Shopgirl

“ To name the various kinds of business in which women are found making for themselves a sustenance would be to give a list of the many lines of retail trade; but the shopwoman of the earlier part of the nineteenth century is quite a different person from the tradeswoman of the latter half. Instead of a small, obscure shop, conducted in a hesitating, apologetic manner, to-day women are as aggressive advertisers, make as fine displays in their shops, and sustain the same business relations with the wholesale dealers, as do the retail dealers of the other sex. ”

“ A shop-girl, no doubt—a shop-girl that carried all her wages on her back and walked with a wiggle! There were no girls, no more. like the girls of her day. Never a one. Now, they went to work in offices instead of staying home and learning the things a girl ought to know. They made poor wives and worse mothers; they were half of them sickly and all of them silly; they knew no more about their proper business in life than a peacock knows about hatching duck's eggs.
She muttered and grumbled it over and over while she dressed—angry at herself now, because she had dared Larry to bring the girl. ”

“ The ill-bred fashionist sails haughtily into the shop where she obtains materials for her adornment, and with a supercilious air purchases her ribbons and laces of a sulky girl, who revenges herself for not being able to wear the costly gauds by treating as rudely as she dares the customer who can; and as they look upon each other, the one with scorn, and the other with envious hate, we see in both only the very same littleness of feminine vanity, which in its narrow-minded silliness believes that the first requisite of a lady is costly garments. ”

“ The youth himself stands prompt and alert behind his counter, never idling for a moment, nor permitting his shopboy to idle, but both busy, cutting, and brushing, and bustling about, whether there be any thing to do or not. If but an old lady be seen looking up at the window, or glancing in through the avenue of cheap prints that forms the doorway, what an angler-like eagerness in the mind of the trader that she would but walk in!—nothing more required—were she once within the shop, no fear but she is well done for. ”

“ The amount of "labor" these women will take upon themselves in the languid summer days is past my computation. I encountered one in a shop here the other day, trailing after her, at eleven in the morning, a wonderful length of silk robe, and wringing her tightly kidded fingers because a particular kind of ribbon was not to be had, and with a gesture of despair exclaiming, "I must telegraph instantly to New York for it." Poor thing! I say poor advisedly. I had rather be the barefooted, blithe little girl who drives the cows home, if I had to make my choice. What is woman without a shop? ”

“ We often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as “marriage-girls.”
Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage. ”

“ This, after a day of standing in other employment, is a vital strain more severe than may perhaps be readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have not the powerful wrists and muscular waists of accustomed washerwomen, and are in most instances no better fitted to perform laundry work than washerwomen would be to make sales and invoice stock. But custom requires exactly the same freshness in a saleswoman's shirt-waist, ties, and collars as in those of women of the largest income. ”

“ Quick perception and social tact, which are generally supposed to be feminine characteristics, often proved useful even to the craftsman, when his wife assumed the charge of the financial side of his business; it is therefore not surprising to find women taking a prominent part in every branch of Retail Trade. In fact the woman who was left without other 198resources turned naturally to keeping a shop, or to the sale of goods in the street, as the most likely means for maintaining her children, and thus the woman shopkeeper is no infrequent figure in contemporary writings. ”

“ What is there for this girl but the factory or the shop? Yet her presence there is a disaster for the whole labor system, for she is a cheap laborer—cheap not because she is a poor laborer—she is not; generally she is an admirable one—quick to learn, faithful to discharge. Her weakness in trade is that she is a transient who takes no interest in fitting herself for an advanced position. The demonstration of this statement is found in a town like Fall River, where the admirable textile school has only a rare woman student, although boys and men tax its capacity. ”

“ The dear Rose! How good it would be to see her, and Doctor Flower, and, perhaps, Bubble!
It was eleven o'clock before she reached Blank & Blank's, and the vast shop was filled with a surging crowd of women, young and old, smart and dowdy, rich and poor. Here and there a lone man was seen, standing bewildered, with a sample in his hand of something that he was to match; here and there, too, stood the floor-walkers, in calm and conscious dignity, the heroes of the shopping-world; but these [104] were only occasional flecks on the frothing tide of womanhood. ”

“ I know that your ambition is not a very soaring one, and a few months ago you would not have ventured to dream of ever being a young lady in a shop like Jay's or Peter Robinson's. Yet for such a place you would not have to study for years and pass a stiff examination, as a poor girl is obliged to do before she can make her living by sitting behind a counter selling penny postage-stamps. Homely girls can succeed there: for the fine shop a pretty face, an elegant figure, and a pleasing lady-like manner are greatly prized—more than a knowledge of archaeology and the higher mathematics ”

“ Her influence afterwards, among girls comparatively innocent and without her experience, cannot but be pernicious, and at the same time must exert a certain formative and shaping process in determing the peculiar character of the whole class of girls in the store.
Very frequently she does not attain even to the questionable dignity of a marriage ceremony. Flattered by the attentions of some swell, the pretty shop girl will be induced to accompany him to the theatre and to supper in a concert saloon. ”

“ My idea of a shop-girl is a good deal like my idea of any other woman, or lady, for that matter. She should wear her hair tidily, have clean hands and nails, and wear a costume that is appropriate to what she's doing. ”

“ Saleswomen, usually plain-featured, but vivacious, waylaid the feminine foot passenger with cunning importunities, after the fashion of market-women, and using much the same language; a shop-girl, who made free use of her eyes and tongue, sat outside on a stool and harangued the public with "Buy a pretty bonnet, madame?—Do let me sell you something!"—varying a rich and picturesque vocabulary with inflections of the voice, with glances, and remarks upon the passers-by. Booksellers and milliners lived on terms of mutual understanding. ”

“ She knows far better what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor. From her post behind the counter the shop-girl examines every detail of costume, every air and grace of these women whom she despises, even when longing most to be one of them. She imitates where she can, and her cheap shoe has its French heel, her neck its tin dog-collar. Gilt rings and bracelets and bangles, frizzes and bangs and cheap trimmings of every order, swallow up her earnings. The imitation is often more effective than the real, and the girl knows it. ”

“ Women know how to buy for women—or should know. How foolish indeed would be the merchant prince of the New York of this day who would not instantly say "yes" to the assertion that feminine taste in buying is the one thing with which his store absolutely could not dispense. So the woman buyer in our city stores is so much an accepted fact as to call today for little special comment, save possibly to add that in no store outside of Macy's has she come more completely into her own. The buyer's job covets her. And she covets the buyer's job. ”

“ He told me, that in countries where women are the shopkeepers, shops are only kept for the convenience of the people, and not for their amusement. Persons there go into a shop because they want the article which is sold there, and in that case a woman answers all the purposes which are required; the shops themselves are mere repositories of goods, and the time of year of little importance to the receipts. But it is otherwise in London; luxury here fills every head with caprice, 121from the servant-maid to the peeress, and shops are become exhibitions of fashion. ”

“ Stepping into one or two shops in the village, to hunt up some nick-nacks for a dear little girl at [Pg 193] home, I encountered some familiar New York shop faces. One woman told me that she hired a shop there every year during the "season," and that many other New-Yorkers did the same, retreating again when the tide of fashion set cityward. They calculate rightly—the shopping mania never will be burned out of women while there is a timber left of her; and were there nothing but an old horse-blanket in the village, she would buy it, if she had to throw it away the next minute. ”

“ HOW WOMEN ARE!” SHE emerges from the shop. She is any woman, and the shop from which she emerges is any shop in any town. She has been shopping. This does not imply that she has been buying anything or that she has contemplated buying anything, but merely that she has been shopping—a very different pursuit from buying. Buying implies business for the shop; shopping merely implies business for the clerks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping, particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women ever really shop? Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but do they shop in the practical sense of the word? ”

“ Into this curious world the girl-bachelor soon finds her way. She knows exactly the twopenny-halfpenny little shop where she can get art-muslin at a penny-three-farthings a yard. Most of it is hideous, but she is clever at picking out the few pretty pieces. She sometimes purchases a quite beautiful bit of colour for the brightening of her rooms in the shape of pottery vases for a couple of pence. “The little grocer’s shop.”No one better than the girl-bachelor knows that the best value for her money is to be found at the little grocer’s shop in a poor neighbourhood. ”

“ When a woman asks herself that question, there is but one answer—shop. But before embarking on that fascinating pursuit she began to turn over in her mind just what kind of shopping would amuse one who had not a need or a wish ungratified. ”

“ Miss Ena Rolls and her brother were said to be "showing their father's shop to an English lord." How the thrilling tale began to go the rounds nobody in "Blouses" could tell. But whenever any famous personage—a millionaire's daughter or an actress, a society beauty or the heroine of a fashionable scandal—enters a big department store, the news of her advent runs from counter to counter like wildfire. In some shops the appearance of an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Princess Patricia would send up the mercury of excitement forty degrees higher than that of a Miss or Mr. ”

“ The store was a maze of wonder to the girl from the mountains—so many bright, bewildering things, ribbons and tin pans, glassware and toys, cheap jewelry and candies. She looked about with the dazed eyes of a creature from another world.
But the manager looked upon her with eyes of favor. He saw that her eyes were bright and keen. He was used to judging faces. He saw that she was as yet unspoiled, with a face of refinement far beyond the general run of the girls who applied to him for positions. And he was not beyond a friendly flirtation with a pretty new girl himself ”

“ It is almost impossible to mistake the factory-girl, and even at a glance one notes certain characteristics which distinguish her from her sister [Pg 509] workers. Contrast her, for instance, with the theatre child out of Drury-lane. The little actress may be as poor as the Mile-end factory-girl, but in nine cases out of ten she will be very neatly clad, with spotless petticoats and well-made boots and stockings. If you watch her, you will notice she walks gracefully, and instinctively assumes, whenever she can, a picturesque and taking attitude. ”

“ Here and there a storekeeper stands before his shop-door exchanging gossip with the passers-by; and black fellows of every nationality, clothed in ragged trousers and greasy shirts, with, it may be, a battered hat stuck on top of their dusty wool, stand in knots chattering in their deep bass, or trundle great packages in and out of the stores. All this Lilian hardly sees as she strolls along, a world of tender thought in the sweet eyes; and the beautiful figure in the cool summer dress forms a very bright and pleasing contrast in that busy workaday throng. ”