ng the Christmas rush of
1909-1910.

Further informal reports made by the shop-girls in the early summer of
1910 proved that the income and expenditures of women workers in the
stores had remained practically unchanged since the winter of Mrs.
Clark's report.

So that it would seem that the budgets, records of the investigator, and
statements given by the young women interviewed last June may be
reasonably regarded as the most truthful composite photograph obtainable
of the trade fortunes of the army of the New York department-store girls
to-day.[2]

The limitations of such an inquiry are clear. The thousands of women
employed in the New York department stores are of many kinds. From the
point of view of describing personality and character, one might as
intelligently make an inquiry among wives, with the intent of
ascertaining typical wives. The trade and living conditions accurately
stated in the industrial records obtained have undoubtedly, however,
certain common features.

Among the fifty saleswomen's histories collected at random in stores of
various grades, those that follow, with the statements modifying them,
seem to express most clearly and fairly, in the order followed, these
common features--low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in
laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training,
absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of
seasonal work.

One of the first saleswomen who told the League her experience in her
work was Lucy Cleaver, a young American woman of twenty-five, who had
entered one of the New York department stores at the age of twenty, at a
salary of $4.50 a week.

II

In the course of the five years of her employment her salary had been
raised one dollar. She stood for nine hours every day. If, in dull
moments of trade, when no customers were near, she made use of the seats
lawfully provided for employees, she was at once ordered by a
floor-walker to do something that required standing.

During the week before Christmas, she worked standing over fourteen hours
every day, from eight to twelve-fifteen in the morning, one to six in
the afternoon, and half past six in the evening till half past eleven at
night. So painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long
periods that some of the girls forego eating at noon in order to give
themselves the temporary relief of a foot-bath. For this overtime the
store gave her $