ncreases up to eighty-five. Girls in training as Morse operators are
called check girls and may receive thirty, thirty-five or forty-five
dollars a month with an increase in the second year to fifty dollars.
Women who are Morse operators belong to the same union as the men and
receive the same wages. In larger places they begin at eighty-five
dollars a month and receive increases up to one hundred and twenty-three
dollars and twenty-five cents.

Both telephone and telegraph operators are in a sense public servants, and
may win the respect and gratitude of their clients. They sometimes suffer
from a lack of appreciation of their really arduous work; but as a rule
the public recognizes good service. These workers often show loyalty under
trying and exacting circumstances. On many occasions girls have risked
death from fire and flood by staying at their posts to warn others of
danger. During the Great War there have been instances of telephone and
telegraph operators performing services as faithful and as brave as many
of the deeds on the battlefield.

CHAPTER XIV

HAIRDRESSER AND MANICURIST. WAITRESS

Hairdressing and shampooing, manicuring and chiropody, are almost
exclusively the work of girls and women. There has been a decided
improvement in these employments, and any girl who takes a serious
interest in making herself a thoroughly trained worker in one of these
lines of work, provided she has the gifts which are needed, is likely to
find her occupation becoming more and more necessary and esteemed.

To be entirely successful in work of this kind a girl should have engaging
personal qualities. Just as a doctor or nurse with abundant personal
vitality gives health and encouragement to patients by being in the same
room with them, so the girl who gives massage after a shampoo quiets and
soothes the client with whom she is working and who has come in for a rest
as well as to have her hair shampooed. A girl with this power to soothe is
a helpful person. She will never lose a customer who can remain with her
if the customer has once experienced the difference between an ordinary
treatment and the superior work of the girl who is gifted by nature with
a personality which both soothes and invigorates.

While a girl may begin her training as young as sixteen, it is better if
she is nineteen or older. Some experienced women say that no girl should
begin work of this description younger than twenty. She should appl