scharge one
of the old girls because she didn't smile enough. Good reason why. She'd
lost her mother the week before and wasn't likely to feel much like
smiling. And then she went inside the counters and pitched out all the
old shoes the girls had there to make it easier to stand. It 'most kills
you to stand all day in new shoes, but Miss T---- pitched them all out
and said she wasn't going to have the store turned into an old-clothes
shop."

"Well, it's better than lots of them, no matter what she does," said
another. "I was at H----'s for six months, and there you have to ask a
man for leave every time it is necessary to go upstairs, and half the
time he would look and laugh with the other clerks. I'd rather be where
there are all women. They're hard on you sometimes, but they don't use
foul language and insult you when you can't help yourself."

This last complaint has proved for many stores a perfectly well-founded
one. Wash-rooms and other conveniences have been for common use, and
many sensitive and shrinking girls have brought on severe illnesses
arising solely from dread of running this gantlet.

Here and there the conditions of this form of labor are of the best, but
as a whole the saleswoman suffers not only from long-continued standing,
but from bad air, ventilation having no place in the construction of the
ordinary store. Separate dressing-rooms are a necessity, yet are only
occasionally found, the system demanding that no outlay shall be made
when it is possible to avoid it. Overheating and overcrowding, hastily
eaten and improper food, are all causes of the weakness and anaemic
condition so perceptible among shop and factory workers, these being
divided into many classes. For a large proportion it can be said that
they are tolerably educated, so far as our public-school system can be
said to educate, and are hard-working, self-sacrificing, patient girls
who have the American knack of dressing well on small outlay, and who
have tastes and aspirations far beyond any means of gratifying them. For
such girls the working-women's guilds and the Friendly societies--these
last of English origin--have proved of inestimable service, giving them
the opportunities long denied. In such guilds many of them receive the
first real training of eye and hand and mind, learn what they can best
do, and often develop a practical ability for larger and better work.
Even in the lowest order filling the cheaper stores there is