ess which bothers a
business man so much as it is that of some one else--his stenographer,
for instance. Men do not have quite so much opportunity to make
themselves ridiculous as women. Their conventions of dress are stricter,
and, as a rule, they can express their love of color and ornamentation
only in their choice of ties and socks. Girls have practically no
restrictions except what happens to be the style at the moment, and a
young girl untrained in selecting and combining colors and lines, and
making money for the first time in her life, is more likely than not to
make herself look more like a Christmas tree than a lily of the field.

The big department stores which employ hundreds of girls to meet and
serve their customers have settled the problem for themselves by
requiring the girls to wear uniforms. The uniform is very simple; often
a certain color during working hours is prescribed, but the girls are
permitted to choose their own styles. Other places have women who look
after the welfare of the girls and prevent them from laying themselves
open to misunderstanding by the way they dress. Large organizations can
afford to have a special person to take care of such matters, but in a
small office the problem is different.

Of course, a man can always dismiss a girl who dresses foolishly or
carelessly, but this is sneaking away from a problem instead of facing
it. High-class offices have comparatively little trouble this way. In
the first place, they do not attract the frivolous, light-headed, or
"tough" girls; in the second place, if such girls come, the atmosphere
in which they work either makes them conform to the standards of the
office or leave and go somewhere else. If a girl in his office dresses
in a way that he considers inappropriate, a man may tactfully suggest
that something simpler would be more dignified and more in keeping with
business ideals and traditions. But, oh, he must be careful! On no
subject is one so sensitive as on his personal appearance, and women,
perhaps, more so than men.

There is a limit to how far an employer should go in dictating the
manner of his employees' dress. When the head of a big Western
department store declared that he would discharge all the girls who
bobbed their hair, most of us felt that he had gone a bit too far, even
while we saw the logic of his position. While it is the only sensible
way in the world for a woman to wear her hair the majority of people
have