New York Department Stores
FRANCES DoNovAN was a teacher in a large Public School in Chicago. In order to get a first-hand knowledge of the life of girls who work in department stores she spent her long vacation in working in two of the biggest department stores in New York. The Saleslady—our chief quarrel with the book is its title—is the result of her observations during these few weeks. It might have been a dull, statistical treatise: it is a human document from start to finish.
Miss Donovan found life in a department store a world of its own, with its own loyalties, ambitions, recreations and interests. For most of the saleswomen, though they may have husbands and children, the store is their life :— •
"The thing that the department-store girl enjoys most is work. She likes the companionship of those whose interests are identical with her own ; she enjoys her wide contact with the humanity - that pours through the doors of the store and sooner or later finds its way to her department.; she enjoys the fierce struggle to hold her own and to get ahead, and she adores the conflict of personalities, the constant bickering between her fellow-workers and those higher in authority. To her, life is a dramatic episode in which she has the dual role of participant and spectator. All the little happenings of the store are her meat and the gossip that drifts by her counters is to her the wine of life."
It is the engrossing nature of this work with its demands on the intelligence of the saleswoman—Miss Donovan found- the correct keeping of her sales-book a real difficulty—and the constant skill required in the handling of people, that makes this occupation so satisfying. It is astonishing but true that in slack moments during the day the chief recreation vas the game of "Customer." "One girl takes the part of the saleswoman, another that of the customer in search of a dress, and together they put on an act that would delight the heart of a vaudeville audience." This game never ceases to entertain, and it has also a serious significance, for in this way the saleswoman dramatizes the life in the store, thus commenting upon it and learning many a lesson thereby.
Miss Donovan describes how she got her job. She found a. genuine attempt was made in both department stores to give her the work which she was most likely to enjoy and to do successfully. She quotes from her intelligence testi and describes the medical examination, the most important part of which was the inspection of her feet ; she explains what care is taken to assist every saleswoman to do her job as competently as possible, particularly by means of the daily classes which every inexperienced newcomer is required to attend.
Miss Donovan was obviously a good " mixer " ; she succeeded in making friends with a large number of her fellow- workers and in this way she was able to write not only of the surface setting of saleswomen, but she gives us a broad canvas of their business lives in the store against the varied background of their private lives. She got through the
superficial external similarity of her fellow-workers to respect the free, independent woman inside.
"I shall always look back with pleasure to the five valuable weeks I spent in this store, and I shall never forget the girls. There were twenty-two of them in the department ; six were unmarried, two were widows—one widow was divorced—and the rest were married and living with their husbands. All that I was able to discover about the latter was that they had office positions.' Three of the girls had automobiles and all had friends whose cars were at their disposal for evening rides or week-ends at Asbury Park—their favourite vacation objective—where they stayed, not at the big hotels, but 'in little places on the side streets. They returned from these trips proudly displaying thick coats of tan and recounting at great length the pleasures they had enjoyed and the delights of sea-bathing."
On the whole, our author seems to have been thoroughly, attracted and interested by the business of selling, and there are many of us who are as interested as she is in the way others live.
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