ers and evil-minded", no other place of employment
is so easy of access as the department store. No visitor is received in
a factory or office unless he has definite business there, whereas every
purchaser is welcome at a department store, even a notorious woman well
known to represent the demi-monde trade is treated with marked courtesy
if she spends large sums of money. The primary danger lies in the fact
that the comely saleswomen are thus easy of access. The disreputable
young man constantly passes in and out, making small purchases from
every pretty girl, opening an acquaintance with complimentary remarks;
or the procuress, a fashionably-dressed woman, buys clothing in large
amounts, sometimes for a young girl by her side, ostensibly her
daughter. She condoles with the saleswoman upon her hard lot and lack of
pleasure, and in the role of a kindly, prosperous matron invites her to
come to her own home for a good time. The girl is sometimes subjected to
temptation through the men and women in her own department, who tell her
how invitations to dinners and theatres may be procured. It is not
surprising that so many of these young, inexperienced girls are either
deceived or yield to temptation in spite of the efforts made to protect
them by the management and by the older women in the establishment.

The department store has brought together, as has never been done before
in history, a bewildering mass of delicate and beautiful fabrics,
jewelry and household decorations such as women covet, gathered
skilfully from all parts of the world, and in the midst of this bulk of
desirable possessions is placed an untrained girl with careful
instructions as to her conduct for making sales, but with no guidance in
regard to herself. Such a girl may be bitterly lonely, but she is
expected to smile affably all day long upon a throng of changing
customers. She may be without adequate clothing, although she stands in
an emporium where it is piled about her, literally as high as her head.
She may be faint for want of food but she may not sit down lest she
assume "an attitude of inertia and indifference," which is against the
rules. She may have a great desire for pretty things, but she must sell
to other people at least twenty-five times the amount of her own salary,
or she will not be retained. Because she is of the first generation of
girls which has stood alone in the midst of trade, she is clinging and
timid, and yet the only perso