in history, a bewildering mass of delicate and beautiful fabrics,
jewelry and household decorations such as women covet, gathered
skilfully from all parts of the world, and in the midst of this bulk of
desirable possessions is placed an untrained girl with careful
instructions as to her conduct for making sales, but with no guidance in
regard to herself
The department store has brought together, as has never been done before
in history, a bewildering mass of delicate and beautiful fabrics,
jewelry and household decorations such as women covet, gathered
skilfully from all parts of the world, and in the midst of this bulk of
desirable possessions is placed an untrained girl with careful
instructions as to her conduct for making sales, but with no guidance in
regard to herself. Such a girl may be bitterly lonely, but she is
expected to smile affably all day long upon a throng of changing
customers. She may be without adequate clothing, although she stands in
an emporium where it is piled about her, literally as high as her head.
She may be faint for want of food but she may not sit down lest she
assume 'an attitude of inertia and indifference,' which is against the
rules. She may have a great desire for pretty things, but she must sell
to other people at least twenty-five times the amount of her own salary,
or she will not be retained. Because she is of the first generation of
girls which has stood alone in the midst of trade, she is clinging and
timid, and yet the only person, man or woman, in this commercial
atmosphere who speaks to her of the care and protection which she
craves, is seeking to betray her. Because she is young and feminine, her
mind secretly dwells upon a future lover, upon a home, adorned with the
most enticing of the household goods about her, upon a child dressed in
the filmy fabrics she tenderly touches, and yet the only man who
approaches her there acting upon the knowledge of this inner life of
hers, does it with the direct intention of playing upon it in order to
despoil her. Is it surprising that the average human nature of these
young girls cannot, in many instances, endure this strain? Of fifteen
thousand women employed in the down-town department stores of Chicago,
the majority are Americans. We all know that the American girl has grown
up in the belief that the world is hers from which to choose, that there
is ordinarily no limit to her ambition or to her definition of success.
She realizes that she is well mannered and well dressed and does not
appear unlike most of her customers. She sees only one aspect of her
countrywomen who come shopping, and she may well believe that the chief
concern of life is fashionable clothing. Her interest and ambition
almost inevitably become thoroughly worldly, and from the very fact that
she is employed down town, she obtains an exaggerated idea of the luxury
of the illicit life all about her, which is barely concealed.
