ventured. These changes may, however, be indicated by the fact that department stores — the more radical and progressive of them, at least — no longer hire their help with the casual approval of the department manager. No, indeed! Girls now get their jobs and hold their positions on the basis of a psychological examination and an intelligence test.

This volume, I might add, may be regarded as a sequel to an earlier volume by the same author, The Woman Who Waits, describing in the same intimate way the life of the waitress in Chicago.

Robert E. Park

Table Of Contents

I. Why This Inquiry Was Made i

II. Getting a Job 4

III. Training In 19

Chapter I Why This Inquiry Was Made

Every year I become acquainted with some two hundred girls who are confronted with the problem of earning a living. They talk this over with me, ask my advice about what they shall do after graduation. Those who are obliged to leave school before graduation, because their families need the money which they can earn, ask me the same question. I am a teacher in a large public high school in Chicago.

"But what have you thought of doing?" I ask, though I know the answer, which is, nine times out of ten, "I would like to be a stenographer."

"Why?" I wait for the always unsatisfactory answer. The only exception was Marguerite, a clever, charming little thing with an intelligence far above the average, who replied, "Oh, I'm going to be an executive secretary and marry the boss." She laughed but she meant it.

I laughed with her. "I think you'll be successful if you are careful in selecting your boss."

"Well, you see," continued Marguerite with unembarrassed frankness, "I want to get married sometime. If I'm a teacher I'll never meet any men and so what is there for me to do except be a stenographer? Besides I can't go to college; the family needs my wages to help pay off the dear old mortgage. Last year father built a two-flat building."

"Why not work in a department store?" I suggested. "You might get to be a buyer and that would be a good position with a fine salary."

"What's a buyer? I never heard of one," replied Marguerite naively.

I explained as best I could and dwelt at some length on the advantages, as I saw them, of working in a department store. But, in reality, I knew very little about department stores myself and it is not surprising that I failed to convince Marguerite. None of her friends worked in department stores; they were all stenographers who hoped to become executive secretaries and marry the boss or, failing in this, some of the lesser male members of the office force. Marguerite knew girls who had made such marriages and, in the face of such realism, my chatter about department stores sounded altogether mythical.

"But you don't get any money in a department store," protested Marguerite, "and you won't have a chance to meet any men. I don't want to marry a ribbon-counter clerk." Marguerite became a stenographer.

In the hotel where I lived was a woman, a widow who had been happily married, who was a buyer in a large department store down town. I told her what Marguerite had said.

"The girl doesn't know," said Mrs. Carter, "wages in stores average higher than they do in offices and the work is more interesting. The girls do get married, too, lots of them, and they marry well."

This buyer lived in a high-class family hotel in a rather luxurious room rilled with the books, pictures, and photographs of a woman of refinement. "I started in Waterloo, Iowa, my home town, selling red flannel underwear," she went on. "I was sixteen then. My wages were one dollar and fifty cents a week." Now she earns something less than ten thousand dollars a year. She had married when she was very young a man who worked in the store.

Both this interview and the one I had had with Margue-

WHY THIS INQUIRY WAS MADE 3

rite lingered in my mind. I determined to find out what there was to know about department stores. I went to the Chicago Public Library and looked up all the references on such stores that I could find. There were many excellent books on the business of running a store and many pamphlets on the subject that showed exhaustive research, and also a few rather sentimental magazine stories about the persecution of the poor shopgirl that probably had some point when they were written but which I later learned were out of date. There was, however, nothing that would interest Marguerite, nothing to make the department store intelligible to her, in fact nothing that she would take the trouble to read.

I decided to devote my long summer vacation to getting first-hand knowledge about the life of girls who worked in department stores. It seemed to me that the facts would be more definitely established if I placed myself upon the same basis as that of thousands of girls who start working in department stores every year, even to living on the wages I earned. I determined to go to New York and become, as nearly as I could, a department-store worker.

I knew few people in New York and these I ignored with the exception of one young woman who had written me that she lived in a model tenement where she had three rooms and i bath for which she paid $7.50 a week. She said that she :ould get one of these apartments for me from a friend who ^vas going away for the summer but that I would have to [>ay a little more for the use of the furniture.

I arrived in New York on Sunday with $25.00 in cash, ietermined, if possible, to make no draft upon my reserves peyond this sum. On Monday, armed with the advertising >age of the Sunday newspaper, I went forth to look for a ob. On Tuesday I went to work.

Chapter II

It is a warm summer morning; the employment department of the store I shall call McElroy's, woman's section, is crowded with "girls" — for in a department store every woman is a girl — girls of every type and of every age: girls who are under seventeen, with and without working certificates; girls who are graduates of the high schools or grammar schools of Manhattan and its environs; girls who have worked many seasons in department stores; girls who have never held any kind of job; girls who have tried out every occupation offered in the want-ad columns of the city newspapers; girls who are brides seeking employment so that their wages may help out until husbands are given promotions or to provide a reserve fund for the time when the first baby will arrive; girls who are mothers with children whom they wish to keep in school well dressed and with money in their pockets to pay for school entertainments, to buy the school annual, or to meet the expenses of the graduation outfit; girls who are grandmothers left without means of support; girls who are widows by grass or by sod whose husbands have died without leaving insurance or from whom alimony cannot be collected; but girls, all girls who if they are successful applicants will become Miss Moore, Miss Smith, Miss Kuntz, Miss Levinsky, Miss Du Costa, or Miss O'Brien in the departments to which they will be assigned.

In appearance these girls suggest a movie audience waiting for the show to begin. They are, for the most part, well dressed, even stylish, with the similarity of costume, regardless of age, characteristic of the crowds one sees on the streets of any city. The general impression is one of youth and attractiveness though the older women are not quite so "snappy" as the younger. Like the movie audience they chatter with the friend they have accompanied or with the casual person who happens to sit or stand next.

The room in which the girls are waiting is rectangular in shape, the rear square of it partitioned off by a railing in front. Beyond the railing is a passage about as wide as a church aisle from which open the tiny, glass-inclosed offices of the employment managers. A little daylight enters through glazed windows above the office partitions and is supplemented by electric light, which adds its quota to the uncomfortable warmth. The girls fan themselves with the application blanks which, upon entering, they have filled out at the tall desks that line the walls of the little room. Here and there a girl has removed her hat and smoothed back the hair that clings damply to her forehead and ears. The chatter continues.

"Stand up, goiles, all of you," orders the mistress of ceremonies, a small, bobbed-haired blond in a green smock who stands in front just behind the railing. "Now sit down again on the benches in the order of your applications. Number one? Where is number one? Right up here in this foist place, please. That's right. Now number two next— number three next to her— number four, number five— "and the blond smiles kindly, sympathetically, as she completes the seating arrangements. Two hundred or more are present; they have come to answer an advertisement which had appeared the day before in the Sunday newspaper. There are seats for fifty.

"Now the rest of you stand in the back of the room until there is a place for you on the benches," continues the little blond. She speaks with authority; her father is a policeman, her uncle a fireman. She beckons now to the first four applicants to rise and pass through the gate in the railing. Number one enters the tiny sanctum of Mrs. Cheney, the employment manager whose office is at the left, and seats herself in front of the latter's desk in a chair placed there for the convenience of applicants. Number two stands in readiness just outside the door, the application blank drooping listlessly from her ungloved fingers. She watches, with eyes that appear to be uninterested, the interview that is taking place inside the office.

Mrs. Cheney is a bobbed-haired, vivacious woman of probably thirty-five who radiates efficiency. She shoots quick questions at the young applicant and jots notations on the pad under her right hand, always smiling at the girl in front of her. Her manner is warm, kindly, sympathetic. The occupant of the chair begins to lose her reserve, replying freely to the questions and smiling with a cordiality that equals that of Mrs. Cheney. The girl feels that she has found a friend, that she will be at home in the great store.

While this is going on in Mrs. Cheney's office, number three is being interviewed by Mrs. Coonley, a stout, middle-aged woman in the adjoining office whose manner has considerable of the maternal in its composition. Number four, just outside the door, looks on, tense, anxious, self-conscious. She hasn't the nonchalance of the others; this is the first time that she has applied for a job.

"Now move up, goiles" sings out the little blond in the outer office; "Number five foist— number six next— and so on." She passes down the aisle between the benchespauses. "What's your number?" she asks.

"Seventy-five," murmurs a girl who is plainly a widow of fifty.

"Then how did you get in here next to number twentyeight?" challenges the tiny lieutenant gaily. "Come now, goiles, no cheating— take your right places. Let me see the numbers on your blanks— that's right— now there at the end of the line, numbers fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, fiftythree, fifty-four."

Back goes the lieutenant to the head of the line. It is now time for numbers five, six, seven, and eight to be interviewed. They step through the gate, the shifting begins again and continues for an hour and a half. By that time the first fifty have been interviewed. Of these only six are sent back crestfallen through the gate, out the center aisle between the benches of waiting, expectant girls, through the door of the reception room.

Upon what does the employment manager base her decisions? It cannot be upon the clothes the girl wears because just now she has sent away that pretty flapper in a smart blue frock and chic little hat and has hired a drab, stoop-shouldered child in a dingy cloth dress and dusty straw head-covering and a stout old woman in an old-fashioned tricolette costume. Experience has enabled her to make quick judgments of human nature; she has seen that the flapper will not be happy in the hard grind behind the counter; she has discovered that the shabby child has a sister who has worked for the firm six years, a faithful and valued employee, and the stout old woman has been disciplined by life to the point that has made her expect little and to be grateful for the security offered by employment in a store of high standards.

The employment manager leaves her office now and, standing behind the railing, begins calling the applicants to her. She glances at each application blank, dismisses the girls with a nod and a smile, then calls the next. A dozen or more girls are passed on in quick succession and rejected.

"She's hired all she wants this morning," whispers the girl next to me on the bench. "She'll get rid of the rest of us quick now; it's lunch time."

"Number sixty-eight!" calls the employment manager.

That is my number. I rise, approach the railing, and hand her my blank. One glance and she has absorbed all the information shown upon it. "Come back at four o'clock," she says amiably and writes 4 p.m. in one corner. Then, handing it back to me, she adds, "Present this at the desk when you return and you will be sent at once to my office."

"Yes, thank you," I murmur and turn away. I go out a little triumphantly— though I try to conceal the pride I feel at my success — through the crowd of girls seated on the benches or standing in the back of the room. They stare enviously as I pass.

Promptly at four that afternoon I am seated at Mrs. Cheney's desk.

"I thought I'd have something good for you by this time, Miss Donovan," she says, "but the right place for you hasn't come in yet. I can offer you a part-time position in the negligees but I'd like something better for you." She pauses, seems to be thinking, continues, "I tell you what you do, come back tomorrow morning ready for work and if there is nothing better I'll put you in the negligees. Be here at ten and come right through the private door; no one will stop you."

With a bright smile she dismisses me and I go home to wonder whether or not she is trying to find exactly the place where I shall be most useful to the store or is merely "stringing" me along. I report, however, the following morning at ten.

"I have a good place for you this morning, Miss Donovan," says Mrs. Cheney briskly as soon as I enter her office, "in the dress department selling Mabelle frocks. With your appearance and your education you ought to be able to sell dresses even though you have had no experience. At any rate we'll try you out."

She fills out a small blank and hands it to me with a business-like nod of dismissal. "Take this to the girl at the desk in the outer office and come in to see me once in a while to talk things over. If there is ever anything you want to know, don't hesitate to come and ask me, I am always here."

At the desk outside an efficient, bobbed-haired young woman gives me another blank. "Step into Dr. Johnson's office," she commands and nods in the direction of another inclosed cubicle with Dr. Johnson's name printed in large letters on the opaque glass windows.

Dr. Johnson turns out to be another short-haired girl, a blond in spectacles. She hands me a legal-size, printed form. "Fill this out," she directs, "you may have ten minutes."

I glance at the form. There are fifty incomplete sentences upon it. My job is to complete these by putting into blank spaces words that will make intelligent statements.

"The first one is easy enough," I say to myself and write in a suitable word. The second is a bit more difficult but still mere child's play. The third is a shade harder but preio THE SALESLADY

sents no real difficulties. I go on quickly finding each succeeding sentence a little more perplexing until I reach the fortieth. Here it is necessary to pause, pencil in hand, to do a little thinking. The forty-first requires a longer pause, the forty-second still longer. When I reach the fiftieth I find it

necessary to frown deeply they .... us ... .

not .... nature's .... are unchangeable.

"One word in each space, not so easy!" I muse and nibble my pencil. Perhaps I can't do this one. I think hard ; Ah! now I have it! With a flourish I write, "Thus they admonished us 'Rebel not, for nature's laws are unchangeable.' "

My ten minutes are not yet up. I glance over the blank to see that it is just as I wish it and then I hand it to Dr. Johnson. With her pencil she quickly scores the answers and writes "50" in the upper right hand corner.

"Is that all my intelligence quotient is?" I ask, disappointed.

"That's not your I.Q." replies Dr. Johnson, smiling; "there are fifty questions and you got fifty right."

I am much relieved at this vindication. Dr. Johnson hands me another blank. "Take this to the desk," she instructs, and I obey. The young woman at the desk gives me a handful of forms this time and an abundance of further instruction. "Take these to the doctor's office on the eleventh floor and wait until he can examine you. When you have passed your physical, report to Mrs. Wrenn's office on the sixteenth."

In the doctor's office two more bobbed-haired girls receive me, make out more forms from the information furnished on those I have brought, and bid me sit down on a

GETTING A JOB n

bench. I obey and find myself beside the drab young thing whom I had seen hired the morning before.

"Why did it take you so long to get here?" I whisper to her; "You were third yesterday morning."

"I spent all afternoon taking intelligence tests," she whispers back; "they gave me six; how many did you take?"

"Only one," I answer but, seeing an opportunity to secure information, add, "Were they very hard?"

"You bet they were! I couldn't do the last six sentences on that first one at all."

For a long time we sit in silence. The two girls at the desk busily answer telephone calls, run record cards hastily through their fingers, and receive new applicants who, from time to time, file in through the office door. After what seems to me an interminable time, one of them turns to me and says, "Dr. Smith will see you now."

I walk across the room expecting to see another bobbed-haired scientist but Dr. Smith is a tall, slender, rather ipretty, youngish man with a neat little mustache and weary gray eyes.

"Stand up against the wall," he orders.

Obediently I stand for a moment under the measuringrod. "Five feet nine," I hear him murmur into his bored little mustache as he jots the figures down upon the blank spread out on the desk before him.

"Read the last line on the card opposite," is his next command. Again I obey; again he writes on the record card. "Sit down now," is his third mandate and then he asks a series of quick questions. Age? .... Date of birth?

. . Father living? .... Mother? .... How many brothers and sisters? .... Living? .... Ever been ill?

. . . . Open your mouth Let's see your throat.

"Ah-a-a," I gurgle obediently.

"Take off your shoe." I kick off my right pump.

"Feet O.K." The time was not far away when I was to realize the importance of this foot test. My feet were not O.K. at all. He finishes the record and says wearily, uTake this to Mrs. Wrenn's office."'

At the desk in Mrs. Wrenn's department a bobbed young miss accepts my card. I sit down beside two other girls, one a child and the other a woman of forty-five or fifty. The miss at the desk picks up the telephone. "Depawtment sixteen," she commands into the mouthpiece and waits a minute or two. Then, with a courteous inflection, "Depawtment sixteen? .... I have a new girl for you Please send up a mcmbah of the reception committee. .... Yes, thank you."

She hangs up the receiver, does a little work at the desk, then picks up the telephone again. She calls two other departments and repeats her request for a member of the reception committee. Later I was to learn that every department has a receptionist, appointed by the secretary in charge of this receiving of new employees, and that this receptionist is paid one dollar in addition to her salary for every new girl she receives. The receptionist is expected to look after this new girl for a few days and help her to learn the stock and the routine of the department.

The first receptionist arrives promptly, is introduced, and departs with the child. Another takes away the girl of fifty, and now it is my turn. "Miss Bird, this is Miss Donovan, a new girl for your department," says the youg miss.

"How do you do," responds Miss Bird professionally,

GETTING A JOB I3

and we shake hands. Miss Bird is an attractive woman of thirty with long hair neatly knotted at the back of her head. She seems to feel her responsibility and as we go down in the elevator she chats pleasantly with me so that I may feel at home. The third floor reached, we leave the elevator and walk through a maize of frocks— thousands of them it seems to me— until we reach a blazing electric sign which announces, "Mabelle Frocks— $23.75." This is my department.

Miss Bird introduces me right and left, first to Miss Nelson, the section-manager, a stout woman with gray hair, dimples, and a capable manner: then to the other saleswomen, twenty-two in number, all ages and sizes, some tall and thin, some short and stout, others tall and stout or short and thin, some modish, some dowdy, but all with pleasant, stereotyped smiles with which they greet me as they murmur in a bored, professional manner, "How d'ye do."

I follow Miss Bird to a desk in the corner. "This is our buyer, Miss Metz," she says and presents me to a chic, Jewish girl, whose hair is gray and bobbed but whose face is singularly youthful.

"I'm glad to meet you," says Miss Metz with warmth; "What experience have you had?"

"None," I answer simply.

"Then you can't sell dresses," she begins. "I think I can," I interrupt, and add, "I'd like to try." Miss Metz hesitates, looks me over. "All right," she concludes; "you look like a girl of good judgment."

"Thank you," I say politely and, turning to Miss Bird, add, "Give me a book and let me see what I can do." I knew you had to have a sales book because every saleswoman in a department store has one.

'That's the way to talk!" exclaims Miss Metz approvingly if a little patronizingly; " You'll get along all right if that's your spirit. Take her along, Miss Bird, and let her start."

Miss Bird leads me back through the maze of dangling frocks explaining each rack in passing, telling me about sizes, colors, materials, and then dismisses me with, "Walk around and find out all you can; we don't expect you to sell anything the first three days, but if you do, let some other girl make out the sales check. You won't get your book until the third day."

I wander about in the forest of frocks, locating sizes, materials, colors, styles, and wondering how I can remember where all the different dresses are. But not for long am I left undisturbed; a tall, spectacled gentlewoman accosts me. In one hand she is holding a brown silk Mabelle frock. "May I try this on, please?" she asks courteously.

"Certainly," I reply, all a-flutter. I grab the frock and, accosting the nearest saleswoman, demand in an excited whisper, "Where are the fitting-rooms?"

"Over there," replies the girl, airily indifferent, as she indicates the direction with a nonchalant finger.

I hold the brown silk frock high in my right hand, unconsciously imitating Miss Morrison who sells me frocks in a smart shop back home, and plow ahead, the spectacled gentlewoman following closely. I have no difficulty in finding the fitting-rooms ; there they are near the windows, shut off from the rest of the store by their nice little partitions of opaque glass. I open a door; some one is in this room, a tall stout someone in a pink teddy and flesh-colored stockings. She glares at me.

"Sorry!" I murmur and close the door. I walk to anotfid fitting-room only to find it occupied by a flapper in georgett undies. "Oh, for an empty fitting-room!" I pray ardently. My prayer is answered— the third room is unoccupied. I usher in my patient customer, close the door, and stand at attention. She begins to pull her dress over her head; I stand stupidly by for a second, then suddenly realizing the duties of my new position, I hang up the Mabelle frock and murmur in imitation of Miss Morrison, "Let me help you."