P-GIRLS.

"It's the ladies that's in the way, mum. Once get a lady to think that a
girl isn't idling because she's sitting down, and the battle's won. But
a lady comes into a shop blacker 'n midnight if every soul in it isn't
on their feet and springing to serve her. I've got seats, but, bless
you! my trade 'd be ruined if the girls used them much. 'Tisn't that I'm
not willing, and me brother as well. It's the customers, the lady
customers, that wouldn't stand it. Its them that you've got to talk to."

Once more it is a woman who is apparently woman's worst enemy, and
London sins far more heavily in this respect than New York, and for a
very obvious reason, that of sharply defined lines of caste, and the
necessity of emphasizing them felt by all whose position does not speak
for itself. A "born lady" on entering a shop where women clerks were
sitting, might realize that from eleven to fourteen hours' service daily
might well be punctuated by a few moments on the bits of board pushed in
between boxes, which do duty for seats, and be glad that an opportunity
had been improved. Not so the wife of the prosperous butcher or baker or
candlestick maker, rejoicing, it may be, in the first appearance in
plush and silk, and bent upon making it as impressive as possible. To
her, obsequiousness is the first essential of any dealing with the order
from which she is emerging; and her custom will go to the shop where its
outward tokens are most profuse. A clerk found sitting is simply
embodied impertinence, and the floor manager who allows it an offender
against every law of propriety; and thus it happens that seats are
slipped out of sight, and exhausted women smile and ask, as the purchase
is made, "And what is the next pleasure?" in a tone that makes the
American hearer cringe for the abject humility that is the first
condition of success as seller.

Even the best shops are not exempt from this, and as one passes from
west to east the ratio increases, culminating in the oily glibness of
the bargain-loving Jew, and his no less bargain-loving London brother of
Whitechapel, or any other district unknown to fashion.

This, however, is a merely outward phase. The actual wrongs of the
system lie deeper, but are soon as apparent. For the shop-girl, as for
the needlewoman or general worker of any description whatsoever,
over-time is the standing difficulty, and a grievance almost impossible
to redress. That an act of parliament forbid