Shop Girls Driven To Disgrace

Not all young shop girls lacked in virtue or pocket money.

      The Tribune printed a New York special about the testimony of Mrs. Mary Goode, keeper of a disorderly resort, before the Curran aldermanic committee, in which she told of paying for police protection.

      "She estimated the number of women making vice a business in New York today at 35,000," says The Tribune. "This number, she said, included many shop girls who worked in stores all day, but whose weekly wage of $4 or $5 or so made it almost compulsory for them to turn to illegal employment as means of livelihood." 

      According to the official report of the Chicago Vice Commission, the same thing exists in Chicago: and The Tribune can get a much better-story out of that report than it got from New York.

      Here are some of the quotations from the Vice Report on the subject:

      "There are many men who own large establishments, who pay wages which simply drive women into prostitution."

      "Some of the girls who are most tempted, and who enter lives of prostitution, work in the big department stores, surrounded by luxuries, which all of them crave, and sell large quantities of those luxuries for a wage compensation of about $7 or $8 a week, and even less."

      "It has been established after exhaustive study that it is quite impossible for a working girl in any large city to live on less than $8 per week, yet employers of these department stores say that they pay on an average of $6 to $7 per week. This is all the girls are worth, they maintain; the law of supply and demand regulates this."

      "And because the unskilled girl workers are a drag on the market the employer keeps piling up enormous profits and paying great dividends, sometimes extra dividends."

      "Young sales inspectors receive a straight salary of $4 and older ones $5 per week."

      "This department store (name not given) pays $4 to $5 per week for new help."

      " A manager of a department in this store (name not given) who has charge of 10 girls, said he knew that 7 of them went to houses of prostitution on certain nights of the week to earn extra money."

      "An employe of (X985b) stores said she actually heard a superintendent ask a girl who had complained that she could not work for $6 per week, if this was the only way she had of earning money. She answered that it was. He then told her that the house could not pay her any more."

      "The head of (X985d) department store told an employe he did not care what the girl did outside of working hours, so long as they did not bring disgrace on the name of the store."

      This indicates that New York's shame is no worse than Chicago's shame. It also indicates that the federated churches, reformers and uplifters might do a world of good by making a fight to get a living minimum wage for all working women and girls, so that they can live decent lives if they want to, and not be driven to disgrace by fear of starvation.

      It is the first fight the reformers ought to make. It is a fight the newspapers ought to make, but one they can't make, or won't make, because the department stores are big advertisers. The Day Book, 1912     

Video About Shopgirls:

• True Story of Life Behind the Counter -"Dr Pamela Cox presents this three-part series following the journey of the shopgirl from an almost invisible figure in stark Victorian stores, to being the beating heart of modern shops. With retail the biggest private sector employer in the UK today, this series charts how shopgirls have been central to Britain's retail revolution and at the cutting edge of social change."