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girl with commercial ambition who has no knowledge of stenography, typewriting or bookkeeping, nor the time and funds to acquire it, should consider telephone operating. If she has adaptability, keen powers of observation, persistency, and the wisdom of secrecy concerning her employer's affairs, she will advance to a position of trust as rapidly by way of the telephone switchboard as by the stenographer's desk. Scores of women who have no knowledge of stenography or typewriting now hold positions of responsibility and draw good salaries. Other girls may do the same. The first important means toward this end is to secure a hearing and prove one's worth. The switchboard provides a business door easy to open, and one which may lead eventually to the innermost shrine.

In every city hundreds of girls preside over branch exchanges for the beggarly salary of five dollars a week. They are the same girls


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 who, armed with a smattering of stenography or bookkeeping, would be working for a petty lawyer or in a eashier's cage of a small shop for the same sum, five dollars a week. Always it is the girl, and not the work, that determines the wages. And the same girl who would become private secretary if she had a knowledge of stenography may become a department manager or the trusted aide to the senior partner through her cleverness and tact at the switchboard. Capability will manifest itself just as quickly in handling jacks and plugs as in taking dictation. In fact, considering the enormous output of "business colleges," half-trained, almost unlettered stenographers, I honestly believe that the expert telephone operator has the better business opportunities.

Certainly I would urge the girl who has no trade, who suffers sudden financial reverses, and who is naturally intelligent and refined, to turn to telephoning rather than to stenography. If accepted as a learner in a large city exchange, she will not lose a day's time, but from the hour she begins to study she will be earning a small stipend at least.

The out-of-town girl whose knowledge of the work is limited to the system employed at the local exchange should not judge the opportunities offered by what she sees in her home city or village. There positions may be few, and

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 obtainable only through influence. In the large cities these conditions do not exist. Good operators are in tremendous demand, and the telephone companies run almost regular advertisements for learners who are paid during their training.

The girl from a village or small city can have no conception of the business done by telephone companies in great commercial centers, nor the number of operators required. A few figures may be illuminating. On January 1, 1907, when the telephone had been in commercial use exactly thirty years, eight million telephone stations, the technical term which includes receiver and transmitter, had been installed all over the world. Of this number the United States could claim 68.5 per cent., or over five million stations. Since then the number of installations has increased at a phenomenal rate, corresponding with the manifold uses to which commerce has been able to put the telephone.

As a result statisticians declare that to-day it is more than probable that the United States could claim six million stations in use. In New York City alone 30,000 girls and women are employed to operate public and private exchanges, of which about 7,000 are in the service of the. New York Telephone Company. The others handle switchboards in business houses, department stores, hotels, apartment houses, any sort


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 of an establishment where a switchboard is maintained to connect different departments or branches or employees. Chicago follows New York closely as a Mecca for telephone operators, and in any city of 100,000 population or more a girl is reasonably sure of securing an opening almost immediately.

But the reader must not think that any and every girl is suited to this work. The applicant for a position or for training in a school for operators must have natural intelligence and quickness in thought and action. The dull, slow girl who moves with exaggerated deliberation and who does not grasp an idea quickly will not, succeed. The applicant must speak distinctly and write a legible hand. She must have good health, good eyesight, good hearing and a fair education. In the larger cities, where telephone operating is taught by the local company, no girl who has not completed her grammar school grades will be considered as an applicant, while preference is given to the high school graduate or the girl who has had a year or two of high school training. This is because the additional training is apt to make a girl think more quickly and grasp instructions more readily.

Applicants between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three are given the preference also. The girl under seventeen lacks the physical strength and the mental poise to handle a switchboard,


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 while the woman past twenty-three who has never had any sort of business training is not always adaptable. But in exceptional cases, where the applicant betrays alertness and capability during the course of her interview, the age limit does not bar her out.

The girl who thinks she is physically and nervously able to stand the work—for especially to the beginner, handling a switchboard is no easy matter—should ascertain by inquiry at the traffic department of the local company where to apply for work. She will be given the address of the school of instruction or the exchange where applications are received. Here she fills out a blank, giving name, address, education, previous employment if any, condition of her eyesight and hearing, and references.

When the latter have been investigated, the girl is summoned to the school and interviewed by the manager, generally a woman. Her hearing and eyesight are tested, and her enunciation and pronunciation are passed upon critically. Her general appearance of neatness and alertness has much to do with her acceptance or rejection. Only twelve per cent. of the applicants for positions succeed in passing this examination for admission to the operators' school connected with the New York Telephone Company.

Once the girl is accepted she enters the train-


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 ing-school for a period of one month, during which she is paid five dollars per week, and must spend in the classroom practically the same hours she will be employed when she becomes a graduated operator, or from nine o'clock to five.

This classroom contains a huge switchboard, accommodating twenty-five operators, at which girls secure practical training and experience. The branches taught theoretically, as well as practically, by lectures, consist of the use of the various parts of the operating equipment, the local telephone geography, the proper method of completing any call and the necessity of being courteous in all relations with the public. The location of the various exchanges all over the city and the general geography of the city are taught by the aid of huge maps. A girl must know the location of fire-alarm stations, engine houses, police stations, and hospitals. She must be prepared to handle every sort of emergency call, for many a burglar has been trapped, many a fire checked, many a panic averted, through the cool head and quick action of a telephone operator.

Every day she is given drills in pronunciation and the correct method of modulating her voice. In a great exchange with scores of girls working at the switchboard, not a single voice is raised above what is commonly known as a


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 whisper. The girl with the strident, harsh voice has no place in a telephone exchange, and will not be tolerated.

The student begins to operate a switchboard on the very first day. She dons a metal headpiece, holding the receiver directly ower her ears; while about her shoulders is fastened another metallic harness holding the transmitter into which she speaks. Her hands never touch either transmitter or receiver, but are busy with the plugs of the switchboard. Her first lesson at the board generally lasts an hour. Day by day her time is increased, as her assurance and strength grow. At first, delicate or nervous girls have been known to faint under the strain, but experience proves that this effect is due more to nervous strain and anxiety to succeed than to real physical exhaustion.

At the end of a month or perhaps five or six weeks, the girl moves from this very practical classroom into an exchange, where under a monitor or inspector she continues to receive instructions. These inspectors pace behind the operators, not only to advise and assist newcomers, but to keep the entire force alert and keyed up to its work.

In a city like New York or Chicago, the new operator is paid six dollars a week. At the end of a year, she should be an expert operator, drawing ten dollars per week. Then if she re-


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 mains in the employ of the company, she is advanced gradually to the following positions: Senior operator, eleven dollars per week; chief supervisor, fourteen dollars a week; chief oper-, ator, twenty to twenty-five dollars per week.

In a telephone exchange the working day is about eight and a half hours, with two thirty-minute rest periods, morning and afternoon, or for night workers at about the same intervals apart. All over the country the telephone companies are famous for their welfare work, but particularly so in New York City. Here you will find a matron or welfare secretary at every exchange. The building always has its kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, supplied with reading matter, an emergency hospital, and a lockerroom with an individual locker for each operator. Hot tea and coffee are served to the operators free of charge at any hour of the day or night, and girls are permitted to bring their own luncheons to eat with the beverages served in the dining-rooms.

This is the bright side of the exchange picture. Its hard side shows the nervous strain under which girls must work, the ever-present necessity of concentration, and the extreme discourtesy, almost insults, which even good operators meet from a certain portion of the general public. Many operators complain of the small pay and the part which office politics play in


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 securing promotion, but go where you will, you will find malcontents who are unworthy of promotion, who are earning all that their services are worth, and who cry "Favoritism" when others are promoted. On the whole, I believe—and scores of telephone operators have expressed the same opinion to me—that the lot of the telephone girl is far more comfortable than that of the average salesgirl or stenographer. Certainly it is more desirable for the girl of natural refinement and reserve who dreads personal contact with all sorts of men and women.

Naturally, the telephone company would like to hold its best operators in its own exchanges, but business diplomacy demands that it furnish private exchanges with experts when the request for such workers is made. Thus the traffic department always has on file a list of skilled operators who are willing to accept positions in private exchanges. Banks, brokerage concerns, publication houses, department stores, wholesale establishments, hotels, apartment houses and almost any frm with big interests, require capable operators and pay from fifteen dollars a week up for the service. The salary depends upon the girl. Unfortunately, there are girls in search of pin-money who accept small wages. There are incompetents willing to work for almost any price in the hopes that even though


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 they fail at the switchboard they may meet their matrimonial fate. But there are also scores of openings which demand good work and pay good wages.

The girl who uses her knowledge of Laeohhie, operating as a stepping-stone to broader business experience must consider what line of business appeals to her most strongly. If she has wanted to be connected with a publishing firm, here is her entering-wedge. If she pleases the editor or the manager with her alert, quick service at the switchboard, he will lend willing ear to her application for the position of manuscript reader. If real estate has always held a fascination for her, as operator in a real-estate company's office or in an apartment house, she will be brought in contact with the class of men who are willing to give a good woman agent a hearing.

There is no use to deny the fact that the swichboard is far more apt to lead the way to matrimony than to business careers. The records of all telephone exchanges show that an amazingly large number of operators resign to marry, and this, their employers claim, is not due to the traditional charm of low-voiced mystery which clings to the "hello" girl, but because to be a good operator a girl must possess all those distinctly feminine characteristics which appeal—gentleness, patience and good a ale


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 breeding. In many cities I have personally studied telephone operators, standing outside the exchanges as they came to work and departed. Their bearing, dress, conversation, all go to prove that an excellent standard of student-workers is demanded, and that the discipline of the switchboard, as well as the fine welfare work carried on in exchange buildings, has resulted in attracting and creating a singularly nice class of operators.

The girl in a small town who desires a position at the switchboard is less independent in making her application than is the city girl. Here acquaintance counts most heavily, and personal influence must be brought to bear on the superintendent or manager of an exchange which requires but half a dozen operators. Even with influence, however, a girl must possess the same qualifications her city cousin claims—a distinct speaking-voice, keen hearing and good eyesight. As the telephone service in a small place is generally more leisurely than in a big city, her temper will not be so sorely tried at the beginning of her career. As no school is provided for her training, she must start with practical work. Substituting for regular operators will form a large part of her training, and eight dollars per week is the maximum salary in a small exchange. In a New England town of three thousand inhabitants,


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 where two operators are employed, the superintendent is a woman who receives but twelve dollars a week.

However, a girl who begins in the exchange of a small town and tires of its limitations, may eventually reach the goal of her ambitions—an exchange in a big city; for if she mention her desire to the superintendent he will recommend her to the manager of some exchange in the city where she would be.


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before in the history of our Federal Government has the obscure American woman, without the influence of any politician, had so fair a chance to secure a departmental position. Each year the power of the Civil Service Commission, which makes the majority of appointments in which women are interested, is strengthened. Hach year the power of the individual politician in the matter of appointments is weakened. The time when appointment to positions in any of the Federal departments at Washington was in the gift of Congressmen and Senators is practically past.

With this fair outlook, let the woman seeking employment ask what positions the Government offers women and which one she is best able to fill.

The average woman has rather hazy ideas as to Government work. She has simply a vision of handling some sort of papers in some sort of a department office.


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 The vast majority enter the service as clerks or copyists at a salary of $720 or $900 a year, and rise gradually to a salary of $1,500 or more, doing purely mechanical or clerical work.

This branch of the Federal service is known as "Clerks' Departmental Service." Examinations are held twice a year—spring and fall—at various points all over the country, selected by the Civil Service Commission. A girl does not have to go to Washington to take this examination. It is given in several cities of her own State. For instance, in Ohio examinations are generally held at Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Ironton, Toledo and Zanesville.

As this is the service in which the majority of women find positions, and as its examinations are the simplest, I am giving exact instructions for the girl who thinks she would like to seek an appointment as a clerk. The Civil Service Commission issues twice a year—in January and July—a manual giving all the information needed at first by would-be appointees. In addition to securing a copy of this manual, which is sent on request, the applicant should write to the Civil Service Commission, Washington, D. C., several weeks before the examination is scheduled, stating simply that she wants to take the Clerk-Copyist examination, and asking at what point nearest her home and on what date said examination will be held, and closing with


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 the request that application blanks, printed instructions and sample copies of examinations should be sent to her. If she writes this neatly and concisely on a postal-card, her consideration will be appreciated by the busy clerks.

In return for this postal request she will receive an application blank, which she must fill out carefully, and a card of admission to the examination, which she must not fail to take to the city where the examination is to be held. Without it she will be refused admittance.

For this examination you will need a thorough knowledge of arithmetic (geometry and algebra not necessary), English grammar, spelling, copying from rough draft, and the general information furnished by a graded public-school course or its equivalent in private tuition. You will be expected to know something of the Government under which you are to serve, and of the current events in which the Government is vitally interested; and above all things, accuracy and neatness will help you wonderfully in this examination.

For instance, you will be given a certain selection from some book or paper to copy. Do not improve on that copy. If "dog" is spelled "dawg," write it in that way. If the punctuation is wrong, do not correct it. If your examination instructions advise you to leave a two-inch margin, do not change it to a one-inch mar-


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 gin just because you think the latter improves the appearance of your paper or you have always allowed the one-inch margin in school. The Government is looking for fine, accurate human machines to do routine work. Your fitness for the position will be measured largely by your ability to do things just as you are told to do them.

And, lastly, you will be expected to write an intelligent, if brief, essay on some topic of national interest, such as "The Prospect of War With Japan," or "What Has the Pure-Food Law Done for National Health?" So if you are not in touch with current events, acquire some of this most desirable knowledge.

Now we will say that you have taken the examination and are waiting to learn of your fate. Three months will elapse before you hear from the commission. If you rate seventy per cent. or higher you will be placed on the eligible list. How long a time will elapse before your appointment is determined by various factors: Firstly, your rating. The higher the rating, the more prompt the appointment. The girl who scores 96.7 will be given the preference over the girl who scored 78.6, though the latter may have passed the examination at an earlier date than the former. Second, by the number of appointments already made from your State. Appointments are apportioned to the various States by


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 the Civil Service Commission. For instance, from July 16, 1883, to December 31, 1907, the State of Pennsylvania was allowed six hundred and thirty appointments, while Oregon was entitled to only forty-one.

Again, we will suppose that you have passed with a high rating and your appointment comes promptly. You may or may not be offered a position in Washington. You may find yourself scheduled for New York City, Philadelphia, Boston or San Francisco; wherever there is a Custom House in which a clerk is needed; or in Omaha, Butte or Fort Worth, wherever a Pension Office or Land Office may be in need of a Federal employee. The Government official who needs a clerk or assistant of any sort notifies the Civil Service Commission in Washington, which looks over the list of eligibles, and selects the name carrying the highest average, whose owner lives within the district entitled to the next appointment.

Now, if you do not wish to accept that position because of some vital reason to yourself, personal health or family responsibility, you can take chances on refusing it. But I am told that it is much safer to take the first appointment offered, show your ability, and later ask for a transfer.

Another supposition: Your appointment orders you to Washington as a clerk in the Treas-


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 ury Department at $900 a year—a very fair salary for a beginner. An inexperienced girl would not get as much in a business house of any sort.

If you have a family dependent upon you, mother or younger sister, you must figure on their support; and when the family is small, experienced Government workers all advise that the appointee remove those dependent upon her to Washington, even though living in Washington is high. Many maintain that it is higher than anywhere else in America. Girls old in the service furnish these figures: Very ordinary board, with a small room, $30 a month; washing, $4; carfare, from $2 to $5. Bare living expenses absorb forty of the seventy-five dollars received each month. Out of the remainder a girl clerk must dress herself well, support those dependent upon her, and pay for such pleasures as or threatertheater [sic]-going, and entertain relatives, of whom the average clerk sees many during her Washington experience.

If several girls wish to club together, they can secure a desirable flat for $45 a month, a servant for $14, and a decent table can be set for $50 more, making a total of expenses for the month, including gas and incidentals, $115, or a trifle less than thirty dollars apiece for a club of four girls. The advantage of this arrangement lies in the home life and the social


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 pleasures possible only in one's own apartment, and the better grade of food furnished.

The new Federal clerk in Washington finds that her hours are easy. As a rule, seven hours constitute a day's work. She reports at nine and works until four-thirty, with half an hour for lunch. When, in the opinion of her chief, an emergency requires overtime, no extra compensation is allowed. Thirty days' annual leave on salary, and in meritorious cases, thirty days' sick leave with pay, are allowed at the discretion of a head of a department.

The conscientious clerk is practically assured of a life position once she is installed by the Government. Office politics, such as one finds in the average business house, cannot affect her tenure of office, though they may prevent her promotion. The Government does not "fail," nor does it install a new chief of a department who ousts old employees in favor of personal friends. The existence of the Civil Service Commission prevents the latter catastrophe.

The advantages of a clerkship in the departmental service may be summarized as follows: A regular income larger than the average salary paid in offices. No work to take home at night. A clerk cannot be dismissed without just cause, and complaints against her must undergo rigid investigation at the hands of the Civil Service Commission.


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 The disadvantages are: A sedentary life, mostly copying, which is bad for the general health. As in teaching or the business field, the woman must do more work than a man to attract the attention of her chief, and men are advanced for less ability and on smaller pretexts than women. The routine deadens ambition in the average woman, who degenerates into a mere machine.

If a girl wants a fair income to spend on herself, it offers a fair prospect. If she is domestic in her tastes and wants a home, a husband and children, she is practically renouncing all those when she enters the Government office.

So much for the average clerkship. Now to girls who have specialized or who wish to do so. Some excellent positions are open to such girls. Examinations, salaries, age limitations and other details vary according to the work. The average limitation as to youth is eighteen years. The average age of appointees is twenty-eight years.

In Washington and other cities there are Federal positions open to expert stenographers and expert typewritists. The commonplace worker in either line should not waste time applying. Preference is given to the male stenographer or typist, and the ambitious girl must make a fine rating to secure the appointment. A few women bookkeepers are employed, but


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 preference is given to the men in this work. Girls who have been well trained in drawing sometimes secure excellent positions in the Bureau of Forestry and the Department of Agriculture, where the ability to draw and tint well counts. Also the well-trained girl can secure architectural drafting or drawing in various departments. This work, of course, appeals particularly to the girl who has spent years perfecting herself as an architect, but who lacks the business ability to hold her own against an army of competitors. In the department of Government printing, skilled workers who have had experience in the regulation printing and binding establishments can secure postions as compositors, proof-readers, binders, etc. And the girl who has specialized on botany can sometimes pass a special examination and secure a desirable position in the Department of Agriculture.

Federal positions outside of Washington include kindergarten, teaching and industrial teaching in the Indian schools, matrons in Indian schools, teaching in Hawaiian, Porto Rican and Philippine service, trained nursing in Isthmian or Philippine service, inspection in immigration and custom service.

Positions in the Congressional Library are not secured through the Civil Service Commis-


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 sion. The power of appointment is vested in Herbert Putnam, librarian.

The girl who wants a position of any sort under Uncle Sam should write to the Civil Service Commission for a manual, and study it thoroughly. She may find inspiration in its pages and a definite object toward which she can work.


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chapter is designed to be a frank warning against the beauty shop and its arts as a means of livelihood for any American girl of intelligence and self-respect. I propose to tell my readers just what it means to work in such an establishment, and to induce them to seek some other means of self-support.

In penning such a warning, I speak from a verging on actual experience. A member of my household and several personal friends have undertaken the work, only to drop it almost immediately because they found it uncongenial and degrading. This was not because of the scandal which always shadows a beauty-shop, because the self-supporting girl rarely finds any trade or profession over which the slimy trail of gossip does not pass. It was because these girls, possessing a sense of honor, natural reserve and refinement, found themselves placed in a position worse than menial.

You think you could not be a second-maid or


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 waitress because you would be one of the servants. You think you could not endure clerking in a store because you would be compelled to serve customers who are personally offensive to you. You think you could not work in a factory because you have heard that foremen and forewomen are domineering and callous. Well, all of these drawbacks and more you will find in the life of the manicurist, hairdresser or masseuse in the so-called beauty shop.

The first time that a customer tells you to "keep the change," you will realize that you are on a plane with the butler, the footman, the public waiter. The first time that you decline to serve a customer who, though elegantly dressed, may be foul of speech or under the influence of liquor, you will be asked to find work elsewhere. And your first lesson from foremen or forewomen in the shop will be that, while there are tricks in all trades, at the beauty shops there are more tricks and more downright dishonesty than you, in your innocence, ever dreamed of. When you have read this chapter, I hope you will have no illusions about the trade and its tricks.

To begin with, if you are the average girl who knows little or nothing of the various trades or lines of business for your sex, you imagine that you can go to a school of manicuring, hairdressing and massage in New York


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 City, and within a few months be managing an establishment of your own. But this is what will happen:

You will promise to pay anything from twenty-five to one hundred dollars, according to your gullibility, for the course of training that is to lead to a "diploma" and a guaranteed position. You will find yourself in a shop, not a school, where you will pay for the privilege of being an apprentice. You, who had such lovely visions of gliding over velvet-covered floors in a long black frock with perfectly coiffed hair and tapering white fingers, will be sweeping, dusting, running after, nets and shampoo mixtures, patiently holding the dye for the expert worker, washing brushes and combs and cleaning up the tiny apartments in which the various toilet mysteries are conducted.

If your hair is dressed at all, it will-be done by a fellow-apprentice who, in her inexperience, burns it. If you ask for some of the promised instruction, you will be passed on, from one worker to another, until the best-natured girl on the staff finally condescends to give you some very indifferent instruction. The head of the "school," you will generally find, knows little or nothing about the trades. He merely invests the capital and trusts the actual work to his hirelings. Among your fellow-workers, you


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 will meet a few men, mostly foreigners of vicious habits.

Understand that this is all under the surface. Outwardly the shop is as beautiful as enameled paint, gleaming mirrors and suave attendants can make it. The game is well played before customers.

As the days slip by, you will realize that hairdressers deliberately burn the hair so that customers will be compelled to buy false pieces, transformations, switches, puffs, etc. You will discover that so-called experts in facial treatment often introduce poisonous properties into their lotions, and thus the customer who falls into their clutches must either continue to have her face literally plastered with cosmetics or go to some high-priced baths, where, in retirement, her natural complexion may be restored. You will learn of horrible cases of blood-poisoning due to the use of unsterilized knives and scissors in the manicuring and chiropody department. But all the while the white enamel gleams, and the mirrors glitter, and snowy white towels will be plentiful.

Gradually you will realize that you are get ting a smattering of very bad methods and learning no branch of the trade thoroughly, When you reach this point, if you are a sensible, brave girl, you will turn your back on the shop and seek some other sort of work. If,


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 however, you become panic-stricken at the thought of the hard-earned money you have invested in your "course," you will begin to work desperately, cajoling and bullying those above you into giving you a little instruction.

Of this sort of girl the shop managers are very anxious to rid themselves, so very soon you will be pronounced fit for a position. This having been guaranteed, you will find yourself working in an opposition shop for perhaps eight or ten dollars a week. Here you will try very hard to do the right thing for your customers; but it will not last. To your amazement you are dismissed without warning and without cause. The proprietor of the shop will merely tell you that he is cutting down his force. Business has fallen off, etc. But in a few days you will learn that your successor is another girl from the shop or "school" where you were trained. When you become acquainted with more girls you will learn that shop managers have a system of interchanging positions that are merely temporary, in order to make good their worthless guarantee.

"You take my pupils off my hands," says one shop manager to another, "and I'll take yours." And so the fluttering moths are caught.

These tactics are followed not only in New York, but in other large cities where "schools"


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 are advertised; and the crimes committed against society and especially against the inexperienced woman whose feet stray over their threshold in search of an honest trade are despicable. Manicuring, hairdressing and facial massage are legitimate trades, but they have been dragged into the very mire by unscrupulous workers. Do you want to become one of these?

Certainly not! Then keep away from the "beauty school" and learn your trade, if you think it is the one trade for you, in a more honest and earnest fashion.

In the shop you must serve all who come, sober or otherwise, able-bodied or diseased, and if the customer indulges in immoderate, unjustified fault-finding, which sometimes amounts to insult, a liberal tip is supposed to be the only apology necessary.

Understand I do not say all shops come under this head. There are a few establishments in every city where the bacilli of dishonesty and criminal carelessness have not yet found a nesting-place. But it is the shop such as I have described which, unfortunately, appeals most generally to the out-of-town girl, for whom this book has been written. She knows nothing of city life. She knows nothing of those who manage shops or patronize them. She judges the shop and its trade purely from cleverly-written,


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 prettily-illustrated booklets, and she has romantic ideas, gleaned from reading Sunday papers, about the matrimonial opportunities of the fair manicurist.

To such girls—and their mothers—I trust this chapter will be a warning. From such shops girls issue forth only half trained, utterly unfitted to do honest work and utterly unable to carve a future for themselves or to build up the one desirable line of custom—the house-to-house or visiting trade.

The house-to-house worker is not employed in a shop, but calls on customers at their homes or hotels, carrying her implements and supplies in a neat hand-bag, which is made especially for this purpose. Many of her customers prefer to use their own implements, and have their own shampoo mixtures and face lotions, for they are the better and more refined class of women who do not care to patronize the public shop. They pay the same fees that are charged in the shop, or more. The worker who gives satisfaction soon has an established trade among the most desirable people, and is in a position to accept or refuse new clients.

The house-to-house trade has many advantages, not the least of which is the outdoor exercise which the visiting worker secures while making her rounds. She is not subject to the petty politics and favoritism found in every


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 shop. She can arrange her appointments, at least in a certain measure, to suit her personal convenience, so as to have time to manage her own household affairs if she happens to be married or have an invalid dependent upon her.

The girl who thinks she would like house-tohouse work must become a first-class manicurist, for she will appeal to the most fastidious trade. If she lives in a large city, she should take private lessons from the best manicurist whose teaching services are available. These lessons will cost her at least two dollars each, and if she practices earnestly between lessons on her own hands and those of her family circle or intimate friends, six lessons will be sufficient. This statement is made on the authority of a thorough and successful manicurist in New York City, who has trained at least a dozen girls for the work. She insists that a girl who cannot master the theory of the trade in six lessons, one a week, and become moderately proficient in the same length of time through honest practice, is not suited to the work and never will succeed.

As soon as the worker feels sure of her own ability, she solicits trade. This may be done by sending out neatly-printed cards or circulars, giving home address and telephone. A telephone is essential to the success of a house-to-house worker. These may be distributed in


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 family hotels, or boarding-houses, or through the mail, using the telephone directory for securing addresses. When the influence and help of a hotel manager, clerk or housekeeper is desired, the new candidate for patronage generally keeps in order, free of charge, the hands of the person who will be helpful to her. But the most desirable trade comes through the recommendations of satisfied customers. The stranger in a city will do well to take a room in some small hotel or large boarding-house, where professional and business women stay in large numbers. She will soon build up a good trade among her fellow-roomers.

The girl who lives in a small city may have some difficulty in securing a reliable private teacher, simply because established manicurists do not particularly desire to train competitors in a field which they feel quite able to fill. Such a condition can be met by having the hands done regularly by one manicurist, time and time again, studying every movement of the work keenly and putting what is thus learned through observation into practice at home. In addition to this, several good books on practical methods of beautifying the human form have been written by experts. They can be purchased at any reliable book-shop or ordered through any dealer. The conscientious study of these books and the diligent observa-


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 tion of methods employed by a first-class manicurist, together with practice, are perhaps the best substitute for private lessons.

Next to this comes the correspondence school. I fully realize that established workers will criticize this statement severely, but it must be borne in mind that the girl who served an apprenticeship in a beauty shop ten or even five years ago was really trained for the work, while to-day the methods, unfortunately, are those described in the opening pages of this chapter. On the other hand, I have investigated personally the courses offered by two reliable correspondence schools, and found them thorough, accurate, and workmanlike. The girl who cannot master the trade by the aid of such a course and diligent practice will never succeed as a "graduate" from a beauty shop or "school." In fact, in this trade, as in almost any line of work, the girl who really wills to succeed will find a way.

The manicurist who calls on transient customers, such as tourists stopping at hotels, generally receives fifty cents per treatment. Her regular customers, whom she visits two or three times a week, she charges at the rate of thirty-five cents a call. In addition to visiting customers in their homes, many house-to-house workers in large cities have hospital and sanitarium practice, visiting convalescents who,


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 though they have hospital attendance, are glad to have the visiting manicurist care for their hands and incidentally keep them in touch with the busy world beyond the sanitarium doors. This sort of work is secured through trained nurses, superintendents of hospitals and sanitariums, physicians and regular customers who have friends recovering from illness.

When a girl has thoroughly mastered manicuring and secured an established trade, she may wish to study another line of similar work, particularly shampooing. This is by no means a complicated branch of the trade to learn. To thoroughly cleanse the scalp without drenching the customer or causing more than a minimum of discomfort; to select the correct shampoo mixture for the different sorts of hair, blonde, brunette, red, oily or dry; to dry the hair properly; to singe it and wave it if the customers so desire, complete the training of the girl who announces herself as ready to do shampooing. The waving is not essential, but it is often the means of holding a customer who does not patronize a professional hairdresser, and who dislikes the task of waving her own locks. But the girl who does waving only should never exploit herself as a hairdresser, nor should she claim ability as a scalp specialist until she has been trained thoroughly and honestly for the work.

Shampooing can be mastered through prac-


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 tice and the study of books on the care of the hair or a correspondence course. For such service customers pay from fifty cents to one dollar, according to the size of the city and the scale of prices that prevails.

The girl who has both manicuring and shampooing at her command will have plenty to do among her house-to-house customers. There is absolutely no need of further training, unless she aims in time to open a shop. Then she should save money until she can afford to study with an expert masseuse the art of massaging the face, the scalp and the body. The most successful and reliable workers insist that in this day and age it pays to be a specialist, especially for the house-to-house trade. The girl who is really an expert manicurist will soon have her engagement book full. The girl who masters shampooing should follow this up with scalp massage learned from a recognized specialist.

Hairdressing is a trade quite apart, and the girl wha would learn this should work first in a wig or hair-making shop, learning the composition of hair, the art of dyeing it and making it into pieces, such as puffs, transformations, switches, etc.; and finally the very beautiful art—of dressing the hair to suit the face. This trade cannot be learned superficially in a beauty shop among chattering girls. It is particularly the art or trade of a man, and men are the best


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 Marcel wavers. Only about one girl in a thousand succeeds as a hair-worker and dresser, and she cannot really succeed and establish herself without serving an honest, sincere apprenticeship in a wig shop.

But to return to the house-to-house manicuring or shampooing, to which lines of work I hope most of the girls interested in the subject will turn their attention and their efforts, let us consider whether you are the sort of girl to succeed. You must be healthy, neat and tactful. You must be healthy because you are constantly giving forth vitality. Every woman who employs you leans upon you and asks for help. Yours must be the stronger nature. Particularly in the care of the hair and scalp, and massage, great demands are made upon your strength. A sickly or delicate looking girl does not inspire confidence in her customers. You must radiate strength, capability, confidence in yourself and your powers to remedy physical defects. The anemic girl cannot succeed. Her touch will be uncertain, trembling, and even dangerous in handling manicuring implements. The girl subject to headaches cannot succeed because her ailment deprives her of the nervous force needed to inspire confidence. The girl with catarrh or with an offensive breath cannot hold customers. Therefore, if you would be a beauty specialist start by setting your body in


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 perfect order. Become well and strong and magnetic.

The appearance of the manicurist, hairdresser or masseuse counts almost as heavily, for success as that of the probationer at the training-school for nurses referred to in Chapter IV. You must be immaculate. Your skin must look well cared for, well groomed. Your hair must be clean and glossy, and it must be carefully dressed. Your frock, however simple, must be free from dust, spots and fringes, with immaculate linen at throat and wrists. Your hands must be the best advertisement for your trade. Many first-class workers wear a sort of uniform, and at least the shirt-waist should be of washable material. You must give forth an air of trimness, neatness and good grooming.

Tact is a most important qualification. The manicurist, the hairdresser or the masseuse is frequently the confidant of her customer. Your relations during certain hours of each week are intimate. The girl who has not the gift of sealing her lips, but who is a typical gossip, soon finds herself without trade. Customers do not recognize their own folly in making you their confidant. They simply resent your violation of their confidence.

Tact is also required in handling nervous, tired, overworked women, who will make up the majority of your patronesses. The woman who


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 tears herself away from the turmoil of the social season or a mass of club work to have you undo the mischief of overwork, late hours, constant nervous effort, is not apt to be patient or easily pleased. You must be, above all things, restful and soothing, and this requires perfect physical strength, steady nerves, mental poise and tact.

In the matter of education, the requirements are not exacting—in truth, they are not as exacting as they should be, considering the fact that women place themselves and their appearance at your mercy. Every member of the human body is a delicate organ which you should handle with infinite care and conscientiousness. A knowledge of English, careful, accurate speech, these you should have, because your choice of language will betray to your customers your standing, and, to a certain extent, affect their confidence in you. Slang, bad grammar, and a high-pitched, unmusical voice will annoy women whom you may hope to count among your customers.

Before taking a practical course in any art of beautifying, study anatomy, and continue to study it so long as you follow the trade. You can never cease to learn about the human body, part of which you have undertaken to treat.

Massage, especially facial massage, is a line of work which makes legitimate appeal to the girl who wishes to learn a profitable trade; but


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 it requires a gift which comparatively few women possess—a delicate, soothing touch. In this day of innumerable ailments which can be traced directly to tense or overtaxed nerves, modern medical science is treating more and more by manipulation and less and less by drugs, and a girl who can convince an up-todate doctor that she has soothing, healing qualities in her hands will have no difficulty in securing engagements.

"But," exclaims the girl, "how do I know that I possess this gift?"

Test yourself. Perhaps your mother suffers with nervous or neuralgic headaches. Take her into a cool, not cold, darkened room and gently rub or smooth the forehead, or the base of the brain, wherever the pain may be. Do not talk to her. Merely concentrate your thought on her pain and your desire to ease it. If she gradually becomes quiet, if her nerves stop twitching, and if she feels an inclination to sleep, you have the masseuse's gift in your finger-tips. Or, if your father has twisted his ankle and is suffering pain, rub the affected parts firmly, steadily, never spasmodically. If you bring relief and in time reduce the inflammation you have the soothing hand.

On the other hand, if you make patients irritable and nervous, if they beg you to leave


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 them alone, you lack the touch, and only in cases of rare persistency and study can: it be acquired.

Quite generally this soothing touch is ascribed to personal magnetism. It is really a manifestation of a strength in both nerves and will. It indicates a firm, sympathetic nature and admirable self-control. It is never possessed by the self-centered, selfish or hysterical girl. The soothing hand is neither large nor small, never damp or clammy, and always firm.

There is a regular way of cultivating this power known as magnetism. Sit quietly until you are in absolute repose. Relax and drop everything. Then make up your mind what you want. You want to give forth help, to be helpful. Out of your calmness and strength you want to get the quality of giving forth or expressing through your hands your desire to aid others. This is not hypnotism or chicanery, but the influence of mind over matter. If the mind is cross or irritated, you cannot be helpful. You cannot have a soothing effect or stroke of the hand if your thoughts are jumping in a hundred different directions. The soothing hand presupposes mental concentration.

Scalp massage is excellent work for the beginner. It requires only a fair amount of strength, brings quick results and is very generally in demand. The scalp masseuse is really a hair culturist. Her office is to quicken the life


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 in the hair, loosen the skin from the scalp, stimulate the little cells in which the hairs grow and prevent baldness. The tight scalp is a common cause of falling hair, and massage alone will cure it. The scalp masseuse generally goes to the homes of patients, charging from seventy-five cents to one dollar and a quarter for each treatment.

If you take up this work, study the constitution of the hair. Familiarize yourself with all sorts and conditions of scalps. Learn what the oily hair needs and what is best for dry, harsh hair. Keep a schedule or history of every case you treat, just as the trained nurse watches every change in her patient's condition and marks it in her report. Learn to make your own tonics.

Scalp massage is particularly desirable when a patient is recovering from fever, and in such cases the treatments should be given three times a week, gradually reducing the number and frequency as the condition of the scalp improves. Scalp masage is also desirable for anemic children, and a most profitable field for the sealp masseuse is the prevention of baldness among men. If you have men patients, always insist upon their coming to your home, and you are quite within your rights if, during the treatment, you have your mother or a friend sit in the room with you. The masseuse who wishes


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 to build up a desirable clientele will be very careful in the matter of office etiquette.

Facial massage is more difficult, but also more profitable. When you can make the members of your own sex better-looking, you can command their last dollar. The prices are much the same as for scalp massage. Remember that the woman who comes to you for facial treatment is generally tired in body and nerves. First make her comfortable and quiet. Do not chatter. The secret of preserving your own strength and reviving hers is quiet concentration on the movements of your hands. If your hands are engaged in one direction and your thoughts in another, you must use double the amount of vital energy employed when you keep quiet.

Second, send your patient away looking attractive. It will take a little more time, but it will be casting bread upon the water that is bound to come back. Not long ago a friend of mine changed masseuses. I asked her why she had dismissed Miss Jones, who is considered a skilled worker.

"Oh," was her reply, "I know she had wonderful hands, but she never bothered to take the cream off your face. You have to clean up your face, powder and fix yourself generally. Miss Green, my new girl, leaves you feeling so cumfy. She washes off the cream, powders


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 your face, perhaps she touches up your eyebrows, and smooths you down generally, and you go out looking so fit that every one remarks on your appearance."

Whose customers, think you, are the better advertisers for the masseuse's skill? It takes but a few minutes to groom your patient, and you have her bound by your chains. Just such little things as these make for success.

While the primary virtue of massage is giving forth strength and relief from pain, the facial masseuse must make her patients feel "better-looking." She must take a vital interest in the appearance of each patient and must not hesitate to suggest in a tactful way what would improve the customer's appearance.

Another important point for the house-to-house masseuse to observe is orderliness. Unless her customer has plenty of servants, the masseuse heats the water needed for steaming the face and waits upon herself. When the treatment is over, she should put the basins, tea-kettle, towels, etc., in their right places, and straighten up the toilet table. It is the work of only a few moments to stretch the wet towels and cloths to dry in the bathroom, to put the tea-kettle or basin in place, and to cover the cold-cream jar and powder-box, while the customer is enjoying the restful effects of her treatment. When that customer must pick up


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 after the departed masseuse, she is very apt to lose some of the soothing effects of the treatment and to set the worker down as careless and disorderly. I have known more than one masseuse to lose good customers just through this little fault of untidiness. I admit that "cleaning up" is not nominated in the bond, but it is one of the little things that hold custom.

Body massage is the most complicated of all, and must be studied faithfully on scientific lines. It is employed for the relief of rheumatism, bad circulation, sciatica, nervousness and all diseases arising from congestion. It is invaluable, particularly in the case of children, for liver and bowel trouble, and it is employed to reduce inflammation and swellings from strains, bruises and abcesses, where there is no skin abrasion. Engagements are secured through physicians in private homes and in sanitariums, particularly those patronized by nervous patients or chronic invalids. An expert masseuse recommended by a physician of standing, receives as high as five dollars an hour, but she can take only two or three cases in a day at the most. Training for this high-grade work must be secured through private lessons or in a hospital training-school, in connection with special work in anatomy.

In the preceding pages I have tried to show to girls who have never given the trade of the


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 "beauty specialist" more than a superficial—study the grave importance of really being a specialist, not a general worker. There is neither large salary nor dignity in the general work of the "beauty shop," and there is much danger for the American girl's standard of right living and honest working.


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the vocabulary of those who write and lecture on the self-supporting woman, there is no more misleading phrase than "the poor factory girl." The self-respecting, alert factory-worker—and there are thousands upon thousands of such workers in the United States—neither asks nor merits pity. Many of them make more money in a week than the average mediocre stenographer makes in a month. Thousands of them perform less exhausting work than the girl who stands behind a counter. The vast majority of them have union hours, and each year officials get closer and closer to the heart of factory life, enforcing laws of sanitation and human safety.

When the factory girls have a grievance or are threatened with a reduction of wages, they do not ask rich and charitably-inclined women to open "homes" where they can live on a semicharity basis. They appoint committees, confer with committees from unions for men, and arbi-


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HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.


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 trate the case with their employers. If times are "panicky," they may have to work on part time, or mills may be closed for weeks or months; but saleswomen and stenographers suffer the same financial reverses in hard times.

The girl who learns any trade in a factory soon finds that this knowledge is like a certain amount of capital on which she can always draw for an income. If she is an expert worker and she does not like the methods of her employers, she can seek other work among competitive firms. If she requires a change of climate or feels the spirit of wanderlust stirring within her, she can cross the continent if need be, and feel reasonably certain that wherever she finds a similar factory, there will be an opening for her skilled hands.

Among my self-supporting correspondents during the past ten years, hundreds have been factory-workers who have used their knowledge of trades, their powers of observation and the acquaintance gained in the despised factory life to accomplish certain long-cherished ambitions. One of the best traveling saleswomen in the country to-day represents a great corsetmaking firm in whose employ she started as an apprentice. Five girls who started together in a stocking factory now have a plant of their own, and are making a comfortable, independent living therefrom. The head of the Young


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 Women's Christian Association factory work in an Eastern city was herself an operator in a shirt-waist factory, saw the need of welfare work among foreign-born girls, studied practical philanthropy, and became a successful social worker. A woman who designed trimming for a New York manufacturer of tailored suits for women is now the head of an importing firm which deals in laces, trimmings and buttons.

True, girls toil year after year for mere stipends, in factories which require large numbers of purely mechanical workers to feed machines or perform the simplest of hand tasks. But these girls, if placed in offices, would address envelopes or do filing or telephone operating at four, five or six dollars a week to the end of their business careers.

As an instance, take the case of a young Hungarian girl who, on her arrival in America, found work in a box factory at four dollars a week. She was extremely deft, and became one of the best piece-workers in the shop, her earnings varying from nine to twelve dollars a week. Foreign girls worked all around her, the factory's manager kept within the law but no more, and the environment was not pleasant. The girl had to wear washable clothes to work, because of the glue.

She watched clerks and stenographers whom


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 she met going to and from work, in lunch hours and at the settlement house where she spent her evenings. She grew to hate the factory and determined to become a stenographer. By day she worked at her old task of making boxes; by night she studied English. And always she saved every penny, until she could leave the factory and enter a business college, where she studied like the personification of concentration. It was a laudable ambition, but no one told her what the poor girl did not realize—that stenography cannot be built on a faulty education, and this girl had not been educated in either her own language or in English. She mastered stenography, but her knowledge of English remained defective. She could secure no position.

She went back to the school for more instruction in English. Her funds ran low. Her relatives, whose daughters were doing well in the factories, felt no sympathy for her and refused financial aid. Charitable women helped her in the matter of clothes and incidental expenses, but no one asked her how she was living. The truth was that she was very nearly starving. And when at last she mastered English and was eligible for a position as stenographer at seven or eight dollars a week, she was so broken in health and nerves that she was mentally unfit to cope with the petty annoyances of office life.


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 Employer after employer had to dismiss her, and eventually a charitably inclined woman sent her to the country to recuperate. After eight years of this precarious existence, she has a position where she earns ten dollars a week, but her ambition is broken, her economic future is most uncertain.

Had she given to her factory work the same enthusiasm and concentration that she devoted to the mistaken vocation of stenography, she would have become forewoman or perhaps a partner in a small factory.

Gradually the American girl is leaving the factory and its trade to her foreign cousin. And for what? For less money and equally hard work in a store or office. The girl who cannot advance in a factory will not advance in a store or office, where she is paid less money for her time and indifferent services. The girl who is purely a working machine, without executive ability, without the alertness and ambition that make for success in any line of work, will earn more money in a factory than in a store, because in salesmanship, above almost any line of work, personality and enthusiasm must be exerted.

Owners and managers of factories speak with great bitterness of the American girls who could earn twelve or fifteen dollars a week at their looms or machines, who are standing be-


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 hind counters for five and six dollars a week. Said one employer whose factory occupies a great loft far above the heat and roar of the city streets, and whose girls, mostly foreigners, earn from ten to fourteen dollars a week:

"Five years ago the names on our payroll were largely Irish, German or English. To-day they are almost exclusively Slav. And in that department store on the next corner you will find girls standing on their feet from 8:15 to 6 every day for seven dollars a week. The—air in that store is foul, the heat in summer maddening. The rest-rooms for the girls are a mockery, located in a dingy basement with electric light and foul air. Up here our girls earn a minimum of ten dollars a week, they sit at machines run by electricity. The air is pure, our lunchroom is a model one, and we are thinking of putting our factory on a profit-sharing basis.

"The root of the trouble is that oft-quoted phrase, the poor factory girl, and the subsequent feeling of caste which is fatal to the earning capacity of the American girl who must be wholly or partly self-supporting. She would rather be a cheap clerk or stenographer than lose what she considers social standing by working in a factory. With this false standard of pride she ekes out a miserable existence. She cannot save because she has nothing to lay


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 aside. She lives from hand to mouth and becomes a creature of expedients, in nowise fitted for the wife of an American man of moderate means.

"Our girls have bank accounts, they live with their parents, not at 'homes,' and before they are twenty-five most of them marry, with habits of thrift instilled in them. No girl can be thrifty when she has no meal insured beyond what her current week's salary can pay for."

This interview is offered for the particular help of the girl who, having completed her elementary or grammar grades in the public schools, is hesitating between what is known as "business career," i.e., cheap office work or cheaper salesmanship, and entering a factory to learn some form of skilled labor. It is quite true that foreign girls have almost monopolized factory work, but this is because the American girl has permitted the condition to arise. It is also true that many of the surroundings of factory life are distasteful to the American girl; but what of impudent customers, overbearing, unjust floor-walkers in stores, and fault-finding superiors in big offices? For every factory that defies the laws of sanitation and decency, there is a department store which does the same thing. For every manufacturer who maintains a system of fines and unjust withholding of wages, there is a superintendent of employees


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 in a dry-goods or a department store who is past-master of the same tricks. And most certainly I should urge the young woman who lives in a factory community to investigate the conditions and openings for work in the local concerns before she puts her last penny into a "business training" built upon an elementary knowledge of English.

To the girl seeking factory work in sanitary surroundings the up-to-date plants of pure-food packers offer many attractions. To be sure, it is claimed that the model plants maintained by many of these manufacturers are part of the advertising methods of the firm, but this does not alter the fact that the workers participate in the benefits of pure food, cleanly environment and self-respect which result. At one of the factories maintained by a cracker and biscuit trust, I found girls working at wages from five to twelve dollars a week in almost ideal surroundings, and let me add that most of these girls were American-born. Every room in which I found girls employed was spotless, with dust absorbers, pure air and plenty of it. At various points of the building were splendid lavatories with enameled basins, tubs and shower-baths, a matron in attendance, cots for girls taken ill at their work, an emergency closet with simple remedies aplenty, and an attractive lunchroom. These girls wear-


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 forms, purchased by themselves and laundered by the company. Their work is monotonous. Most of them perform some portion of the packing process, feeding pasteboard to machines that turn out boxes, closing the boxes, labeling them, etc.

In another Pennsylvania food plant, I found girls in immaculate uniforms sorting and preparing fruits and vegetables, sealing and labeling cans, packing, etc. These girls often earn no more than five dollars a week, but they would earn no more in stores. If they are capable of earning higher wages, they are paid them right there in that factory.

These girls have model rest-rooms and lavatories, and are furnished with clubrooms, a gymnasium and an auditorium where dances and other entertainments are given after working hours.

In a mid-West city I found a soap factory with as fine a body of women employees as you will see anywhere in America, because they work on the profit-sharing plan, and have a civil service system of advancement. In a New York City shirt-waist factory I found Irish and American girls working under most comfortable conditions, and apparently content with their surroundings and their earnings. Just two blocks on the other side of Broadway I found a typical, the workers strained, in-


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 tent, plainly underpaid, underfed Polish girls, all of them sewing on the type of shirt-waist that makes the Monday morning bargain sales possible.

There are factories and factories. In New England, there are cotton mills where 500 girls work in one room, where dust and vapor are so thick that they form a peculiar haze. In California, fruit packers work under ideal conditions. On the lower end of Manhattan Island I visited a candy factory which a few days later was raided by the municipal food inspectors and whose owner was heavily fined. Here the girls worked in a fire-trap of a building, with halls dark as midnight and smells foul enough to outweigh that of the sickeningly-sweet chocolate. A fifteen-minute ride on the elevated road brought me to a huge loft, where a hundred girls and a few men made candy in rooms that would have put the average fussy housewife to shame.

Very often factories are what employees make them. Many firms who have tried to improve the environment of their employees have been discouraged by the abuse of their property by the very employees they were trying to help.

It is impossible in this space to discuss the economic position of the woman factory-worker. Investigators have proven that her presence in


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 the factory world has reduced wages and driven expert male workers out of the trades. On the other hand, she has also reduced hours and bettered conditions in factories. But after all, the most important fact is that she has arrived and is monopolizing many lines of work, blazing the way for the rising generation of girls who, with little education, must become self-supporting.

It is impossible, also, within this limited space, to particularize about even a fair proportion of the trades in which girls find employment and quick advancement, but a few general figures furnished by employers and confirmed by workers may be of interest.

Many of the candy manufacturers have schools for girls with a system of civil service promotion. Girls armed with board of health, department of education or child labor law certificates, according to the municipal government, are taken as apprentices while quite young. They start at three or four dollars a week, and if deft are soon advanced to five dollars a week. Experts in the factory seldom earn more than eight dollars a week, but manufacturers who also manage retail stores promote their most intelligent girls to the position of saleswoman in the retail store, which may lead to the post of head of stock. The girl who


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 has worked in the factory is given the preference in the store.

In all large cities where millinery centers may be found, artificial flower factories also exist. Italian girls crowd many of these factories and much work is done, but factories are also found in fine lofts, with good light, exhaust fans and plenty of elbow-room for the workers, and American workers to boot. Here the maximum earnings are ten dollars a week, unless a girl becomes forewoman, when her salary is determined by her value to the concern. An apprentice can always secure a chance at one of these factories at the opening of the rush season.

The bonnaz machines for which operators are always in demand are features of every factory which turns out upholstery supplies, scarfs, draperies, portières, table-covers, etc. This machine does braiding, outlining and various forms of fancy stitchery, employees generally doing piece-work and earning, when expert, fifteen dollars a week. Young girls start here knotting fringe and doing other finishing work. The girl who shows adaptability and eagerness to learn is soon given a chance at a machine, and these apprentices make about seven dollars a week, their earnings increasing with their dexterity.

In the hosiery factories for which Philadel-


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 phia is noted, the girls start at three dollars a week in what is known as the finishing department, stamping and packing the stockings. The knitters are the highest-priced workers, their minimum earnings being ten dollars a week. The piece-worker is always a law unto herself, but often the rapid workers pay the price of their big records with nervous prostration or other ailments peculiar to abnormal concentration.

In Pittsburgh, the center of the cheap cigar or stogy industry, girls work by the thousands at this trade alone, earning six dollars per week. In the cotton mills of New England you will find as many thousand more weavers working for an average of a dollar and a half a day or nine dollars per week. Yet there have been cases in all these factories where girls have doubled the average wages.

Operators in suit and waist factories do piece-work principally, and as a rule make twelve dollars per week. In underwear factories the inexperienced worker is first employed at sewing on buttons, running ribbon through beading, pressing, etc., and makes not more than two or three dollars per week. Tucking, joining tucking to insertion, sewing on lace, etc., are all done by machine and paid for by the yard. At first a girl earns no more at this than by sewing on buttons, but very soon she works up to six dol-


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 lars per week. From this work she passes on to joining garments and adjusting trimming by machine, and at this an experienced hand makes from twelve to fourteen dollars per week. The girl who can embroidery neatly can secure work in shirt factories embroidering initials and monograms on custom-made shirts.

The girl in search of this work must watch the "want ad," columns of the daily papers and haunt the neighborhood where such factories are to be found. Here she will find signs "Experienced Operators Wanted," or "Apprentices or Learners Wanted." She is always safe in applying where she sees the latter sign. Best of all is the acquaintance of some one already employed in the factory, who will not only let her know when an opening occurs, but will help her during the first weeks of her apprenticeship.

In suit, shirt-waist and skirt factories girls are employed as sorters. That is, they take the various pieces of cloth from the cutters, assorting sleeve-pieces and various parts of the waist according to size, 34, 36, 38, etc. This develops the bump of accuracy. The minimum salary is generally three dollars, the maximum eight dollars. There is little chance for advancement. In factories handling cloth suits, men are employed largely as operators, but girls are employed to sew on trimming, run buttonhole ma-


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 chines and do much of the lighter operating. Wages are about the same as at white-goods factories, and all this is piece-work, depending, therefore, on the energy and concentration of the operator. Machinery is now run by electricity.

Box factories give employment to many girls, but the rooms are, as a rule, badly arranged and illy ventilated. Girls may start at this work as pasters, i.e., binding corners and edges of boxes with pasteboard strips. They generally work two weeks for nothing, then earn about three dollars per week, and even an expert cannot make more than nine dollars. The glue workers, who cover boxes with fancy paper, make as high as ten dollars per week, but must work in very hot rooms with hot glue. These are merely sample lines of work and indicate salary paid.

Feather making and curling form an excellent trade for deft-fingered girls. The operator starts at three dollars per week, scraping marabout or French turkey down. Next she sews on the down and earns six dollars per week. From this she advances to ostrich feather-making, at which she earns as high as eighteen dollars per week. An expert curler commands the best salary of all, about twenty dollars per week.

These fragmentary figures from payrolls go


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 to prove that while there is no great future in factory work, save for the exceptional girl who would carve for herself a successful business career wherever she started, factory work promises a fair wage during the seven years which is the average period of work for girls and women the country over. And for the woman who works no longer than that, it provides equally good pay in equally sanitary surroundings as does stenography or salesmanship, the usual alternative with the average girl.


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philanthropy presents a congenial method of self-support for educated, ambitious, earnest women. The organized uplift movement, generally known as social work, which is found in every industrial center, offers a field in which the intelligent, tactful woman may reap the double harvest of a fair livelihood and the knowledge that the world will be the better for her having worked in it. It is not work for the very young girl.

During recent years philanthropy has been reduced to a science. Charity is dispensed by methods as business-like as those employed by any great corporation. Time was when women who had failed at almost everything else were sent out as missionaries to foreign lands, to the poor whites of the South, to the neglected Indians of the West, and to the slum dwellers of the great cities. "Genteel" women with social backing and family name were given the preference as managers of homes for the dependent or


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 refuges for girls; while the wealthy employed as their almoners perfectly ladylike relatives who had to be supported, anyhow, and might as well be paid a salary.

The untrained, tactless missionaries accomplished little beyond making trouble for ambassadors and consuls in the foreign countries to which they were sent. The "genteel" superintendents of homes and refuges failed because they did not know how to organize and manage affairs.

Then a few men and women brave enough to face the storm of public outcry against salaried positions in charity work began their struggle to put philanthropy on a business basis. Rich men and women were asked to help the poor and needy only through these charity associations, whose members had the courage and the time and the working force to investigate claims.

Such was the quiet, unostentatious beginning of the associated charity work which is now found in every city of any size in the United States. So immediate were the results from this movement, so quick were business men and women to grasp the municipal or civic possibilities of such an association, that not only is organized charity receiving general support from the masses who can give small sums, but men and women of great wealth are organizing


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 their benefactions on similar lines. The Russell Sage Foundation is as well organized as any life-insurance office or great department store. The Carnegie benefactions are handled by directors, committees and paid investigators; so are most of the charities in which John D. Rockefeller is interested. The churches have fallen into line, establishing schools where missionaries, deaconesses, neighborhood workers, etc., are trained.

Just as it takes capable men and women to conduct great enterprises, so does it require high-grade workers, men and women of executive ability and special training, to manage the great charity movements of the hour, to dispense the magnificent philanthropies of the American multi-millionaire. There must be stenographers to handle correspondence, investigators to relieve the poor and encourage the wretched, studious workers to dig below the surface indications of squalor and filth and reach the cause, and head workers of peculiar executive ability to sift the reports brought in by investigators, and outline a more vigorous campaign as the world's needs are indicated by the reports.

I have emphasized the need for trained workers, not untrained enthusiasts, at the very beginning of this chapter, because I do not want to deceive any girl who feels that she must have


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 something to do to-morrow or next day which will bring in immediate returns. This chapter on philanthropy as a profession is written especially for the girl of education who has time and money to specialize for social service work. To this explanation I want to add something more, the statement that not every woman, however ambitious, is suited to social service work.

She must have reasonably good health—at least no organic trouble. I use the word "reasonably" advisedly, for often the girl who is breaking down under the routine of office work or confinement of desk, counter or schoolroom, practically renews her youth and regains her strength in social work, which generally includes much outdoor life.

She must have tact. She will need this in securing funds from the rich, co-operation from the influential, and results from the poor to whom she dispenses charity.

She must be open-minded enough to suspend judgment in a case until she has learned every side of it, and yet she must be resourceful enough to act on her own responsibility when emergency demands. She must not be swayed by personalities—judging the need, not the individual—and she must not expect gratitude.

She must be willing to start for a mere pittance and prove her worth to those above her in authority.


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 She must be willing, nay, anxious, to study continually, for nearly every case will present a different sociological problem springing from a different sociological evil, and it is her work not to relieve the single case alone, but to do her part in reducing the evil which lies behind the case.

The work itself is varied. Here are some of the positions open to those who desire to engage in it:

Expert visitors for charity organization societies or other charitable institutions. Investigators of social conditions or institutions. Matrons or administrators in institutional work. Financial secretaries for private individuals or societies. Inspectors (tenement houses, factories, etc.). Executive secretaries of educational or philanthropic societies. Probation officers. Head workers and assistants in social settlements, institutional churches, welfare departments of manufacturing and mercantile establishments. The public service, State and municipal, especially those branches which deal with public welfare, such as health, charities and corrections. Members of boards of managers and committees of philanthropic institutions. Friendly visitors and volunteer workers in any field of service requiring an acquaintance with existing conditions and a knowledge of modern methods of social work.


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 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the girls' branch of the house of refuge has been placed in charge of a woman trained for social work in Chicago, Martha P. Falconer, who has employed as teachers about eight Wellesley and Vassar graduates who specialized on sociology during their college course and later took postgraduate training for social work. In glancing over the bulletin of the Thirty-fifth National Conference of Charities and Corrections, held at Richmond, Virginia, in May, 1908, I find that among hundreds of offices held by women are these: Secretary charity organization society; clerk of juvenile court; assistant superintendent of industrial school for girls; truant officers; investigating clerk board of children's guardians; secretary of the same board; circulation manager of Charities and Commons; supervisor of playgrounds; superintendent State training-school for girls; district superintendent bureau of charities; superintendent nurses' association; matron of home for working-girls; matron of farm school and home for nervous and backward children; probation officer; superintendent I. O. O. F. home; agent soldiers' orphan home industrial school for girls; head resident neighborhood house; superintendent of probationers State industrial school; registrar tenement-house department; superintendent visiting nurses.

There are openings for trained workers in


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 settlement or neighborhood houses, in consumers' leagues, in district nursing, in the child-labor movement, in public playgrounds, in summer schools for the poor, in free clinics for mothers who need to be taught how to care for their children, in country homes for convalescents and children, and in the anti-tuberculosis movement. The Russell Sage Foundation and similar benefactions give the preference to trained workers, and especially to investigators.

The charity organizations in large cities experience great difficulty in retaining the services of their trained workers, because from smaller cities just organizing charity associations, or from some private institutions being reorganized on practical, up-to-date lines, come better offers for the trained worker of city experience.

A man who stands close to the head of his profession, philanthropy, told me recently that he knew of not less than six societies or organizations ready to pay from eighteen hundred to three thousand dollars a year that were searching for the right men and women. And the right man or woman is not the untrained, however earnest, one.

The salaries paid in philanthropy or social service are about the same as those which prevail in schools and colleges, though for executive ability, especially among men, a little more


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 is paid by the charity organization than by a college or school. A minimum salary for the beginner is six dollars a week, or three hundred and twelve dollars a year, but it is seldom that a worker draws so low a salary for any length of time. If she is worth training, she is quickly worth more money. From three hundred and twelve a year the salary usually jumps to five hundred dollars, and increases with the usefulness and executive ability of the worker, seven thousand dollars being the maximum salary.

The preparation consists of high-school education, or, better, special attention to sociology and anthropology and political economy, followed by a year's practical training in a school of philanthropy. The entrance requirements of the New York School of Philanthropy, which is conducted by the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York and affiliated with Columbia University, are as follows:

"Men and women are enrolled as regular students, without further examination, who present satisfactory credentials as to character, good health and earnestness of purpose, and belong to one of the following classes: First, graduates of a recognized college or university who have taken some courses in the social sciences—sociology, economics, etc. Second, persons of good general education—at least equivalent to a high school or normal school training


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 —who have had considerable experience as volunteer managers, visitors or directors of charitable societies, or of social, educational, philanthropic or religious activities. Third, professional workers with at least one year's successful practice of the profession of social work who desire to improve their knowledge of the methods of social service."

In one or two other schools the entrance requirements are a trifle less rigid.

The plan of instruction employed in the New York School of Philanthropy, and practically in all similar schools, is as follows:

The one-year course offers supervised work to occupy the entire time of the student for eight months (October to May), six days in the week from nine o'clock to five. It comprises formal lectures by experts, classroom exercises and discussions, assigned readings and library work, field work in visiting institutions and carrying on investigations, practice work in the visitation of needy families and the practical administration of office work in the various special lines of the individual interest of each separate student. New York City offers doubtless the richest opportunities in the country for such practice work.

The tuition fee for such training averages fifty dollars a year, to which board and incidental expenses must be added—about five hun-


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 dred dollars in all for the year. Sometimes the latter are reduced by a student living at a settlement or neighborhood house and earning part of her expenses as a helper, but the taking of outside employment during the training is not encouraged. Also several scholarships are granted annually to promising workers.

As I said before, graduates do not have to seek positions. The positions seek them. There is absolutely no period of uncertainty or waiting for the well-equipped and trained worker to face.

In conclusion, here is a word of suggestion to nurses, teachers and stenographers who have spent years preparing for their work, only to find it uncongenial and wearing. If you believe that you would enjoy social work, apply to the nearest charity organization and ascertain just what your experience would count for. If a teacher in graded schools change to a position in a State or private charity institution. If a private nurse, try visiting nursing among the poor. If a stenographer in a law office, try for a clerical position in a charity organization. If the call is meant for you, it will come to you, no matter what the position, and the means to answer will come with the call.


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have hazy ideas, often grave misconceptions, concerning proof-reading and all work for their sex offered by publishing concerns. For some inexplicable reason, the average out-of-town woman imagines that every branch of work connected with the publication of books or magazines is extremely and elegant. They cannot appreciate the close connection existing between the literary and the mechanical ends of the business. They picture women employees at home, turning out in leisurely fashion the "work" which is finally shipped by messenger, mail or express to the few poor unfortunates who must remain at the "shop" and keep the wheels spinning round.

Occasionally correspondents who hold such views come to see me at the great noisy building where we, who have served some sort of apprenticeship in the art of making books and periodicals, are turning out pages for other folk to read. They listen to the clack of half


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 a hundred typewriters. They peer into editorial dens, separated only by thin half-partitions from the rush of many feet, the issuing of many orders, all the turmoil common to any great business concern. And they murmur: "Nobody could write in an atmosphere like this and remain sane."

But we do—and we learn to love the atmosphere.

Then these women climb winding stairways to where intent, silent girls click out columns of copy on linotype machines, and they enter small, electrically-lighted rooms, where other intent girls sit beside coatless men, reading proof.

"Why, I never dreamed it was like this! I thought proof-sheets were sent to women to read at home. I could not think clearly in this dirt and noise."

Much of this misconception of publishing house work is due to the misleading advertising matter issued by certain unscrupulous managers of correspondence schools in proof-reading. They flood the country, and especially the rural districts, with circulars stating that the girls who master their system of proof-reading by correspondence will have work in plenty sent to their homes. These promises are so cleverly worded that the guarantee of work or a position on completion of the course is quite within the


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 law, and the student, perhaps unable to leave home in search of work, has no redress, and nothing to show for the fee paid for the course.

The course of study may be entirely sincere and reliable in theory, but the man behind it cannot furnish home work, and he has no right to guarantee it. I have the backing of employers in many cities and practical foremen and printers when I say that ninety-nine out of every one hundred students who take a course of home-study proof-reading will never make use of it. The hundredth boy or girl will be a worker born, and will go out into the printing world to seek practical instruction and training, but not one out of the hundred will ever receive a galley of proof to read on the farm or in the little village.

Personally, I am a firm believer in any reliable correspondence course, and particularly a university extension course, for the young man or woman who is far from educational and business centers, and who yet desires to keep in touch with the world's progress. It has spurred many a girl and boy on to efforts which have brought rich rewards, when without this impetus they would have vegetated or stagnated in the village or on the farm where they were born. It is also a boon to the man or woman whose early education has been neglected, but, like the college or university diploma, it is not


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 silent. In the "Storm" section the piccolo is used with fine effect. Beethoven was the first to introduce this instrument into a symphony, and he uses it also in the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies ("like golden braid on tapestry, lending dazzling glitter to the design"), in the overture to Egmont, in his Ruins of Athens, King Stephen, and , Overture to Egmont. the "Battle" Symphony (op. 94), where he assigns to it "Rule Britannia" and "Marlbrook," the latter in a minor key to typify that the French were defeated. He never uses two piccolos.

In the overture Leonora, No. 3, the flute plays an ascending scale from the low D upwards, followed by a gay succession of rapid sequences in the upper register. This very prominent passage is written for the first flute only. Owing to the weakness of the low register of the flute, the earlier portion of the ascending scale is not heard as a rule.


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 the key to business success and an assured income. It cannot give the essential and practical experience obtained in an office, composing-room or factory; but it can make first experiences in the workaday world much easier. The college-bred lad who decides to become a proof-reader must serve his apprenticeship, his diploma notwithstanding. Why should a student expect a diploma or certificate from a correspondence school to do away with this apprenticeship or nullify the rules and regulations of one of the strongest unions in the labor world?

The home-student may take her correspondence course if she lacks the courage to enter upon an apprenticeship without theoretical training, but she must not expect the course to open the door to easy work, short hours and big pay. These are the reward of an apprenticeship covering four years or more.

Neither is proof-reading a trade for the girl or woman who wants home work. It is bound to take her into the "shop," as the composing-room is commonly called. Why should publishers send work to the home of refined or delicate or sensitive women who need the wages, when hundreds of strong, skilled and willing women are knocking at the doors of their composing-rooms for work on the premises?

The foreman of the shop connected with a publishing house of national fame told me that


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 last year he received five hundred written applications from women who desired to do proof-reading at home and expected to follow the trade without leaving home, having work sent to them and called for, drawing the regular union wages, thus working in what some of them termed a "quiet, ladylike, confidential way."

I want to impress on the mind of all home-staying girls that the time for this sort of nonsense has passed. Business men are not conducting socitiessocieties [sic] for the amelioration of the condition of distressed gentlewomen. They are demanding that every one of us women who compete with men in the field of labor work under the same conditions and give the same results as the men with whom we toil shoulder to shoulder.

As a union proof-reader, a woman will be paid precisely the same salary given to the male worker, but she must do the work just as well, and reach her position by precisely the same method of training, the same apprenticeship required of a man.

And now, having learned what proof-reading is not, and how girls cannot attain a position in this trade, let those who really mean to "make good" take counsel together.

Proof-reading is one of the best-paid trades for women. The minimum salary is twenty-one dollars per week, and the expert worker names