Salesmanship for girls, especially in the great department stores of the cities, is a vocation of at least doubtful advantage for the home-minded girl to pursue as a step in her training for managing her own home.  In the quiet of the village store, with few associates in work, and with one’s neighbors and fellow townsmen for customers, salesmanship takes on a somewhat different aspect.  But the city store means usually hurry, excitement, nerve strain, a long day, with quite probably reaction to excessive gayety and hence more nerve strain at night.  It means spending one’s days among great collections of finery which tend to assume undue importance in the girl’s eyes.  It means constant association with people who spend, until spending seems the only end in life.  It means almost always pay lower than is consistent with decent living if the girl must depend alone upon her own earnings.  And none of these things tends toward steady, skillful, contented wifehood and motherhood in later years.  This question of underpaid work is of course not found alone in the department store.  But, wherever it is found, we may be sure that it tends on the one hand toward marriage as a way of escape from present want, and on the other toward inefficiency in the relation so lightly assumed.

The factory girl is in many respects in a position parallel to that of the saleswoman.  She earns too little to make comfortable living possible.  She too must leave home early and return late, wearied by the monotony of a day in uninteresting surroundings, with neither energy nor inclination for anything other than complete relaxation and “fun.”  This desire for relaxation leads her often away from a crowded, ill-supported home in the evenings, until the habit settles into a confirmed disposition.  This is a decided handicap for a homemaker.  Coupled with the mental inertia resulting from years of mechanical work without thought, it provides poor material from which to make steady, responsible, efficient women.  We have already noted, however, that factories differ widely.  It follows of necessity that the girls who work in them come from their work with all grades of ability.

The actress, the artist, and the literary woman are usually spoken of as far removed from the true domestic type.  This I cannot believe to be true, except in individual cases.  All these women, as makers of finished products, stand far nearer to the traditional type of woman than many others we might name.  The life of the actress tends more than the others perhaps to break home ties, but in the case of real talent in any direction ordinary rules do not apply.  The actress, the artist, and the writer are much more likely to carry on their work after marriage than the teacher, the office worker, or even the factory woman.  Many of them succeed to a remarkable degree in doing two things well.  Many more, of course, are less successful, but we must not overlook the fact that the failures are more noised abroad than the successes.