The business of dress-making and millinery seems to be one in which acomparatively few persons make all the money, while the rank and file do most of the work. At least such is the case with regard to this industry in large cities. In small towns and villages it is different, and the village dress-maker is an institution in herself, and frequently a person who has attained to no little importance in the community. The familiar type of the village dress-maker, who carries the gossip of the place from house to house, portioning out her time between the different well-to-do villagers in need of her services, and acting as the arbiter of taste and fashion in the community, has by no means disappeared; and perhaps it is just as well to say that in the smaller villages and towns the person who devotes herself to dress-making will probably find the best field for her activity. The expenses of business in a large city, and the constant risk of bad debts, make the life of most fashionable dress-makers far from a bed of roses.
There is a common impression to the effect that all fashionable dress-makers and milliners accumulate fortunes, but as a matter of fact it is said by those in the business that the fortunes made in dress-making in New York City in the last twenty years may be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is true that some women have succeeded exceedingly well, one fashionable dress-maker having invested a large amount of money in real estate in New York City and Long Branch, and thereby more than tripled her earnings; the fortune of this dress-maker was recently estimated at nearly a million dollars, but probably not more than a quarter of this sum was due to the dress-making business she carried on for nearly twenty-five years.
Very much the same may be said as to the business of millinery shops. It milliners grow rich, or even succeed in acquiring enough money to withdraw from the business.
is notorious that the cost of the raw In most of the shops work begins material which enters into a bonnet or at eight o'clock, or even earlier, and hat is absurdly out of proportion to the lasts until six, with extra hours until price asked for the finished article in eleven or twelve at night in the height fashionable shops; and yet very few of the busy season. The wages vary.
The chief troubles of the trade, according to one of the best milliners of New York, are bad debts and the impossibility of disposing of materials which have become a trifle out of fashion. The business, like that of fashionable tailors, is one largely run upon long credits; some of the best customers of the leading milliners of New York allow their bills to run from two to three years, and, of course, in some instances such bills are never paid. Yet, from the peculiarities of the business, fashionable milliners and dress-makers, as well as tailors, cannot afford to press their customers too hard for money, or to take the debt into the courts, unless the sum is exceedingly large. They are afraid of having, or acquiring, the reputation of harsh dealing, and prefer to lose the money rather than appear in court.
The rank and file of the workers for milliners and dress-makers do not have an over-easy or over-pleasant life, according to the stories told by themselves. [...] Very few dress-makers in New York employ more than sixty hands upon the average, and the rooms are usually well ventilated and well lighted.
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The ambition of most women who enter the workshops of fashionable dress-makers and milliners is naturally to establish a business of their own, and there are nearly four hundred dress-makers in New York City who do work in their own flats and employ from two to ten assistants. Such dressmakers do not make fortunes, but they appear to make a comfortable living; they are not haunted, as a rule, by bad debts, for their customers are among the people who pay as they go, and they are not brought into competition with the army of women, both city and country, who sew for the wholesale houses. In the same way there are many small milliners, chiefly upon the cheaper avenues, who appear to make a very modest but sufficient income, so that if a woman has some business capacity as well as taste, the field of dress-making and millinery is not necessarily one of drudgery or starvation. The apprenticeship is, however, a hard one, and most girls who have homes in the country will do well to make their business where they are, rather than risk the troubles and possible dangers of life in a large city.
The shops naturally attract an army of women from the country to large cities every year, and New York is said to give employment to sixty thousand shop-girls and women. The life is, at best, one of long hours and small pay, very few saleswomen, even in the best New York shops, receiving more than six dollars a week.
A number of influential men and women have worked for years to better the condition of the New York shopgirls, in the way of seats behind the counters, easier hours, improved ventilation and sanitary arrangements. The White List is a publication widely circulated by one such association, which contains the names of shops where employees are humanely treated. The members of the association agree, so far as it is convenient, to deal only with the shops found in this list.
The law compelling shop-keepers to provide at least one seat for every six shop-girls, was due to the efforts of such a society, and now that some laws exist for the protection of shop-girls an attempt is made to see that they are enforced. Violations are frequently discovered. In one large shop where the law has been obeyed to the extent of putting in the one seat required for every six girls, a fine was imposed upon any girl found sitting on it!
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The ambition of most women who enter the workshops of fashionable dress-makers and milliners is naturally to establish a business of their own, and there are nearly four hundred dress-makers in New York City who do work in their own flats and employ from two to ten assistants. Such dressmakers do not make fortunes, but they appear to make a comfortable living; they are not haunted, as a rule, by bad debts, for their customers are among the people who pay as they go, and they are not brought into competition with the army of women, both city and country, who sew for the wholesale houses. In the same way there are many small milliners, chiefly upon the cheaper avenues, who appear to make a very modest but sufficient income, so that if a woman has some business capacity as well as taste, the field of dress-making and millinery is not necessarily one of drudgery or starvation. The apprenticeship is, however, a hard one, and most girls who have homes in the country will do well to make their business where they are, rather than risk the troubles and possible dangers of life in a large city.
The shops naturally attract an army of women from the country to large cities every year, and New York is said to give employment to sixty thousand shop-girls and women. The life is, at best, one of long hours and small pay, very few saleswomen, even in the best New York shops, receiving more than six dollars a week.
A number of influential men and women have worked for years to better the condition of the New York shopgirls, in the way of seats behind the counters, easier hours, improved ventilation and sanitary arrangements. The White List is a publication widely circulated by one such association, which contains the names of shops where employees are humanely treated. The members of the association agree, so far as it is convenient, to deal only with the shops found in this list.
The law compelling shop-keepers to provide at least one seat for every six shop-girls, was due to the efforts of such a society, and now that some laws exist for the protection of shop-girls an attempt is made to see that they are enforced. Violations are frequently discovered. In one large shop where the law has been obeyed to the extent of putting in the one seat required for every six girls, a fine was imposed upon any girl found sitting on it!
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