me-preserved fruits and jellies, and home-canned vegetables and
meats find ready sale and that women who can produce these things do
find it profitable to do so. There is, consequently, a field for some
girls in such work.

[Illustration: Cooking class at Benson Polytechnic School for Girls,
Portland, Oregon. In spite of the statement that foods will be
prepared in the public utility plants, the trained, accurate worker
may find a ready sale for home-cooked foods]

Not all girls, on the other hand, who have taken the domestic science
course are fitted to take up this work, even if a market could be
found for their work. Only the expert, that is, the precise, accurate,
painstaking cook, can secure uniform results day after day. Only the
rapid worker can do enough to insure pay for her time. Only the girl
with a keen sense of taste can properly judge results and devise
successful combinations. Only a business woman can buy to advantage
and compute ratios of expense and return. This combination, of course,
is not to be found every day.

THE DISTRIBUTING GROUP

_Salesmanship_. Passing from the class of work which has to do with
making things to that group of occupations which has to do with the
distribution of various products to the consumer, we shall naturally
consider, first of all, the saleswoman. In any given group of young
and untrained girls drawn as in our schools from varying environment
and heredity, the _natural_ saleswomen will probably be in the
minority. I do not mean that girls may not often express a desire to
"work in a store" as apparently the easiest and most immediate
employment for the untrained girl. This may or may not indicate that
the girl has a commercial mind. The girl who is really interested in
commercial undertakings is easily distinguished from her fellow
workers in any salesroom. She is not the girl who lingers in
conversation with the girl next to her while a customer waits, or who
gazes indifferently over the customer's head while the latter makes
her choice from the goods laid before her. To the real saleswoman
every customer is a possibility, every sale a victory, and every
failure to sell distinctly a defeat. The fact that we see so few girls
and women of this type behind the counters in our shopping centers is
sufficient indication that many girls would have been better placed in
other occupations.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Hardware section of a department store